He leaves the tannery and feels relief. But then he questions, yet again, why he exposes himself to this. The answer is always the same. He knows why he does this work. Because he’s the best and they pay him accordingly, because he doesn’t know how to do anything else, and because his father’s health depends on it.
There are times when one has to bear the weight of the world.
3
The processing plant does business with several breeding centers, but he only includes those that provide the greatest quantity of head on the meat circuit. Guerrero Iraola used to be one of them, but the quality of their product declined. They started sending lots with violent head, and the more violent a head is, the more difficult it is to stun. He was at Tod Voldelig to finalize the initial purchase, but this is the first time he’s included the breeding center on the meat run.
Before going in, he calls his father’s nursing home. A woman named Nélida answers. Nélida is a woman who deals with things that really don’t interest her with an exaggerated passion. Her voice is nervy, but beneath it he senses a tiredness that erodes her, consumes her. She tells him that his father, whom she calls Don Armando, is doing fine. He tells Nélida he’ll stop by for a visit soon, that he’s already transferred the money for this month. Nélida calls him “dear,” says, “Don’t worry, dear, Don Armando is stable, he has his moments, but he’s stable.”
He asks her if by “moments” she means episodes. She tells him not to worry, it’s nothing they can’t handle.
The call ends and he sits in the car for a few minutes. He looks for his sister’s number, is about to call her, but then he changes his mind.
He enters the breeding center. El Gringo, the owner of Tod Voldelig, apologizes, says he’s with a man from Germany who wants to buy a large lot, tells him he has to show this man around, explain the business to him, because the German is new and doesn’t understand a thing, he just stopped by out of nowhere. El Gringo wasn’t able to let him know. Not a problem, he says, he’ll join them.
El Gringo is clumsy. He moves as though the air were too thick for him. Unable to gauge the magnitude of his body, he bumps into people, into things. He sweats. A lot.
When he met El Gringo, he thought it was a mistake to work with his breeding center, but El Gringo is efficient and one of the few who were able to resolve a number of problems with the lots. His is the sort of intelligence that doesn’t need refinement.
El Gringo introduces him to the man from Germany. Egmont Schrei. They shake hands. Egmont doesn’t look him in the eye. He’s wearing jeans that appear brand-new, a shirt that’s too clean. White sneakers. He looks out of place with his ironed shirt, his blond hair plastered to his skull. Egmont doesn’t say a word, because he knows this, and his clothes, which only a foreigner who’s never set foot in the fields would wear, serve to place him at the exact distance he needs to negotiate the deal.
He sees El Gringo take out an automatic translator, a device he’s familiar with, though he’s never had reason to use one. He’s never been abroad. It’s an old model, he can tell because there are only three or four languages. El Gringo talks into the machine and it automatically translates everything into German. The machine tells Egmont that he’ll be taken around the breeding center, that they’ll start with the teasing stud. Egmont nods and doesn’t show his hands, which are behind his back.
They walk through rows of covered cages. El Gringo tells Egmont that a breeding center is a great living warehouse of meat, and he raises his arms as though he were handing him the key to the business. Egmont doesn’t appear to understand. El Gringo abandons the grandiloquent definitions and moves on to the basics, explaining how he keeps the head separate, each in its own cage, to avoid violent outbursts, and so they don’t injure or eat one another. The device translates into the mechanical voice of a woman.
He sees Egmont nod and can’t help but think of the irony. The meat that eats meat.
El Gringo opens the stud’s cage. The straw on the floor looks fresh and there are two metal bins secured to the bars. One contains water. The other, which is empty, is for feed. El Gringo speaks into the device and explains that he raised the teasing stud from when he was just a little thing, that he’s First Generation Pure. The German looks at the stud with curiosity. He takes out his automatic translator, a new model. He asks what “generation pure” is. El Gringo explains that FGPs are head born and bred in captivity. They haven’t been genetically modified or given injections to accelerate their growth. Egmont appears to understand and doesn’t comment. El Gringo picks up where he left off, with a topic he seems to find more interesting, and explains that studs are purchased for their genetic quality. This one’s a teaser stud, he says, because even though he’s not castrated, and he tries to inseminate the females and mounts them, he’s not used for breeding. El Gringo tells the German that he calls the stud a teaser because he detects the females that are ready for fertilization. The other studs are the ones destined to fill plastic containers with semen that will then be collected for artificial insemination. The device translates.
Egmont wants to go into the cage, but stops himself. The stud moves, looks at him, and he takes a step back. El Gringo doesn’t realize how uncomfortable the German is so he keeps talking, says that studs are purchased according to the feed conversion ratio and the quality of their musculature, but he’s proud not to have bought this one; he raised him, he clarifies for the second time. He explains how artificial insemination is fundamental in order to avoid disease and how it enables the production of more homogeneous lots for the processing plants, among many other benefits. El Gringo winks at the German and finishes off by saying, “It’s only worth the investment if you’re dealing with more than a hundred head, because we’re talking a lot of money for maintenance and specialized staff.”
The German speaks into the device and asks why they use the teaser stud, since these are not pigs nor are they horses, they’re humans, and why does the stud mount the females, he wants to know, he shouldn’t be allowed to, he says, it’s hardly hygienic. A man’s voice translates. It sounds more natural than the woman’s voice.
El Gringo laughs a little uncomfortably. No one calls them humans, not here, not where it’s prohibited. “No, of course they’re not pigs, though genetically they’re quite similar. But they don’t carry the virus.” Then it’s silent; the voice on the machine cracks. El Gringo looks it over. He hits it a little and it starts. “This male is capable of detecting when a female is in silent heat and he leaves her in optimal condition for me. We realized that when the stud mounts a female, she’s more willing to be inseminated. But he’s had a vasectomy, so he can’t impregnate her; we’ve got to have genetic control. In any case, he’s examined regularly. He’s clean and vaccinated.”
He sees the way the space fills with El Gringo’s words. They’re light words, they weigh nothing. They’re words he feels mix with others that are incomprehensible, the mechanical words spoken by an artificial voice, a voice that doesn’t know that all these words can conceal him, even suffocate him.
The German looks silently at the stud and there’s something like envy or admiration in his eyes. He laughs and says, “This guy doesn’t lead too bad a life.” The machine translates. El Gringo looks at Egmont with surprise and laughs to hide the mix of irritation and disgust he feels.
As he watches El Gringo respond to Egmont, he sees the way questions arise and get clogged in the man’s brain: How is Egmont capable of comparing himself to a head? How could he want to be one of them, an animal? After a long and uncomfortable silence, El Gringo answers, “It’s short-lived, when the stud’s of no more use, he’s sent to the processing plant like the rest.”
El Gringo keeps talking as though there were no other option. The owner of Tod Voldelig is nervous; beads of sweat slide down his forehead and are held up, just barely, in the pits of his face. Egmont asks if the head talk. He’s surprised it’s so quiet. El Gringo tells him they’re isolated in incubators
from when they’re little, and later on in cages. He says their vocal cords are removed so they’re easier to control. “No one wants them to talk because meat doesn’t talk,” he says. “They do communicate, but with simplified language. We know if they’re cold, hot, the basics.”
The stud scratches a testicle. On his forehead, an interlocking “T” and “V” have been branded with a hot iron. He’s naked, like all the head in all the breeding centers. His gaze is opaque, as though behind the impossibility of uttering words madness lurks.
“Next year, I’ll be showing him at the Rural Society,” El Gringo says in a triumphant voice, and he laughs and it sounds like a rat scratching at a wall. Egmont looks at him without understanding and El Gringo explains that the Rural Society gives prizes for the best head from the purest races.
They walk past the cages. El Gringo steps away from Egmont and approaches him, just as he’s thinking there must be more than two hundred in the barn. And it’s not the only barn. The man puts a hand on his shoulder. The hand is heavy. He feels the heat, the sweat, coming off this hand that’s starting to dampen his shirt. In a low voice, El Gringo says, “Tejo, listen, I’ll send the new lot over next week. Premium meat, export-quality. I’ll throw in a few FGPs.” He feels El Gringo’s wheezing breath next to his ear.
“Last month you sent us a lot with two sick head. The Food Standards Agency didn’t authorize packaging. We had to throw them to the Scavengers. Krieg told me to tell you that if it happens again, he’ll take his business elsewhere.”
El Gringo nods. “I’ll finish up with Egmont and we’ll discuss it,” he says, and leads them to his office.
There are no Japanese secretaries and no red tea. There’s barely any space in the room and the walls are made of fiberboard. This is what he’s thinking when El Gringo hands him a brochure and says, “Here, Tejo, read this,” before explaining to Egmont that he’s exporting blood from a special lot of impregnated females. He clarifies that the blood has special properties. The brochure’s large red letters say that the procedure reduces the number of unproductive hours of the merchandise.
He thinks: Merchandise, another word that obscures the world.
El Gringo is still talking. He clarifies that the uses of blood from pregnant females are infinite. He says that in the past the blood business wasn’t exploited because it was illegal. And that he gets paid a fortune because when blood is drawn from a female, inevitably she ends up aborting after becoming anemic. The machine translates. The words fall onto the table with a weight that’s disconcerting. El Gringo tells Egmont that this is a business worth investing in.
Egmont doesn’t say anything. Neither of them does. El Gringo dries his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. They leave the office.
They pass the dairy-head sector. Machines are suctioning the females’ udders, that’s what El Gringo calls them, and into the device he says, “The milk from these udders is top-quality.” El Gringo offers them both a glass, which only Egmont accepts, and says, “Recently milked.” He explains that these females are skittish and have a short productive life. They get stressed easily, and when they’re no longer of use their meat has to be sent to the processing plant that supplies the fast-food industry, that way he can maximize profit. The German nods and says, “Sehr schmackhaft,” and the machine translates, “Very tasty.”
On the way to the exit, they pass the barn where the impregnated females are kept. Some are in cages, others lie on tables. They have no arms or legs.
He looks away. He knows that at many breeding centers it’s common practice to maim the impregnated females, who otherwise would kill their fetuses by ramming their stomachs against the bars of their cage, or by not eating, doing whatever it takes to prevent their babies from being born and dying in a processing plant. If only they knew, he thinks. El Gringo quickens his step and says things to Egmont, who doesn’t see the impregnated females on the tables.
The adjoining barn houses the kids in their incubators. The German stops to look at the machines. He takes pictures.
“Tejo,” El Gringo says, approaching him, his sticky sweat giving off a sickly odor. “What you told me about the FSA is concerning. I’ll give the specialists another call tomorrow and have them come in to examine the head. If you get one that needs to be discarded, let me know and I’ll discount it.” The specialists studied medicine, he thinks, but when their job is to examine the lots at breeding centers, no one calls them doctors.
“Another thing, Gringo, you’ll have to stop skimping on transport trucks. The other day two arrived half dead.”
El Gringo nods.
“No one expects them to travel first class, but don’t pile them up like bags of flour, because they faint, or hit their heads, and if they die, who pays? And also, they get injured and then the tanneries pay less for the leather. The boss isn’t happy about this either.”
He gives El Gringo the folder of samples from Señor Urami. “You’ll have to be especially careful with the lightest skins. I’ll leave this folder with you for a few weeks so you can take a good look at the value of each sample, and treat the most expensive skins with extra care.”
El Gringo goes red. “Point taken, it won’t happen again. A truck broke down and I piled them up a little more than usual to get the order in.”
They walk through another barn. El Gringo opens one of the cages. He takes out a female with a rope around her neck.
He opens her mouth. She looks cold, is trembling. “Look at this set of teeth. Perfectly healthy,” El Gringo says. He raises her arms and opens her legs. Egmont moves closer to take a look. El Gringo speaks into the machine: “It’s important to invest in vaccines and medication to keep them healthy. A lot of antibiotics. All my head have their papers up-to-date and in order.”
The German looks at her closely. He walks around, crouches down, looks at her feet, spreads her toes. He speaks into the device, which translates, “Is she one of the purified generation?”
El Gringo suppresses a smile. “No, she’s not Generation Pure. She’s been genetically modified to grow a lot faster, and we complement that with special food and injections.”
“But does that change her flavor?”
“Her meat is quite tasty. Of course, FGP is upper-grade meat, but the quality of this meat is excellent.”
He sees El Gringo take out a device that looks like a tube. It’s one he’s familiar with—they use it at the processing plant. El Gringo places one end of the tube on the female’s arm. He presses a button and she opens her mouth in pain. It leaves a wound no bigger than a millimeter on her arm, but it bleeds. El Gringo gestures to an employee, who approaches to dress the wound.
Inside the tube there’s a piece of meat from the female’s arm. It’s stretched out and very small, no bigger than half a finger. El Gringo hands it to the German and tells him to give it a try. The German hesitates. But after a few seconds, he tries it and smiles.
“Quite tasty, isn’t it? And what you’ve got there is a solid hunk of protein,” El Gringo says into the machine, which translates.
The German nods.
“This is prime-grade meat, Tejo,” El Gringo says in a low voice, approaching him.
“If you send us a head or two with tough meat, I can cover for you; the boss knows the stunners can slip up when they strike. But there’s no screwing around with the FSA.”
“Right, of course.”
“They used to accept bribes when it was pigs and cows, but today, forget about it. You have to understand that they’re all paranoid because of the virus. They’ll file a claim against you and shut down your plant.”
El Gringo nods. He takes the rope and puts the female in the cage. She loses her balance and falls into the hay.
The smell of barbecue is in the air. They go to the rest area, where the farmhands are roasting a rack of meat on a cross. El Gringo explains to Egmont that they’ve been preparing it since eight in the morning, “So it melts in your mouth,” and that the guys are act
ually about to eat a kid. “It’s the most tender kind of meat, there’s only just a little, because a kid doesn’t weigh as much as a calf. We’re celebrating because one of the farmhands became a father,” he explains. “Want a sandwich?”
Egmont nods, but he says no, and the other two look at him with surprise. No one turns down this meat; the meal is worth a month’s salary. El Gringo doesn’t say anything because he knows that his sales depend on the quantity of head the Krieg Processing Plant buys. One of the farmhands cuts off a piece of kid meat and makes two sandwiches. He adds a spicy sauce that’s reddish orange in color.
They walk to a small barn. El Gringo opens another cage and motions to them to come over. He says into the machine, “I’ve started breeding obese head. I overfeed them so that later I can sell them to a processing plant that specializes in fat. They make everything, even gourmet crackers.”
The German steps back a little to eat his sandwich. He does this bent over, not wanting to stain his clothes. The sauce falls very close to his sneakers. El Gringo goes over to give him a handkerchief, but Egmont gestures to show he’s fine, that the sandwich is good; he stands there eating.
“Gringo, I need black skin.”
“I’m actually just negotiating to have a lot brought over from Africa, Tejo. You’re not the first to put in a request.”
“I’ll confirm the number of head later.”
“Apparently some famous designer is making clothes with black leather now and demand is going to skyrocket this winter.”
It’s time for him to leave. He can’t handle El Gringo’s voice any longer. He can’t bear the way the man’s words accumulate in the air.
They pass a white barn that’s new, that he didn’t see on his way in. El Gringo points to it and talks into the machine, saying that he’s investing in another business and is going to breed head for organ transplantation. Egmont moves closer and seems interested. El Gringo takes a bite of his sandwich, and with his mouth full of meat says, “They finally passed the law. It’ll require more licenses and inspections, but it’s more profitable. Another good business to invest in.” He doesn’t care to hear any more of El Gringo’s words and says goodbye. The German is about to shake his hand, but stops himself when he sees there’s oil from the sandwich on it. He makes a gesture of apology and under his breath says, “Entschuldigung,” and then smiles. The machine doesn’t translate.
Tender Is the Flesh Page 2