2007 - The Ministry of Special Cases

by Nathan Englander

  [ Thirty-eight ]

  KADDISH’s GOOD SUIT no longer buttoned but it still fit nice. He was showered and shaved, his shoes polished up with the shirt he’d spent the last days in, and, right before he hung a sheet over the bathroom mirror, he used its reflection to adjust his tie.

  In the kitchen he took up a knife and went after the block of ice in the freezer, just enough chipped off to cool a drink. He toasted the air, drained his glass, and poured another full. He then took up the knife a second time and aimed it—with no intention of stabbing—at his heart. Lapel in hand, Kaddish made a cut with a sawing motion. He put the knife down and rent the fabric, giving a good tear.

  This is how he did it, this is how it’s always been done: a sign of mourning. He smoked a cigarette and waited for Lillian. He had a vague memory from a lesson of Talmud Harry’s, and at one point, feeling foolish, he ashed the cigarette onto his head.

  There was the thud of a bag dropped, heavier for having been dragged around all day. Lillian let out a groan as she hung up her coat. Neither the sound of the thud nor the echo of her despair came back with anything other than an empty-house feel, this despite Kaddish’s presence there.

  Lillian didn’t start at the sight of her husband seated behind the little table in the kitchen. She noted the hair combed down and the cleanshaven cheeks, the smell of soap, and the suit he wore. “Have you wrapped yourself up like a gift for me to take you back?”

  Kaddish, with head dropped, stared down at the table.

  “Is it a party, then?” she said. “Should I get dressed up to celebrate your coming home?”

  Kaddish raised his eyebrows and, as if that had generated the momentum, followed with his chin until his head tilted back.

  Lillian looked down at him. There was a laxness to his skin that undermined all the grooming, and wet bloodshot eyes that were nothing but sad. With an open view of his broad chest, Lillian saw how the lapel hung down.

  “No,” she said.

  “Dead,” Kaddish told her. “I’ve spoken to a man.”

  Lillian stood up straighter, raised her own chin high. “Show me,” she said. “Get up and take me.” She grabbed the little table and pulled it to the side. The only thing on it, a glass, fell to the floor. Lillian covered her mouth. How sad Kaddish looked in the little chair. Not since their wedding, Lillian thought, Kaddish in a suit and a broken glass between them.

  “There’s nothing to show,” he said. “Disappeared, the man said, is as it sounds. The children are gone for good.”

  “Who?” Lillian said. “What man?”

  “The navigator,” Kaddish said. “The man who tosses them from the planes.”

  Lillian forced her mouth into a smile.

  “Now I get the suit,” Lillian said. “Now I understand the celebration. With a husband who’s forever wrong, with a man whose every promise comes apart, whose word is no good, whose beliefs always bring the opposite, and, if they don’t, he’s been telling lies…I get it now,” Lillian said. “You’re celebrating. Because even if you really think the worst has befallen him, it can mean nothing more, my Kaddish, than Pato is surely alive.”

  “Dead,” Kaddish said. “I believe it.”

  Lillian brought her face right up to his.

  “Not under this roof, husband. Under this roof Pato is still alive. In this house,” Lillian said, “live a mother and a son who is soon to come home. What is hazy, what is still unclear, is if a father lives here too.”

  “How will it turn clear?” Kaddish said.

  “If I can picture him with the mother waiting. If he is not waiting for the son to return, he is not not-waiting here.”

  It isn’t fair, Kaddish thought. She couldn’t be asking this of him.

  “I’m in mourning,” he said.

  “No,” Lillian said, waving a finger. “No, we aren’t. I’m not. I’m not and you must decide Waiting is the only option for under this roof. Waiting and wishing and helping to bring him home.”

  “You can’t expect,” Kaddish said. He stood to face her.

  “I can,” Lillian said. “I do. I’ve let you fail for a lifetime. And it’s a lifetime’s worth of expectations I’ve saved up. All for this, all for now.”

  Kaddish breathed the short breaths that precede tears.

  “Don’t,” Lillian said. “Forbidden. You’ve already said what you believe. And I want you to know, you’re thinking sick thoughts. Guilty thoughts. They contribute. They contribute to making real what is a lie.”

  “I spoke to the man,” Kaddish said. “The navigator.”

  “Invisible claims,” Lillian said.

  Kaddish missed his son so dearly it was as if he hadn’t been feeling a thing before. He didn’t know what to do with Lillian’s ultimatum, he only knew he couldn’t face that pew again tonight, he couldn’t wrap himself in that curtain and make it through until dawn. Of all the bad odds and long shots Kaddish had bet on, of all the good enterprises gone wrong, it seemed this was another deal he was making. Another deal with no other choice. So Kaddish leaned over and kissed his wife on the cheek, whispered into her ear. “Your roof, your rules,” he said.

  “Nothing less,” Lillian said, kissing him back. “Only alive, Kaddish. It’s the only way to keep it so.”

  Kaddish didn’t know in that instant if he could believe a dead son alive, but he was sure he wouldn’t make it without Lillian. And in a country where everyone was forced to live one lie, what did it hurt—for Lillian, for her sake and for his own—to try and live another?

  Kaddish made his way to their bed and lay down fully dressed. It was worth it, he thought. He could manage it if, when Lillian slept, he could lie beside her, his arm around her, and think the truth. This is what he told himself, not knowing that Lillian did not sleep, that she’d never return to bed without her son.

  Lillian went to the sink in the bathroom to brush the taste from her mouth. The sheet over the mirror startled her. She grabbed it in her fist and was about to tear it down, when, staring into the whiteness, she decided it was better. Pato’s face, Lillian’s face, they were both gone from that reflection. What was left for her to see that memory didn’t better serve.

  [ Thirty-nine ]

  LILLIAN PRESSED MONEY into Kaddish’s hand and rolled her fingers closed around his. She said, “You and I can live on our worries. A guest might need more to eat. Frida’s coming by. How about we have steaks?” When Kaddish nodded, she said, “Make sure at least one is a decent cut.”

  They were already behind on rent. They didn’t have a single job between them. And the night after he’d come home declaring Pato dead, she was digging into the money he’d left on the table and catering for a guest. “A bottle of wine,” she said, as the elevator dropped. Kaddish kept his eyes straight ahead. A voice from above.

  Kaddish went to the butcher’s and the butcher wasn’t there. His daughter, who sometimes worked the register, wore his apron. It nearly wrapped around her twice.

  Kaddish had been shopping there forever and he’d never found the store open without the butcher, Julian, there to greet him, plodding over, a pair of giant flat feet slapping around behind the counter.

  What to say in these days when nothing was said, when health or holiday were not assumptions, when only one conclusion was drawn? Kaddish couldn’t imagine what trouble a butcher might have got himself into. No more or less, he figured, than had his son.

  Looking at her face, looking around the empty place, it seemed the situation was as he’d thought. The butcher disappeared and his customers along with him. And how many, like Kaddish, coming in, taking note, still walked up to the counter as if this always was?

  Kaddish listened to what—even to his ear—sounded like a dull cleaver, the woman fracturing bones as if by malice. Her lips were pressed tight as she hacked. Kaddish knew what was in her mind. Each one a general, he was sure.

  He peered over to see the cuts of meat, terrible and rough. He thought the steaks might come apart before she go
t the wax paper closed. Another student for Mazursky this one. Ready for her first nose.

  Kaddish nodded to the daughter. He ordered three steaks.

  As he turned to leave, he had a change of heart. Maybe an attempt at solidarity was in order, maybe he could say something nice. Kaddish did nothing more than stand there. It wasn’t that his mind went blank. It was that, after the navigator, the only thing he could say to her was, He’s dead. Your father’s not coming home. That wasn’t Kaddish’s job. He wasn’t the grim reaper. Once a day, announcing death, was already too much.

  A car ground its engine in the street. Kaddish clenched the change tighter as if Lillian still held his hand closed. He opened the door with his hip, the bottle of wine he carried banging hard against it.

  The walk home was used for hating Frida. What kind of person would let herself be fed by those left desolate? What kind of friend would let the mother of a disappeared son—without money or prospects—treat her to steaks and a bottle of wine?

  Kaddish wore the navigator’s parka and his suit jacket underneath. The torn lapel no longer hung down. Lillian had made him stitch it back right. Only the sheets stayed over the mirrors, which was good for a man who couldn’t look himself in the eye.

  For all Kaddish’s thinking that Frida should know better, he got home to discover that Frida did.

  “You’re our guest,” Lillian was saying. “A pleasure, when pleasures have gone rare.”

  Frida was shaking her head and unpacking what she’d brought. The smells had already reached Kaddish and his stomach growled.

  “Steaks,” Kaddish said. He lifted up the wrong hand, showing them the wine.

  “You save those steaks for another night,” Frida said. “Make another meal out of it. Maybe Pato will be back in time to join you.”

  “Let it be so,” Lillian said. “Amen,” as if it had been a prayer.

  With Frida there and food brought, Kaddish felt like it was a condolence call. It pained him physically that it wasn’t. He stepped forward and kissed Frida on both cheeks. They had always loved each other, Kaddish and Frida. They hugged and it was warm.

  Lillian reached into one of Frida’s bags and came up with a deep dish of chicken and rice. Uncovering it on the table, she plucked a green pea and popped it into her mouth. “Who comes to dinner with dinner?” Lillian said.

  “A much better cook, that’s who.”

  Frida brought out a bottle of milk, two-thirds empty and still cold.

  “For my tea,” she said.

  She went back to unpacking, unchallenged. Batata and pickles, a dented pear, and, from the bottom, a tray of empanadas, one with a bite in its side.

  “I got hungry wrapping it up,” Frida said. She rubbed at her belly. “It’s a dangerous thing to be impressed with one’s own cooking. There is a price to pay.”

  Lillian took the empanada with the bite missing and, considering it, stink her teeth right on top of the ridge Frida had left, bite over bite.

  With Kaddish’s chair pulled up to the table, a glass of wine before him, and sweet Frida putting a buttered roll on each of their plates, Kaddish already thought he would break. His shoulders rose and fell in two quick heaves. He tried very hard not to, though he thought he might cry.

  Lillian, who would not brook it, raised her voice louder, told her story faster, pulling Frida’s gaze. Kaddish sniffed and wiped his nose. He was fine being boxed out of the conversation, absorbed as he was in marking the end of Pato’s first day passed. Kaddish took a sip of his wine. And thinking of his son, surely dead, and picturing the navigator, who knew it was so, and staring at Lillian, who hadn’t believed him, and hating a government that would deny Pato had been, Kaddish recognized also that this was the end of the first day for him alone.

  Lillian’s fork scraped against her teeth. Frida ate an empanada, catching crumbs in a palm held under her chin. How much different was this dinner, he thought, than the one at the general’s? Was it any better to sit here and talk of Pato in prison or swallow that man’s oysters while he claimed Pato was sunning on some beach? It filled Kaddish with such rage and so much guilt he thought to flip the table. Not wanting to, knowing also that what Lillian did was out of heartache, Kaddish only wished he’d slit the general’s throat when he’d had the chance. He should’ve taken the knife that pricked that woman’s finger and used it to split her in two, exposing the black pearl she must have instead of a heart.

  “I’m going to hold Feigenblum’s feet to the fire,” is what Lillian told Frida. “The Jews will put Pato on their list. And then there’s the newspapers. Each and every one will come to our aid. A front-page story on Pato disappeared, and let them run a banner when there’s news of his return.”

  The thought of a Poznan begging favors from the Jews put a shame on top of Kaddish’s sorrow. He finally had something to add. “If the other Jewish council had flourished,” he said, “if the Benevolent Self had made it instead of Feigenblum and his friends—and it could as easily have happened—this would have been over and done with at the start.”

  “The other Jewish council?” Lillian said. “Yes, I’m sure a board made up of pimps and alfonses would have an amazing amount of pull.”

  “If Talmud Harry were alive, or Shlomo the Pin, if Beryl Brass-Balls or any of the caftans who ran the Benevolent Self were around, there’d be broken knees between here and Ushuaia and enough dirty secrets to put the whole junta down. Pato would’ve been back the first evening,” Kaddish said. “If it was the other way, I’d have fixed it in an instant. A single call. All I would’ve had to do was pick up the phone.”

  Frida smiled into her plate.

  “But it’s not the other way,” Lillian said. “It’s this way. And I’m going to get to everyone but the doctor. The one useless man with power, I leave for you.”

  Kaddish had been brought low by this dinner. How much worse if Frida also knew that to keep his wife, to keep his home, he’d been made to betray his son? He tried to read his secret on her. What else of his name-chipping hijo-de-puta life had she been told?

  “Do you know?” faddish said to Frida.

  Frida said, “What?”

  She waited for an explanation while Kaddish stared at her, looking for a sign. When he turned to Lillian he found her jaw set forward and a rage to match his own. “I can’t do this,” he said.

  “Fine,” she said, so quickly Kaddish wasn’t sure he’d even spoken.

  He looked back to Frida. He was going to tell her the truth. Let Frida hear what he had to say about Pato, and let her decide which one of them she wanted to believe. But Lillian had been his wife a long time. Lillian knew him better than anyone else in the world.

  “Don’t say it,” she said, “don’t dare.” Lillian reached out and grabbed his wrist. “You can’t take certain things back,” she said.

  Kaddish nodded and went to the bedroom for his tools. He put a sweater on under his suit jacket and over it he put on the navigator’s coat. The suit was tight already. With the sweater underneath and the jacket above, Kaddish’s arms didn’t touch his body.

  Seeing Lillian’s purse on the bureau, he couldn’t help himself. Kaddish rifled through and took a few hundred-peso notes. It was only fair, this dipping into her wallet. He was leaving her the apartment (at least until they were tossed out) and the money from the last job, and he trusted that Lillian always had cash squirreled away. On his way out, Kaddish stopped at the table. Lillian didn’t interrupt the conversation to acknowledge he was there. She wasn’t going to give him a second chance to announce that Pato was dead. Anyway, pretending Kaddish wasn’t there was no great feat. It was the easiest thing in Argentina to effect.

  “I bet Gustavo doesn’t lose any sleep,” is what Lillian said to Frida.

  “No,” Frida said, “not a wink.” She laughed nervously, and gave Kaddish a sidelong glance.

  Kaddish reached right in between them. He took the bottle of wine from the table. Lillian didn’t acknowledge this either. So Ka
ddish shuffled off with his tool bag and headed out their always open door.

  Kaddish stopped at his kiosk on the way to the car. He put the bottle on the counter while he fished out some cash. It was a windy night and the tears in his eyes—for Pato and for Lillian and for the thought of leaving—could easily have been from the weather. Kaddish raised four fingers, the money pressed into his palm with a thumb. The kiosk man nodded and Kaddish shifted the weight of the tool bag, keeping it close to his body.

  The kiosk man moved the bottle of wine over and plunked down four packs of Jockeys. Two and two.

  He said to Kaddish, “¿Quetal, Flaco?”

  How’s it going, Skinny?

  And, as always, Kaddish answered, “Bien.”

  It’s going good.

  [ Forty ]

  DESPITE BEING CALLED A LIAR, despite feeling like a failure, despite the terrible things that had driven him back to that Benevolent Self pew, Kaddish wondered if his intentions shouldn’t count for more. He’d always meant well, even if lacking motivation and short on success. Thinking this thought through, he had to admit his logic was shaky. The navigator, Kaddish knew, would claim the same. A man who’d meant the best with each one, with every last body he’d fed to the sea.

  But this wasn’t his real concern. It was a momentary deception natural to a man already in the midst of what he couldn’t bear to do. To act brought with it a great dread for Kaddish. It was a shame that much more shameful when it forced him to betray the principles that protected him and to break with the picture that defined him. He found himself driven to take comforts he swore he’d never seek.

  Kaddish Poznan dropped off his pew and dropped to his knees. He pressed his forehead to the floor of the Benevolent Self and, banging his fists, raising up dust, Kaddish let out a wail…

  And he prayed.