The Ministry of Special Cases Read Free

even Kaddish’s name was family given; it was the young rabbi who’d picked it and, no more than a half kindness, it was the most the upstanding Jews had ever shown. Sickly, weakly, and grasping at survival, Kaddish barely lived through his first week. His mother—a faithful woman—begged that the rabbi be summoned to Talmud Harry’s to save him. The rabbi wouldn’t cross the threshold. Standing in the sunlight out on Cashew Street, he peered into the vestibule at the infant in Favorita’s arms. His judgment was instant. “Let his name be Kaddish to ward off the angel of death. A trick and a blessing. Let this child be the mourner instead of the mourned.” Assuming no fathering beyond the physical (and commercial) act, the rabbi gave Kaddish the last name that goes with the legend—it’s from Poznan we know that a man’s offspring through a prostitute will come to no good. Favorita repeated the name: Kaddish Poznan. She held out Kaddish and gave him a turn, as if tryingit on for size. The rabbi didn’t smile or take leave. He simply stepped out into the gutter, feeling he’d done right by the child. Let the name Kaddish save him. And if the boy is righteous, let him get out of the other one on his own.
    Had Kaddish known the origins of his name, he wouldn’t have felt cursed. He was happy with his family. He believed in a bright future for his son. And as creaky as his knees were when he climbed that wall, as lightly and with as little
oomph
as he tried to land, he hadn’t given up on his own self either. If she’d acknowledged him in the intervening twenty-five years, Kaddish would have told Lila Finkel she was partly right. Hard as life got, there was something to living it with a little hope. Maybe that was why Kaddish never needed his fellow Jews any more than they needed him.
    This was the balance maintained through the Montoneros and the ERP and after Onganía was overthrown. During those two decades, the community prospered and attained status. And Kaddish was convinced he’d have prospered most of all had any of his schemes worked out.
    The Jews didn’t feel any great need to take stock when Perón returned to power. It surely didn’t make them think about Kaddish Poznan’s treatment all those years. The community did give a collective twitch when, during Perón’s welcome home, there was a small massacre in the welcoming crowd. There were some in Once and Villa Crespo who bounced their knees nervously throughout Perón’s short reign and two brothers in two big houses in Palermo who began to bite their nails in earnest when he died.
    Perón had left his nation with a dancing girl in the Pink House failing to run their lives. At this time of great uncertainty and deadly rumor, a number of the fortunate feared that the envious and ill-willed might start looking into the past. Though bodies mounted, there wasn’t yet any real burying. It was a period better defined by what was dug up. So many secrets were being unearthed in Buenos Aires, anyone might by accident stumble onto another. It was then that the children of the Benevolent Self acknowledged what Kaddish had always known—the wall separating those two cemeteries wasn’t so high. So desperate were they then not to be linked to the Benevolent Self that they turned to theonly one who wouldn’t let it go. They hired Kaddish Poznan to cross over the wall. They paid him good money to erase the names.
    Pato crouched down behind Hezzi’s marker. He planted his knees in the dirt and pressed his shoulder to the stone. Grabbing hold of its sides, he braced himself, ready for Kaddish’s first blow. Pato was providing resistance. “The one thing you’re good at,” Kaddish had said. “We might as well put it to use.”
    It was a delicate job. Kaddish didn’t want to knock that headstone over. And Pato was happy enough to take shelter from his father any way he could. He did not want to be there. He did not want to cross through the United