The Ministry of Special Cases (25 page)

“Yes,” the general said, his own apology. “You get a glimpse into our quirks. It’s a most informal version of ridiculously formal. If there’s something else you want, a sandwich or a salad? I’m sure we could rustle up an omelet and toast.”

The trays were unloaded. Deep dishes of oysters on beds of crushed ice. Half were on the half shell and the other half closed. As the servant in the vest put out a stack of small plates, the lemons and the sauces, Teresa signaled to him most subtly with a look. Lillian caught it as the servant understood, displaying a silent shock and picking Kaddish’s cigarette butt and match off the corner of the table. He tucked them into the pocket of his vest.

Kaddish poured an oyster into his mouth.

“Now I remember,” the general said to Lillian. “Gustavo’s girl. The one we worked with at the office. I thought it was you but, if you can forgive my rudeness, you look different, much younger and—”

His wife continued for him. “More Argentine in some way.”

“Less ethnic,” Lillian offered.

“If you say so, yes,” Teresa agreed.

Kaddish took a sip of his drink and took a long look at the general’s wife. Teresa turned a bit farther into the angle of the chair.

“I’ve noticed it myself,” Kaddish said. “She does look younger. Taller too.”

The general liked this. He laughed. “If only it were possible at this age. Maybe she found the centimeter I lost.”

“Would it be all right if we got right down to business?” Lillian said.

“Business?” Teresa said. She held a tiny silver fork. With it she freed an oyster and aimed it at her mouth so that the brine dripped toward the table, landing, of course, on her plate. “What business could there be? What business would we want to discuss at our table, in our home?” At that, she tipped the shell and Lillian watched the oyster slide onto her tongue.

The general looked to his wife as if there was explaining to be done. “A turn of phrase, I’m sure,” he said, and then addressed his guests. “I’m admittedly flabbergasted by your presence. I was led to believe—by you yourself—that it was Gustavo who would be arriving.” The general stood and stepped behind his wife’s chair. “And now to receive his assistant in his place. We don’t much like surprises, and we don’t conduct any business in our home.”

“It’s not business,” Kaddish said, his heart racing. He had no idea Lillian was capable of such a thing. He couldn’t believe that it would cross her mind to put them all together in that room with a lie. “It’s more of a favor.”

“You are here to do us a favor?” the general said.

“To ask one,” Lillian said.

“Why would we owe you a favor?” the general said, his voice now harsh.

“Owe?” Kaddish said. “God forbid. Favors aren’t traded. Friends don’t cash them in like poker chips at the end of the night.”

“But we aren’t friends,” Teresa said.

Lillian pressed her lips together and set her jaw. “But you may find that you’d like to help us anyway because you feel we’re good people to have in your debt.” She assumed that such rarefied conversationalists didn’t miss to what she referred.

Teresa had an amazing amount of poise. Lillian felt her seething, yet
there was no identifiable outward sign, no motion or move, only a simmering hatred of which she was sure.

The general’s composure seemed to crack when he looked toward his wife. “You’re here already, let’s make the most of a misunderstanding. Have a drink, have an oyster, no damage done.”

“Yes,” Teresa said. “Eat up, as who knows when the opportunity will arise again.”

Lillian pushed her plate away. “I ate at home.”

“That’s a shame,” the general said, “as this is the perfect month for the perfect oyster. These we harvest ourselves.”

In the painful silence that followed, Kaddish reached for oyster after oyster. He swallowed them as fast as he could. “Delicious,” he said, “incredible,” trying to fathom how he’d gotten into this position. He’d never had to cover for Lillian before and wondered if this was what it was like for her, raising a husband for all these years.

Kaddish slowed down, running short on superlatives, and feeling green. He wanted this to work. He agreed with Lillian, this man could produce their son. “A rare treat,” Kaddish said. Then, summoning up enthusiasm, he said, “Did you say you grow them?”

“Not grow,” Teresa said. “Harvest.”

“My father-in-law’s legacy,” the general said.

“When he first sailed to North America,” Teresa said, “he was horrified to find that they rinsed the brine from their oysters.”

“Think of that,” the general said. “Washing the flavor right off. It ruins them. It’s the Yankees,” he said, conspiratorially “Their influence. In mixed company let me say it as delicately as possible—the Yankee doesn’t like anything to taste of the sea.” Lillian put her hand on Kaddish’s knee. “From that trip on, they never made a voyage without their oysters. If you keep them in their own sand and flush their water, you can fool them into staying alive the whole trip. When he moved here for good he shipped the whole operation over. He made the final crossing with his precious cargo as if he had his own ocean belowdecks.”

Here came the single bit of life shown by Teresa.

“A funny man, my father,” she said, with actual sweetness. “He hated the passage and did everything for his comfort but was always jealous of the food. He always said, ‘First class passage is first class passage, but my oysters travel in their own beds.’” She held out her wineglass and a servant filled it. “As ridiculous as it sounds, it’s more natural than bringing along the livestock. There’s nothing more pitiful than a seasick cow.”

“At the end of the war, when the United States was storming every beach in Europe with their amphibious crafts, her father would scream back at the newsreels about the churning up of the shallows. ‘Those barbarians won’t stop at the Nazis,’ he’d yell. ‘The Yankees will put an end to decent dining so as to protect the democratic way of life.’”

Kaddish pried open a belon. “Again, they’re a rare treat.”

“Yes,” Teresa said. “They transplanted to our bays very well. As good an acclimation as any Italian or Jew.”

“At least as well as the general takes to new governments,” Lillian said.

He didn’t seem insulted. “It’s my loyalty to the uniform, which is a loyalty to the state.”

“As long as it leaves you in good stead,” Lillian said. “It’s of the uniform that we need a favor. My son has been abducted. It’s been more than a week,” she said. She looked at Kaddish. “And we’ve made no progress in getting him back.”

The general gave the wine in his glass a turn and watched it swirl.

Teresa reached for an oyster and piled it high with horseradish. She swallowed the oyster and the horseradish and then looked right at Lillian, her face flushed. “Your son has disappeared?”

“He hasn’t disappeared,” Lillian said. “He
was
disappeared. The government did this to him.”

Kaddish sucked on a wedge of lemon. He watched the exchange, eyes darting between them.

“Taken by the government?” the general said. “Arrested is very different than vanished. Where is your son being detained?”

“If I knew we wouldn’t be here.”

“You shouldn’t be here anyway,” Teresa said.

“But you know they have him?” the general said, his face full of concern.

Kaddish popped the lemon from his mouth, and his front teeth felt as if they’d been dried down to the roots. “There were agents,” Kaddish said, “four men in suits.” He ran his tongue along the front of his teeth, “One with a windbreaker underneath.”

“Agents?” the general said. “Insurance agents like your wife?”

“Cleaning agents?” Teresa said, catching on. “Like Odex or Ayudín?”

“It happened very quickly,” Kaddish said.

“You were there?”

“Yes,” he said. “They took three books. They beat up our neighbor.”

The general gave a sniff. “Who did they say they were when they arrived?”

“They just knocked,” Kaddish said.

“Well, why didn’t you accompany these agents when they took him? Wouldn’t you ask where they were headed with your child?”

“You know it’s not like that,” Kaddish said. “They would have killed me—killed my son—in a heartbeat.” Now Kaddish looked to Lillian. “There’s nothing that can be done.”

“You attend these home invasions regularly, then?”

“No, but I’ve heard.”

“They pointed their guns at you? Did they threaten to shoot?”

“No,” Kaddish said.

“How about we stick to what is verifiable?” the general said. “We are fortunate to live in the best nation on earth, and yet, the more I hear, the more I’m convinced we destroy ourselves with gossip. It’s a fifth column in itself. If we aren’t careful, idle chatter will be this country’s downfall.” The general shook his head, looking gravely disappointed.

Teresa spoke up. “There are many wild ideas that the hopeless grab onto,” and she reached over and patted Lillian’s hand. “I’m sure my husband is interested in helping. But to believe such rumors? It’s just not so. This band of missing, it’s made up. They don’t exist.”

“I think you might mean that,” Lillian said. “It’s even scarier to think that the people who run this country believe their own lies.”

“That’s too far,” the general said. He was on his way to standing when his wife stopped him.

“I
do
believe those lies,” she said. “What I want to know from you is, if everyone believes the same lie, isn’t it, maybe, the truth?”

Lillian didn’t pause, not even a beat. “That’s how the world stays balanced. You can never get everyone to believe the same thing.”

Kaddish wondered if a lie could become truth even if everyone agreed. But there was a consideration more pressing. He wasn’t sure there was anything that he couldn’t be made to believe.

“There is lying going on,” the general said, “and there are young people missing. But they aren’t in secret jails or fighting alongside the leftists. They are on drugs, they are lost. They’re a bunch of hippies who’ve run away to the beaches of Brazil and Uruguay to chase after sex. The lie this government tolerates is that it’s political. The people aren’t disabused of the notion that these drug addicts and ne’er-do-wells are up in the mountains planning revolution. A generation of youth hasn’t been raised right, which is as much the government’s fault as it is the fault of the family. Why not let the parents believe their children are off somewhere fighting for a cause? The only secret being kept from the people is that a whole generation is being lost to selfishness and bad behavior.”

“What could you possibly be saying?” Lillian went white.

“Admittedly, it’s hard to put ourselves in your shoes,” the general said. “I do understand how you’d interpret that as a denial of whatever trouble your son may be in.”

“This meeting is actually our greatest accomplishment yet,” Lillian said. “You’re the first official to admit I have—that I ever had—a son.”

“And sadly this in an unofficial capacity. There is one other bit of information I can offer. It doesn’t help, but it may make you feel less alone. This problem is not limited to Argentina. We talk to our neighbors. There is a wanderlust, and it’s as bad in Chile and Bolivia and Peru. For every one of our kids who crosses those borders, another is on his way here to get lost the same way. I don’t want to be the one to tell you that the child you’ve done all you can for has run off without a good-bye. The clerks draw straws at the Ministry of Special Cases. No one wants to tell the parents these things.”

“Our son didn’t run off,” Kaddish said. He rushed it out, hoarse. “I told you what happened.”

The general sighed. “I’m a military man. This kind of hand-holding is not my forte.”

Kaddish couldn’t wait any longer, he held a cigarette to a candle until the tip burst into flame. Blowing it out, he took two quick pulls, the paper of his cigarette scorched black.

“There’s really nothing more forthright that I can offer,” the general said. “I wish you success. And if you want to achieve it, I recommend a large dose of self-control. Rabble-rousing will get you nowhere and only see your son farther away.”

“That’s an admission,” Lillian said, pointing a finger. “That means the two are related, that what we do affects Pato—what we do to you. You admitted it just now, that there’s a link.” Lillian looked to Teresa as if she’d feel obligated to support her.

The general said, “I made a point about preservation and about silence.”

“You made a point about cause and effect. You can help us. I’m begging you. Use that uniform for someone else as you have for yourselves—”

“What does that mean?” Teresa said, angry.

“Use it to get back our son,” Lillian said. She spoke to the general. “You’re a powerful, powerful man and I beg of that power.”

“This excess energy would do better if it was focused on restraint,” the general said. “Silence saves lives. If there’s to be any chance for you or your son, you need to go home and behave and be quiet. Go home and wait. The boy will return when he is ready, probably with a tan and a pregnant revolutionary on his arm.”

“There were four agents,” Kaddish said. “They took three books.”

The general looked at Kaddish as if he were a madman.

“Do you see?” he said to Lillian. “This kind of protest does him no good. Your husband sounds as if he’s coming unhinged.”

“I’m fine,” Kaddish said.

“Please,” the general said, “such a tough-looking little man. You think
I don’t see it? I could make you cry right now with half a word.” Kaddish took a drag of his cigarette to hide the fact that what the general said was true.

“Go home,” the general said. “Wait quietly. See it as a contribution to order. We are all making sacrifices to mend the torn fabric of this country, to put the economy back on track and build ourselves up. Do you know officers holding government positions have had their salaries wiped away? Do you know I now serve for free? We all must do our part. I only request you don’t feed the hysteria. It’s easy to set a whole society on its head. Panic spreads worse than wildfire.”

“You’re not going to help us,” Lillian said. “You will look us in the eye and do nothing.”