From 1973 to the early 1980s, Argentina was a country in political and social chaos. Several leaders, including Isabel Peron, and loosely organized groups, such as the Junta, engaged in what is now known as “The Dirty War,” a state-sanctioned process of kidnapping and killing off people believed to be left-wing subversives.
Literally thousands of “desaparecidos” (disappeared ones) vanished into shallow graves or “detention centers” because of their beliefs or ethnic backgrounds.
Author Nathan Englander’s story begins in 1976, soon after the fall of Peron and the rise of the military Junta. Kaddish Pozman, the son of a whore, finds employment by erasing the names from headstones of the Jewish dead so their living family won’t be harassed or threatened by association.
Under the military Junta, Argentina was, in the late 1970s and 1980s, a hellish place for citizens deemed to be enemies of the state. By chipping away the names on tombstones, Kaddish is effectively erasing the pasts of the descendants of people who committed questionable acts in the eyes of the fascist government. Along with the protagonist’s first name, there are other instances of symbolism that comes across as heavy-handed: Kaddish’s wife, Lillian, works for a life-insurance firm; after defacing the gravestone of a plastic surgeon, Kaddish is paid via nose jobs for him and his family (but Lillian’s doesn’t take, her proboscis starts to droop and the defacing comes full circle).
Lillian and Kaddish’s son, Pato, is a college student whose radical beliefs and pot smoking alienates his parents. Lillian Pozman invests in a steel door for their apartment because no one is certain whose door will be smashed down next in the military’s mad, slash-and-grab power plays.
In fact, Englander’s deftly written fictional retelling of a little-discussed part of 20th century history is rather removed in tone until Pato is taken away. Then the meaning of “desaparecido” truly hits home – for the reader and for Kaddish.
No one in authority will admit that Pato was arrested. And no one will admit that Pato ever existed. He has simply disappeared. Kaddish’s struggle to locate his son winds up in a scene in which Kaddish confronts what has been called the “banality of evil.” What does one do when learning that the people who committed a horrible act (or acts) never saw it as such? How do we respond to those born without a moral compass? And should we forgive ourselves for ignoring evil, and government corruption, until it touches our own lives?
Those are just some of the questions that arise from Englander’s fine debut novel, the final portion of which, fair warning, can be hard a pill to swallow emotionally. A winner of the O. Henry and P.E.N./Malmud awards (among others) for his short fiction, Englander (“For Relief of Unbearable Urges”) has lived up to the promises made early in his career with his highly regarded stories. “The Ministry of Special Cases” is a moving, thoughtful, even humorous and carefully crafted first novel.
Dorman T. Shindler is a freelancer from Missouri.
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FICTION
The Ministry of Special Cases
Nathan Englander
$25
