The Mutations

by Jorge Comensal

  “No, ma’am, but don’t worry. I’ll be right back.”

  Elodia wondered what she would do if the manager didn’t come back soon, or if he came out playing dumb, as if he’d never seen her before. What if they swindled her? Her employer had seemed desperate when he’d begged her to do him this favor, and had sworn her to secrecy, since he was going to use part of the money for a “surprise” for Señora Martínez. Elodia had thought that the story sounded odd, but she accepted it out of respect for her boss, and because she urgently needed the overdue paychecks he’d promised her. But who were the police more likely to believe? The manager of a prestigious jewelry store, or a domestic worker who didn’t even have a voter ID? She wouldn’t just lose her job, they would also send her to jail, to the Santa Martha Acatitla penitentiary, where she’d be locked away with murderesses and kidnappers and skin-headed gang members covered in tattoos, who would demand money from her children in exchange for not beating her up.

  “How about fifty thousand?” the manager asked when he came back to the counter.

  Elodia shuddered when he named the price. She’d known they would pay her a lot, but not that much. How was she going to hide such a huge amount in her bra? She tried to disguise her mortification and took out her cell phone to call Señor Martínez. Ramón picked up the phone and tinkled a bell to let her know he was listening.

  She spoke in a piercing voice, as if he were half deaf as well as mute.

  “I’m here with the gentleman at the store!” She lowered her voice from a shout to a whisper. “He says it’ll be fifty thousand.”

  Ramón had told her that he would tap the table once to indicate that he rejected the offer, and twice to accept. Elodia had memorized this simple code by repeating, “One tap no, two taps yes,” to herself over and over.

  Ramón gave two firm taps on the table.

  “So, yes?”

  She heard two taps again.

  “Okay. So I’ll take a taxi this time?”

  Two taps. Elodia said goodbye, and Ramón hung up.

  On her way back, Elodia fantasized about all the things she could have bought with the money she was carrying: a washing machine, a gas stove and oven, a nice pair of shoes, a new computer for her children, a water heater for her shower, and an endless array of hair accessories, her only weakness.

  Mesmerized by her consumerist daydreams, Elodia forgot to tell the driver to take a left turn. They had to take a long detour before reaching the house. As they drove, she recalled the passage in the Gospels where Jesus proclaimed that no man could serve two masters, God and money.

  “I’m back!” Elodia announced in triumph as she entered the house.

  Ramón was awaiting her anxiously. It was an anticlimactic encounter, since rather than handing over the money immediately, Elodia had to go up to the bathroom to extricate the wad of bills from between her breasts.

  When he finally had the bills in his grip, still warm from their prolonged contact with Elodia’s skin, Ramón counted them eagerly. It had been a long time since he’d held such undiluted power in his hands. The faces of dozens of Sor Juanas and General Zaragozas gazed at him solemnly from the paper notes, indifferent to the earthly delight that lit up their owner’s face. With them, Ramón would be able to speak again; with them, he would grandiloquently dictate his final wish.

  20

  Aldama read the offensive reply from the director of the UNAM Biomedical Research Institute several times. It began with an unforgivably careless mistake, addressing him as “Dear Doctor Madame.” The implied emasculation might have enraged an insecure man, but Aldama was annoyed that his correspondent hadn’t bothered to proofread his message before sending it, and correct the mindlessly cyber-generated autocorrect. The famous geneticist went on to excuse his delayed response with a joke about his work on tissue regeneration: “My apologies for not writing sooner, but sometimes we have to choose between opening axolotls and emails.” Aldama might have taken delight in this witticism, but under the circumstances he saw it as shameless proof of just how insignificant his interlocutor thought him.

  With no further diplomatic preamble, the genetic researcher informed him that the institute’s interest in cancer cells was limited to the study of telomeres, the caps found at each end of a chromosome, the front and back covers of the genetic book, designed to protect its hereditary inner pages during cell division. Just as handling and friction with other surfaces caused the covers of books to deteriorate, the jostling caused by meiosis eroded the telomeres, speeding up the cellular aging process. Sometimes, carcinogenesis involved the reactivation of the telomerase enzyme, which could repair the telomeres after each division. In this way, the cancer cells avoided natural wear and tear and remained eternally young.

  The geneticist’s detailed description of telomeres showed how little faith he had in the physiological knowledge of a clinical oncologist like Aldama and represented a worse affront than the previous ones. But what most incensed Aldama on reading the missive was the discovery that Luis Ramírez, the pathologist who’d encouraged him to pursue the study in the first place, had been using him only to further his personal goals: “Dr. Ramírez has expressed his interest in participating in our telomere study at his own laboratory using your patient’s cell line, as well as some others they’re working with. We’re sure this collaboration will benefit his Institute as much as ours.” That scumbag Ramírez had “expressed his interest.” He’d never cared about the rhabdomyosarcoma’s oncogenes; what he was really after was a cell line that secreted telomerase, just as Ramón’s rhabdomyoblasts did. Everything else, Aldama’s participation included, was incidental. The geneticist signed off with a categorical statement: “It would be impossible to demonstrate even a correlation between the FOX01 alleles linked to hereditary obesity and the oncogenesis of such an unusual tumor. Frankly, I think your working hypothesis is unsound.”

  Not only did he feel duped by Ramírez, but after the tactless researcher’s ridicule, Aldama was embarrassed by his naïve scientific ideas. In the end, the gossips were right: his foray into genomics was a senile folly. He cursed his own arrogance: doctors should be content to stick to their Hippocratic mission, charging handsome fees while they plied their trade. The parallel joys of saving lives and making a fortune were enough to satisfy most oncologists, but not Aldama. He recalled a passage from Saint Augustine that captured his feelings for scientific research: “Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you.” Late had he loved microscopes and spectrometers. Late had he loved the elegant double helix of DNA. Late had he known the thrill of hunting down founder mutations that explained de profundis the causes of life, not just of its oncological quirks, but of evolution itself through the ages, from the remotest primordial soup to the cunning biped who looks in the mirror and believes himself superior to his own nature.

  Aldama accepted stoically that he would never discover the cause of Ramón Martínez’s cancer, a dauntless strain of muscular cells that had eluded eight cycles of aggressive chemotherapy and two months of radiation.

  The rhabdomyoblasts had also had the last laugh, coating the patient’s lungs with moss and the reef of his spine with coral. Where else might they now be dwelling? When he gave Ramón the news that he couldn’t be cured, that the disease was continuing to progress, he had seemed relieved, as if the treatment had convinced him that, in his case, the happiest diagnosis was a terminal one. Mrs. Martínez, on the other hand, had responded with irate questions that did more to accuse him of incompetence than request information. How was it possible that after such harsh and lengthy treatment, the doctor did nothing but show them the whitish areas on the chest X-rays where the cancer was thriving? Aldama tried to explain that without chemotherapy, her husband probably wouldn’t have survived even two months. Despite the unusually aggressive sarcoma, the patient was still alive almost a year after his diagnosis. Under the circumstances, the treatment had been quite successful. Mrs. Martínez then aske
d defiantly how the study with the original tumor’s cells was progressing. It was all a ploy, Aldama would have liked to tell her, to use your husband’s tissue in a cellular aging project. The search for the fountain of eternal genetic youth will bear fruit many years from now, when it’s no longer of use to your husband or me, since I’m about to retire and be consigned to oblivion. I’ve treated hundreds of patients and cured many of them, but I can count those who remember me with gratitude on just one hand.

  He answered that the cellular research had been effective for designing the chemotherapy, thanks to which, he reiterated, the patient’s survival had been extended by almost a year. Mrs. Martínez asked no further questions and began to cry with restraint. The patient consoled her fondly. Aldama took the chance to observe her. He had dealt with dozens of relatives and knew how to judge their character. Throughout the treatment, Mrs. Martínez had been calm and collected. Many patients’ husbands and wives were dramatic, obstreperous, demanding. Despite the circumstances, they wanted to be the center of attention. Not her. She had accompanied her husband discreetly to dozens of appointments, waited for hours outside the chemotherapy suite, stood in interminable lines to donate blood, collect lab results, and deliver urine samples. She had never shown any sign of clinging to religion or even to optimism, that secular superstition. She had carried herself in a way he could only describe as the epitome of civilization. He understood her anger: she had done everything she could, and the doctor had let her down. Nevertheless, it wasn’t his job to apologize like a hotel manager to an unsatisfied guest. Medicine was a rudimentary and to a large extent intuitive trade, from which it was impossible to expect perfect results.

  Many believed that, in the end, scientific progress would conquer cancer, and oncology would become as crude a specialty as orthodontics. Patients would seek treatment for a brain tumor as nonchalantly as they made an appointment to have a tooth pulled. But Aldama didn’t believe the civilized world would prosper long enough for that oncological paradise to become a reality.

  21

  “Asshoooooole! Asshoooooole!” Benito began to squawk when he sensed that Ramón was about to get home. Elodia, the only witness to the parrot’s daily prophecies, always recounted them to Ramón, and today was no exception.

  “I was upstairs cleaning when I heard Benito squawking. That’ll be Señor Martínez, I said, so I came straight down to pour you a glass of horchata. I figured you’d be thirsty in this heat.”

  I appreciate it, thought Ramón, and he went out to visit Benito, who celebrated his arrival with even more obscene squawks. Benito’s new cage was the avian equivalent of a Hollywood mansion: twelve cubic feet, six mahogany perches at multiple different heights, a metal ladder that led to a balcony, a swing, a pool with an island and a miniature plastic palm tree, an automatic food dispenser, insulating night cover, and a slide-out tray for easy cleaning. A pair of macaws could have lived comfortably in those luxury quarters, which took up most of the space on the garden table.

  Aren’t you embarrassed, Ramón asked Benito, to know you don’t live like President Juárez anymore, but like fucking Maximilian? Oh yeah, he was a great humanist and all that crap. Why did he go around being so meddlesome? The word “meddlesome” was one of a number of linguistic relics making their way into Ramón’s mute soliloquies. These archaisms that came from his mother’s vocabulary had never featured in Ramón’s speech before, but the thick current of his silence had stirred the bed of his memory, dredging up old-fashioned words like “bungling,” “trinkets,” “baubles,” “harlot,” “victuals,” and “valise.” According to Teresa, these terms’ resurgence was a sign that his mind had undertaken a review of his past, in search of records that might account for the present. Our strongest desire in life, his therapist had said, is to understand why.

  They took the catheter out of my chest today, Ramón told his friend. They’re taking me off the chemo, so I don’t need it anymore. The palliative care doctor wanted to leave it in and use it for painkillers, but I told them it was itchy and asked them to take it out. I don’t want to die with a tube in my chest, it gives me the creeps. But the pain in my legs is really a bitch. The tumor’s pressing on the nerves in my spine, so I’ve got sciatica all over the place. They’ll give me some hot compresses for the inflammation, but just now in the car it hurt like hell, you have no idea. Every time we went over a speed bump, I felt like my balls were being crushed. Sometimes I wonder what they did about tumors in ancient times. Turns out cancer existed thousands of years ago. Paulina and I looked it up on the Internets. Even the dinosaurs had to deal with this motherfucker. And these days, sea lions are getting cancer of the nuts from polluted water. I can’t remember where, but somewhere in the U.S. And you know what country has more cancer than anywhere else? Tere says it’s Canada, because of all the preservatives. She thinks anything natural’s good for you, even scorpion venom. And then there’s the weed. I have to admit, it feels good. And then the doctor gives me these opiate concoctions, which at the end of the day are the same shit the Chinese used to smoke, except these are prescription and cost an arm and a leg. What the fuck’s up with that? Tere told me she gets her marijuana for free, someone gives it to her for helping out. But who? What for? There’s something sketchy about it. Remember this: there’s no such thing as a free lunch. But she talked it up so much I finally gave in. She took out a little gadget that looked like a radio, except it had a straw where the antenna would be, and told me to take a drag on it, like a cigarette. It’s not smoke, she said, it’s a vaporizer. Nothing happened. She told me to take another hit, so I did. You won’t believe this: five minutes later, I had a hard-on. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to have a boner. It was so weird, my back was hurting like a motherfucker, but then it stopped. No pain at all. I was pretty high by then—my face was tingling, and everything was moving in slow motion. And I started feeling horny, I swear. Not because of the doctor, poor old lady, just in general. And the pain was gone. How are you feeling? she asked me. I just gave her the thumbs-up—I’m doing great. If you’d told me twenty years ago I’d be doing drugs, I’d have said no way, you’re out of your mind. But now look at me. She asked me something or other, I can’t remember what. So, I looked at the keyboard to answer, and I’ll be damned if the keys weren’t talking. It was the weirdest thing. I stared at them and completely spaced out. I could hear them all: aaaa, teee, rrrr, uuuu. When I came down, I was lying comfortably on the couch. She brought me a glass of milk and said, Here, have a drink of this. Carmela was waiting for me outside, and Tere had told her I wasn’t feeling well and had taken a little nap. I went out with a serious face and she didn’t suspect a thing. Tere said if I want, she could give me some to use at home. Can you imagine us doing drugs here, Benito? There’s no chance in hell I’m letting my kids catch me smoking pot. What kind of example am I setting if their last memory of their father is seeing him stoned? No way. But I’ll ask her for some when I go to her place next week … It could be the last. I already transferred the ownership of the house, now we just need to get the divorce papers done. Once Carmela accepted that my number’s up, she stopped arguing. The other day, she asked if I wanted her to call Ernesto and tell him. No way, I said, over my dead body. I don’t want that asshole to find out until after I’m gone. He can come to the funeral and cry for his money. Carmela didn’t make a stink about it, so I took the chance to bring up the divorce. She doesn’t want to do it, she’s ashamed of what people will think. Who? I asked her. She says there’ll be a record on paper. True, marital status is recorded on the death certificate. But who cares? Who’s going to find out? The children! she said. We can explain it, I said, we have nothing to hide. She still doesn’t want to. Mateo’s about to fail the whole school year, and Pau’s depressed and refusing to eat. Take her to therapy. With what money? I bet Tere would help us out for free. You can count on her. We’ll ask her to help us explain the divorce. Stop going on about that! she shouted. But I want to go without a
ny worries, I wrote. And what about me? she asked. I have to stay! If I could speak, I wouldn’t have known what to say … I get where she’s coming from, Benito, but if Ernesto buys himself a judge and gets a writ of seizure, he could really fuck them over. It’s not like he earned that money he lent me by honest means. He did it by shafting his suppliers and employees. And I defended him and his dirty tricks. He’s a thug, a gangster. And I’m hardly a socialist, but someone’s got to make sure a predator like that is the one who gets fucked.

  Benito swung vigorously on his swing and seemed to approve of Ramón’s plans, nodding his head in agreement again and again.

  22

  Aldama’s cell phone rang at eleven on Monday night. He had withdrawn to his study after dinner to listen to music. The two glasses of wine he’d drunk put him in the mood to search through his CDs for Aram Khachaturian’s expansive Masquerade Suite. At least the termination of his genetic research had given him back those precious evening hours he spent indulging his fanatical devotion to music, the only time he could call free in every sense of the word.

  “Forgive me for calling at this hour,” Mrs. Martínez said, “but I had to stay late at the office today, and when I got home, I found my husband in a terrible state, collapsed on the floor next to our bed.”

  Aldama harbored profound nostalgia for the pager, that little gadget, a relic from the last century that had received electronic messages before the widespread use of cell phones. If anyone wanted to speak to him, they had to call an operator, who would transcribe the message, request a name and phone number, and send it to his pager: “Doctor, the bleeding started again. What should we do?” “Vomiting and diarrhea, not sure if urgent.” “The hospital called. Mrs. Ibáñez died. Sincerely, Sara.” Never had patients and relatives been so plainspoken and succinct as in the glorious heyday of the pager.