The Hormone Factory: A Novel

by Saskia Goldschmidt

  The tootsie gave a shy, apologetic smile as she walked over to the far end of the bar to clear away his glass.

  “Regular customer?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, “he always comes in here. His is the only kind we ever get in this shithole.” Glancing at me as she walked to the slop sink to wash the glass, she asked, “What’s a fancy gent like you doing in a place like this, are you lost or something?”

  I smiled. “You might say that,” I said. “What about you, why are you working in such a dump?”

  She shrugged. “Oh, to support myself. I’d had it with my mother nagging me all the time. And, yeah, sure, I’d heard cool stories about the Village, but the stories make it sound better than it really is.” She grinned a bit sheepishly.

  “Isn’t that the truth,” I said. “Here, let me have one last drink, make it a double, and one for yourself as well.”

  She poured me a glass and another one for herself. Then she pulled out a stool from under the counter and sat down across from me. “Cheers,” she said, “to the stories.”

  “To the stories.” I raised my glass.

  “Where are you from?” she asked, the question that always seems to come first from Americans.

  “The Netherlands,” I said, “a small, insignificant country that’s mostly below sea level.”

  Her eyes lit up briefly before clouding over again. “I know,” she said. “Holland, that’s where my family’s from too.”

  “What a coincidence,” I said. “Do you speak any Dutch?”

  She shrugged. “Nah.”

  “Too bad,” I said.

  “Why?” she said. “Shitty country, horrible people.”

  “Thanks for the compliment,” I laughed, and raised my glass again. “To the horrible people and the shitty country! Have you ever been there?”

  She gave a scornful laugh. “If I had the moolah to travel, I’d go somewhere completely different. You bet!” she added indignantly.

  When her face lost its sullen expression, she wasn’t bad-looking. She had nice hair, dark and wavy; she was skinny, but her skin was smooth and fresh.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Hannah,” she said.

  I had an idea.

  “Hannah,” I asked, “have you ever been to the Five Spot? Do you like jazz?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” she said. “But going to a club by myself stinks. I did go into one of those joints once,” she went on, “but I hated it. I was just standing there, like, all by myself, looking like a dope, and I sneaked out as soon as I could. I’m kind of, like, a wimp, when it comes right down to it.” She said it with a sad grin.

  “Hannah, will you do something for me?” I asked. “I need to go to the Five Spot. It was the favorite hangout of a close friend of mine who just died. Her last wish was for me to go there and have a drink on her, but I can’t seem to make myself, not on my own. I’m a wimp too as far as that’s concerned. Will you go with me?”

  She hesitated for a moment, as if trying to figure out whether I might be dangerous. Apparently I wasn’t, because after establishing with a glance at the clock on the wall that she could close up the joint, she nodded, and together we strolled over to the Five Spot. I ordered some drinks at the bar, and we drank a toast to Diane Drabble, my delightful drinking-buddy diva. The crowd around the bar jostled us against each other, and I put an arm around her. Gently swaying to the mellow sounds of the jazz quartet, I drew her in closer until I had her in a tight clinch. I could feel her heart pounding. The heaviness that had taken possession of me ever since reading Diane’s letter was gradually pushed out by a building excitement. My beast, which had been limp and lifeless, was starting to wake up. I felt it rising, and cautiously pressed myself against the girl’s flat stomach while making a few tentative dance moves with her on the slice of floor left to us by the young people ordering drinks around us. I caressed her soft brown hair, and then gently kissed her ear, and she reacted by resting her head on my shoulder. I brushed her cheek with my lips, and finally sought her mouth.

  We stood there for a while gently swaying to the music, my hand exploring her body, her small but firm breasts, her bony back, her muscular arms and firm buttocks, and finally her mound of Venus, which I pressed firmly against me to tweak my beast.

  When I judged it was time, I steered her out of the crush at the bar and suggested going somewhere where we could be alone. She nodded shyly. With my arm around her narrow waist, I led my barmaid out of the joint, thinking that this was the best possible way to remember Drabble: to end my commemorative visit to the Five Spot with a nice little roll in the hay, which, although bound to be a poor substitute for my wild nights with Diane, would nevertheless serve as a fitting memento of our so dearly cherished freedom.

  Once outside, I quickly formulated a plan. I kissed her and suggested that we spend the night together, a proposal that received a similarly resigned, rather lukewarm assent. Taking the girl to my luxury suite wasn’t an option—there are some worlds that just don’t mix—and so I dragged her into the first fleabag hotel we happened to pass, paying for a room in cash. On shutting the door, I gave my conquest no time to change her mind. She stood there giggling nervously. I pushed her down on the creaky bed, pulled the scruffy dress up over her head, and, still kissing her, in short order yanked off her bra and panties, wriggled out of my own clothes like a veritable Houdini, and forged a way into her pussy with my fingers. But after the obligatory round of finger play, as I started pushing my beast inside her, she stopped me.

  “You can’t get me pregnant,” she said uncertainly.

  “That’s not going to happen,” I reassured her. “I’ll pull out before I come, I promise, all right?”

  Before she could answer, I covered her mouth with mine and thrust my tongue and my beast simultaneously inside her. I made sure she came before I did, pulling out perhaps a fraction too late, but most of the semen ended up on her thigh, so that was all right. I kissed her and, rolling off her, asked, “Did you like that?”

  She shrugged. “It’s nice not to, like, be alone, I guess,” she said. We stared at each other, and there was an awkward silence. Shyly she closed her eyes, lying on her back and not moving. I looked around the shabby room. The faded flowered wallpaper was torn, the wardrobe in the corner listed to one side, and the stained linens on the sagging mattress hinted that the management wasn’t too finicky about changing the sheets. I gazed at the pale little face with its rather crestfallen expression, and guessed her to be about twenty. Suddenly I felt a wave of revulsion. Why was I still compelled to do my beast’s bidding, now that my hair was going gray at the temples? It was that cursed libido of mine that had led me to wind up in this dreary room, shooting my wad into this dirt-poor wench only to feel desperate to get the hell out of there as soon as it was over. To forget the whole sordid episode ever happened.

  I got up and started collecting my scattered clothes.

  She opened her eyes and sat up. “What’s the matter, are you leaving?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, leaning across her to retrieve my pants, which had slipped down behind the bed. It wasn’t until I was dressed and had my hand on the doorknob that I looked at her and said, “All right then, Hannah, best of luck.” Her eyelids quivered, the corners of her lips started trembling; shit, she was about to cry. I walked back to the bed; she pulled the sheet up to her chin, like a little kid who believes that hiding under a sheet makes you invisible. I patted her on the head a bit and said, “So, now that you’ve been to the Five Spot, you can go there by yourself, as my girlfriend used to do. No more being a wimp, all right? Okay then, goodbye.” Avoiding her gaze, I hurried out of the room, pulling the door shut behind me.

  I left the hotel like a thief in the night, slinking past the sleepy doorman, who asked with a smirk if everything had been to my liking.

  I wandered aimlessly through the deserted streets. I walked over to the river, past the piers of the Meatpacking District, where the st
ench of rotting meat made me think of our factory long ago. A kind of homecoming, just as I seemed to have lost my way. Overhead were the train tracks of the High Line; the warehouses loomed in the darkness, silent and gloomy. I sat down on one of the piers, stared into the dark water of the Hudson River, and asked myself if there would ever come a time when I’d be master over my beast. Why did I need to expose my health and my good name to dangerous or joyless escapades such as the one I had just endured? I so badly wanted to be free of them, those tyrannical urges of mine! I thought of Aaron, and how disgusted he had been with me, and I felt his disgust bubbling up inside me. If only Diane were still alive! For just an instant I had to fight the ridiculous, romantic urge to jump into the black water of the Hudson and let myself sink to the bottom. To renounce a life in which I had to contend not only with the jealousies of all the people who resented my success and the malice of my competitors, but also with the grief of losing Diane, the only one who’d ever helped me cope with this everlasting struggle with my baser instincts.

  But when morning broke and the workmen in their bloody aprons began showing up outside the warehouses as the loaded cattle cars came rattling in overhead, I left the dock and returned to the gracious splendor of the Waldorf Astoria. There I showered and shaved, then put on a clean suit before proceeding to make a grand entrance at our branch office, where I was received with all due deference. Work is work, after all—and a great way to drown out unpleasant thoughts.

  49 …

  As Ezra grew into a handsome teenager keenly interested in girls, he also grew more interested in the economic aspects of the business. Occasionally I’d let him sit in on a meeting, and then afterward go over it with him in detail—enjoyable father-son sessions in which, prompted by his insatiable curiosity, he peppered me with questions about what had just gone on. I could see that he already possessed a finely honed business instinct.

  As time went on I became more and more convinced that my son had the talent and gumption the firm needed for its growth. He was destined for a glorious career in the future global behemoth Farmacom. Knowing that my life’s work would someday be in my son’s hands was an enormous incentive for me, enhancing the pleasure of seeing our company thrive.

  He read economics at Oxford, and before joining the firm he went on to Nyenrode Business School in the Netherlands, where he was groomed for the life of an international businessman. He was an excellent student, and I made it clear to our managers that when he graduated, I expected him to be offered a position in the executive suite. I wanted to groom him for the global side of the business; that way I’d have someone I could depend on across the pond. I needed a trusted partner over there to represent the interests of the parent firm, since the Americans had been starting to throw their weight around, trying to gain more influence in the company.

  “The most important thing I learned in business school,” he often told me, “is that in all that you do, you have to work with others, so you must always try to find common ground.” It was from this starting point that he became determined to tear down the wall that still separated the commercial and ivory-tower sides of our business and to end the tug of war between those conflicting interests. Mindful of the stories I had told him about the clashes I’d had with Levine, he felt it as a thorn in his side that in all these years nothing had changed; once he was in charge, therefore, he instituted a “strategy unit” to implement his ideas and outlook, so that everyone at Farmacom would henceforth start off on the same page.

  It was in 1965 that Rivka and I finally met again, at Ezra’s graduation from business school at Nyenrode Castle. After the speeches and diploma ceremony, we walked into the garden together. There she told me sourly, chain-smoking one Caballero cigarette after another, that she had finally succeeded in tracking down Rosie after years of searching for her name on the lists of the dead provided by the Red Cross.

  As it turned out, both mother and daughter had survived the war and had emigrated to the States shortly afterward. Rivka had visited them in Brooklyn, where the two women lived together in a miserable tenement. Rosie and Rivka had greeted each other like long-lost sisters. Rosie gave her a quick rundown of what had happened to her: after being flushed out of hiding, she was sent to three different concentration camps. She’d been liberated in the nick of time, more dead than alive. Once back in the Netherlands, she had gone to pick up Chana, who’d been hidden on a farm, but the little girl hadn’t recognized her mother, and her foster parents had refused to give her up. Rosie had finally managed to pry the recalcitrant child away from them. Their life in America was hard and lonely; mother and daughter didn’t seem to get on very well. Chana moved out and lived by herself for a while, but had been forced to return home upon being saddled with a kid after a one-night stand with some random guy. Just as Rosie had always refused to reveal to her daughter or anyone else the identity of the girl’s father, so Chana too was determined to keep quiet about the prick who had done this to her, but Rosie’s big, splayed hands had managed to beat some information out of her anyway. She had gathered that, God forbid, it had been a guy on a business trip to the Land of the Brave who’d gotten her daughter pregnant—a story not all that different from her own experience on the Cozy Corner sofa.

  Rivka’s voice grew more and more indignant. It reminded me of when she used to fling the refugees’ stories in my face, insinuating that the persecution and indignities they’d suffered were all my fault. “It’s as if the whole world is getting poisoned by perverts like you,” she exclaimed, angrily puffing on her Caballero. “They ought to lock you up, the lot of you.”

  “Rivka,” I said carefully, “isn’t it going a bit far, to blame me for something that happened to Rosie’s daughter? Aren’t you getting just a tad carried away?”

  “Do you have the gall to tell me you’ve changed?” Her anger with me seemed to have been rekindled by seeing Rosie again.

  I thought about my little affairs and was silent.

  “Why don’t you people invent something that will squelch that cursed libido of yours? So that our daughters will be safe? You’re so goddamn brilliant at marketing a pill that prevents pregnancy; you know how to pump men full of testosterone; why, then, can’t you come up with some way to rid yourselves of that vile male lust? That would be doing womankind a service!”

  She turned, tossed back her shoulder-length hair, and walked up to a group of guests a bit farther on. I saw her angry expression change into an effusive smile as she joined the conversation; she proceeded to ignore me for the rest of the event.

  It was the last time I ever saw Rivka. One year later, I heard from Ezra that his mother was suffering from the emperor of all maladies, as Diane had, and that after several months of chemotherapy, it had been pronounced terminal. He also told me that Rosie had flown in from New York to nurse her.

  I wrote Rivka a letter asking for permission to visit her one last time. It would have meant a lot to me, to be allowed to make peace with the woman who for almost twenty years had played such an important role in my life. I received a short scribble in reply:

  You will never deserve peace until you learn to control that monstrous schlong of yours. I suggest castration. Rivka.

  I wrote back tersely:

  You seem to be more attached to your anger than to living. Forgiveness, Rivka, is an important part of love, and I recall that you once said love was the “greatest power” of mankind. I’m sorry that in this life you seem to have lost the capacity to forgive.

  Your Motke.

  She sent me one last note:

  Forgiveness is something one earns, by being prepared to learn one’s lesson. You are incorrigible. Leave me be. I won’t embitter my last days thinking of you, the worst mistake of my life. R.

  She died with Rosie and our girls at her bedside; they let me know that I would not be welcome at the funeral. Rivka was buried in the village of Wargrave, the English hamlet with the very apt name where years earlier, in the war, our marriage h
ad been laid to rest.

  50 …

  Ezra was the ultimate sybarite. He loved to consume great quantities of food and drink, he was exceptionally curious and interested in every subject he encountered, and he was, like his father, incapable of resisting the profusion of feminine beauty the world had to offer. It was very hard for him to resist the urge to grab, caress, or touch anything female, soft, or alluring when the situation called for restraint. The times were on his side, of course, since thanks to the Pill, the miracle drug we had given the world, puritanism had given way to the sexual revolution, and so it had become much easier and less risky to let off a bit of steam. Even so, Ezra still had a tendency to go too far, blatantly feeling up an employee, a reporter, or some other tootsie who might not appreciate it; these gals, unlike the ones back in my time, refuse to keep their traps shut about it. Until now his charm had always helped get him out of the tightest spots. People adored him and tended to turn a blind eye when his behavior crossed the line, behavior that would have meant ruin for anyone less well-liked.

  As he climbed the corporate ladder, taking on an increasingly important role first in the Netherlands and later in the U.S. branch, his intemperance and devil-may-care attitude began to grow more worrisome. Not only was I kept apprised of his exploits through company gossip and the tabloids when he was seen squiring some actress, TV personality, or football player’s wife about town, but I also heard about it from the man himself, since Ezra liked to regale me with reports of his latest conquests.