The Ministry of Special Cases (23 page)

That she was going to the ministry didn’t mean that what the lawyer said or what Kaddish said or what Cacho feared was right. Maybe people waited too long to go because of the rumors, and, having missed their window of opportunity, the building’s reputation proved true. Maybe the other families were making spurious claims and that’s why they found no recourse—it wasn’t for Lillian to judge. And if what the lawyer said was accurate, if it was like getting water from a rock, so be it. She wasn’t trying to find all the missing. She was trying to get one son back. Kaddish thought she was afraid to face reality when it was the other way around. This was the place the parents, the husbands and wives, the children of the missing went. And Lillian was headed there alone.

She looked at her watch when she got to the building. The Ministry of Special Cases didn’t open for another hour.

Except that it did.

The door was open and the lobby was packed with people. They pushed and shoved, all trying to reach the lone security guard behind the counter. He stood on his chair, then up on the counter itself, yelling at the crowd.

Lillian worked her way into the mix. “It’s not supposed to open for another hour,” Lillian kept saying, a form of apology as she pushed and was pushed back.

“It’s the numbers,” a lady told her as they were pressed up against each other. “They give them out ten minutes before one hour before.” And then they were separated and then they were back. “But only the first fifty. If you don’t get one now, you better hustle when they open. We wait outside and then there’s another line upstairs.” They were pushed apart and the lady was gone. Lillian was by then close enough to the guard to see better and understand.

He wasn’t yelling
Order, please
, or
Line up
, or
Who was here first?
He was picking people at whim, saying, “You,” and, “You there.” He was feeding the frenzy. It was a cruel game.

By the time Lillian grasped this fully, the crush of people was thinning out. The guard climbed down and Lillian watched the last of the
stragglers race back outside. When she looked over her shoulder, the security guard met her eye. He said, “We’re closed until eight.”

Lillian exited the lobby. The guard locked the door behind her, and Lillian saw, stretched out and down the block, a line. She didn’t need to look for the slip in each hand to know when she’d walked by the last of the chosen and on to the dry faces that followed. She didn’t see the lady who’d explained so as to offer thanks.

Lillian didn’t quite understand why they were all in line now, or at least, if they were, why those with numbers stood in the same one. Still, it was orderly and purposeful and so she stood at the end and waited.

When the line began moving slowly ahead, Lillian followed. When the pace picked up, Lillian picked up hers along with it, and when those from behind, first one and then another, rushed past, she too broke ranks and ran the last steps.

It was too late. Back again like before, everyone pushing toward a single door beyond the counter and off to the left side.

This push was more suffocating than the last. It was pandemonium until one man, right at the street entrance and a few meters behind Lillian (she’d made some forward progress), began to call out in a confident but harried tone. “Can’t a man get to his office?” he said. “Coming through,” he said. “Late for work.” And in the midst of what seemed like complete chaos, now, so easy, a path was made. The man—smoothing down his mustache and mumbling insults—slipped right through the crowd.

When Lillian reached the door, it led into a narrow stairwell. This was the reason for the jam.

There was a smaller lobby two flights up and another counter, this time with a woman behind it. Mounted on the wall next to the counter was a battered red-metal ticket machine. From this the numbers were pulled.

Lillian pulled hers. Number 456.

She followed the others into the adjoining hall and found a place to sit among the fixed wooden benches and folding chairs. The clerks faced them from a row of desks on the far side of the room.

Lillian sat holding her number tight with two hands. She’d look to it and look toward the clerks. Eventually one stood and called out, “Nine.”

“Nine,” he said again. There was rustling up front, and a woman in a kerchief stood. Lillian looked around to see that she and the woman in the kerchief were the only two who’d paid it any mind.

Lillian looked at her number again when they called for ten and eleven and twelve. She then asked her neighbor, “Do they stay open until they’re done?”

The man laughed.

“So tomorrow?” Lillian said.

“What do you think?” the man said. “Take a guess.”

“One,” Lillian said.

“Yes. A natural. The day begins with one.”

Lillian thought she might weep right then and would have if not for a distraction.

“He has one-sixty-two,” an old man said.
“El desgraciado
has one-sixty-two.” The old man drew the attention of another couple, who also began to curse, which brought another lady into the fray. “Monster,” the lady said. And the man she called monster, the one the couple leered at, the guy the old man raised his cane at, was the very same man with the mustache who’d arrived “late for work.”

He was, like them, waiting. He did not work there and had been late only for the line. He’d lied and, like suckers, they’d made him a path. There had to be another entrance for workers. How, in all that time waiting, could only one need to use the front door? How had they not caught on—caught him—on their own?

The rage was unbelievable; Lillian thought they might kill the man with the mustache for real until the old man struck him in the mouth with the hook of his cane. As hard as the old man could hit was not hard enough to do much. The man with the mustache spit blood, though, and this seemed to satisfy the crowd. The man sat for the day looking ashamed but he held on and was called with his 162.

Lillian had no book and no papers beyond the few documents she’d put together that related to her son. She spent the day staring at a very
large woman in a very small chair who held a bottle of fizzy water and sweated the whole time. The woman was not a delicate woman but she did have a delicate bird’s tongue. This she’d dab into the neck of the bottle, never once sipping from it or tipping the bottle back to drink. Only, like a hummingbird, that tongue darting into the neck, dabbing endlessly, the whole of that woman spreading out from that point.

Lillian thought the woman would die of thirst. She’d never get anything that way. Lillian wanted to run over and grab the bottle and drink it down herself. She wanted to push that woman’s giant head right into it, to shove her inside and set the bottle back on her seat. It was too much: the waiting and the sweating and the numbers not moving and that woman, with her tiny private purpose and flicking tongue.

Lillian watched the whole bottle disappear, one dab at a time.

That this woman’s blank face and her sharp raspberry tongue could so fill Lillian with hate unsettled her. They were all of them waiting, all in this together. Lillian still couldn’t stand her, but she forced herself to wish the woman well in her mind.

When the ministry closed, Lillian still hadn’t been called. She did not know if that day was special or if they’d closed earlier than on most. Her own office was still open and, reminded of it, Lillian decided it would be good to go by. On her way out, as had the others, she let her number—worn through—flutter to the floor.

Gustavo approached at the start of their embrace but Lillian and Frida didn’t let go. Lillian wept on Frida’s shoulder, and Frida whispered into Lillian’s ear. “No, you don’t,” Frida said. “Not from me.” When it seemed the embrace was about to end, one or the other would give a good squeeze and shore it up. “Hide all you want,” Frida said. “But this is the longest you go without seeing me again.”

“I swear,” Lillian said, and then they moved apart.

Gustavo pulled Lillian by the shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks.

“A visit?” Gustavo said. “What a nice surprise.”

“I thought I could do a couple of hours’ work,” Lillian said. She
motioned, shocked to see it, at the mountain of files on her desk. “I’ve got to keep the job in order,” she said. “I’ve got to keep the job.”

“Don’t be silly,” Frida said.

“Don’t be silly,” Gustavo said. “The important thing is Pato. Are things moving along?”

Frida took one of Lillian’s hands and held it between her own.

“Poorly,” Lillian said.

Being back in her office, stepping into what was so recently her day-to-day, was enough. Answering the question was too much. It unmoored her. Lillian didn’t consider it to be crying, but when she said, “Poorly,” the tears began rolling from her eyes.

“Things will normalize,” Lillian said. “When Pato is home—exactly as before. I won’t let things slide too far.”

“We are very busy without you,” Gustavo said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Frida said. “You shouldn’t come in at all.”

“Yes,” Gustavo said. “We’re doing fine.”

This was followed by silence. Lillian was trying to maintain composure. Gustavo and Frida didn’t know what to say. Certain observations simply aren’t appropriate to certain moments, but neither can they be ignored.

It was Gustavo who spoke. “You look, Lillian, absolutely gorgeous.”

“I have a new nose,” she said. With that, she went to her desk and set to work.

Lillian arrived earlier at the ministry the next day. Kaddish had offered to come, his face buried in a pillow. Lillian told him to stay home by the phone.

Again Lillian failed to get a number in the first rush. In the second—toward the stairwell—she fared a little better but still found herself back on the benches holding 401. Lillian did not see the lady with the raspberry tongue or the man who was late for work, but already many of the faces were familiar. The lady who had told Lillian “ten minutes before” passed by. She smiled at Lillian but did not stop.

Lillian brought food. She brought one of Pato’s books from the shelf.
She sat and read and did not look up when they called numbers. The ministry stayed open a half hour later than the day before and still they didn’t get to Lillian. She called home from the corner. Kaddish answered. There was nothing to say and she stood there in silence feeling the weather, until Kaddish finally said, “I’ll cook.”

They were whispering by the extra desk when Gustavo came out. “Two days in a row,” he said. “Such dedication, Lillian, it really means a lot. This is the last thing to worry about.”

“I can’t lose this job,” Lillian said. “Look at milk. Look at butter. How much with inflation will it cost to get my son?”

Gustavo smoothed his tie.

“Who is talking about lost jobs?” Frida said. She gave Gustavo a threatening look, as if he’d raised the idea. Gustavo threw up his hands. He took a step back.

“Your position is safe,” he said.

“For how long, really?” Lillian said. Gustavo smiled. He blushed. “Considering how much I do here, Gustavo. Considering I do most of your job, give me a number.” Lillian’s voice turned sharp. “How many days or is it weeks or is it months, how long is safe, how long is paid, how long is this place my home if I don’t show up? How long will the paychecks come?”

Gustavo started to speak. Lillian actually reached out and put a hand over his mouth.

“Don’t say it,” she said. “I know you, Gustavo. I know you well. A date. Something real. Until when will you pay me for a job undone?”

“Lillian,” Frida said, but she wasn’t sure why.

The hand came down. Gustavo buttoned his jacket, he straightened his cuffs. Today he was the one with tears in his eyes.

“Honesty is all I have left,” Lillian said.

“You have more than that,” Gustavo said. “The lawyer—how was Tello? Do your best, I told him. Send me a bill.”

“Is there a date?” Frida said. “Tell her if there’s a limit.”

Gustavo, who could not look at Lillian, hissed at Frida through
clenched teeth. “You know who’s coming,” he said. “There’s no time for this.” Only then did Lillian notice his good shoes, his good cuff links: Gustavo dressed to the nines. “They can’t walk in and find a scene.”

“Then tell her,” Frida said.

“I’m telling you, not Lillian. Go to your desk and look busy. Right now all our jobs are on the line.”

“Tell her she’s safe forever,” Frida said. “Tell her you’ll pay her forever.”

Gustavo looked at them both, his jaw tight.

“No one gets paid forever,” Gustavo yelled, and then he smiled a beautiful smile that went right through them. It was meant for the venerable, the powerful, Judge Ocampo and his wife. They were as important a pair of clients as one could wish for. To insure even the scraps from their table would keep a man afloat.

“You asked about the lawyer,” Lillian said, as Gustavo greeted his clients. “You asked about Tello.”

Gustavo was the picture of calm but for what was left of his blush. He said, “Excuse me for a moment,” to his clients and turned to Lillian.

“Tello,” she said. “Your lawyer was useless. He offered no help at all.”

“I’d wondered,” Gustavo said, getting back to his welcome, the matter dealt with.

The judge, who was not deaf, couldn’t resist.

“It wouldn’t be the first instance,” he said to Lillian. “Useless lawyers I see by the bucketful. Enough to fill the whole of Río de la Plata so that we could walk over them to the other side.”

Gustavo laughed too loudly. The judge’s wife laughed just the right amount. Lillian and Frida pursed lips and tilted their heads in the woman’s direction. The men followed suit.

Celia Ocampo then asked, “And what happens to the most useless of the lot?” Her husband smiled and kissed her on the cheek—yes, a family routine, a set question. After the pause, he chucked Gustavo’s chin and answered. “Those are the ones who are chosen to judge.”

All laughed, Lillian too. The color began to even out in Gustavo’s cheeks, and the meeting continued in his office. Lillian and Frida sat outside at their desks. Framed through Gustavo’s doorway and on
display for the clients, it looked like just the kind of boutique business to do delicate work for a judge.