I finish reading Sisman’s letter. It explains why he was crying in the Palais, how he wants to die, and why it seems fitting to follow Sylvia in one of the sanatorium’s rooms. Those are his exact words.
It takes me a moment to realize that a colleague’s life is in my hands. That there’s still time to save him.
As I reread certain passages, a staff nurse sees him enter a room, slamming the door behind him. She is struck by his pallor and the blue of his lips. She knocks and asks if everything is all right, to which Sisman replies with a scream that wakes the entire sanatorium. His scream also interrupts my perusal of the note, which I tuck away in my pocket.
During the rescue, I want so badly to tell everyone that I could burst. But the story of how Sisman fell in love with Sylvia, maintained a secret relationship with her, promised to get her discharged, and then participated in her decapitation is just too juicy for a summary. I decide to save it for afternoon tea.
Sisman wants us to leave him alone. We ask him not to go through with it. Who’s stronger? The door doesn’t give; we bounce off it like rubber balls. Gigena takes the lead with surprising force. Ledesma charges, leading with his torso. Gurian is still trying the lock.
Rubbing his shoulder as he declines his turn, Papini wonders out loud what might have prompted Sisman to leave his suicide note in my office.
“Quintana’s trustworthy!” Sisman shouts from inside.
When we make it inside, Sisman is trying to squeeze himself through the window. Blue pills are scattered around an overturned glass on the gurney. Ledesma brings him down with one tug. He falls into our arms with a sudden calm that makes our blood run cold.
We lay him down on the gurney and race through the halls. The cancer cases are moved by the scene and lean forward despite the risk that the tubes might fall out of their arms. The institution’s image changes in our wake. One nurse takes the reins and points us toward the operating room, confusing the situation with an emergency surgery. It will do for now.
Ledesma asks me for the note. He reads it in front of Sisman as if it were a clinical history. When he reaches the part that alludes to Sylvia, he continues in silence and suggests we withdraw to give the patient some air. Sisman opens his blue mouth, lies agape like that for a moment, then asks me to stay. I close the operating room doors on my colleagues’ curiosity, ordering them to get ready to pump his stomach.
“This is a pretty nasty surprise, Sisman,” Ledesma says.
“I never took advantage of her. I’m not a piece of shit,” Sisman replies.
“Would you like some water?”
“What makes you think I’m thirsty?”
“Because you’re gulping air like a little fish.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Give him a glass of water, Quintana.” Ledesma sighs. “I’m a man just like you are, Sisman. We’re all men here. We understand one another. This Sylvia business stays between us.”
“We’re all men here? I’m not so sure,” says Sisman.
“True.” Ledesma rubs his eyes. “There might be a poof hiding among us.”
“Who?” I ask.
“I don’t know who. But someone could turn fairy on us at any moment—it’s been known to happen—especially at such a critical time for the sanatorium.”
“Go fuck yourselves,” Sisman says, listless.
“Give him a little slap, Quintana.”
This kind of order doesn’t seem strange to me anymore. The string coils in my hand and snaps against Sisman’s face.
“You do realize that once we’ve pumped your stomach we’re going to have to fire you,” Ledesma says.
“I just took eight Parvenol. I’ll give you one guess whether I give a shit about this fucking place.”
“Eight Parvenol won’t get you anywhere, Sisman. By tomorrow, you’ll be eating a steak dinner. Behave yourself, and I’ll make sure you get a good severance package.”
“I don’t care.”
“You have no reason to kill yourself here.”
“I want to be with her, don’t you get it?”
“You want a selfish death.”
“I don’t care what kind it is.”
“Let’s talk, then.”
“You can have my head,” says Sisman.
“Once you’ve recovered,” Ledesma replies.
A few days later, the groundskeeper’s shed catches fire again. The night shift observes the blaze, noting that bad luck tends to come in threes. Ledesma, more practical than intrigued, says we need to find the pyromaniac before he destroys something more expensive or harder to replace. The flames lap at the nearest tree. A delightful scent filters between our faces.
Sisman is a gentleman; he doesn’t come at me with embraces or pats on the back. He walks calmly a few paces ahead. With aplomb. He lights a cigarette, leaving a trail I can follow down the length of the hall without having to keep him in sight.
He closes his office door quietly. On the floor are several leather suitcases and a wooden crate. He tells me they contain all his worldly possessions. It doesn’t seem like very much. Maybe he was bad with money. I don’t know. I don’t know anything about him. I deduce that he’s a loner: he considers me his closest friend.
I ask (to be polite) whether he plans to donate his things to charity. He replies indifferently that he plans to burn them in the sanatorium furnace so he can go without leaving a trace. He points to the crate.
“I want you to keep this, Quintana.”
The prospect of having a lasting reminder of Sisman in my life worries me. I feel like I’m being asked to carry a relic, the hand or torso of a saint.
“It’s my collection of frogs,” he says. “Five hundred frogs.”
I leave them on my desk. The frogs are made of metal and each is no bigger than a nut. They’re painted bright green and have two slots where their eyes should be. If you press their back legs down with one finger, they spring up in the air and a little bell inside them rings; the high-pitched noise continues when they return to the ground, making them easier to find. Sisman says they’re toys for blind children. He sets off a row of them with a sweeping movement of his hand. How? As if from a speeding train.
Mr. Allomby leans on the device, bracing himself with both hands. His face is damp. He says something incomprehensible. Who would dare to correct his Spanish? We’re all just as tired as he is. It shows in the dark circles under our eyes; we slept on gurneys until it was time. No one helps him up. Mr. Allomby takes a breath, brushes the hair back from his forehead, and asks Sisman to please just take his seat inside the device.
“I’d like to say a few words first,” says Sisman.
“Get on with it,” Ledesma replies.
Sisman looks at the device. A few of us think he’s going to chicken out at the last minute, while others expect him to make some brief, trivial remarks to prove he’s not a coward.
“There’s nothing extraordinary about suicide,” he begins.
“Why deny it?” Ledesma interrupts.
“But this one is different. A collaborative suicide. You have no idea how good it feels.”
Someone applauds. I don’t know who; he’s behind me. Another follows suit, so as not to leave him hanging. We applaud. Sisman thanks us and takes his seat inside the device. Ledesma closes the lid around his neck.
“Thank you, Doctor,” he says, enthusiastic.
Ledesma does not pull the lever right away. The blade slices through the doctor, though not as smoothly as in Sylvia’s case. His head moves an inch across the lid and off the vent, making it impossible for him to speak. Ledesma spends the first two seconds putting it back in place. Sisman’s eyes open wide and his nostrils flatten until the air starts running through them again. At no point does it look like he’s trying to open his mouth. Because he doesn’t speak, the process seems to go more quickly, as if he’d died right there on the spot.
Ledesma brings his fist down hard on the device.
“Go get some rest
,” he says.
I see Papini trying out his speech on a patient. I walk over and stand next to him, apologizing for the interruption. I pretend to look over some papers. How much courtesy is required when asking someone for their body? I want to see his solution. It’s Papini’s first time (his nervousness has no specific odor), and he is mute in my presence.
“I don’t understand,” says the patient.
“The serum isn’t producing the desired result,” says Papini.
“I can wait for it to start working.”
“No. It’s not working. It’s not going to work.”
“Are you sure?”
Papini doesn’t have a scientific face. He has freckles. No diploma in the world can make freckles disappear. I look at him as one would look at a colleague, but with the same reservations as the patient. Are you sure, Papini?
“If you’d like, you can request a consultation.”
“A consultation? What’s that?”
“Doctor Quintana is right here.” He points a flaccid finger at me. “Ask him, if you like.”
“I can’t offer an opinion without seeing the tests,” I say, my exit strategy at the ready.
“They’re right there on the desk, Quintana.” I catch a strong whiff of lemon.
I do have a scientific face and can opine without raising suspicions.
“The serum isn’t producing the desired result,” I say to Papini, without looking at the patient.
“There are bodies, and there are bodies,” Papini says.
“But why not mine?” asks the patient.
“It’s a matter of chemistry,” I say firmly. “Too much potassium in yours, perhaps. You’re of Italian origin, correct? Southern Italy?”
“Yes,” says the patient.
“Mediterranean climate, lots of sun,” I continue, politely now. “Mother Nature is wise, and she endowed you southern Italians with high levels of potassium to protect you from the climate there. Unfortunately—unfortunately, indeed—potassium affects the chemical structure of Beard’s Serum. That’s the point. Do you understand?”
The patient doesn’t understand, but it’s enough for him that I do; meanwhile, he’s busy asking himself why he had the bad luck to be born in Italy and how he can avoid going to hell after thinking such terrible things about God.
“I’d like to discuss an opportunity with you,” says Papini.
“I have another consultation in five minutes,” I say. I know it’s not an elegant exit, but so what. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“Thanks, Doc,” the patient says.
His error of diction hastens my exit. That kind of thing can throw me off for several minutes.
“What will you do with my body?” is the most common question, grounded not so much in a shortage of nobility or interest in the greater good as in an excess of mistrust. The answer demands creativity. Experiments with cold and heat; donations of lungs, heart, corneas; conservation of the skin; anything, really—so long as it doesn’t involve heads.
Gurian hits a virtuosic note when, betting on the perfect ignorance of his interlocutor, he promises a postmortem study of the circulatory system. If he’s accused of talking nonsense, he simply smiles and describes a device that is, essentially, a vacuum pump designed to reactivate the circulation of the deceased.
Most of them allow themselves to be convinced because they intuit that Argentina is tackling a scientific challenge of global proportions; in this patriotic fervor, they sign over their bodies. The air of historical significance lends itself to an easy yes.
We note down the donations on a chart Menéndez hands us at the end of each interview. Its design puts us on the offensive: next to the donor’s name and the estimated delivery date, one field demands the surname of the doctor who acquired the body. The next few years in the sanatorium, the possibility of professional advancement, and perhaps even a friendship with Mr. Allomby—who will be measuring our aptitude as doctors and human beings based on these results—depend on how often our names appear. The number must not be negligible.
Gigena leads by two donations. People leave his office smiling. Papini’s cancer cases walk out wondering if they’ve done the right thing. Mine leave convinced but taciturn—not even sad, really—with absolute faith in the institution and concrete plans for their last will and testament.
Those who refuse our offer rise from their chairs with the elegance of a mantis, convey their sadness at the serum’s failure as they shake our hands, and close the door quietly as they leave.
Ledesma underestimates the plan’s greatest flaw: the massive failure of our cancer treatment will mean a shortage of future patients and fewer heads for the device. How are we supposed to get donations without undermining the credibility of the bait?
In good spirits, Ledesma proposes more or less respectable accidents (a streetcar collision rather than simply being run over) so the cancer cases die from something other than their disease and don’t call the efficacy of the serum into question. Ideally, according to him, we would find the real cure by asking the heads to snatch the formula right out from under God’s nose.
Mr. Allomby believes that when the decapitations begin, God will be able to share his Word with us using the heads as a megaphone.
Behind his back, Gurian says that Mr. Allomby is hoping for a religious epiphany and to pay cash for a plot in the hereafter. Cash, he says, in English.
Ledesma asks if we’ve been baptized, rolls his eyes skyward, and proclaims that if God does anything, it’ll be to hightail it the hell out of here. He says high tail.
This time, Menéndez tosses her half-smoked cigarette, lifts her head, and stares straight at me. My first impulse is to step away from the window, but my body brings me back on its own, as if offended by my cowardice. I return her gaze with a look that says “So what?” while she lowers her eyes as if nothing has happened.
I should formulate a partial, convenient interpretation of that gaze. Reach her before she gets back to work. Without breaking into a run, but quickly. Call her in and lay out my intentions, one by one.
I head downstairs. I’m wearing nice shoes.
Why like this? Why not a simpler way? What does it take, on average, to make a woman fall in love? Anyone who sees it as a matter of minutes or days is failing to consider their intricacies, their traceries—what Papini calls the threat.
Menéndez stands behind the team of nurses. I catch sight of her before she evaporates among the others. I point at her from the far end of the hallway and call her by her first name. She approaches with the air of someone about to correct an error or request an explanation. Now everyone in earshot knows her name. They can use it to gain her trust or say it softly, as if talking about a dear friend. She exists in a tangible, demonstrable sense. And it’s my fault. Her name is the lance tied to the string coiled in my hand.
“I need you to wait for me in my office, Menéndez.”
“Now, Doctor?”
“Now.”
She knows the order has to do with the way she stared straight at me. She’s busy but agrees. I watch her go. Let her wait there, with my things. In the unwritten rules of amorous conquest, waiting is a key element. And it gives me time to figure out what I’m going to say and how, which of my voices I’ll use, which gestures.
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?
Open the door, slam my fist on the desk, and say, “I love you.” Act like a doctor and invite her to coffee. Can that be done twice? Walk in, invent some complicated task that puts her back in her preferred role momentarily, then toss in a personal comment and see if it leads to a more candid, delicate chat. Or do the truly heroic thing: accuse her of trying to seduce me.
I crash into these specters one by one. And there’s Papini, crystal clear among them.
“Did you hear the news, Quintana?”
“No.”
“Not very dedicated, are we?�
��
He wants to lose another tooth. If he appeals to my generosity, he’ll probably get his wish. But first, there’s something he wants to confess. I can smell it on him. Why do people insist on confessing things to me? Must be something in my face. As we walk, I wonder what faces might inspire my confessions. Men’s faces? Women’s?
Menéndez must be sitting across from my empty chair with her legs pressed tightly together, or looking out my window to see what I see when I spy on her, or else following my order to wait, patiently and without secrets.
“They let me measure Sisman,” Papini says. “Atavistic. He kept it hidden, but he was. Look at that dome! Ledesma was so shocked he ordered me to measure all the donors from now on. What do you make of that?”
“Congratulations, Papini. What are you going to do with the donors who don’t pass the test?”
“We can’t dash their hopes of participating. But we have to consider the circumstances. It wouldn’t be wise to take a primate’s word about the existence of the hereafter.”
“Since when are we trying to prove that?”
“I’m speaking figuratively, Quintana.”
“Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Do you know where Menéndez is?” He is immediately aware of his error, of the risk to his teeth. “My interest is strictly professional, of course.”
“Menéndez is waiting for me in my office.”
I smile at him like someone who smiles all the time.
Menéndez’s time, thus suspended, belongs to me, but I approach my office unsure of what to do with it, or her. Making her wait any longer would mean transforming her anticipation into boredom, but to walk in and stand there stammering would be failure itself—worse than Mr. Allomby’s scene on the ice. He was tragic, at least. I would just be inarticulate.
I stand at the door and observe her through the glass stamped with my name: the most banal partition imaginable between a man and his enigmatic beloved. She stands stiff, with her head held high. The hallway light casts the shadow of my surname across her forehead.
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