The Ministry of Special Cases (11 page)

They were not up on stage as Kaddish had expected. He thought dozens of students would watch from a gallery, taking copious notes and peering through glass. There were only five students, two girls and three boys, gloved and masked and looking like children. Lillian was among them. She was also in scrubs, and, not counting the nurses and the anesthesiologist, she rounded out the audience to six.

The doctor turned to face the students. “It’s a steady motion,” he said. Then he raised up his elbows and shoved.

Before the operation, the doctor had come into the room where Lillian and Kaddish waited in surgical gowns. Those five children in white coats were standing behind him. “Do you want to draw straws?” he’d said. “As dexterous as I am, I can only do one nose at a time.” Lillian looked to Kaddish and gave a quick and panicked shake of her head.
“I’ll go first,” Kaddish said. He kept his eyes on Lillian as he said it, making sure he’d read her right. The doctor then asked Lillian about the strength of her stomach. Fortified, is what she told him. “Then come watch me make history,” the doctor said. “A rhinoplasty like this is as serious as detaching Siamese twins. There is a chance,” and for this part he addressed the students that trailed him, “that we may lose one of them after separation.”

Lillian watched it all until the insertion of the rods. When the doctor gave that push, Lillian turned to the side. The student beside her was up on her toes.

Kaddish blinked quickly. At least he thought he had, the view was so wet and fuzzy, he wasn’t sure if his lids had moved. Again there was the question of tears. Kaddish still wasn’t sure if he was feeling anything, though he thought maybe his head had split in two. He felt a line up the middle of his forehead, a soft separation or something like. It made the oddest noise, so very distinct—an internal sound. He wondered if this was what deaf people heard, if, with the world around them turned off, they got such wonderful sound from within. It was like an egg cracking. And that’s what Kaddish saw. It was as if his eyes were in backward, peering into the blackness of his empty head, and in its very center floated a large white egg, so white as to be throbbing in its whiteness, so that against the blackness its edges seemed to glow.

A three-minute egg floating in the middle of his head.

When the doctor had given his quick turn, a heavy silver spoon came down into the darkness. That was the sound Kaddish heard emanating from the inside of his head: the perfect echo of spoon against shell.

He was sure he was crying, or that blood (the egg still glowing but now red) was running from his eyes. He said something, a joke, but even Kaddish wasn’t sure what it was. Then, “Bad dream,” he slept.

When the rods were out the doctor said, “Second nature. Like making your way into a lobster claw.” The doctor’s trusted nurse held forceps at the ready while the doctor worked his scalpel up inside Kaddish’s nose. He put out his hands for the forceps, inserted them, pinched, gave a little shake to the wrist, and pulled them back out, holding them high. “And there’s the meat—all but the butter.” He held aloft the bump from
Kaddish’s nose. Lillian kept her eyes averted and felt nauseated nonetheless. The more she tried to get it out of her head, the more she saw butter trickling down.

Kaddish was out cold but would surely have enjoyed hearing the doctor. Two peas in a pod. Both thinking of food. That is, one thinking of an egg and one of a lobster—both thinking of things that we crack open and eat.

The doctor lifted his arm a bit higher when a student interrupted.

“Crab,” the student said. Eyebrows arched over the mask, the doctor’s eyes darted around trying to isolate the source of the comment, as if his students were dressed this way to confound him.

“Bracchi,” the doctor said, “was that bit of profundity from you?” Still the arm, and Kaddish’s mangled cartilage, aloft.

“Yes, sir,” he said. Then, “Yes, Doctor,” to replace it.

“What is it then?”

“It’s not so much like lobster, Doctor, as crabmeat. That is, from back here.”

Dr. Mazursky considered and then raised his voice.

“I’m educating,” he said. “It’s more important that the feel to the rods is that of breaking open a lobster claw, not a crab leg, than that the meat tends more to the latter.” As if to punctuate his statement, he flicked the forceps toward the bucket and Kaddish’s nose, his most defining characteristic, clanged against its side.

There was additional cutting and sewing and then a final length of white tape laid down across the bridge of his nose. “Voilà,” the doctor said. One student clapped and Lillian peeked over to see the master’s work. It looked as if her husband had gone through the windshield of his car.

“Who’s next?” the doctor called out.

Lillian raised her hand. “Me,” she said.

“Who, me?” the doctor said, confused as to who was behind the mask.

“Me,” Lillian said. And the doctor understood.

“Well, of course you’re next. I mean, who’s doing the procedure?” The doctor looked into the other faces. Lillian’s was still the only arm up.

“Bracchi, then,” the doctor said, pulling off his gloves. “Full of wisdom,
let’s see if you can translate it into nice work. Let’s see how keen that eye is from up close.”

Lillian looked to Kaddish. When did he do any better than this in an emergency—at her side and out cold?

Bracchi had already stepped forward. An orderly was wheeling Kaddish away on a gurney.

“Shall we sedate you now?” the doctor asked.

“No,” Lillian said. She pointed to her husband as he was slipped through double doors. “Not Bracchi,” she said. “Not the students.” She was aghast. “Three for all was the deal my husband told me,” Lillian said. “Me and him. That’s only two.”

“I explained to your husband,” the doctor said—this in front of everyone, he didn’t seem at all troubled, didn’t seem to care—“his nose alone is a fair trade. I made it crystal clear. The only way I could afford his terms was in the teaching hospital.”

“Yes?” Lillian said.

“Well, what did you think it meant? What could it possibly be but that I teach here? It’s surgery, not arithmetic. The only way they learn is to touch. Isn’t that right, Bracchi, my wunderkind?”

“Gospel,” Bracchi agreed.

“You’ve done it before?” Lillian said. “He’s done it before?”

The two men answered in unison. “No.”

Lillian stood silent.

“Someone has to be the first nose,” the doctor said.

“I’ve read the chapter,” Bracchi said. “Irene and I went over it together last night.” One of the two girls nodded, her eyes small and steady above the mask. “I’ve just watched it performed by the best.”

“He’s already a doctor,” the doctor added. “This is a specialization. They are more fellows than students. He’s not an urchin dragged in off the street.”

“I’m not,” Bracchi said.

“Lie down,” the anesthesiologist said. He was watching the clock.

Lillian looked in the direction they’d taken her husband. She looked into the eyes of the doctor, so much coercion in that strip of face over the mask. She felt her nose pushing out against the fabric of her own.

She lay down on the table.

Before the anesthesiologist even moved, the doctor said, “Take a good long breath. It’s the last time you’ll get so much air with such ease. The rest of us,” he said, “do a little work to breathe.”

Lillian wasn’t sure what she should and should not be hearing and should or should not be feeling. Being invited to watch her husband’s operation, she knew it was something she was definitely not meant to see. At the start of the procedure she’d thought she was asleep. She believed she was dreaming exactly what was happening but that what was happening was not real. Then she remembered why she was sleeping and understood that she was awake, that there really was a tight circle of baby doctors around her—everyone standing so much closer while Bracchi worked. She was then for some reason thinking about driving: Kaddish through the windshield, cars and accidents, and a young doctor behind the wheel. It was with the rods in her nose that a form of clarity returned.

She could not feel that the rods were hard or that they were cold. But she felt a serious pressure building as Mazursky instructed. She did not trust him at all, not a bit, except when he was doctoring. How nicely and smoothly he had wielded his tools over Kaddish—even when she’d turned her head to the side she’d felt his ease. How nice he sounded while directing Bracchi, as if he were moving the rods with his voice from afar.

Lillian saw the bright lights and knew her eyes were open. She closed them but they didn’t move, the lights still there along with the motion around them. Thinking them closed, her eyes immediately did, and then it was only the doctor talking and the pressure, which had decreased momentarily, increasing again. “Good God, man,” Mazursky said, and now his voice wasn’t so smooth. “Do it already. Down and over, down and over. Nothing gets done in this world without follow-through.”

Lillian exhaled through her mouth and the down and over came. There was the twist and turn and the release of it. Though there were many sensations missing beyond the lack of feeling in her face, a single dominant impression remained. The one thing she could feel perfectly well was just another thing that wasn’t there. Along with the follow-through, Lillian felt a sharp, a clear, a prominent absence of grace.

“THEY’VE GOT TO GO,”
Lillian said.

“There are rumors,” Kaddish said.

Pato couldn’t believe this was happening. Seated together on the couch, their knees touching, his parents had actually formed a united front. They sat there with their swollen cheeks and black eyes and masks of white tape across their noses looking very much punched in the face.

“They’re my books,” Pato said. “How can you even ask such a thing?”

“You’re the one full of conspiracy theories; oppressed long before it was in style. Now it’s in vogue,” Lillian said. “Good for you. A trendsetter. Only, the books have become dangerous. You’ve got to get rid of them. No one wants to be rid of you.”

“Just because you’re paranoid, don’t take it out on me. The door I went along with. Who cares about changing keys?”

“We’re both paranoid in different ways,” Lillian said. “My way and you may live to be anxious until a ripe old age.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“It doesn’t matter if anyone’s really coming or not, it’s your lot as a Jew to fear it. We are bred for the waiting.”

“You’re as crazy as he is,” Pato said.

“And you don’t show enough fear. Take yourself seriously and accept that the books are finally as subversive as you want them to be.”

“Honestly, I’d rather give you my nose. I should have shown my loyalty with that when I had the chance.”

“No one’s offering that now,” Kaddish said. “It was a mistake in the first place. Who’s going to breathe for the family without you? What if there’s a gas leak? You’re our canary, Pato. We need you to test the air.”

“If I had the money,” Pato said, “I’d take my books and move out and never speak to either of you again.”

“By the time you have the money,” Kaddish said, “you won’t need it because my life insurance will have long ago paid out. You can just move into the big bedroom.”

“Enough,” Lillian said. “The books are going. Either choose the ones you know to be troubling or get rid of them all.”

“I read half of them for classes given by the university of this city which is run by the state. There is nothing wrong with having books.”

“But you have heard,” Lillian said. “You’ve heard that they’re dangerous. That they’re guilt. Don’t tell me you and your friends don’t know of the craziness going on? Frida’s niece was interrogated for ten hours straight, no bathroom break, no water, her mother kept outside. They wanted to know about her organizational affiliations. She’s sixteen, Pato. She’s captain of her volleyball team.”

“Who knows what stories are true anymore? The honest mouths are shut. The graffiti is gone. This whole country has been whitewashed. Go look,” Pato said. “The walls have been painted over. There’s a ring of white as high as my head around every tree.”

“I’ve seen the trees,” Kaddish said.

Lillian bit at a nail. She’d somehow missed the whitening of the city.

“They’re cowards,” Pato said. “They’re supposed to burn banned books in the street. That’s how it’s done, with big bonfires and evil intent. This is the only ruthless, coercive system that expects us to destroy them ourselves. Do I have to ransack my own room while I’m at it? It’s like—” Pato said, looking around for an example, “it’s as if—” and he looked down at his parents, together on the couch, Lillian’s hand on Kaddish’s knee from where she put it to still him. “It’s like what you’ve done to your faces. It’s like the horror of a nation with one acceptable nose.”

“Except that we had a choice and you don’t. There’ll be plenty left for you to read.”

“I do have a choice,” Pato said. “Whatever the threat, I’m keeping my books either way.”

“Tough guy,” Kaddish said.

“You’re at a dangerous age, Pato,” Lillian said. “You look like a man, you think like a man, but you still have the idealism of a child. Why do you suppose all those soldiers out there are also nineteen? It’s because they’re the only ones stupid enough to die for a cause. After that, a little older, and the high-mindedness will melt away like baby fat. It’s only the generals, only the generals and rebel leaders and rock stars, your military men and your outright morons, that go boldly on after adolescence looking for a reason to die. Your hippy mottoes are right, Pato. Don’t trust the grown-ups. Don’t trust any adult with a cause.”

“Not unless they make sure to die before you do,” Kaddish said.

“Not even then,” Lillian said.

“The books go,” Kaddish said. “The dangerous ones get torn up and all the rest can stay. If you want, I’ll buy you a new book for every one you lose.”

“The ones you want me to get rid of are the ones I most want to keep. And,” Pato said, “I’ll buy whatever I want when I get the money I’m already owed.”

“We’re serious,” Lillian said.