The Ministry of Special Cases (32 page)

“You’re crazy,” he said.

“And you’re worse than them,” she said. She meant to wound Feigenblum, she felt his betrayal was great.

“Selfish woman!” Feigenblum grabbed Lillian by the arm, the delicacy gone. “How many mothers make their way here, acting as if each child is the only one?” Feigenblum sighed and let go. Then he smoothed the lapels on his perfect suit, adjusted his collar, and centered the dimpled knot of his tie. He pulled at his cuffs—his cuff links, in the motion, gleamed—and pressed carefully against his hair so as not to muss its perfect part. “There is a plague upon us,” he said. “On this community more than the others.”

“What shock do you think you can give? My son has been disappeared. I know that when there’s death in the air the Jew is more susceptible, more likely to catch it.”

“My position brings with it an elevation that affords its own particular view. I’m privy to things. And I’m convinced you wouldn’t speak to me this way if you were responsible for more than one son.”

“If it were your son missing, neither would your best efforts ring so false. If it were your boy he’d be back in a day, wouldn’t he, Feigenblum? There is a different
all
. There is a
most
that you save for him.”

“Honestly, I can’t tell you until it—God forbid—should happen. Right now, though, the resources must be shared.”

“Do the undoable, Feigenblum. Reach out as if Pato were your own.”

“I’ll get his name added. Despite this visit, I’ll try.”

“You’re a weakling,” Lillian said. “You want to lead the Jews while they come for our children, and all you manage is an incomplete list. You want to talk plagues, Feigenblum? In Egypt they took the Jewish children, and do you know what they got in return?”

“That was miracles,” he said. “That was God.”

“No, that’s what we say now. Who better than you should recognize the whitewashed version of the story. Do you really think there were frogs, Feigenblum? Do you really believe an angel came down from heaven and took our enemies’ firstborn? There was a leader, Feigenblum. It was Moses and his Jews who rose up and did the slaying.”

“This is the talk of a desperate woman, God help you. You should wish for rescues as sweet as in Egypt. The waters don’t split for us anymore. I’ll tell you, without metaphor or rumor or lie, there are terrible things happening. There are crimes the Western Hemisphere has not
known. You must open your eyes and look up, Mrs. Poznan. Then you won’t expect so much of anyone. It isn’t angels you’ll see. Those are bodies raining down from the sky.”

“You don’t look so good,” Dr. Mazursky said.

“Always seeing beyond the surface,” Kaddish said. “It’s touching, that kind of sensitivity.”

“Better than mentioning the smell.” He gave Kaddish a pat on the back. “Any news of the boy?”

“You sound concerned for a man who won’t let me get near him.”

“When have I turned you away?” the doctor said.

Kaddish tilted his head toward the pillar he’d been hiding behind. He’d loitered there for more than an hour, waiting for the doctor to walk the few paces from office building to waiting car. The doctor turned and looked at the pillar. He gave a big shrug.

“Considering our dealings were most secret,” Kaddish said, “your people are very good at identifying me. The maid at your house is one thing. Here I can’t even get into the lobby.”

“You exaggerate, I’m sure,” the doctor said. “Either way, it’s not about you. It’s a global tightening of security. These are volatile times.”

The doctor’s car pulled forward and the driver, seeing Kaddish, seemed to be in a panic as he got out and came around the front of the car.

The doctor held up an open hand and the driver stopped mid-stride.

“Leave the engine running,” the doctor said. “We’ll just be a minute or two.” The doctor looked to Kaddish and Kaddish nodded. “Should we take a walk?”

“That would be good.”

The driver got back into the car. Instead of idling as instructed, he put the car in gear and drove slowly, keeping a car’s length behind the two men.

“If it’s not about me, why don’t you take my calls? I must have tried a dozen times this afternoon alone. It’s not like I’m not also a patient. How strange would it be to have me back for an exam?”

“Some very important titties up there today, patients that not even by face should be able to identify a tit such as you.” Mazursky pointed toward the Botanical Garden, and they started to walk that way. “It’s really nothing personal. I don’t know how better to prove it than by strolling with you now. It’s riskier to be seen with you outside than in.” The doctor looked up at the sun disappearing behind the city. “The air today is very nice. I should sneak out more.”

“Not enough fresh air at the track?”

“Plenty. Except all I breathe in there is horseshit, and it smells like money to me.” Mazursky stepped off a curb and, nearly clipped by a taxi, stepped back up. His driver honked the horn.

Kaddish popped a cigarette into his mouth and followed the doctor across the street. He smoked quickly, feeling unsteady. “I’ve got some business,” he said.

The doctor shielded his eyes.

“Do we have any left?”

“A question,” Kaddish said. “You said when I had the right one that you could maybe do something.”

Mazursky sucked in his cheek. “If I said I could maybe do something, that would be a very unbinding promise. Not much to cash in on.”

“It wasn’t even a promise. It was a kindness that you offered. And it wasn’t with a maybe. Definite. You said you would.”

“Well,” the doctor said, his second shrug of the day. “As you know, I’m a man of my word.”

Kaddish dropped his cigarette to the ground.

“I wanted to know,” he said to the doctor, stepping on the butt and staring down at the grinding tip of his shoe, “I wanted to know,” Kaddish said, “if my son, Pato Poznan, whether he’s alive or dead.”

KADDISH HAD TAKEN TO SLEEPING
under the front pew instead of atop it. He’d told himself the bench was too narrow for a man of his bulk. It was really that the synagogue was too wide. He was amazed at how easily a man adrift could make himself feel at home. Only, he’d discovered, the space in which one could manage it got tighter and tighter.

He piled the prayer books in stacks right in front of the pew, each stack with a pair of bricks on the bottom so the books wouldn’t touch the floor. Kaddish left a space by his head and closed himself in. Should he ever reconcile with Lillian, should he have the good fortune of a dignified death and the foreknowledge that the end was near, Kaddish would ask for a coffin cut extra tight to his body. Let the worms find their own place to sleep.

It was not two days after Kaddish had made his request of the doctor that he woke with a start. He guessed from the light that it was barely yet dawn. As he blinked his way to focus, careful—in his shock—not to bang his head, what came into view right in front of his eyes were two feet and two legs planted in the space he’d left open. He was a little bit afraid and a little bit curious and felt a rising sense, in his cozy space, of being trapped.

Apparently there was a man sitting above him. Kaddish did his best to keep silent, which was no easy task for a lifelong smoker. He tended to greet each day with a racking fit of coughing. Kaddish studied the fine silk socks the man wore and thought of sinking his teeth into an Achilles tendon and then making a graceless scrabbling escape.

The heel of the left shoe rose up and then came down with a clack, sending a swirl of dust right into Kaddish’s face.

“I know you’re awake, Poznan. A terrible actor.” It was Mazursky Kaddish’s heart beat heavy; Kaddish should have known. “You’re either awake or dead, Poznan. Both the snoring and farting have come to a stop. You’ve got to breathe from somewhere.”

Kaddish stifled a cough, keeping silent.

“We’ve got to get a look at those sinuses again. It really is an ungodly noise. The other end I won’t touch. You’ll have to find a braver doctor to stick his nose in that.”

Kaddish wasn’t sure what to say. “Are you going to let me out?” was all he came up with.

The feet came together and slid over. Kaddish pushed a pile of prayer books out of his way and slipped through, taking the curtain he used as a blanket with him. He stood up and dusted off, a hand now holding two corners of the
parochet
to his chest. All the red velvet draped around him added a touch of the kingly to an otherwise undignified moment.

Kaddish sat next to the doctor. He threw the excess curtain over his legs to keep away the chill and fumbled for a cigarette.

“How did you find me?” Kaddish said.

“It’s your son that’s disappeared,” the doctor said. “The condition you suffer from is completely different. With you, Poznan, no one is looking.”

“Still, this a very odd place at which to arrive.”

“It’s not the first spot I checked. Trust me, though. I didn’t go far. You’re a man avoided mainly for the fact that you might end up here. I’d have walked right back out, if not for the snore.”

Kaddish knew what question he’d asked of the doctor, and, as much as he wanted an answer, he was afraid of what it was.

“I appreciate the risk you’ve taken in showing up here.”

“This is the synagogue, not the cemetery. If it was to save your son’s life, I can’t promise I’d have come to find you there.”

“Is it to save his life?”

“I don’t know,” the doctor said. “I spoke to a gentleman who spoke to a gentleman who’s willing to meet. I was making a different point. It’s that Toothless’ name wasn’t screwed into the wall over here.” The doctor put his elbow over the back of the pew, looking around. “There was never a leaf on that tree for my father.”

Kaddish took the opportunity to have the coughing fit he’d fought off underneath. The doctor watched as Kaddish’s eyes bulged. He listened as whatever was sticking to Kaddish’s lungs came loose in an amazingly audible sound.

“Time to go,” the doctor said, when Kaddish recovered.

“Like that?” Kaddish said.

“Just like that. And it was no small feat to arrange such a rendezvous.”

“With who?”

“The only man I’ve ever heard of that’s more pitiful than you. But you’ve got to get going, he’s not easy to pin down and even more rarely coherent.”

“He sounds like a prize.”

“Have mercy. It’s difficult to live with the answers to the questions you ask.”

“Is he close by, this man?”

“Jesus,” the doctor said. “Did you walk out on your wife without taking the car?”

“With nothing,” Kaddish said. “Why else would I be sleeping under a bench?”

“I still can’t understand why you’d leave.” The doctor took out his billfold. “You’re a man with a hard life. Why on earth do you go around making it harder? The top of the bench would do you better.” The doctor handed Kaddish three American ten-dollar bills. “I’ll drop you by the golf club.”

“You want me to go golfing with him?” Kaddish said.

“Your man is at the Fisherman’s Club. The golf club is for me. If I’m up this early, I might as well get in a round.”

“The pier is a good three kilometers from there.”

“You’re enough of a prize your own self, Poznan. I don’t need to be spotted near the both of you together. Anyway, you look near death. A brisk walk down Costanera, a bit of park time, a stroll along the river—it’ll cure what ails you.”

“What about the rush?”

“I wouldn’t stop for breakfast on the way,” the doctor said. On second thought, he gave Kaddish another ten. “Treat the man to a meal.”

Lillian stood outside the Ministry of Special Cases deep in a line that ran the length of the block and snaked around the corner. She’d sworn that another visit to that building would kill her. With the habeas corpus fallen through, she’d returned without pause. She would show up at Feigenblum’s the same way, just as she’d visit police stations and hospital wards, roam the parks and misery towns, and stand in the morgues of the city, not looking for Pato—as he was alive—but to count the bodies herself, to rule out each one with her own eyes, the dead
porteños
that were not her son. She added to this roster the foreign amnesty groups and the Israeli embassy. If they could find and kidnap and sneak Eichmann out, how much harder could it be to track down Pato? Let those commandos roll her son up in a carpet and spirit him off, too.

When she got to the hall it was packed worse than she’d ever seen it. They were in the aisles today, sitting on the floor. And why shouldn’t it fill to overflowing, Lillian thought, if people kept disappearing and so much work went into getting even one boy home?

Lillian spied an old couple who’d staked a good claim. With their knees together and backs turned out, a bag between them and one each on the outside, there was room for another person on that bench, maybe two. The woman moaned as she took a shoe off, so that, staring at a swollen foot, her neighbors did their best to shift farther away.

Lillian was over, Lillian was pointing and reaching, a hand on a bag. “On the floor,” Lillian said. “I could sit if you move them.”

The old woman took Lillian’s hand off the bag. “I’m getting settled,” she said. “I can see how crowded on my own.”

The woman took her time getting off the other shoe, a heavy thing with a heel that looked as if it were cut from a two-by-four. The husband went into the middle bag and produced a pair of slippers and then went back to ignoring Lillian and his wife.

“Bad circulation,” the woman said. Then she shifted and organized and Lillian sat down.

It was when Lillian checked the crumpled number from in her pocket that the old woman spoke. “How high?” she said.

“Too high, I’m afraid.” Lillian put the paper back and pressed her pocket closed as if to signal that their conversation was done.

“Is it your husband?” the woman said. She stared at Lillian’s wedding band. Lillian stared at it too. It had been so long since she saw it as a symbol of any tie to Kaddish.

“No,” Lillian said. “It’s my son.”

“Snatched up?” the woman said. She inquired with great concern.