Nor did he cry later, after the simulacrum of a funeral that was still expected back then. When the guests had left and the two of them remained, the cemetery employees lifted the coffin back up, wiped away the earth and flowers that had been thrown on it and took it into a room. They removed his son’s body from the white coffin and placed it in one that was transparent. He and Cecilia had to watch their baby slowly enter the oven that would cremate him. Cecilia collapsed and was taken into another room with armchairs that were set up for this purpose. He received the ashes and signed the papers that verified that his son had been cremated and that they had witnessed it.
He leaves the aviary and walks past a kids’ playground. The slide is broken. There’s a seesaw that’s missing one of its seats. The merry-go-round shaped like a spinning top has retained its green color, but swastikas have been painted on its wooden floor. Grass is growing in the sandbox and someone has placed a rickety chair in the middle of it and left it there to rot. Only one swing is left. He sits down on it and lights a cigarette. The chains still hold his weight. He swings by moving his legs gently, his feet touching the ground. Then he starts to pump his legs, lifting his feet into the air, and sees that in the distance clouds are forming in the sky.
It’s a hot day. He takes off his shirt and ties it around his waist.
Not far from the playground he sees another cage. He goes over to it and reads the sign.
Sulphur-crested cockatoo
Cacatua galerita
Class: Aves
Order: Psittaciformes
Family: Psittacidae
Someone has written, “I love you, Romina,” in red letters over the description of the habitat.
Adaptations: The males have eyes the color of dark coffee, while the females’ eyes are red. During courtship, the male raises his crest and moves his head in a figure eight while he emits vocalizations. Both parents take responsibility for incubating and feeding the chicks. The bird lives to about 40 years of age in the wild and to almost 65 in captivity (there’s a record of a cockatoo that lived to over 120).
The rest of the sign is broken and lying on the floor, but he doesn’t bend down to pick it up.
He walks over to a large building. The doorframe has been burned. The building contains a room with big windows that have been broken. He thinks the space must have been a bar or restaurant. There are built-in chairs that weren’t removed. Most of the tables are gone, but two remain soldered to the floor. There’s an elongated structure that could have been a bar.
Then he sees a sign that says “SERPENTARIUM,” and an arrow. He walks through hallways that are dark and narrow until he reaches a bigger space with wide windows. There’s another sign painted on the wall. It says: “SERPENTARIUM, PLEASE WAIT IN LINE.” He goes into a room with a high ceiling, part of which is broken. The sky shows through the cracks. There are no cages. Instead, the walls are divided into compartments by glass panels. He thinks they’re called terrariums. There were once different serpents inside them. Some of the glass panels are broken, others have disappeared completely.
He sits down on the floor and pulls out a cigarette. As he looks around at the graffiti and drawings, an image catches his attention. It’s a mask that someone has drawn with a good deal of skill. It looks like a Venetian mask. Beside it, in large black letters, the person has written: “The mask of apparent calm, of mundane tranquility, of the joy, at once small and bright, of not knowing when this thing I call skin will be ripped off, when this thing I call mouth will lose the flesh that surrounds it, when these things I call eyes will come upon the black silence of a knife.” It’s not signed. No one has scratched it out or drawn over it, but words and images surround it. He reads some of the things people have written: “black market,” “why don’t you rip this,” “meat with a first and last name tastes best!,” “joy? small and bright? seriously? LOL!,” “awesome poem!!,” “after the curfew we can eat you,” “this world is shit,” “YOLO,” “Oh, eat of me, eat of my flesh / Oh, amongst cannibals / Oh, take your time to / Cut me up / Oh, amongst cannibals / Soda Stereo forever.”
As he’s trying to remember what “YOLO” means, he hears a sound. He keeps still. It’s a faint cry. He gets up and walks through the serpentarium to one of the largest windows. It’s intact.
It’s hard for him to make anything out. There are dry branches on the floor, filth. But he sees a body move. And then suddenly a tiny head lifts up. It has a black snout and two brown ears. Then he makes out another head, and another and another.
He stands there watching them, thinks he’s hallucinating. Then he feels an urge to break the glass so he can touch them. At first he doesn’t understand how they got there, but then he realizes there are three terrariums connected by doors and that the glass surrounding two of them is broken. They’re not on ground level, which is why he has to climb up to enter them. He gets down on all fours and crawls through the door to the largest terrarium, the one in the middle, which is where the puppies are. The door is open. The terrarium is wide and fairly tall. He thinks it would have held an anaconda, or a python. The puppies whimper, they’re frightened. Of course, he thinks, they’ve never seen a human in their lives. He crawls along carefully because the floor is covered in stones, dry leaves, filth. The puppies are beneath some branches that do a fairly good job of sheltering them. Branches around which a boa might have wrapped itself, he thinks. They’re curled up next to each other to keep warm and protect themselves. He sits down close by but doesn’t touch them until they’re calmer. Then he starts to pet the puppies. There are four of them, they’re scrawny and filthy. They sniff at his hands. He picks one of them up. It hardly weighs a thing. At first it trembles, but then it begins to move desperately. It urinates out of fear. The others bark, whimper. He hugs the puppy, kisses it until it calms down. The puppy runs its tongue along his face. He laughs and cries silently.
22
With the puppies, he loses track of time. They play at attacking him, try to catch the branches he moves through the air. They nip at his hands with their tiny teeth and it almost tickles. He grabs their heads and shakes them carefully, as if his hand were the jaw of a monstrous beast who was after them. He tugs gently on their tails. When they whimper and bark, he does too. They lick his hands. All four of the puppies are males.
He gives them names: Jagger, Watts, Richards, and Wood.
The puppies run around the terrarium. Jagger bites Richards’s tail. Wood appears to be asleep but gets up suddenly, grabs one of the branches with his mouth and shakes it in the air. But Watts is mistrustful, and sniffs at this man in the terrarium, then plays around him, smells him, and barks, before climbing up his legs with clumsy movements. He attacks Watts, and the puppy cries a little and nips him on the hand, his tail wagging. Then Watts jumps onto Richards and Jagger. He attacks the other puppies but then they chase after him.
He thinks of his dogs. Pugliese and Koko. He’d had to slaughter them, knowing, suspecting, that the virus was a lie invented by global powers and legitimized by the government and media. He’d considered abandoning his dogs to avoid having to kill them, but he was afraid they’d be tortured. Keeping them could have been much worse. They could have all been tortured. Back then, injections were sold to prevent pets from suffering. They were for sale everywhere, even at the supermarket. He buried Pugliese and Koko beneath the biggest tree in the yard. He and the dogs would sit under its shade on afternoons when the heat was intense and he didn’t have to work at his father’s processing plant. While he sipped on a beer and read, they were by his side. He’d bring his father’s old handheld radio and listen to a program that played instrumental jazz. He enjoyed the ritual of having to tune in to the station. Every so often, Pugliese would get up and chase after a bird. Koko would raise her head, drowsy with sleep, and look first at Pugliese, then at him, in a way that he always thought meant, Pugliese is mad, stark-raving mad. But we love him just as he is, bonkers, and he’d always pet her head, smiling and say
ing softly, “Sweet Taylor, my beautiful Koko.” But when his father came by, Koko was a different dog. She couldn’t contain her happiness. Something lit up inside her, a dormant engine, and she began to jump, run, wag her tail, bark. When she saw him, no matter how far away he was, she’d bolt in his direction and jump on him. He always greeted her with a smile, hugged her, picked her up. Koko would wag her tail differently for his father, that was how he knew his dad was near. She only did this for the man who had found her on the side of the highway, curled up and dirty, a few weeks old, dehydrated, on the verge of death. His father had kept Koko by his side twenty-four hours a day; he’d taken her to the plant and looked after her until she began to respond. He thinks that slaughtering Koko was another of the reasons for his father’s mental collapse.
Suddenly the four puppies go quiet and perk up their ears. He becomes tense. At no point has the obvious occurred to him. The puppies have a mother.
He hears a growl. On the other side of the glass, two dogs are baring their fangs. It takes him less than a second to react. In this instant, he thinks he’d like to die here, in this terrarium, with these puppies. That way at least his body could serve as food and these animals could live a little longer. But then the image of his father in the nursing home comes to him, and, so quickly it’s instinctive, he drags himself to the door through which he entered. He pushes the door shut and locks it. The dogs are already on the other side, barking, scratching, trying to get in. If he leaves the door locked and escapes through the one that connects to the adjoining terrarium, the puppies will die. But if he opens this door with the puppies inside, he won’t have time to escape before the dogs attack. The door to the adjoining terrarium is closed. He tries to open it but can’t. The puppies are whimpering. They curl up to protect themselves. He decides to cover them with his shirt, though he knows it won’t keep them safe. He lies down on the floor in front of the door he intends to leave through and starts to kick it. After several kicks, the door gives. He breathes. The dogs bark and paw at the glass more forcefully. He makes sure that the door leading to the adjoining terrarium is completely open and knows he’ll be able to escape that way because the glass is broken. The growling intensifies. He thinks there are now more dogs. Either that or those already out there are getting more enraged by the second.
The puppies are curled up, confused, poking their tiny heads out from under his shirt. He picks up a medium-sized stone and props it against the locked door, the one the pack is trying to get in through. Then he unlocks it. He knows that eventually the dogs will be able to push it open, though it’ll be difficult. He finds another stone that’s a little bigger and, on all fours, drags it to the adjoining terrarium. He jams the door in place with the large stone because his kicks destroyed the latch. Then he leaves through the broken glass, carefully, without jumping or making any loud noises. When he’s on the ground floor, he starts to run.
He runs without stopping or looking back. The sky is heavy with dark clouds, but he doesn’t notice. It’s when he sees his car that he hears the barking more clearly. He turns his head slightly and sees a pack of dogs getting closer and closer. He runs as though it were the last thing he was going to do on earth. Seconds before the dogs reach him, he’s in his car. When he catches his breath, he looks at them sadly, because he can’t help them, because he can’t feed them, wash them, take care of them, hug them. He counts six dogs. They’re scrawny, probably malnourished. He’s not afraid, though he knows they could tear him apart if he got out of the car. He can’t stop looking at them. It’s been a long time since he’s seen an animal. The alpha male, the leader of the pack, is a black dog. The six of them surround the car, barking, dirtying the windows with white froth from their snouts, pawing at the closed doors. He looks at the fangs, the hunger, the fury. They’re beautiful, he thinks. He doesn’t want to hurt them. They follow him until he presses the accelerator, and in his mind he says goodbye to Jagger, Watts, Richards, and Wood.
23
As he pulls up to his house, he misses the way Koko and Pugliese used to bark and chase after the car along the dirt road bordered with eucalyptus trees. It was Koko who had found Pugliese. He was crying under the tree where the two of them are now buried. He was a puppy only a few months old, full of fleas and ticks, and malnourished. Koko adopted him as if he were her own. And though he’d been the one who removed the fleas and ticks from the pup, and fed him so he’d regain strength, Pugliese always saw Koko as his savior. If someone shouted at Koko or threatened her, Pugliese went crazy. He was a loyal dog who looked out for everyone, but Koko was his favorite.
The sky is loaded down with black clouds, but he doesn’t notice them. He gets out of the car and walks straight to the barn. The female is there. Curled up, asleep. He has to wash her, it can’t wait. He looks around the barn and thinks that he should clean it, create a space in which the female can be more comfortable.
When he leaves to get a bucket to clean her, it starts to rain. It’s only then that he realizes a storm is coming, one of those summer storms that’s both frightening and beautiful.
He goes into the kitchen and feels a crushing exhaustion. What he wants to do is sit down and have a beer, but he can’t put off cleaning the female any longer. He gets the bucket, a bar of white soap, and a clean rag. In the bathroom, he looks around for an old comb without much luck, until eventually he finds the one Cecilia left behind, and picks it up. He thinks he’ll have to connect the hose, but when he’s back outside, it’s raining so hard he gets soaked. His shirt is with Jagger, Watts, Richards, and Wood. He takes off his boots and socks. All he has on are his jeans.
Barefoot, he walks over to the barn. He feels the wet grass beneath his feet, smells the wet earth. He sees Pugliese barking at the rain. Sees the dog as though he were there at that moment. Crazy Pugliese jumping around, trying to catch the drops, getting covered in mud, seeking the approval of Koko, who always looked out for him from the porch.
Carefully, almost tenderly, he takes the female out of the barn. The rain frightens her and she tries to cover herself. He calms her down, pets her head, and, as though she could understand, says, “Don’t worry, it’s just water, it’ll clean you up.” He soaps the female’s hair and she looks at him with terror. To reassure her, he sits her down in the grass. Then he gets on his knees behind her. Her hair, which he moves around clumsily, fills with white soapsuds. He goes slowly, he doesn’t want to frighten her. The female blinks and moves her head to look at him in the rain; she writhes, trembles.
The rain falls hard and starts to clean her. He soaps her arms and rubs them with the clean rag. The female is calmer now, but she looks at him with a degree of distrust. He soaps her back and then slowly brings her to her feet. Now he cleans her chest, armpits, stomach. Diligently, as though he were cleaning a valuable but inanimate object. He’s nervous, as if the object could break, or come to life.
With the rag, he wipes the initials that certify the female is First Generation Pure. There are twenty of them, one for each of her years in the breeding center.
Then he moves on to her face, and with his hand cleans the dirt stuck to it. He notices her long eyelashes and her eyes, which are a vague color. They’re perhaps gray, or green. She has a few scattered freckles.
He crouches down to clean her feet, calves, thighs. Even with the drops of rain falling hard, he can smell her, wild and fresh, the scent of jasmine. With the comb in his hand, he sits her back down in the grass. Then he moves behind her and begins to work it through her hair. She has straight hair, but it’s tangled. He has to comb it carefully so he doesn’t hurt her.
When he’s finished, he brings her to her feet and looks at her. There, in the rain, he sees her. As fragile, as nearly translucent, as perfect. He moves toward the smell of jasmine, and, without thinking, hugs her. The female doesn’t move or tremble. She just raises her head and looks at him. Her eyes are green, he thinks, definitely green. He runs his hand over the mark on her forehead where she’s bee
n branded. Then he kisses it, because he knows she suffered when they did it to her, just as she suffered when they removed her vocal cords so she’d be more submissive, so she wouldn’t scream when she was slaughtered. He strokes her neck. Now he’s the one who trembles. He removes his jeans and stands there, naked. His breath quickens. He continues to hug her as it rains down.
What he wants to do is prohibited. But he does it anyway.
TWO
…like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born in a cage and dead in a cage, born and then dead, born in a cage and then dead in a cage, in a word like a beast, in one of their words, like such a beast…
SAMUEL BECKETT
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Tender Is the Flesh Page 9