The shorter applicant goes up to the window and watches the scene with a smirk on his face. The taller man covers his mouth.
While the applicants are standing there, he knocks on the glass. The worker jumps. He hadn’t seen his boss in the window and knows the mistake could cost him his job. He motions to the worker to come out. The man asks for a replacement and leaves the slitting room.
He addresses the worker by name and tells him that what just happened can’t happen again. “This meat died in fear and it’s going to taste bad. You ruined Sergio’s work by taking too long.” The worker looks at the floor and tells him that it was a mistake, apologizes, says it won’t happen again. He tells the man that until further notice he’ll be moved to the offal room. The worker can’t hide the look of disgust on his face, but he nods.
The female that Sergio stunned is now being bled dry. There’s still one head whose throat needs to be slit.
He sees the taller man crouch down and put his head between his hands. The man remains there, and he goes over and pats him on the back, asks if he’s okay. The man doesn’t answer and only signals that he needs a minute. The other applicant continues to watch, fascinated, unaware of what’s happening behind him. The taller man stands up. He’s gone white and beads of sweat have formed on his forehead. But he’s recovered and goes back to watching.
They see the way the female’s bloodless body moves along the rail until a worker undoes the straps around her feet and the body falls into a scalding tank where other corpses are floating in boiling water. A different employee plunges the corpses below the surface with a stick and moves them around. The taller applicant asks if their lungs fill with contaminated water when they’re pushed below the surface.
Smart guy, he thinks, and tells the man that yes, water does get in, but only a little, because they’re no longer breathing. He says that the plant’s next investment will be a spray-scalding system. “With those systems scalding occurs individually and vertically,” he explains.
The worker places one of the floating bodies inside the grille of the loading container, which lifts the body up and tosses it into the dehairing machine, where it begins to spin while a system of rollers equipped with scraper paddles removes the hair. This part of the process still gets to him. The bodies are spun at high speed; it’s almost as if they were performing a strange and cryptic dance.
13
He motions to the applicants to follow him. The next stop is the offal room. They walk there very slowly and he tells them that the product is used almost in its entirety. “Hardly anything goes to waste,” he says. The shorter applicant stops to watch a worker use a blowtorch on the scalded corpses. Once they’re entirely hairless, they can be gutted.
On the way there they walk through the cutting room. The rooms are all connected by a rail that moves the bodies from one stage to the next. Through the wide windows, they see the way the head and extremities of the female stunned by Sergio are cut off with a saw.
They stop to watch.
A worker picks up her head and takes it to another table, where he removes her eyes and puts them on a tray with a label that says “Eyes.” He opens her mouth, cuts out her tongue, and places it on a tray with a label that says “Tongues.” He cuts off her ears and sets them down on a tray with a label that says “Ears.” The worker picks up an awl and a hammer and carefully taps the bottom of her head. He continues in this manner until he has cracked a portion of her skull, and then he carefully removes her brain and leaves it on a tray with a label that says “Brains.”
Her head is now empty and he places it on ice in a drawer that says “Heads.”
“What do you do with the heads?” the shorter applicant asks, barely containing his excitement.
He answers automatically: “A number of things. One is sending them to the provinces where they still cook heads like they used to, in pits in the ground.”
The taller applicant says, “I’ve never had heads cooked that way but I hear it’s pretty good. There’s only a little meat, but it’s cheap and tasty if done well.”
Another worker has already gathered and cleaned the female’s hands and feet, and placed them in drawers with their respective labels. Arms and legs are sold to butchers attached to the carcasses. He explains that all of the products are washed and checked by inspectors before they’re refrigerated. He points to a man who’s dressed like the rest of the workers but is carrying a folder in which he jots down information, and a certification stamp that he takes out every so often and uses.
The female that Sergio stunned has now been flayed and is unrecognizable. Without skin and extremities, she’s becoming a carcass. They see the way a worker picks up the skin that was removed by a machine and carefully places and stretches it in one of several large drawers.
They continue walking. The wide windows now face either the intermediary room or the cutting room. The flayed bodies move along the rails. The workers make a precise cut from the pubis to the solar plexus. The taller applicant asks him why there are two workers per body. He explains that one worker makes the cut and the other stitches the anus shut to prevent expulsions from contaminating the product. The other applicant laughs and says, “I wouldn’t want that job.”
He thinks that he wouldn’t even hire the man for that job. The taller applicant has had enough as well and looks at him with contempt.
The intestines, stomachs, pancreases fall onto a stainless steel table and are taken to the offal room by other employees.
The bodies that have been cut open move along the rails. On another table, a worker slices the upper cavity. He takes out the kidneys and liver, separates the ribs, cuts out the heart, esophagus, and lungs.
They continue walking. When they reach the offal room, they see stainless steel tables. Tubes are connected to the tables and water flows over the surface of them. White entrails have been placed on top of them. The workers slide the entrails around in the water. It looks like a sea that’s slowly boiling, that moves at its own rhythm. The entrails are inspected, cleaned, flushed, pulled apart, graded, cut, measured, and stored. The three of them watch the workers pick up the intestines and cover them in layers of salt before storing them in drawers. They watch the workers scrape away the mesenteric fat. They watch them inject compressed air into the intestines to make sure they haven’t been punctured. They watch them wash the stomachs and cut them open to release an amorphous substance, greenish brown in color, that’s then discarded. They watch them clean the empty, broken stomachs, which are then dried, reduced, cut into strips, and compressed to make something like an edible sponge.
In another, smaller room, they see red entrails hanging from hooks. The workers inspect them, wash them, certify them, store them.
He always asks himself what it would be like to spend most of the day storing human hearts in a box. What do the workers think about? Are they aware that what they hold in their hands was beating just moments ago? Do they care? Then he thinks about the fact that he actually spends most of his life supervising a group of people who, following his orders, slit throats, gut, and cut up women and men as if doing so were completely natural. One can get used to almost anything, except the death of a child.
How many head do they have to kill each month so he can pay for his father’s nursing home? How many humans do they have to slaughter for him to forget how he laid Leo down in his cot, tucked him in, sang him a lullaby, and the next day saw he had died in his sleep? How many hearts need to be stored in boxes for the pain to be transformed into something else? But the pain, he intuits, is the only thing that keeps him breathing.
Without the sadness, he has nothing left.
14
He tells the two men that they’re nearing the end of the slaughter process. Next they’ll stop by the room where the carcasses are divided into parts. Through a small square window they can see into a room that’s narrower, but just as white and well lit as the others. Two men with chain saws cut the bodies in half. The
men are dressed in regulation attire, but with helmets and black plastic boots. Plastic visors cover their faces. They appear to be concentrating. Other employees inspect and store the spinal columns that were removed before the cut was made.
One of the saw operators looks at him but doesn’t acknowledge his presence. The man’s name is Pedro Manzanillo. He picks up the chain saw and slices the body more forcefully, as if with rage, though the cut he makes is precise. Manzanillo is always on edge when he’s around. He knows this and tries not to cross paths with the man, though it’s unavoidable.
He tells the applicants that after the carcasses have been cut in half, they’re washed, inspected, sealed, weighed, and placed in the cooling chamber to ensure they’re kept cold enough. “But doesn’t the cold make the meat tough?” the shorter applicant asks.
He explains the chemical processes that allow the meat to remain tender as a result of the cold. He uses words like lactic acid, myosin, ATP, glycogen, enzymes. The man nods like he understands. “Our job is done when the different parts of the product are transported to their respective destinations,” he says, so he can end the tour and go for a cigarette.
Manzanillo puts the chain saw down on a table and looks at him again. He holds the man’s gaze because he knows he did what needed to be done and he doesn’t feel guilty about it. Manzanillo used to work with another saw operator whom everyone called Ency because he was like an encyclopedia. He knew the meanings of complex words and on break was always reading a book. At first the others laughed at him, but then he began to describe the plot of whatever he was reading and he captivated them. Ency and Manzanillo were like brothers. They lived in the same neighborhood, their wives and kids were friends. They drove to work together and made a good team. But Ency began to change. Little by little. As the man’s boss, he was the only one who noticed at first. Ency seemed quieter. When he was on break, he’d stare at the shipment in the resting cages. He lost weight. There were bags under his eyes. He started to pause before cutting the carcasses. He’d get sick and miss work. Ency needed to be confronted, and one day he took the man aside and asked him what was going on. Ency said it was nothing. The next day everything seemed to be back to normal, and for a while he thought the man was fine. But then one afternoon Ency said he was going on break and took the chain saw without anyone noticing. He went to the resting cages and began to cut them open. Whenever a worker tried to stop him, he threatened them with the chain saw. A few head escaped, but the majority stayed in their cages. They were confused and frightened. Ency was shouting, “You’re not animals. They’re going to kill you. Run. You need to escape,” as if the head could understand what he was saying. Someone was able to hit Ency over the head with a club and he was knocked unconscious. His subversive act only succeeded in delaying the slaughter by a few hours. The only ones to benefit were the employees, who got to take a break from their work and enjoy the interruption. The head that escaped didn’t get very far and were put back in their cages.
He had to fire Ency because someone who’s been broken can’t be fixed. He did speak to Krieg and make sure he arranged and paid for psychological care. But within a month, Ency had shot himself. His wife and kids had to leave the neighborhood, and since then Manzanillo has looked at him with genuine hatred. He respects Manzanillo for it. He thinks it’ll be cause for concern when the man stops looking at him this way, when the hatred doesn’t keep him going any longer. Because hatred gives one strength to go on; it maintains the fragile structure, it weaves the threads together so that emptiness doesn’t take over everything. He wishes he could hate someone for the death of his son. But who can he blame for a sudden death? He tried to hate God, but he doesn’t believe in God. He tried to hate all of humanity for being so fragile and ephemeral, but he couldn’t keep it up because hating everyone is the same as hating no one. He also wishes he could break like Ency, but his collapse never comes.
The shorter applicant is quiet, his face is pressed up against the window, and he’s watching the bodies being cut in two. There’s a smile on his face that he no longer bothers to hide. He wishes he could feel what this man does. He wishes he could feel happiness, or excitement, when he promotes a worker who used to wash blood off the floor to a position of sorting and storing organs in boxes. Or he wishes he could at least be indifferent to it all. He looks at the applicant more closely and sees he’s hiding a phone under his jacket. How could this have happened if security pats them down, asks for their phones, and tells them they can’t film anything or take pictures? He goes up to the man and grabs hold of the phone. He throws it to the floor and breaks it. Then he grabs him forcefully by the arm and, containing his fury, says into the man’s ear, “Don’t come here again. I’m going to send your contact info and photo to all the processing plants I know.” The man turns around to face him, and at no point does he show surprise, or embarrassment, or say a word. He looks at him brazenly and smiles.
15
He takes the applicants to the exit. But first he calls the head of security and tells him to come get the shorter man. He explains what happened and the security guard tells him not to worry, he’ll take care of it. They’ll need to have a talk, he tells the guard, since this shouldn’t have happened. He makes a mental note to discuss it with Krieg. Outsourcing security personnel is a mistake, he’s already told Krieg this. He’ll have to tell him again.
The shorter applicant is no longer smiling, but neither does he put up a fight when he’s taken away.
He says goodbye to the taller man with a handshake, adding, “You’ll be hearing from us.” The man thanks him without much conviction. It’s always this way, he thinks, but any other response would be abnormal.
No one who’s in their right mind would be happy to do this job.
16
He steps outside for a cigarette before going up to give Krieg the reports. His phone rings. It’s his mother-in-law. He answers the call and says, “Hi, Graciela,” without looking at the screen. On the other end there’s silence, at once serious and intense. That’s when he realizes it’s Cecilia.
“Hi, Marcos.”
It’s the first time she’s called since she went to stay with her mother. She looks haggard.
“Hi.” He knows it’s going to be a difficult conversation and takes another drag on his cigarette.
“How are you?”
“I’m here at the plant. What about you?”
There’s a pause before she answers. A long pause. “I see you’re there,” she says, though she’s not looking at the screen. For a few seconds, she’s quiet. Then she speaks, but she doesn’t look him in the eye. “I’m not well,” she says, “still not well. I don’t think I’m ready to come back.”
“Why don’t you let me come visit?”
“I need to be alone.”
“I miss you.”
The words are a black hole, a hole that absorbs every sound, every particle, every breath. She doesn’t answer.
He says, “It happened to me too. I lost him too.”
She cries silently. She covers the screen with one hand, and he hears her whisper, “I can’t take any more.” A pit opens up and he’s free-falling, everywhere there are sharp edges. She gives the phone to her mother.
“Hi, Marcos. She’s having a really tough time, forgive her.”
“It’s okay, Graciela.”
“Take care, Marcos. She’ll get there.” They hang up.
He stays where he is for a little while longer. The employees walk by and look at him, but he doesn’t care. He’s in one of the rest areas, outdoors, where you can smoke. He watches the treetops move in the wind that alleviates the heat a little. He likes the rhythm, the sound of the leaves brushing against each other. There are only a few trees—four surrounded by nothing—but they’re right next to each other.
He knows Cecilia will never get better. He knows she’s broken, that the pieces of her have no way of mending.
The first thing he thinks of is the medicine t
hey’d kept in the fridge. How they’d brought it home in a special container, taking care not to break the cold chain, hopeful, deeply in debt. He thinks of the first time she asked him to give her an injection in the stomach. She’d given millions of them, trillions, countless injections, but she’d wanted him to inaugurate the ritual, the start of it all. His hand had trembled a little because he hadn’t wanted it to hurt, but she’d said, “Go on, dear, just put the needle in, go on, you’ve got this, it’s no big deal.” She’d grabbed a fold in her stomach and he’d put the needle in and it had hurt, the medicine was cold and she’d felt it enter her body, but she’d hidden it with a smile because it was the beginning of possibility, of the future.
Cecilia’s words were like a river of lights, an aerial torrent, like fireflies glowing. She’d tell him, when they didn’t yet know they’d have to turn to the treatments, that she wanted their children to have his eyes but her nose, his mouth but her hair. He’d laugh because she’d laugh, and with their laughter, his father and the nursing home, the processing plant and the head, the blood and the stunners’ sharp strikes would disappear.
The other image that comes to him like an explosion is Cecilia’s face when she opened the envelope and saw the results of the anti-Mullerian hormone test. She didn’t understand how the number could be so low. She looked at the piece of paper, unable to speak, until very slowly she said, “I’m young, I should be producing more eggs.” But she was disconcerted, because as a nurse she knew that youth doesn’t guarantee anything. She looked at him, her eyes asking for help, and he took the piece of paper from her, folded it, put it on the table, and told her not to worry, that everything was going to be okay. She started to cry and he just held her and kissed her on the forehead and the face, and said, “Everything’s going to be okay,” even though he knew it wouldn’t be.
Tender Is the Flesh Page 6