The Ministry of Special Cases (33 page)

Lillian answered. She told them what had happened and was surprised to find that she was happy to talk and be listened to, to have her story—to have Pato—believed by strangers. When she finished the husband said, “Hardship all the way.”

It was as Lillian wondered why they didn’t all share their troubles that she learned her telling would warrant a listening. The woman told her their names—Rosita and Leib—and launched into the story of their own absent son. Lillian wasn’t sure why she didn’t see this coming or, more curiously, why she thought it so unfair.

“It’s killing us for real,” Rosita told her. “It’s killing Leib.”

“I’ve been in the hospital,” he said. He pointed to his heart.

Lillian didn’t feel generous, and she didn’t feel bad. What she did feel was repulsion, visceral and sharp. The buffer was there for a reason. The customs of silence and solitude for a reason. The Ministry of Special Cases didn’t need, with all its other tortures, the mixing of hopelessness and hope.

“Until this, he was always healthy, and now he has heart failures all the time. Not even attacks,” she said. “It’s different. The heart doesn’t try anymore. We’re packing it in. We’re moving to Jerusalem before Leib dies. The strain can kill us over there just as easy.”

There was a look of horror on Lillian’s face.

“We’ll come right back if there’s a miracle,” Leib said. “It doesn’t help our son if we die from the waiting. It’s time to move on.”

“Yes,” Rosita said, agreeing. “How many ways can they tell us to give up? For how long?”

“If we don’t protect ourselves a little.”

“A good boy,” Rosita said.

“A scientist,” Leib said. “We have letters on his behalf from Britain, from the United States. One was even sent from the Technion in Haifa. A name, our son. We weren’t the only ones working. Others have tried.”

Old as they were, frail as they were, Lillian passed judgment. She held her tongue between her teeth, so strong was the urge to say,
If it’s killing you, the waiting, it’s nature’s wish. Then it’s a person’s time to die
.

“We fought long,” Rosita said. “First in Salta, from our home. Then we came to the capital, to be near the government and near where Daniel lived, near the scene of this crime.”

“We’ve been staying in his apartment,” Leib said. “Parents sleeping in a dead son’s bed.”

“We’ve lived away from home so long,” Rosita said, “there’s no reason to go back. At our age when you’ve been uprooted, when you’ve broken the routines of a lifetime, what difference is it to keep on to Jerusalem? It’s the same thing for us, ten kilometers or ten thousand.”

“My heart is no good,” Leib said.

If they can run from their son, Lillian thought, why couldn’t she run from them? Lillian bent to separate her bag from theirs, to get her things and move on.

“The intent wasn’t to burden,” Rosita said. “You go,” she said. “Be well.”

“I’m not judging,” Lillian said, unnerved. “I’m just going. You be well,” Lillian said. “You have good luck.”

“You’re new,” Rosita said. “I understand, I remember. You shouldn’t know from it,” Rosita said, “but two years on this bench is enough.”

Lillian was in the midst of backing away. This stopped her, Rosita’s
You shouldn’t know
. Who more than her? How could anyone claim more than Lillian, to suffer?

“Two years?” Lillian said, angry now, ungenerous. “It’s hardly two months since this nightmare has befallen us. There’s no need to make it worse than it is.”

“She’s all piss and vinegar,” Rosita said to her husband. “It’s the only way to start out.”

“You can fly away if you need to,” Lillian said. “But you don’t suffer any more than me.”

“Maybe you suffer more, maybe less. Either way, it’s the same two years for us. You can’t imagine yet—no matter your claim—what two years will bring. In ’74 our Daniel was taken.”

“The troubles go back a ways,” Leib said. “Before the junta, before Isabelita, still with Perón it started.”

“Not true,” Lillian said. “Then it must be something else. A different matter than disappeared.”

A sweet, sweet smile from Rosita, at Lillian and then at her husband.

“Even now,” Leib said. “Even still, it is hard for us to imagine that maybe, before our Daniel, there was another.”

“We know how it is,” Rosita said. “Everyone is like that. The troubles always start when they start for you.”

Lillian did run from them. She ran out of the hall and down the stairs. She wasn’t going to sit there turning into that woman while the hours ticked by. She knew full well that a marred habeas corpus with names scratched out was neither a document issued on behalf of her son nor proof of the rejection of such a request, either of which—according to the clerk in the hallway—was the province of the ministry’s other side. And even that she no longer had. Kaddish took their copy when he left. She’d find the bird-feather man regardless; she’d make him help. Lillian headed for the stairway on the right.

The door was locked and Lillian tried to force the knob. Then she began banging with her fists. The lobby was empty except for Lillian and the guard. He came straight over to ask what it was she thought she was trying to do.

“To get upstairs,” was her answer.

“That part I figured,” he said. “Except I’m not really interested, because you’re not allowed up there, not without special permission—and if you’d been given it, they’d have called me. I’d have been the one to escort you.”

“It’s not nice the way you give out the numbers,” Lillian said. “It’s cruel. You could make a line and hand them out, one to fifty, in the order in which people arrive.”

“I don’t think that’s what we’re discussing.”

“We are discussing sadism. It’s sadistic the way you hand out the numbers and a further indication of that trait when you come over to harass me instead of simply unlocking that door.”

“No one gets up there without approval and without me leading the way.”

“I’ve already been up,” Lillian said. “My husband and I were there together. I’m returning to finish the business I’ve already started on that side.”

“Take it back,” he said.

“What?” Lillian said. She blinked, and was honestly startled, so perfectly infantile was the request.

“If what you said was true, I’d get in a lot of trouble—serious trouble.”

“But it is,” Lillian said.

“But take it back,” the guard said, dead serious. “If you’d been there I’d have a record in my log and a note to put in the file that goes to the archive that lists all the citizens who’ve been up there that week, except that I haven’t had to send the file or use the log this quarter, because no one ever goes.”

“I spoke to a man in the hallway. He was eating his lunch.” Lillian knew she should stop. If she had to keep coming to the ministry every morning, she’d never get one of the good numbers. “Let me up this time,” Lillian said, “and I’ll take them both back, this visit and the last.”

“You’ve got two seconds to take everything back before I thwart your attempt to enter a secure area.”

Lillian took this to mean that he meant her harm. But she really couldn’t imagine that he did. That’s maybe why she said, “Only the truth. That’s all anyone gets from me.”

She really didn’t see it coming, that first swing. It wasn’t aimed at her but it made such a crack, and the crack, in that empty lobby, set off such a boom, Lillian actually screamed and jumped, and couldn’t in the intervening seconds get rid of the shakes. The guard had pulled his baton and swung it with all his might against that door. He raised it again and this time it was poised above Lillian.

“You weren’t up there,” he said. “Take it back.”

But Lillian couldn’t take it back, because she’d been there. It seemed insane even to her not to just say it when she knew a single blow would break her bones. “I was up there,” she said. “And you were here, like always, and didn’t stop me.”

She tensed as she spoke, curling her shoulders and tucking her chin, preparing to be hit. All the guard did was slip the baton back in its loop. For an instant Lillian thought that the strength of her resolve had won him over. And then she straightened up, understanding that they weren’t alone.

Lillian felt the man’s presence behind her. Then a hand was clasped over her shoulder in a kindly way, and—the strangest thing—he said, “Candy?”

“No, thanks,” the guard said. “Not today.” He kept his baton hand by the baton, and the other one he raised, to wave the offer off.

“Come on,” the man said. “You’re the only one in the building with a sweet tooth worse than mine.”

“I’m working,” he said.

“From what I heard, it sounds like you need a break.”

At that the guard’s cheeks turned red and he said again to Lillian, screamed it in front of this man, “Take it back!”

“Have a piece,” the man said. And an extremely long arm reached out past Lillian, crossing the space between her and the guard. A chocolate coin wrapped in gold foil was pressed into the guard’s hand.

“She’s lying,” the guard said. “She was never up there.” The guard seemed to be trying to frown, but only one side of his mouth turned down.

“As expedient as caving in this woman’s skull would be, would you be amenable to another solution as a favor to me?”

The guard nodded.

“And you?” the man said. He was talking to Lillian. She already knew, from the length of the arm and the height from which the voice came, to look up when she turned. Still, Lillian fell short. She first saw his jacket and then, at his neck, the collar around it. He was a military priest. In those first moments she didn’t raise her eyes from there. “Yes,” she said.

“This is excellent,” the priest said, and returned his attention to the guard. “Not to upset standard procedure too much, how about I give you a second piece, which we’ll call a bribe?” Again the long arm was extended and the coin, this one silver, was passed to the guard. “My version of events goes like this: This woman was never on the other side as she claims,” he squeezed Lillian’s shoulder to stop her before she spoke. “She never stood here right now, and I never gave you the second chocolate, only the first was given as a courtesy. Since nothing transpired, it would follow that there’d be no reason for bad blood between you, and there’d definitely be no reason to approach a stranger and ask if she ever was where she shouldn’t be—to which, being a stubborn stranger, she’d surely answer yes, starting a cycle that ends with a split-open head. Now that outcome doesn’t have to be. Problem solved.”

“Yes, Father—sir,” the guard said.

“Yes,” Lillian said.

“Excellent,” the priest said. “You eat your chocolate,” he said to the guard. “You come for a walk with me,” he said to Lillian. “And when we get back, a test for everyone, we will see how good we all are at keeping a promise.”

“You should be more cautious,” the priest said. “Is it really worth it to die over that?”

“I don’t think he’d have killed me right there in the lobby.”

“It’s not conjecture. I’ve seen someone beaten to death in that lobby before.”

The priest had a talent for listening and Lillian wondered if receiving confession was an actual skill. Lillian spoke more openly to him than
she had to anyone other than Frida and went as far as sharing her dream of an Eichmann-style rescue, which she’d never said aloud.

“The Eichmann abduction was a more complex operation than you make it seem. Let’s say there were people who looked the other way so that it could be such a well-publicized success.”

“Those are the people I’m trying to get to,” Lillian said.

“They don’t do favors,” the priest said. “And they can’t be bought with a cookie.”

“But they can be bought?” Lillian said. She thrust out her sheaf of papers. The priest stepped back and Lillian only reached out farther. The priest’s arms were nothing; Lillian would reach across the city if need be.

The priest took the papers and began patting himself down. Lillian, preempting, offered her own glasses. Testing them out, he moved them forward and back on the bridge of a perfect triangle of nose. “More or less,” the priest said. He crossed his eyes and took the chain that hung below his chin like a bridle. He lifted it over his head. The priest
tsk-tsked
and pulled out another chocolate coin. He unwrapped it, snapped it in two, and offered Lillian half.

Lillian took it. “Is this your cure for everything?”

“In this case it’s about all I can do.” He licked his thumb. “I’m a military chaplain in a Catholic army. I split my loyalties between God and country. Even if God takes precedence, I think yours is beyond my jurisdiction.”

“It’s all the same when it’s about saving a boy.”

“In this world, maybe. Most of what I do is focused on saving people for the one to come.”

“Now is when I want him. Save the boy in this life and you can have his soul in the next.”

“I wish I could,” he said. “I can’t.”

Lillian didn’t believe him. “Then you wouldn’t have gone this far,” she said. “I’ve learned enough in these last weeks to know good Samaritans don’t just materialize. Priest or no priest, there’s something in it for you.”

“That’s an extremely cynical view of the system. We should get you into a uniform. I think you’d do well.”

“I only want one thing from it,” she said. “Whatever your deal is, if it’s guilt or God or dirty money, anything you can do to keep my son out of his grave, I’ll take with me to mine.”

“I really can’t help you,” he said. And then, handing Lillian her glasses, “I really shouldn’t.”

Kaddish walked through the park to the water. Not a great naturalist, while looking at trees Kaddish was reminded that there were trees, and heading out to Avenue Costanera to walk the promenade he saw the great river, and acknowledged—even with cars passing by—that it was something to behold. Kaddish rubbed his hands together. It was still very cold.

Walking along the river, Kaddish couldn’t help but see it as an ocean. It was an idea Talmud Harry had put into his head as a child. Harry would say, “Take every river and lake from the Bible, gather them up and drop them into our Río de la Plata, and guess what? They wouldn’t even make a splash. Tell me though, little Poznan, if God himself isn’t afraid to have His storied seas look like puddles upon inspection, why must the Argentine fake a river that is a sea?” Kaddish, of course, had no answer. “Hubris,” Talmud Harry would always say. “It is dirty pride and hubris that spur such a deception.” Practically fifty years later, Kaddish still thought it every time. Who wants the planet’s tiniest ocean when he can have a river that makes men weak in the knees?