The Hormone Factory: A Novel

by Saskia Goldschmidt

  I shut the door carefully, walked up to him, and kneeled down by his side.

  “Aaron,” I said softly, touching his back, “come on, get up, man, let me help you pull your pants up.”

  Aaron’s bellow turned into a howl of despair, like a wolf letting the rest of the pack know he’s in grave danger. He stared at me, dazed. His face was covered in blood; Rosie must have fought back like a wildcat. Brusquely, he shook my hand off his back. My presence seemed to whip him into an even greater fury.

  “You and your soul glands! Is this what you wanted for me, you schmuck? You’ve finally done it, I’ve finally turned into as big a creep as you. Now we are one, the same lousy piece of scum, only in two different bodies.”

  I tried to pull up his trousers, but he slapped my hand away hard. “Don’t touch me, don’t you dare lay a finger on me,” he roared, but then hauled himself to a sitting position, pulled up his pants, sobbing and groaning, and buckled his belt. I poured him a glass of water and handed it to him. Refusing to look at me, he took a sip and, staring at a large amber shard from the broken vase, started mumbling to himself in an expressionless voice. “I didn’t want to, I didn’t mean to. I tried to resist it, with all my might.” He raised his head and looked at me with eyes that did not see me. “She was so scared of me, so terrified. No, not of me. It wasn’t me.”

  And as he spat out those last words, his voice growing louder again, he stood up, picked up the broken piece of glass, and started waving it at me. I got up too, and began backing up slowly, not daring to look away, toward the door.

  “It was you,” he thundered, stabbing the shard in my direction, “it was your voice. You were there all the time I was doing it, you were laughing, urging me on, I mean, you were inside my head.” Dropping the piece of glass, he began hammering his fists against his forehead, as if trying to brain himself. “Inside my body. You forced me to, you were turning me into you. I didn’t want to do it!”

  Then he collapsed again, banging his head on the parquet floor, howling at the top of his lungs.

  I realized I had to get out of there. I wasn’t the right person to calm him down; on the contrary, I was the wind fanning the flames. Quietly I left the room, closed the door behind me, turned the key in the lock, and dashed into my office. There I rang Rivka, who was fortunately home, and informed her without going into detail that Aaron was in a bad way.

  “Alert the doctor and ask him to come here on the double, with however many rapidly working sedatives he has on hand. It’s an emergency. And please hurry over here yourself.”

  Once Aaron was sedated, Rivka and the doctor would be able to get him home, which would give me the chance to talk to Rosie and her parents in peace. I picked up the carafe I kept in my office and poured myself a glass of water, then sat down at my desk and tried to think what I should do next.

  25 …

  Agnes returned empty-handed; Rosie hadn’t been home. She had encountered only the mother, who’d been greatly alarmed to find the executive secretary on her doorstep in search of her daughter. What had that girl done now? she’d wanted to know. Agnes had said something noncommittal and left in a hurry.

  She was looking at me anxiously; I felt my panic rise. Where was that little bitch? Had she gone straight to the police? It seemed rather unlikely, since the Rosie I knew was the guilt-ridden sort; she’d be too ashamed to have her disgrace be known. Maybe she’d gone off someplace to hide. Or, God forbid, she was licking her wounds at the house of a friend.

  I drummed my fingers on the desktop. Had the entire office staff not witnessed Rosie’s spectacular flight, I could have tried to hush up the whole affair. I could have tried paying the girl off with a tidy little sum, but since the whole office had seen her in her distressed state, it was too much of a risk. One person’s secret is shared by God alone; a secret shared by two soon to all is known. There was nothing else for it: unless I wanted to be dragged down with him in his fall, I would have to sacrifice my brother. Sometimes one has to give up one’s beard in order to save one’s head. Yes, I’d go to the police and report to them what had happened, and do everything I could to save Aaron. Everything, that is, except jeopardize myself or discredit our first real scientific breakthrough.

  • • •

  As I walked into the police station my heart sank. The fat sergeant, seated at a desk dwarfed by his enormous bulk, was busy jotting something down, and across from him sat two women with their backs to me. I immediately recognized Rosie’s skinny, huddled form shivering in Agnes’s coat, jiggling the fingers of her startlingly large hands more nervously than ever; it looked as if she were typing on an invisible typewriter. And, what do you know? Next to her sat that devil spawn Bertha in all her glory. Could it get any worse? The fact that sweet little Rosie had apparently run into that tart Bertha—it was the worst possible luck. For a moment I was tempted to turn and run, but Bertha looked up and saw me. She jerked her chin and nudged Rosie with her elbow, saying “There he is.” Then, addressing me with a note of triumph in her voice, she said, “Yer gonna get it now, Jewboy, like a tomcat getting its nuts lopped off.”

  Rosie cringed, and the sergeant looked up. He hauled himself to his feet and came forward, shushing Bertha with a hand gesture.

  “Mr. De Paauw,” he said, coming up to me with his hand outstretched, “it’s good of you to come. I was just about to send some of my men to your office to investigate the situation. Please, take a seat.”

  He pointed to the chairs in front of his desk and then realized they were already taken. “Girlies,” he said, “I’ve heard enough for now, you can go. You’ll be hearing from me.”

  I saw Bertha bristling. She glared at the fat officer and exclaimed indignantly, “Ain’t you gonna lock ’im up, the kike? Are you gonna let him blow smoke up yer ass, this prick who can’t keep his dick in his pants?”

  The sergeant’s face grew red. “You don’t talk that way to Mr. De Paauw. Get out!” he reprimanded the devil-bitch.

  Rosie hurried past me on her way out the door, refusing to look at me. Bertha slowly hoisted her fat ass out of the chair and stalked past me with a haughty look, mouthing, “Oh, yeah, how could we ferget, rich birds uvva feather stick together.”

  I looked her straight in the eye and said, “Don’t bother coming back to work, you little bitch. Girls who talk about their boss that way aren’t wanted. And don’t ever let me hear you’ve been spreading more dirty rumors, or your dad’s a goner too.”

  Bertha went as red as a tom turkey, and stomped angrily outside, yelling, “Jest go to hell, you bastard!” She stuck her head around the door one more time to scream at the police officer, “Whatever he tells you, he’s lyin’ through his stinkin’ teeth!”

  In the ensuing silence I went and took a seat. The sergeant sighed.

  “Mr. De Paauw, I’ll get straight to the point. This is an extremely serious situation we have here. Even if only a fraction of the hog-wash I was just told turns out to be true, the whole town’s gonna be up in arms, you can bet on that. I cannot let this slide. That heavy one, the fat tart, she clearly has a bone to pick with you, and I’m going to take anything she says with a grain of salt.”

  As he spoke, he picked up a sheet from the stack in front of him and started tearing it into little pieces with a triumphant look in my direction. He stood up and let the scraps flutter into the wastebasket, then rubbed his hands as if to cleanse them of the filthy words written there. Taking his seat again, he went on. “But that quiet little girl, she’s been dreadfully misused; that’s something we cannot ignore. It’s going to have to go to court, without a doubt. Your brother cannot escape punishment.”

  I let his words sink in. If I read him correctly, this swaggering cop had just admitted, before I’d even tried justifying myself, that he was prepared to go along with the very strategy I had worked out on my way over! The statement fat Bertha must have given him in gory detail about our disports on my sofa (although she’d almost certainly omitted the fa
ct that my exertions had taken place with her full consent) now lay in shreds in his wastebasket. Only Rosie’s complaint still stood. It remained to be seen if the poor abused girl had confined herself to reporting only that afternoon’s rape, or had also mentioned my own habit of fooling around with her, which she, unlike Bertha, had never openly encouraged.

  The officer did not leave me in the dark long. “That bitch tried to get the poor little thing to say that she had been abused by you as well, but the victim herself has given no indication that this is indeed the case.”

  I managed to suppress a sigh of relief. I seemed to have dodged the bullet. As far as Aaron went, I’d have to try to salvage what could still be salvaged, being careful, however, to avoid any publicity that could negatively affect Rafaël’s discovery. Otherwise we might as well kiss the testosterone drugs goodbye.

  I explained to the officer that my brother had always been an open book, a man with a sterling reputation. In the past few months Aaron had sunk into a deep depression, and had been taking a number of different medications, a poisonous cocktail that must have set off this blind frenzy. A physician would be called in to confirm this explanation, and would determine that my brother had not been in control of his faculties and therefore was not fully accountable for his actions. The policeman seemed relieved to have the matter resolved so easily. We agreed that Aaron would come to the police station the next day to give himself up, thereby avoiding the mortification of an arrest at work or at home, which would only invite further gossip. I thanked the fellow for being so understanding, assuring him that if I could ever be of service to him in the future, my door was always open.

  Once outside again, I took a deep gulp of the fresh night air. Depressing as it was to know that my brother would have to spend the foreseeable future behind bars, I couldn’t help but feel relief over the way the interview with the cop had gone.

  26 …

  In the weeks following that catastrophic day, I was forced to pull out all the stops to save my own skin and the firm’s good name.

  After my productive visit to the constabulary, I hurried back to the factory, where the night shift had just come on. To forestall further gossip, I summoned the factory foremen and supervisors and gave them a short, businesslike update on what had happened. The ladies and gentlemen listened to my story in a state of shock. Aaron was a beloved figure to the workforce, and, like Agnes, no one could even imagine the moody but kindhearted pushover being capable of such an outburst. I disclosed that the authorities had been informed, and that my brother would be going to the police station the next day to give himself up. He would not escape punishment. I asked them to spread the word to their workers and said that gossip about the incident would not be tolerated. Then I rushed over to Aaron’s house, where I found the G.P. and Rivka, who was extremely upset. The good doctor had injected my brother with a healthy dose of tranquilizer and, when that hadn’t had the required effect, sedated him with a strong narcotic. Aaron now lay stretched out on his bed like a corpse, temporarily released from his tormented soul. Both the doctor and Rivka were mystified as to how my lethargic brother could suddenly have turned into a brute capable of raping a girl known in the factory as a sweet and rather unremarkable young thing. I told them the same story I had told the police about the drug cocktail Aaron had supposedly taken to cure his depression. That made the doc look up, since my brother had not been to see him in over a year.

  “What sort of drugs?” he asked suspiciously.

  I assured him I had no idea. The conscientious medic said there must be some pill bottles lying around to tell us what medications my brother had been taking. I told him I had already looked and had not found any, neither in Aaron’s office, the scene of the crime, nor back here at the house. But the doc wouldn’t let it go. Like a dog refusing to surrender its bone, he demanded that I give him the names of the doctor or doctors who had written the prescriptions. I promised the fellow I would do everything in my power to find out, and finally got him to leave. The obstinate quack insisted he’d come and have another look at his patient in the morning, before Aaron gave himself up to the police. That meant I would have to get Aaron out of there before the pit bull’s return. I shuddered to think what might happen if anyone got wind of the true story. I thanked the doctor warmly and shut the door behind him with a sigh of relief, only to have to face Rivka, standing there demanding answers.

  “What in God’s name is going on, Motke?” she said, staring at me with a mixture of distrust and worry. “Aaron raping a girl? There’s no one on earth more good-natured than your brother. Surely he would never, ever do anything like that! What’s come over him? And what was that crazy story of yours about the pills? Did you give him something nasty to swallow? That new preparation, perhaps, since that’s all you know how to talk about these days? Did he get injected with that testosterone crap Rafaël’s been working on? Is Aaron one of your guinea pigs? Has Rafaël been experimenting on him? Tell me it isn’t true!”

  That was one of those times when I regretted having married a smart woman who wouldn’t let me pull the wool over her eyes. I asked her to make us a cup of tea, and then sat down at the kitchen table with her.

  “Rivka, I’m going to tell you something in the strictest confidence. A secret I trust will never pass your lips. You’re making me come clean with you, because your guesses are not that far off. You’re right, but you’re also wrong. Rafaël has nothing whatsoever to do with this. He knows nothing about it and it’s crucial he never does. Aaron was given that stuff by a specialist he consulted, because all the signs were pointing to the fact that his body was producing too little testosterone, and it was ruining his life. Something must have gone wrong with the dosage. I had at one point suggested to the doctor he might want to step the treatment up a bit, since Aaron was in such a bad way. But if it gets out that my brother was receiving a bigger dose than the one prescribed by Rafaël, all hell will break loose.”

  “So Aaron and Rosie are now the victims not only of that brilliant discovery of yours, but also of your everlasting impatience? Christ! Why do you always have to have it your way? Why can’t you ever accept the fact that someone else may know better?” Rivka jumped up, snatched a sponge off the counter, and wiped the table clean for the second time.

  “Well,” I admitted, “I really did think I was doing Aaron a favor. I was wrong, I now know that, to my chagrin. But if a word of this leaks out, it’s curtains for the company. A catastrophe, not just for myself or for our family, but for the hundreds of workers who will lose their jobs and become beggars. So if only for their sake, Rivka, you’d best keep quiet about this. I shall do everything in my power to contain the harm this will do to Aaron.”

  “And Rosie?” she asked. “That poor girl, what are you going to do for her?”

  “I’ll give her whatever help she needs, rest assured of that.”

  “Tell me, though, Motke,” she said, looking at me coldly, “give me one good reason why I should stick up for you. I’ve been raising our four girls, I run your household, but that’s about it. There hasn’t been much else to keep us together these last few years. Why should I go to bat for you?”

  The coldness of her tone shocked me.

  “You’re not the only one who’s upset that we seem to have drifted apart,” I said quietly. “I too wish we could get back to being as close as we used to be. How the hell did we end up here?”

  Rivka had sat down again and was staring darkly into her teacup. She stirred it with her spoon and then looked up at me earnestly. “You’re miles away,” she said. “Sometimes I have the feeling that we’re living on two separate continents that are drifting apart. There’s a wide and savage sea between us preventing me from reaching you. It’s as if I can just catch the occasional glimpse of you standing over there on your iceberg, pontificating. I often find myself thinking that somewhere inside that arrogant prick, surely, there must be the man who once swept me off my feet. The winsome lad I wound up marry
ing because my father insisted on it, to spare my family the scandal. And even though no one ever asked me if I wanted to get married, our marriage did make me happy at first. Where is that Motke, the man who showed me the Amstel River by night, who bewitched me with all his charm, and taught me there is nothing more thrilling than two beings in love becoming one? Where did that man go? I miss him.”

  I think I felt sort of sorry for her then; she looked so terribly sad and lonely. I got up, kneeled by her chair, and gave her a hug. Her body stiffened at first, as if steeling itself against me, but then she snuggled her head against my shoulder.

  “I’m so sorry, darling,” I said, caressing her gently. “You don’t deserve this. The boy you fell for, or, I guess you might say, the boy who fell on you”—here I chuckled softly—“is still here, I promise. Here, feel.”

  I took her hand and placed it over my heart. “He’s still in there, always. Except that of late he hasn’t been coming out as often as he’d like. He has to act tough, he’s shouldering heavy responsibilities, he’s under a lot of stress; there are so many people who depend on him. If he were to show his open, vulnerable side, the wolves out there would tear him to pieces in a heartbeat. He’s had to harden himself; he has to keep fighting. Otherwise, they’ll just walk all over us—me, you, and the girls.”

  Rivka lifted her head and shook it in denial. “No, Motke, I’m not buying it. You say you wouldn’t be able to get through life showing your softer side. That the only way to survive is to fight, to make others obey you, to crack the whip. I don’t buy it, I refuse to accept it. Loving others, having compassion—those are our greatest strengths.”