Under no circumstances is the donor to be informed of the decapitation itself, or that the donation will occur pre-mortem.
Gurian folds the papers and clears his throat. Ledesma explains that the rest of our instructions will be ready by Sunday, but that we should start clearing our consciences as soon as possible. He suggests confession or mass for the religious among us and aerobic exercise for the rest.
“We haven’t tested the device on humans yet,” he adds.
“But supposedly it works,” says Gigena.
“So you’ve said,” replies Ledesma.
“I don’t know,” Gigena says. “Are we moving too quickly?”
“Do we have the nuts to bake this cake or not?” Ledesma shouts. “They’ve got cancer! They’re going to die anyway!”
Gigena breathes a sigh of relief because the outburst is directed at the group as a whole. The corners of Papini’s mouth curve upward as if pulled by invisible wires.
“Ideas?” asks Mr. Allomby.
“That don’t involve killing one of your colleagues,” Ledesma jokes, having regained his composure.
Menéndez finishes her cigarette and looks for a place to stub it out. Mr. Allomby takes it from her gently, then looks her straight in the eye as he closes his fist around it, extinguishing it in his sweaty palm.
“You, Quintana.” Ledesma points at me. “Tell us about that patient of yours, Sylvia.”
“Who?” I come back to earth. “I don’t have her clinical history on hand, but if you’d like . . .”
“If I’d like, what?” says Ledesma.
“Sylvia has no next of kin,” Papini says, “and she’s crazy as a loon. The rest of her is in mint condition, though, yes?” He looks at me.
I have no intention of answering.
“I don’t think . . .” Sisman interjects, “I mean, who has the right to . . .”
“In theory, no one will notice she’s gone,” Papini continues.
“But, of course, there’s the question of rights . . .” Ledesma says.
“Poor thing,” says Gigena.
“Somebody grab that duck,” Ledesma orders.
Sisman watches it scoot out from under the table. Getting down on all fours to catch it would be humiliating. He snaps his fingers, trying to call it over like a dog. Naturally, the animal ignores him. Gurian steps back, making it clear that the hunt is not at all his concern.
So who’s going to bend over? Ledesma issued the order, and Mr. Allomby owns the sanatorium. Gigena is probably trying to find a solution favorable to both the duck and whoever catches it. Papini claps his hands.
“Menéndez,” I say, looking her in the eye. “If you would.”
“Doctor?”
I point at the duck.
Menéndez picks up the cigarette butt that Mr. Allomby left on the table after his little macho routine and offers it to the duck. The animal waddles over to her and swallows the detritus. She picks it up, walks out of the room, and doesn’t look back.
“It’s true, no one has the right to make that decision,” says Ledesma. “But we could take a secret vote. All we need is a few slips of paper.”
“I have a sheet right here,” says Papini, extracting one from his pocket. “Scissors?”
“Just tear it,” says Ledesma.
“There’s no need to make this decision anonymously,” Sisman interjects, “that is, if we’re all real men.”
“Let’s leave our pants on, shall we?” Ledesma replies.
“The slips are ready,” chirps Papini.
Put the paper on your lap and gaze into the distance, looking grim. Lift the pen and let it twitch in the air as if propelled by some heated internal dispute. I don’t know what to write on mine. Sylvia’s full name? An X? Yes or no? If so, yes to what? Everyone writes something except Mr. Allomby, who refused to take his slip. Papini, on the other hand, has two, and he weighs them with his eyes.
“Are you not voting, Mr. Allomby?” Sisman asks, crumpling his paper.
“Because I don’t speak the Spanish well,” Mr. Allomby replies.
I unfold the map of my options, spread them out. Whether I want to or not, I’m taking this seriously. Why wouldn’t I want to? There are the low-risk options, the seat-of-your-pants options, the ones that mean there’s no turning back, the false ones, the exit strategies. I’m among the stragglers—I, who always saw decisiveness as a manly quality, a strange ode to testosterone.
Using a map means paring it down to a line. I add my slip to the pile: fortunately, I’m not the last. Ledesma slides them all into a hat, shakes it up as if he were running a raffle, and takes them out one by one. He announces that, except for two abstentions, the decision is unanimous. The meeting is adjourned. Menéndez does not return.
I enter carrying a tray loaded with a slice of vegetable pie, a blood sausage, a quarter of a roast duck, an omelet, and a salad: a synthesis of all our meals from yesterday and today. I don’t think Sylvia can eat it all. I prepare my face, adopt a friendly demeanor (I’m discharging her), show her the tray, and say, “For you,” but the inveterate nutcase doesn’t even give me the satisfaction of looking surprised—there’s no occasion, no privilege, no last supper. I watch her eat in bed and serve her some wine.
In the morning we meet on the first landing of the main staircase. A nurse shows us up to the second. Then another nurse leads us into a waiting area, where we’re offered coffee and a platter of biscuits that, for the moment, no one touches.
“I don’t think Sylvia was the best choice,” says Sisman.
“All that matters is that she says something,” replies Gigena. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”
They look at me. They’re going to look at me every time they mention Sylvia.
“Do you know Doctor Iturralde?” Papini asks.
“No.”
“I went to a party at his house last Saturday. It was the strangest thing: a man without a mustache walked right up to me and introduced himself as Mauricio.”
The pause that follows is so conclusive, and lasts so long, that many of us get confused. Some even smile, celebrating the end of a great anecdote.
“I get to chatting with this fellow Mauricio,” he continues, “who tells me about some land acquisition or another. Wheat fields, barley, your typical agricultural palaver. Then this fellow Mauricio introduces me to his brother, who’s in the motion-picture business. Get this: his name is Mauricio, too. And it’s not like one goes by Mauricio and the other uses a different name. It’s the only one they have, and that’s what everyone calls them. I bet more than one broad went nuts trying to explain to her girlfriends which one she liked.”
He pauses again, longer than before. They look at him, waiting for him to go on. Papini whirls his hands, as if searching for something to add, until the ones who smiled last time smile again, shaking their heads.
Then we all hurry to grab a biscuit or two before they run out. Only a few eat theirs right away; most save them for later. We stand around in silence until a nurse tells us we can go downstairs.
We walk down the hallway to a door at the far end, on the other side of which are the stairs to the basement, and then to another door that opens onto the boiler room, and finally to the low-ceilinged room where the device is kept. I’m relieved not to be the first or last to enter.
Ledesma greets each of us by name, omitting the Doctor. Sylvia, sitting in her civilian attire with a cup of tea in her hand, indicates which chair each of us should take.
“How would you like to begin?” Ledesma asks us. “I’m open to suggestions.”
“Let’s cut right to the tenderloin,” Sisman replies.
Mr. Allomby doesn’t understand the phrase, and it takes us a while to explain the metaphorics of Argentine meat to him.
“Meat, slaughterhouses, death,” says Ledesma. “Let’s start with death. Let’s say that in the course of all human experience, death is pure conjecture: it is, as such, not an experience. And all that which is not an e
xperience is useless to mankind. Do you follow? Today we cast a flare into the great beyond to see what it illuminates in its flight. Is anyone taking notes?”
I raise my fountain pen and the notebook where I’ll write down everything that happens from this moment on. At least, that’s the arrangement Ledesma and I came to last week. My own secret arrangement, my real enterprise (hatred), will be to expand the territory of the report, decide where to begin, not to leave out Sylvia, or the ducks, or Menéndez; to be meticulous in my account but to avoid the mere accumulation of data. There will be plenty of time for me to expunge my personal journal from the experiment’s.
Mr. Allomby seats Sylvia inside the device. There she is, curious, surrounded by men.
“All right, my dear,” Ledesma says. “In a few minutes, I’m going to pull this lever here, you see? And the area around your neck might feel a little strange. Just stay calm, the way you do when Doctor Quintana gives you an injection.”
“Doctor Quintana doesn’t give me injections.”
“No?” Ledesma looks at me. “What do you mean, he doesn’t?”
“Sylvia was prescribed immersion therapy,” I explain.
“But you must have injected her with something at some point.”
Papini smiles, perfect lemon, in one of those agonizing triumphs he so enjoys. Has he really still not fixed that tooth?
“There was never any need for an injection.”
“We’ll discuss whether there was a need or not later, Quintana,” Ledesma retorts, “but the fact that you never gave her an injection is a bit suspicious.”
“Are you accusing me of something?”
“Do you feel like you’re being accused of something, Quintana?”
“You’re the director, and I would never question your staffing choices.”
“We do have an enviable team.”
“Absolutely.”
“Of course.”
Ledesma rests his hand on Sylvia’s head. He asks her, clearly and deliberately, to tell us what she feels, sees, and hears after the strange sensation in her neck.
If the experiment is a success and Sylvia’s head does indeed speak, I know it will say something about flies. I look forward to the widespread confusion, the frenzy of interpretations.
Sylvia nods, agreeing to cooperate as the two parts of the lid close around her neck and we fall silent. Ledesma pulls the lever. What follows is the contrast between the image constructed by expectation or fear and the sight of a head being neatly cleft from a torso. The blade moves quickly enough to neutralize the pain. An expression of mild discomfort flits across her face, a fluttering of the eyelids and a wrinkling of the nose that seems haughty, but is in fact just her respiratory system coming to an abrupt stop. This is the reaction noted in the first few seconds, then her pupils dilate and her jaw quivers.
Sylvia opens her mouth and emits an inhuman sound, the kind an automaton or a music box might make, with the air streaming past her vocal cords.
“Sí,” says the head. Her pupils constrict, and in the final second, her face is already the face of a dead woman.
“She said yes,” whispers Papini.
“We forgot to call a priest,” says Gigena, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief.
“Yes what?” Ledesma snaps. “Did anyone ask her a question?”
“Unless it wasn’t a sí like yes,” Gurian says, ticking one finger upward in the air, “but rather the start, let’s say, of a conditional statement. An if,” he adds, looking at Mr. Allomby, “a si without the accent.”
“Let’s not forget that she was crazy,” Papini interjects.
“It was a success, in any event,” Ledesma concludes. “What matters is that she said something.”
“That’s just what I suggested on the way in,” Gigena asserts, ending the conversation.
A night on the town, courtesy of the sanatorium. Ledesma’s plan includes cocktails, canapés, and ice-skating at the Palais de Glace, the only rink in South America. I read Menéndez’s first name among the invited guests. She is the only single woman to be included in the outing, and I can guess by whom.
It’s time to get back in the saddle. Being turned down for a cup of coffee is no obstacle for a gentleman in love. The pressure of a competition with Mr. Allomby and Papini could prove useful: knowing one’s enemies, one can devise a proper strategy.
My enemy takes me by the arm and invites me to have a look around with him. There are curtains and people everywhere. A waiter offers us our first drink (we hear live music coming from somewhere) and comments that in a few years, the hall will likely be taken over by the tango. Mr. Allomby’s face twists up in disgust, and he replies that by that time there will be better places to go.
In the crystalline cold I see Papini skating in circles, pure velocity and risk, almost endearing.
I wonder if that evening gown in Menéndez’s closet will be brought out for the occasion. Menéndez. Menéndez. Her name ricochets around my body, shoots out of me like a rubber ball, and lands on the lips of Mr. Allomby, who utters it as if it were an exotic, prized object. He invites me to talk about her while we have a look at the works downstairs.
The basement is vast and has the same circular layout as the building above, but there are no dapper gents or ladies dancing demurely down here. Here there is manual labor, the dignity of hard work—a practical way to organize the space, but also an excessively literal reproduction of the world.
Men as stiff as butlers shovel coal into four steamboat boilers. The heat generates, first and foremost, a tremendous din: the whirring of reels and gears and pulleys (Mr. Allomby says the machine perfectly resembles a human body, but to me it’s just a machine) converges at the ceiling, where the sound takes on the majesty of an echo. The heat also generates, wonder of wonders, the ice that covers the rink above us. We could have an interesting discussion about the fire-ice paradox, but we’re two more drinks in and ready to swap confessions. Mr. Allomby tells me about a young woman from Southampton he seduced with a joke about a squid and a tennis champion. He is in the mood to take Menéndez and wants my advice. I suggest that he profess his love for her in front of everyone, out on the ice.
Gigena appears. He apologizes for his late arrival, describing his wife as a stupid mare. He stands beside Mr. Allomby, admiring what he describes as a technological symphony. Those are his exact words.
We stagger back to the main hall, smoking Havanas. We find the others at one of the tables. An empty seat prompts me to ask about Menéndez. She’s in the bathroom. My mind turns to bidets.
Papini, propelled by the enthusiasm of someone seeing his friends arrive, crashes into the table, knocking over a glass. Mr. Allomby proposes that we follow his example and take a spin around the ice. Ledesma is first to his feet, and the rest immediately follow suit.
We step onto the ice. This is how I want to remember us: dressed in formal black, doctoral mustaches, masculine aura, skating in circles, not saying a word. We’ve fallen into the silence of concentration, of deliberate enjoyment. And we move with grace.
Menéndez returns and watches us dispassionately from her seat. Mr. Allomby does an undignified pirouette, musters his courage, and approaches, inviting her to join him on the ice. In the time it takes her to get her skates laced up, I strategize countermeasures and then give in to physical instinct: I accelerate my lap, risking a fall that would ruin everything, pass Mr. Allomby, and offer my hand to the tremulous head nurse, who’s just stepped onto the rink. In one fell swoop, I (a virile Quintana, a charging Quintana) pull her away from the railing, gathering her up in my movement. She depends entirely on me.
Mr. Allomby follows close behind, holding onto the railing; Papini and Gurian skate up to him, take an arm each, and guide him toward us. He smiles first at me and then at Menéndez before using us as a bumper to halt his trajectory. He kneels on the ice.
The others gather in, tightening the circle around us. I’m spinning, too, so it almost looks like they’r
e standing still. Menéndez opens her mouth to say something (but I thought you only responded?) and Mr. Allomby starts gushing a prologue that telegraphs his intentions from the outset, trying to make his voice sound deeper, like a schoolboy with his first whore. Somehow he manages to use words like “angel” and “nuptials” without sounding contemptible. He says that his love is pure and he doesn’t expect an immediate answer, only an “I’ll think about it.”
The applause builds, centrifugal, overflowing the circle of ice and surging up the stairs. In its center, Menéndez is condensed, made material; she adopts her decisive form. If one were to break a glass on her forehead, she would bleed.
She doesn’t say a word. She isn’t even really looking at him. The applause dies down. Mr. Allomby realizes that he’s kneeling on the ice, ruining his pants, that his face is bright red, that he might have to wait forever for an answer, and that this scene will be relived behind his back until the day of his suicide, if not longer. He grabs my waist and hauls himself to his feet, then pulls me out of the circle without dampening my perfect, nearly spastic, happiness. I realize we won’t be taking off our ice skates, and we scratch our way across the parquet floors toward the bathroom. His palms are frosted with sweat and leave halos on my jacket; with every step, he feels like more of a burden.
We step into the bathroom. Someone is crying in one of the stalls. As I steady a vomiting Mr. Allomby, I examine the sufferer’s shoes in the mirror. I’m less interested in figuring out who he is than I am in understanding how he could have so little shame. Mr. Allomby is weeping, too, as he awaits the next wave of nausea.
I ask loudly if anyone else needs assistance. The stall door opens and Sisman shows his face, red with anguish.
I’m the only one who isn’t crying. With no small measure of fear I think, I’m not capable of that much grief.
3
No one has seen her since that night at the Palais. They say she’s locked herself in her room. The nurses lack confidence in her absence. Menéndez was kind enough to prepare a schedule outlining every single task that needs to be done over the next two days, but they don’t trust the written word.
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