I walk in and close the door. I catch a whiff of cigarette smoke—her second today. Her routine does not include second cigarettes.
“This is outrageous,” she says. “I’ve wasted twenty minutes waiting here for you, when I could be in my room, resting, or doing something useful. You go too far, Quintana. Just like the rest of them.”
Tears fill my eyes. Menéndez sits behind my desk in my chair and points a finger at me.
“You little weasels. Did anyone think to ask if I wanted to be part of this? I don’t care that you’re cutting off people’s heads. But lying to cancer patients just seems . . .”
She means to say immoral, but she makes a mistake and says something else. I’d like to be able to correct her.
“I don’t talk much,” Menéndez continues. “You and your colleagues know this about me. It’s probably all you know. But I never agreed to any of this. Can you get that into your head? Because if not, I quit.”
“You can’t quit, Menéndez. Don’t quit. Please.”
“And why not?”
“I love you, Menéndez.”
I don’t pause as long as I should.
“But if I don’t get a chance to get to know you before . . . even if only a little, if you go . . . Don’t go. I’m a good guy. I only want the best for you. I’m only asking you to think about it.”
“I know you’re in love with me. Do you think that’s some kind of excuse? Why are you crying? Explain yourself, sir!”
I look out the window. The circle of ants is still perfect. Menéndez stands, knowing that I will not explain myself and that she went too far in her role as the Offended Young Lady.
“Balls, Quintana,” she says.
She looks for an ashtray to stub out her cigarette, but there isn’t one and she exits my office carefully, trying to keep the ash from falling. And with that punctilious gesture, she’s gone.
Balls. What to do with those? Menéndez’s parting words assure me that I still have a chance (she didn’t say no), but until I can figure out what she was trying to say, where to put them, there will be no Menéndez, and no virile Quintana: he left my office in the palm of her hand and fell with her cigarette ash.
Ledesma announces that the experiment will begin within the next few days. We raise our glasses. He claims to envy the donors because, for nine seconds, the Truth will be of them. He corrects himself and changes Truth to Abundance, then trades Abundance for Spectacle, still insisting on the capitalization. But he feels he hasn’t quite found the right phrase. He reasons that, in the thrall of Glory (Mr. Allomby repeats the word as if to confirm it’s the right one, so it sticks) the heads will require an external stimulus if they are to deign to share their stories. He underscores that our role in the Glory will be to make ourselves a nuisance. To mitigate this effect, the questions should be selected with great care.
What should we ask? Avoid yes-or-no questions. Avoid questions that require more than ten or twelve words to formulate; according to his calculations, this is all we have time for. Avoid questions that rely on or encourage the use of metaphor. Avoid questions that employ complex vocabulary, that might send a head short on brains into crisis. Avoid questions involving the terms God, heaven, science, and, understandably, head.
I look at Menéndez. Surrounded by men. Shielded by everything they don’t know about her. But I know more. At the very least, I know about the second cigarette that represents the limit of her patience. Which is precisely why she refuses to look at me now.
As an amusing digression, Gigena invites us in a didactic tone to consider the issue of nomenclature.
“Is the severed head still Juan or Luis Pérez, to pull a name out of a hat, or does it become the head of Juan or Luis Pérez?”
The question, which concerns me directly (I keep the written record of the experience), reminds me that Papini’s mother’s leg has its own headstone.
Everyone looks at me. Menéndez looks at me for the first time since the meeting began. I sense that she wants me to give an answer worthy of my intentions with her. That she wants it doesn’t matter. She deserves it. And so, just like that, I find myself in the bind of needing, essentially, to be brilliant. My balls aren’t exactly on the line, but it should be clear that I’m a man of ideas, that I can call them up at will, should the occasion arise.
“The notion of Juan or Luis Pérez is a complex one,” I say, praying my argumentation improves as I go on, “which includes arms, lungs, a heart . . . so much of Juan-or-Luis Pérez rests in his organs. Is it his brain that flutters when he falls in love? Is it really the brain that loosens our bowels when we get scared? Show some humility, gentlemen. When we drink wine, are we the ones who choose to knock the whole glass back in one swallow, or is it our throats? When we go visit our mothers, it may well be our feet that make the decision and then project a map of our trajectory onto our brains. Consequently, as far as I’m concerned, once the blade does its work, Juan-or-Luis Pérez is no more and what we have is a head, with functions limited to those of a head.”
“For Pete’s sake,” Gurian says.
“I don’t know, Quintana,” Ledesma says. “I don’t know. I’m not interested in having a conversation with anyone’s liver. I’d rather believe that Juan or Luis Pérez’s head is still more or less him.”
“Without question,” Papini says.
We debate whether to ask the questions before or after the decapitation. Do we want to guide the responses? Some, quite reasonably, prefer not to. Ledesma squints. He’s in favor of a postmortem questionnaire. He contends we’ll get the most diaphanous responses that way. Mr. Allomby doesn’t understand the word, and no one steps up right away to translate it for him.
“If our questions lead the donor to suspect we’re about to cut off his head,” Ledesma continues, “he’ll feel like he’s being conned and will necessarily tend toward fear and that loosening of the bowels that Doctor Quintana mentioned. One is unlikely to encounter the Glory under those conditions. And also, gentlemen, common sense: we don’t want them having second thoughts at the last minute. That one’s on the house.”
“Let’s not ask questions,” says Gurian. “Let the heads speak for themselves.”
There is something liberating in his proposal, so we defend it against Ledesma’s and Mr. Allomby’s rebukes. The bodies and their diseases belong to the patients, sure, but we’re the ones who have to smell their innards, and if things go badly, we’re the ones who’ll take the blame. If things go well, on the other hand, God gets all the credit.
To be present, but not participate directly, is the dream of every doctor.
By the end of the discussion, Ledesma has conceded every point, but he reserves the right to ask questions if he so desires. A director reserving the right to do anything is such a pathetic redundancy that we lose respect for him on the spot.
“Well, that’s settled,” Ledesma says. “Now we can move on to announcing the names of the three doctors who earned a bonus for securing the most donations. The list, please, Menéndez.”
No one said the results would be made public in such a humiliating way. Or mentioned any bonus. Many of us probably took the whole thing lightly because of that. The sweat from our necks trickles down to our asses; if it weren’t for our underwear, it would continue all the way down to our feet and gradually form a puddle big enough to swim in. It won’t be long before some of them lose their offices and others move on to bigger ones, far from the pus and malaria.
In first place: the doctor with the mole on his chin. He receives a round of incredulous applause from those of us who know nothing about him, not even his name, which, incidentally, we drowned out with our applause.
Gigena has the good taste to come in second, which allows him to demonstrate his competence while avoiding the cloying scent of victory.
“There’s a tie for third place,” Ledesma continues. “I don’t say it’s a tie because this is a competition, understand? But simply because two of your colleagues ended u
p with the same number of donations, and our budget won’t accommodate four bonuses.”
I’d like to come in fourth: the best among the losers. Ledesma announces that Papini and I share third place. He applauds us for going onto the field of battle hand in hand. Those are his exact words.
We have two days to get more donors. Papini is already imagining fifteen horrible strategies for seducing more cancer cases than me. I look at Menéndez and dedicate the fifteen balls of my imminent triumph to her. Her love is of the kind that can be claimed through grand gestures. Underappreciated testosterone.
The patient as a number: nothing new there, but now there’s a prize involved. I have five donations. As I go for my sixth, a woman laughs in my face. For my seventh, I approach the donor and try to console him by resting a hand on his head; it ends up smeared with pomade. My ninth is tricky: the donor faints before signing. I bring him to with alcohol, papers in hand, because no one is watching.
Ledesma slams the chart down on his desk and asks Papini who the donor that doesn’t appear on the list of patients is. I shoot Mr. Allomby a conspiratorial glance. We’re not actually conspiring, but it’s important to look at people like that every now and then because that’s how real relationships are forged.
“It’s Mauricio Albano Ruiz, sir,” Papini replies. “Do you remember my anecdote about the brothers Mauricio?”
“No.”
“The one in the motion-picture business. He came to the sanatorium last week to visit me. And do you know what? He told me that the movement we see on the screen is all a lie. There’s no movement. It’s photographs. Get it? Like a zoetrope! How many photographs per second do you think it takes for the movement to look fluid, natural? I’m taking bets. What do you say? And how about you, Mr. Allomby?”
“I don’t care,” says Mr. Allomby.
“How many?”
“I don’t know,” Mr. Allomby replies, annoyed. “A hundred, more or less.”
“No one knows! That’s the problem. Mauricio tried to figure out the magic number so he could patent it in Argentina. He’s been working on it for years. Seems they’ve already solved the mystery in France or the United States, but they’re keeping it hush-hush. The most remarkable thing, the most charming part, I’d say, is that while Mauricio was chasing real time, his own time ran out.”
“What are you talking about, Papini?”
“Literally, his time ran out. He’s so discouraged he wants to die. He asked to participate in the experiment.”
“I appreciate your dedication, but I can already see this Mauricio fellow at some cocktail party, tossing out the details of this experiment that has cost us so dearly to play up his eccentricity or impress some young lady. No, Papini. Mr. Mauricio will keep his head for now, and so will you.”
Papini finds Ledesma’s joke hilarious and concedes the competition. I win a bonus for my tally of twelve donors to eleven, not counting Mauricio.
“But this Mr. Albano Ruiz knows about the experiment,” I add. “He might talk anyway. Especially if he feels he’s been slighted.”
“That’s the attitude I like to see in my staff,” says Ledesma.
“Thank you.”
“Please, let’s approve the head,” says Papini. “Doctor Quintana’s bonus is not under dispute.”
Papini’s spirit has been forged in failure. A few more like this and he might even be tolerable. He comes up short as a leading man, but he’s a hero nonetheless. Mr. Allomby ends the meeting by saying they’ll only accept Mauricio’s head in exchange for a substantial sum. One shouldn’t make things easy for the upper class.
Menéndez hands me the envelope with my bonus. The principal breakthrough in our relationship is that she’s traded her anger for total indifference. The next step must be love.
How many words do we say in a year? The figure matters to no one, least of all me, but it’s surprising that it doesn’t appear in the Encyclopædia Britannica. One possible explanation is that no one listens carefully. What remains of us as time passes are our words, sure, but in abridged form, crossed out according to the interest they hold for others. It’s different for these poor creatures. We’re going to listen to them meticulously.
Ledesma wears a bow tie in the national colors and reads an inaugural speech full of suspense, zeal, and opportune digressions. On each chair—an essential detail—rests a slip of paper with one of our names on it. We don’t know if the assignments are random or if they correspond to how important we are. Menéndez stands a few paces from the device.
The first donor is Elsa: fifty-two years old, pancreatic cancer, widowed housewife, childless. I write her name like an insignia. When the experiment reaches its mythic stage, we’ll be able to look back on our primordial Elsa. Ledesma offers his hand and seats her in the device.
“How are you feeling?”
He activates the blade before the question is fully formulated. Elsa doesn’t notice.
“Been better,” the head replies in a monotone. “The ceiling is really low.”
The first two seconds pass like this. Ledesma tosses out a “You think so?” that occupies the third, and the head adds nothing in the time that remains. The transition from one state to the other was so abrupt that some bit of “Elsahood” could have lingered in the head. Eternity doesn’t know from low ceilings. It’s a good phrase to present later, playing devil’s advocate—the embodiment of dedication to any cause.
Then comes the next one, with a different name.
“Relax, sir,” says Ledesma, activating the blade.
“What did you do to my neck?” asks the head.
“Nothing.”
“I’m not sure . . .” the head says, in closing.
Gurian reminds us that our policy is not to ask questions. Ledesma brings in the third donor, seats him in the device, and says nothing as he pulls the lever.
The face twists up in pain. The mouth opens and, taking advantage of the current of air provided by the device, screams for nine seconds straight. One of my colleagues faints: he blanches for seconds one through nine, then falls silently to the floor without overturning his chair. It takes us a while to revive him. Ledesma suggests he step out for some air, but he’s stubborn and takes his seat again.
The next donor is shown in. A young woman, about twenty years old. I wonder who’s in charge of the bodies stacking up in the storage room. Papini has a habit of touching the breasts of unconscious old ladies. What’s to stop him from doing the same with this girl’s body later, when no one is watching? If he were capable of that, though, Menéndez would already be his. He’s not capable of that.
“Can I ask a question?” says the girl.
“By all means,” replies Ledesma.
“The donation happens after I die, right?”
“Of course,” says Ledesma. “Have a seat.”
The girl wants to say something else, but Mr. Allomby pulls the lever.
“I’d like some water,” says the head.
If faith demands that each answer be an epiphany, then the Whole is not unlike this time, this space. Or perhaps our gaze has rested so intently on things that it’s taken on their form, their weight, their duration—immutably: one single habit, one continuous hat wrapping around heads, even across worlds.
In either case, a cosmic disappointment. If intellectual honesty indicates, on the other hand, that waiting for an epiphany inherently means accepting failure, well then, there’s still time—not to abort the experiment, but rather to assign it a new goal. The next donor will separate the wheat from the chaff: some will cling to faith, others will not.
Ledesma can smell our disappointment. It oozes from his pores, too. But there’s no reason to read the device like tea leaves. We’ll draw our conclusions when we have more heads. Mr. Allomby proposes a snack break.
I can’t help being the first to get up, so all eyes fall on me. Some assume I’m craving a sandwich, and their mouths start to water too, though they remain seated. Others think I’
m losing my nerve and want to get away from the experiment as quickly as possible. I slow my pace to avoid arousing more suspicion.
At this reduced pace, I see Mr. Allomby take Menéndez by the arm, as if the spectacle at the Palais never happened, as if she’d agreed to let him start with a clean slate. He guides her toward the door. They’re talking about something I can’t quite make out. I hurry.
“I’ll think about it, Mr. Allomby,” Menéndez says.
“Thank you.”
They smile at each other.
Of course. A snap of the fingers. Life goes on for her, while I’m breaking my back to prove something or other about my balls. The enemy does not rest; he’s taken aim and fired off a proposal, the second, far from the public gaze of a ballroom, in a hallway Menéndez knows like the back of her hand, where she feels comfortable and barely visible.
Do you see this shoelace? I’d like to take it and tie your tongue to your uvula, and your uvula to your stomach, and your stomach to your uterus, so that the very first word of your answer leaves you hollow.
My mouth is full of ham and cheese. If I were to open it, you wouldn’t be able to see my teeth. I’m chewing like one of those derelict immigrants who stuff their faces down by the docks, planning crimes against the very society that welcomed them to this promised land. I chew like a man with a fearsome jaw, like that other ape I’m about to unleash.
Ledesma is playing with a coin, tossing it in the air and catching it without looking. My colleagues consider this worthy of praise. The director is so talented, so whimsical. In this momentary suspension of the hierarchy, opportunists come out of the woodwork. They force their way in through the cracks of minor passions (parlor games, married life, some remark of Gurian’s about fencing), convinced that working their way up the ladder begins with winning over the man. The knowing wink. It’s so outrageously naïve I could beat them to a bloody pulp.
The practical, indirect Quintana, that peddler of ambiguities, ends here. What was I waiting for? For time to balance the scales? For chance to intervene? For the magic of love? I stride over to Ledesma without wiping my mouth and, defying my (let’s call it) nature, deftly thrust my arm forward to grab the coin midair. I need to talk to him. Now. Alone.
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