2007 - The Ministry of Special Cases

by Nathan Englander

  “We went back to my house to decide what to do. And then you called, and there was no other choice. We were worried—we are—for our friend. We had nothing but the worry and we ran.”

  “Not very far or very well,” Kaddish said. “It was pretty easy to find you. A pitiful fugitive. You only made it one day”

  “I was hiding just fine. I only came out for a game of foosball and a Coke.” Rafa looked into the rearview mirror and blinked. “If I knew where Pato was, I’d take you. I’d give my life for your son.”

  “If we can arrange the trade, we will.” Kaddish watched the boy in the rearview mirror. He passed back a cigarette and lit another for himself.

  Flavia sat on the carpet in the middle of the room. She had the front of her hair tucked behind her ear. Her knees were pulled to her chest and she wore a modest peasant skirt that was spread out around her. She’d always been friendly to Lillian in the past. She wasn’t now. She sat there looking scared.

  The walls of the apartment needed painting and there was no furniture in the room but for two park benches facing each other in the center. There was a clump of grass still clinging to one of the feet. It was clear no one had lived there for some time.

  Lillian and Kaddish sat together, bodies touching. Rafa was stretched out on the bench across, with a leg thrown over the side.

  Flavia got up and went into the kitchen to turn off the water before it reached boiling. She brought back the kettle and put it on a burnt spot on the rug where the acrylic fiber had melted down. She again set her skirt around herself. She passed the mate to Lillian and then hit Rafa so that he sat up.

  “Pato has done something wrong,” Kaddish said. “You’ve done something wrong. Somewhere, somehow, you and your friends have broken a rule.”

  “Pato has not done something wrong,” Rafa said. “We have not.”

  “There’s a reason,” Kaddish said.

  “The reason is no reason.”

  “How about you make one up?” Lillian said.

  “I think they took Pato because it sounded right to them, because he followed the last person and set up the next. That’s how it spreads, like a virus. It’s enough to get sneezed on by the wrong man.”

  “Nonsense,” Lillian said.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Kaddish said.

  Rafa took the mate from Lillian. The bombilla clinked against his teeth as he drank. “Do you really want to know what we’ve been up to?”

  “Yes,” Lillian said.

  “During uncertain times Pato and Flavia and I discussed a government so paranoid that it would one day hunt us for fearing such a situation would come to be. We’re conspiracy theorists who’ve been stripped of our conspiracy. Fearing this would happen is our biggest crime.”

  Flavia shook her head in disappointment, as if she’d been supervising until then and Rafa had just failed. “This boy here, sadly, is the closest we have to a radical. Does he sound like a mastermind of anything to you?”

  “No,” Kaddish said. “He doesn’t.”

  “We can’t help you,” Flavia said. Her face was expectant and Lillian took note.

  “But we can help you,” Lillian said.

  Flavia didn’t hesitate. She launched right in. “You have to get rid of his address book and his pictures and find his diary and any letters he wrote. You have to destroy everything that ties anyone—any of us—to your son.”

  [ Twenty-six ]

  RHYTHM AND REPETITION had no effect. Neither did choreographed motion, the flexing of specific muscles, or meditative challenges such as staying completely motionless or staring at certain objects until reality fell away. Lillian spent the dawn hours with a teaspoon cradled in her palm, focusing on palm and spoon, spoon and palm, until the lines were blurred, and still no one called. She had come to the conclusion that it was all nonsense but the numbers. Nothing but the counting seemed to make the phone ring. She sat in the wing-backed chair, counting up to thirty and then back down. The call came on nineteen, Pato’s age—another sign. She was out of the chair, the telephone to her ear, saying, “Hello,” and then “Hello,” again. When she heard no answer, she held out the receiver with both hands and yelled “Pato,” into the mouthpiece.

  “It’s me, Gustavo,” Gustavo said. There was confusion in his voice. He hadn’t intended to draw out Lillian’s desperation. It was an intimacy he wasn’t meant to hear.

  Confused herself, Lillian looked around for a clock and then to the watch on her wrist. Finding it, she understood it wasn’t the time but the day she was looking for. It was Friday. Friday with Gustavo, her boss, on the phone.

  She hadn’t spoken to him in a week, hadn’t been to work in a week—and then again to the watch—or was it only four days? When had they been out to dinner, eating spinach, drinking wine?

  “How are you, sweetie?” Gustavo said. “How are you doing with it all?”

  “Fine,” she said. “Bad.”

  Lillian looked out the window and after, for comfort, at Pato’s shelves. Such a smart boy. And kind. And full of surprises. She came up with a nice memory to calm herself. She thought about Pato staying out all night with his friends, and stopping at the bakery on his way home. He’d bring back a dozen medialunas wrapped in patterned paper and warm to the touch. Lillian would wake and smell them from bed, and know her son was home safe. In high school, before he turned surly, he’d still get up in the mornings and drag himself downstairs. It was the first errand Kaddish sent Pato out alone on, the list and the money pinned to his shirt. He couldn’t have been more than five. When he didn’t want to go, when he didn’t understand how this responsibility had fallen to him, Kaddish had explained it simply. “That’s why we had you,” is what Kaddish told him. “To get pastries is why you were brought into the world.”

  Lillian remembered one thing and forgot another. She was on the phone with Gustavo. She should have been listening; Gustavo was always full of advice. Lillian tried to pick up a thread but he’d already stopped talking. He might have hung up.

  Out of the silence, Gustavo said, “How long have we been friends?”

  “I don’t know,” Lillian said.

  “It Wasn’t easy to get you in,” he said. “I had Frida calling people all day. No one’s willing to help, and definitely not a lawyer of Tello’s caliber. You’re fortunate he’s agreed to get involved.”

  Gustavo stopped talking again.

  “Thank you for calling,” Lillian said.

  “You just feel better,” Gustavo said, as if she was home sick. Lillian held the phone tight. “And don’t worry about the bill. It’s taken care of.”

  “Where am I going?” Lillian said.

  “Where are you going? What does that mean, Lillian?”

  “I lost the address,” she said. She looked around for a pen. “And the name, and”—she started crying—“I don’t know what you’re saying. I’m having a very hard time.”

  “All right,” Gustavo said. “Fine, Lillian.”

  She put the phone into the crook of her neck, raised up a shoulder, and tilted her head. She scratched a pen against the back of a pad, testing her readiness, listening as best she could.

  We not only discover who our real friends are in an emergency, we also discover who we consider, in our hearts, to be our real friends. Lillian honestly hadn’t thought about Gustavo until she’d answered the phone. And she didn’t expect any more from him than what he’d offered. Gustavo wasn’t Frida. He wouldn’t risk his life for Lillian any more than she’d risk her own to save his. The limits were mutual and clear.

  Kaddish didn’t see things the same way.

  “Who hasn’t passed through that office since the coup? A top lawyer—what’s that worth?” Kaddish said. “A top fucking general is what we need.”

  “Don’t,” Lillian said.

  “I will,” Kaddish said. “You’ve been there for a dozen years, and the best he comes up with is a shyster? Now that he’s got you dealing with stolen property and stolen babies, yo
u’d think, for that alone, better favors were owed.”

  “Never out loud,” Lillian said. She put her hands over her ears. “Once I whispered it to you. Don’t ever say that out loud, Kaddish, you’ll see us all dead.”

  “Who says the outcome will be any different?” Kaddish said. “You gave that man the best years of your life.”

  “No,” Lillian said. “Those I gave to you.”

  “And mine went to you and Pato. And whether Pato wants to be or not, he’s my son too.”

  “Who’s saying different?”

  “I think you are. All the decisions are getting made like you’re in this alone.”

  “I don’t have the strength for this, Kaddish. You promised me’. ‘No. You promised for me,” Kaddish said. “Now I want an assurance of my own. I want to know you understand that almost a week has gone by and we’ve gotten nowhere. Visiting every police station in the country won’t make a difference and Gustavo’s lawyer isn’t going to tell us anything we don’t already know.”

  “What is the point of this?” Lillian yelled. “What does this do?’ ‘The point is for you to understand that if we keep going this way, we’ll end up roaming that building with the rest of the hopeless people who aren’t getting their kids back. You’re driving us toward the Ministry of Special Cases and I want you to know it. The system doesn’t work for anyone, Lillian, and it definitely never has for me. I still think, if we look the right way, we can find our son.”

  “You don’t want to start pointing fingers,” Lillian said. “It’s a losing proposition.”

  “If you blame me for opening the door, then say it’. ‘I’m trying to find Pato the only way there is. If you have one of your schemes at the ready, tell me. If it’s something concrete, let’s do it right now. I’ll help you search the nursing homes for the last Jewish pimp with a policeman in his pocket and a marble in his head. You lead and I’ll follow. We’ll exhaust all your big connections. Go get a shovel and we’ll dig up one of your heroes tonight.” Kaddish said nothing. He didn’t have a scheme. All he had was what he knew, that the government wouldn’t help them. “If your plan isn’t ready, then put your coat on and let’s go. Otherwise we’ll be late for the lawyer—a lawyer we’d never get to without Gustavo’s name attached.”

  Kaddish put his coat on, and finding the gold in his pocket, he dropped the two handkerchiefs on the shelf by the door. “That Gustavo’s an hijo depute,” Kaddish said. “A lawyer is a pitiful best from your best friend.” Gustavo wasn’t her best friend, he was her boss. Kaddish was coming with her so Lillian let it pass.

  The lawyer’s name was Alberto Tello, and there seemed to be a huge misunderstanding about what exactly he’d been hired to do.

  “New York,” Alberto said. “Paris. For Jews there is Israel. If you want Spanish spoken, there’s Mexico. There’s Uruguay if you want Spanish spoken and to be close, but I don’t recommend it. This government has reach. Too many people go missing in the countries nearby.”

  “You want us to leave the country?”

  “I’m offering help.”

  “Does Gustavo know this is what you’re doing?”

  “He’s very concerned. He asked me to take care of you.”

  “New York?” Lillian said.

  “I mentioned it as an option. I told him I could get you on a plane today, get you settled. He said to arrange it if you decide.”

  “That’s insane,” Lillian said.

  “Often the families disappear as units, which makes it not very insane at all. It makes it actually smart. As for your estate, I’ll handle all of it. I’m to see that the transition is smooth.”

  This was the funniest thing Kaddish had heard since their lives turned bad.

  “Our estate?” he said. “Yes, Lillian, who will look after our holdings while we’re gone?”

  “I know you have limited means,” the lawyer said. “I apologize. These are the terms we use.”

  “I can find a travel agent on my own,” Lillian said. “What I need is a lawyer. If you’re willing to see us, you must be willing to help.”

  “Yes,” Kaddish said. “Here’s your chance to tell us you’d help if only you didn’t have your own family to worry about. Then send us to the Ministry of Special Cases and we’ll be on our way.”

  “I do have a son, and I do worry,” the lawyer said. “But that’s not the reason I won’t start a dossier for you.”

  “Then what is it?” Lillian said.

  “It’s that there’s one of me and every day more people like you. I’m not smart enough to win these cases and I don’t have heart enough to keep losing them again and again. My talent lies in getting families out and finding them countries where they can stay. That’s the compromise I make. I offer small comfort to a lot of people in the time it would take to do nothing on a grand scale for one.”

  “You have tried, though?”

  The lawyer nodded.

  “And the ones you fought for, did they get their missing back?”

  The lawyer shook his head.

  “I had a married couple abducted from their apartment. The army secured three city blocks before they went in. Dangerous a mission as it was, they remembered to bring a moving truck. They took the couple and then they took everything else. They stripped the place to the floorboards. Do you know how many people see such a thing—how public that is? They closed down a neighborhood and then carried the people out along with their couch, the radiators—they took the kitchen sink. And still the habeas corpus was refused. The army said, “Not being detained.” That’s how all my dossiers came back: “Not being detained,” no matter how absurd.”

  “What about witnesses?”

  “I haven’t had a decent corroborating witness outside the family yet.”

  “And you never got anyone back? Not one?”

  “One,” the lawyer said. “And that was by fluke and still a sad story. The habeas corpus was refused, a ‘Not being detained’ like the others. It was the father who tracked the body down at the Forensic Medical Corps morgue.”

  “Dead?” Lillian said.

  “Yes,” Tello said. “That doesn’t mean there aren’t stories where the opposite is true. I’ve heard of people released in all manner of ways and a habeas corpus issued to a person who hadn’t asked. The one thing I can tell you is that this government runs on paper. If they want they can erase someone in a day, everything—birth certificate, diplomas—all of it expunged, co-workers swearing they’d never met. They’ll undo a future and a past in one blow. What you need is to make your son exist on paper. You need to get something official written down. If they own up to arresting him, they may also own up to the possibility that you’re due him back and in one piece. That’s really the key.”

  Kaddish said, “What goes in must come out?”

  “Paper is proof. They’ll lie about everything and make up the rest. The only thing they cower in front of is the filled-out form. If you build up to something, if real progress is made, I’d try for the habeas corpus. Otherwise, as you already said, it’s the Ministry of Special Cases. A success can be had there, but it’s like getting water from a stone.” The meeting had ground down. Kaddish and Lillian stood. “If you change your minds,” he said, “you know where I am. Bring a packed bag and a passport and I’ll see you both safe.”

  Lillian spent Friday night in her chair by the window, watching the corner around which Pato might turn. Kaddish watched TV too loudly, drank too much, and smoked until the taste in his mouth went stale. He went into the kitchen at ten-thirty to freshen his drink and only came out again just before midnight, carrying a salad in a bowl.

  “I’ve mashed potatoes,” Kaddish said. “I’ve burnt you a steak.” His own he took bloody, touching it fleetingly to the griddle.

  “I’m fine,” Lillian said.

  Kaddish laid out place settings and served the rest of the dinner. He said to Lillian, “Come eat.”

  “If we’re having Friday night, let’s have it.�
��

  Lillian put three candlesticks in the center of the table. Two candles for Shabbos and the third a minbag from Lillian’s house. Some mothers light an extra candle for each of their children. Lillian’s mother had lit one for her, and Lillian did the same after Pato was born.

  At least she had for the first weeks until Kaddish had used them to light one too many cigarettes, until he’d made her feel it was nothing but superstition, nonsense to light candles when they did nothing else.

  Kaddish hadn’t felt like he was being a brute. He had no use for laws that saw him a bastard, and less so for traditions passed on. Let them take the rules that made him mamzer and outcast and use that extra candle to push them deeply up their collective ass.

  “You have to do that before dark,” Kaddish said.

  “Now you’re a stickler for things you don’t believe in?”

  “It’s the one Jewish tradition I keep—a hypocrisy that traces back.”

  Lillian held his gaze. “It can’t hurt to light a candle for Pato.”

  “No,” Kaddish said. Lillian put out a hand for his lighter and he gave it to her. “Sounds more Catholic than Jewish, but no.”

  Kaddish stood quietly while Lillian lit the candles and then covered her eyes. Because of the bandage, the whole of her face was hidden but for her mouth. She mumbled the blessing and she made a wish. They sat at the table and Kaddish had to admit—strange compliment though it was—that he’d not seen her looking better since Pato was taken.

  “I added a layer of gauze,” Lillian said. She smoothed the ends of the tape down against her cheeks. “A bit of clean dressing on top always brings out my eyes.”

  Kaddish went and opened a bottle of wine, trying to maintain the spirit. He poured for both of them and quickly drank. He wasn’t about to say a prayer.

  “It’s not hypocrisy,” Lilian said of the candles. “It’s what lapsed Jews do in times of trouble. They make amends and beg help from God.”

  “I’m not going to, if that’s all right.”

  “To ask?”

  “To beg,” Kaddish said.