Ultimately, however, the Poznans’ story is so gripping, and the writing so strong and impressive, that we can largely overlook these flaws. Indeed, there are moments when the description of the Poznans’ pain is so piercing, and so beautifully rendered, that it succeeds in touching the reader deeply. There is the scene, for instance, in which Kaddish burns Pato’s diary and his letters—the last traces of his son’s existence—so as to protect his friends from suffering the same fate. There is Lillian’s constant watch out her window, waiting for Pato to turn the corner, although she knows, in the depths of her subconscious, that he never will. And finally, there is Kaddish’s desperate attempt to pass off another man’s bones as his son’s, so as to convince Lillian of his death, and thus, at long last, bring closure to an otherwise open-ended grief. These are the marks of a tragedy that rises above absurdity and farce, making it real—and making our own feeling for the implications of a “disappeared” past real as well.
“Which man is better off… the one without a future or the one without a past?” Kaddish is asked. If the Poznans’—and Argentina’s—story is to serve as any answer, it is that the two cannot be separated; individuals and societies as a whole cannot move forward without coming to terms with their past. This idea is hardly new to Englander’s work: In For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, it is the past in the form of the Jewish tradition that cannot, and will not, be denied. There, the characters battle to reconcile their desires within the framework of their tradition. Yet that tradition, and the community that embodies it, is depicted as rigid and unforgiving, an all-or-nothing system that offers little in the way of succor to those who have embraced it.
Interestingly, the Jewish tradition is portrayed differently in The Ministry of Special Cases. To be sure, there are similarities between the two works: As in For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, Englander depicts Jewish identity as an indelible, undeniable trait-even for those who would wish it otherwise. Kaddish, who long ago renounced his membership in a community that, in turn, rejects him, nonetheless turns to the Jews for help in saving Pato when all other avenues have failed. So, too, does he scoff at Lillian for lighting Sabbath candles—a habit she attempts to revive after Pato’s disappearance—after it is already dark and thus a desecration of the Sabbath, even though he feels it is “nothing but superstition, nonsense to light candles when they did nothing else.” Moreover, the novel’s institutional symbols of Jewish tradition, such as Buenos Aires’ United Jewish Communities (UJC) and the city’s aging rabbi, are, much like the insular community that forms the setting of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, portrayed as unyielding and unsympathetic in the face of individual anguish: The head of the UJC refuses to add Pato’s name to its official list of the disappeared because he is the son of an unrepentant hijo de puta, and the rabbi offers Kaddish no help when confronted with the latter’s plea to hold a funeral for Pato despite the absence of a corpse.
And yet, that same Jewish tradition also offers a sense of comfort to those most sorely in need of it. Lillian expresses this fact when she lights the Sabbath candles, explaining that “It’s not hypocrisy,” but “what lapsed Jews do in times of trouble. They make amends and beg help from God.” Even Kaddish, in one of the book’s most moving moments, winds up at the old Benevolent Self cemetery synagogue, broken and exhausted by a search that turns up nothing, and holds out no promise of doing so:
When he was so tired that his body would have to let him sleep, Kaddish made his way over to the old shul. He went up to the ark and yanked down the curtain he’d left hanging…. Kaddish lay down on the first pew and used the curtain for a blanket. He made a pile of prayer books, soft from reading, for his head. He gathered them together and he slept.
In the end, however, it is neither Kaddish nor Lillian who best expresses the idea that Jewish tradition—or any tradition, for that matter—is not only inescapable, but also, and perhaps more importantly, something from which one should not want to escape. It is, instead, an old Jewish couple Lillian meets at the Ministry of Special Cases whose own son was disappeared two years before. The strain of the search has nearly killed the husband, they explain, and they have decided it is time to move on-to Jerusalem. After all their suffering-indeed, perhaps because of it-they have reached the conclusion that the only place for them in the world is to be found among their own people, and their only hope for a reprieve from their grief is to be found in the embrace of their own tradition.
Thus, perhaps, is Kaddish’s decision to mourn his son’s death, despite the fact that his body will never be found, a heroic act. In the Jewish tradition, when a loved one dies, a discrete period of mourning is mandated, and after that a return to the world of the living. Kaddish, whose very name means “mourner,” has, perhaps unconsciously, chosen to uphold a Jewish custom that has brought comfort to generations in the face of grief and desolation. Indeed, if Englander believes that our past and our tradition condemn us, he also seems to think that they alone have the power to save us as well. And in a world as evil, absurd, and uncertain as the Poznans’-and ours-this may just be the only salvation to be had.
Marla Braverman is an associate editor of Azure.