The Ministry of Special Cases Read online

  “Fuck you,” Pato said. “The only crimes I’ve ever committed are the ones for your whores.”

  “You watch your mouth,” Kaddish said. “Not under my roof,” he said.

  The age-old responses, the words now only for rhythm. It was the eternal father-son fight. Pato rocked back and forth. To each threat from his father he responded with a hearty, “Fuck you.” The thanks Kaddish sought had mutated into this. He redoubled his efforts to find out what Pato had done. “Not right or wrong,” he said, “no one’s accusing. Tell me, only, what did you do?”

  It was a poor strategy, Kaddish’s forte. How could he have known there was no answer for Pato to give?

  Veins throbbed visibly. Teeth were clenched. And, as if they planned to butt heads, they scratched their feet at the floor. Kaddish and Pato stood chest to chest. So as not to tear each other to pieces, both knowing violence would go unrestrained, they found the only way out. They reversed course, giving their meaningless words all the meaning they could bear. They put the bite back into their yelling. They engaged all their socialized, civilized, higher human faculties. They barbed up their language and said what they meant and felt what was said.

  With careful modulation and pitch-perfect sensitivity, Pato said, “Fuck you,” to his father. He said it slowly and full of feeling and, tweaking, went at it again. “Fuck you,” Pato said. “I wish you were dead.”

  And Kaddish, his father, stepped back at the words. How much, how much can one man take after doing everything he could and doing it wrong in the eyes of his son? There were tears in Kaddish’s eyes. He thought he might cry. Fuck you. I wish you were dead. He’d heard it before. This time, though, the tone was right, the intonation was right, and he heard it personal. He heard it as truth.

  Kaddish heard it and accepted it. He was bowled over by it and, wounded—that’s all he could tell himself, that it hurt him to the core—he returned it to his son. Kaddish dished it right back.

  “Fuck you,” Kaddish said to Pato, his son. And—with all his might, with all his hurt feeling—“Fuck you,” Kaddish said. “I wish you’d never been born.”

  He said it. And it left them both standing for a moment in silence.

  Before there was time for either of them to absorb it, while the curse still hung in the air between them, there was, most clearly, a knock at the door.

  And Kaddish went to get it. And Kaddish got his wish.

  It was, in an instant, as if his son was never born.

  [ PART TWO ]

  [ Seventeen ]

  A MAN IN A SHARP GRAY SUIT walked out the door into the darkness of the hallway, a book tucked under his arm. A second man followed, two books, like dead weights, one hanging from each hand. A third and a fourth man walked out the door with Pato, Kaddish’s son, standing between them. They held him very firmly by the elbows, grasping tightly, so that his arms were bent and his hands straight in front. As he passed out of the apartment he smiled at his father, who hadn’t moved from his place by the heavy door, holding it open (needlessly) with a foot. He said to Kaddish, “A very poor note to end on,” and for this comment grips tightened and hands pointed higher in the air. They were not walking fast; Kaddish heard it all clearly. He also heard the elevator gate open and the hum of the old motor in the dark, since no one pressed the button for the hallway light. The gate to the elevator slid back, teeth caught gears, and then, along with the motor, there was the click of the release as the car lowered and the five bodies started to descend. Kaddish closed the door behind them and turned the key in its center.

  The first man’s suit had wide lapels. The second man had a windbreaker on between his suit jacket and shirt, mostly hidden, but Kaddish caught a glimpse of nylon: red and black, Newell’s colors. Kaddish was a Boca fan.

  Kaddish didn’t read much but was sure the second man, the wind-breaker man, didn’t either. It was the way he let the books hang in his hands as if there were nothing inside, nothing there at all but the weight of the things themselves. The book closer to Kaddish had a picture on the cover. He didn’t recognize it then but would know the book and the photograph when he saw it, also in Spanish translation, on the shelf of a fellow Argentine living in Jerusalem ten years down the line. He would, in mid-sentence, stop talking and, remembering, ask to sit down.

  There is no need to repeat that these books—all the books in the house, really—belonged to Pato. Kaddish and Lillian preferred the TV.

  Lillian Poznan had tried to prevent this. She’d gone out and bought the door. It wasn’t what she wanted kept out but what she wanted kept in. She had worried for her son.

  Kaddish Poznan had also tried to prevent this. He walked down the hallway and into the bathroom. He closed and locked the door and sat down in the dark, leaning his head against his arm and his arm against the tub. He could feel with his fingers the rough enamel within. He smelled the burnt smell and saw, in his mind’s eye, where the tub was black, where the paint on the ceiling peeled, which tiles were sooty in the grouting, and how the small window onto the air shaft was greasy black on the glass slats and around the edges where the wallpaper bubbled and warped.

  Kaddish Poznan had burned his son’s books in the bathtub. He just hadn’t burned all the right ones.

  [ Eighteen ]

  KEYS JANGLING, SMILE FADING, Lillian’s purse hung over her arm. She stepped into the middle of the room and put down her briefcase. She was calling for Pato all the while. The joy of coming home to her son, of the raise at work and her night on the town, still circled round her.

  Lillian checked both bedrooms and the kitchen where, as usual, the split lemon sat. Maybe they were out in Kaddish’s courtyard having a cigarette, the two of them stamping their feet against the chill. Lillian went out onto the service balcony, leaned over the railing, and yelled down. There was no answer from the bottom, only a half-deaf Mrs. Ordóñez with a, “Yes, dear” and an invitation for tea.

  Kaddish lay on his side on the floor, his knees pulled up and pressed into his chest. He hung his arm over the lip of the tub and picked at the charred enamel. He was confused about exactly what had transpired. It had all happened so fast and yet, quick as it was, there was an enormous amount to absorb.

  Here are the things that may have been said to his son: “We’ll cut your little cock off and choke you with it, this is how they’ll find you;” “Montonero, we’ll cut out your tongue and sew it into your father’s mouth;” and also, “We’ll cut off your father’s cock and plug your asshole with it.” So many odd things he may or may not have heard. Kaddish thought, Why so sexual? In the moment it was happening he’d wanted to say, Begging your pardon, is there any need to speak this way? Is it part of the job?

  Kaddish couldn’t remember which one had spoken. Was it the wind-breaker man or the sharp gray suit? Oh, but there was a nice part. He remembered a nice bit that he could share with his wife. Such a tough boy, his Pato, but, in the moment, so sweet. On the way out, he’d said, “Fathers are always fathers. Sons always sons.” Kaddish repeated it aloud. Lillian might like it, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Kaddish paid no mind to Lillian, mashing her fists, pulping her fists, screaming for him to open the door. At another time, in another Argentina, such a ruckus would have brought one neighbor running, set another complaining. There would have been a boot against a common wall, a broom handle in answer from Mrs. Ordóñez—ricochets and reactions and eventually police called in. Now it was assumed the police were to blame.

  When people heard noise they didn’t make more. They stopped what they were doing and turned their eyes to the floor. And, more and more, they kept on with their business. The neighbors heard nothing, no matter how loud.

  Here was Lillian down on her hands and knees, her mouth at the space under the bathroom door. In her panic, she’d been calling for Pato. Lowering her voice to a whisper, she then called, instead, Kaddish’s name.

  Lillian not only said, “Kaddish,” but also, “What have you done?”

&nbs
p; That question, Kaddish heard. After a pause to consider the forked path of errors from the start of his life until that day and, from that day the errors that led up until that moment, Kaddish raised himself up a bit. He hung his head over the slightly cooler emptiness of the tub. To Lillian’s question, he formulated the best answer he could.

  “I locked myself behind the wrong door.”

  Kaddish spoke into the hollow of the bath and the sound spread out, amplified by the tub, reflected by the tiles, filling the bathroom until it spilled out through the space Lillian spoke into, so that she heard Kaddish’s answer less from him than from the house itself: The wrong door, carried out on an infinitesimal current of air.

  “What is that?” Lillian said. “What does that mean?”

  “I thought it was you,” he said. Kaddish got up, unlocked the door, and, coming out, moved slowly past. Lillian followed him down the hall.

  “You opened what should stay closed, what I told you to keep closed—”

  “And closed what might as well be open,” Kaddish said.

  “And?” Lillian said.

  “Three books,” Kaddish said. “I missed three books. They took them along with Pato.”

  “God help us,” Lillian said.

  In the living room, Kaddish pointed to an empty space on the top shelf. “A place to start looking. From all the books in the world, I’m nearly sure one that we are missing went there.”

  “Lost your mind,” Lillian said. “Lost our son.”

  “Yes,” Kaddish said. “And I held it for them.” Here his voice broke hard. “I held open the door.”

  Lillian then took Kaddish’s face in her hands, and to get the attention of her addled husband, she squeezed that face as hard as she could. She pressed her nails into the side of Kaddish’s head. But Kaddish didn’t feel it. The pressure was already immense.

  Lillian said, “Did you call the police?”

  “Oh, my,” Kaddish said. And he laughed. He laughed so hard his head shook and Lillian’s nails, unmoving, broke skin. “No,” Kaddish said. “The police,” he said. “I didn’t think to call them. I would have, my dear, my sweet.” He kissed his wife on the cheek, leaning down, so that now her hands on his face resembled a grasp of great passion.

  “I would have called,” he said, “but I think—I’m quite sure—they only make a house call once a night. I think—I believe, my dear Lillian—I think the police have already been.”

  [ Nineteen ]

  LILLIAN STOOD WITH HER FEET planted in the corners of the doorframe, hands clamped to the sides. She was watching Kaddish in the hallway outside Cacho’s, her husband taking control.

  Cacho, who was surely home at this hour, didn’t answer. For this Kaddish deemed him involved.

  Kaddish had never had to calm Lillian physically before. In the apartment he’d peeled Lillian’s hands from his face. As if setting her loose, she’d stormed across the hall and again started banging, everyone in cahoots. Kaddish had hugged his arms around Lillian and moved her away. Then he’d replaced her.

  Kaddish beat at that door, his swollen palms aching. Lillian said nothing. She stood in silhouette on their threshold while Kaddish backed up three steps and, charging, threw his shoulder against the door like the cops they saw on television. The door didn’t give on the first hit or the second, and then it opened with Cacho hidden behind. He snaked his head around to find Kaddish with a foot planted for a third charge.

  Cacho opened the door wider. He was wearing the same pajamas he’d worn on the day of the coup. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “I was sleeping.”

  Lillian was already pushing at Kaddish’s back. “Well, it’s good you woke up,” she said. “Lucky. Because, you won’t believe it, but while you were sleeping Kaddish was breaking down your door. He was just this minute smashing it in so I could ask you a question.”

  “It must be important, if he was so driven.”

  “It is, it is,” Kaddish said. “Baking,” he said, squinting, studying Cacho’s face. “And, believe it or not, we’ve run out of eggs.”

  “A cup of sugar,” Lillian said, and stepped to Kaddish’s side.

  “You’re kidding, of course,” Cacho offered.

  “Yes. Yes. We’re big jokers, me and the wife. A comedy team. What we want to know—” Again Kaddish was squinting, and then he pointed at Cacho’s face. A finger right up to his face. “Do you see that, Lillian? His eyebrow is bleeding.”

  “That’s him,” she said. “I’ve seen it before. He scratches the eyebrows until there’s blood.”

  “Well, then”—Kaddish lowered the finger—“what about the mouth? Both his lips have been split. Do you think he punches himself in the mouth as well?”

  Lillian doubted this. “Not likely,” she said.

  “That’s why I was asleep so early, sleeping so heavily as to miss the knocking. Because of the accident. I’ve had a fall and I’m not myself.”

  “We understand,” Lillian said. “We’re no strangers to the recuperative. Kaddish is on his second set of black eyes.”

  “I was about to mention,” Cacho said. “Both your noses have come out most lovely.”

  “Can we come in?” Kaddish said.

  Cacho came out instead. He sighed as he did, knowing he was bringing his splinted arm along with him. He’d duct-taped a wooden spoon underneath his wrist; against the top, the tape held a spatula in place.

  “Quite a fall,” Lillian said. “To give you a fat lip as well as a broken—”

  “Sprained at most.”

  “As well as a sprained-at-most arm.”

  “And the apartment a mess because of it, which is why I don’t invite you in.”

  “We’ll have you over instead,” Kaddish said. He looked to Lillian for direction. He wasn’t exactly sure about roughhousing a neighbor who’d been beaten and who hadn’t really done anything in the first place, a passive crime at best. Taking all that into consideration, and glancing at his wife, Kaddish took Cacho firmly by his splinted wrist. Cacho screamed and then whimpered steadily as Kaddish led him across to their living room.

  Cacho sat on the couch.

  “They took Pato,” Lillian said.

  Cacho stared up in horror.

  “No time for displays,” Lillian said. “Kaddish thinks it was the police who took him. We’re going down to the station to fetch him, and you can imagine how much it would help—”

  “I was sleeping all night,” Cacho said.

  Kaddish sat down on the couch on his neighbor’s bad side. “Did you dream any odd dreams, Cacho? Was there a nightmare where four men beat you for peeking out while they took my son away?”

  “I didn’t dream that,” Cacho said. He looked up to Lillian, raising only his eyes.

  “Dream it this minute,” she said. “Go put some clothes on and get rid of that ridiculous splint and come with us to talk to the police.”

  “But I didn’t see anything.”

  “I’ll tell you what you saw,” Lillian said. “You watched him grow up. You saw him from a little boy.”

  “I slept. I didn’t dream. I didn’t hear. I didn’t see.”

  “Everyone losing senses these days,” Kaddish said. He was truly disappointed. “When this is all over, it’ll be hard to see these handicaps undone.”

  Cacho stood up to go. “It is everyone,” he said. “Not just me. Everyone is sleeping deeply.” He looked to Lillian, who looked away. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” Kaddish said. He pulled Cacho back down to the couch. “If you have no reason to come to the police station with us, stay here and babysit Pato.”

  “But he’s gone,” Cacho said. He cradled his arm.

  “Then you’ll have an easy job of it. You can call us at the station if anything comes up.”

  Cacho was desperate; his voice went high. “I don’t understand. Who am I babysitting if no one’s here?”

  “How would you know that?” Lillian said. “Did you see?”

&nbs
p; “I was sleeping, I told you.”

  “Then you’ll have no trouble staying awake. And if you can’t, feel free, stretch out on the couch. Read a book until you nod off.”

  Kaddish looked over his shoulder. “Don’t touch the books. Television. Watch the TV.”

  “You can’t make me stay here. What if they come back? What if they decide they want you two as well? Whole families. First one, then the others.”

  “Who’s coming back?” Kaddish said.

  “I can’t do it.” Cacho stood up cautiously. Kaddish didn’t pull him back down. “I couldn’t have stopped them even if I saw.”

  “We know that,” Kaddish said. “Nobody thinks you could.”

  “A coward after all,” Lillian said.

  “I am,” Cacho said, and his eyes turned narrow before—like a blink—returning to the width of his pleading. “But how did they get the boy past a man as tough as your husband?” He turned to Kaddish. “How did they get past you?”

  “Go home,” Lillian said. “We won’t involve you, Cacho. Understood. We’ll make sure it’s stated clearly in the report: Cacho Barbieri is not involved. I’ll tell the police you asked specifically for it to be recorded that you were witness to nothing.”

  “I’ll stay,” Cacho said. “It’s fine.”

  Cacho sat. Kaddish blew his nose.

  A threat from Lillian. Kaddish thought it as fine as any he’d given or received over the debt-filled high-stress bad-business years.

  Lillian took a picture of Pato off the wall of family photos in the hallway. She put on her jacket and handed Kaddish his.

  “I’ll be here,” Cacho said. “I’ll wait until you get back with your son.”

  How many skinny boys work graveyard shifts on any given night? How many fathers approach these stringbeans knowing already that uselessness is why they’ve been put on the job? This was Kaddish’s inspired observation as they entered Once’s police station. The first line of defense for any corrupt dysfunctional system is an ignoramus guarding the door.