When he wakes, his body is covered in a film of sweat. It’s not hot outside, not yet, not during the spring. He goes to the kitchen and pours himself some water. Then he turns on the TV, presses the mute button, and flips through the channels without paying attention. Eventually he stops on a channel that’s replaying old news from years ago. People had started vandalizing urban sculptures of animals. The program shows a group of individuals throwing paint, rubbish, and eggs at the Wall Street Bull. Then it cuts to other images, a crane raising the bronze sculpture that weighs more than three thousand kilograms, the bull moving through the air while people look on in horror, point at it, cover their mouths. He switches the mute button off but keeps the volume low. Isolated attacks had taken place in museums. Someone had slashed Klee’s Cat and Bird at the MoMA. The news anchor discusses experts’ efforts to restore the painting. At the Museo del Prado, a woman had tried to destroy Goya’s Cats Fighting with her own hands. She’d lunged at it but the security guards stopped her in time. He remembers the experts, art historians, curators, critics who were indignant and spoke of the “regression to medieval times,” of the return to an “iconoclastic society.” He drinks some water and turns off the TV.
Then he remembers the sculptures of Saint Francis of Assisi that were burned, the donkeys, sheep, dogs, camels removed from nativity scenes, the sculptures of sea lions in Mar del Plata that were destroyed.
He can’t sleep and has to be up early to meet a member of the Church of the Immolation. There are more and more of them, he thinks. The calm and orderly pace of the slaughter is disrupted whenever the lunatics from the church stop by the plant. This week he has to go to the game reserve and the laboratory. Tasks that take him away from home, that complicate matters. He has to get them done but lately he hasn’t been able to concentrate. Though Krieg hasn’t talked to him about it, he knows his work has suffered.
With his eyes closed, he tries to count his breaths. But then he feels something touch him and jumps. He opens his eyes and sees her. Then he moves over and she lies down on the sofa. He inhales her wild, vibrant smell, hugs her. “Hi, Jasmine.” He untied her when he woke up.
He turns the TV back on. She likes to look at the images. At first she was afraid of it, and tried repeatedly to break it. The sounds were grating, the images put her on edge. But as the days passed, she understood that the device couldn’t hurt her, that what occurred inside it wouldn’t do anything to her, and she became fascinated by the images. Everything was a source of surprise. Water coming out of the tap, the new, delicious food that was so different from the balanced feed, the music on the radio, taking showers in the bathroom, the furniture, walking freely through the house while he was around to keep an eye on her.
He straightens her nightgown. Getting her to wear clothes was a task that required a huge amount of patience. She ripped her dresses, pulled them off, urinated on them. Far from getting angry, he was amazed at the strength of her character, at her tenacity. Over time, she understood that the clothes covered her up, that in a way they protected her. She also learned to dress herself.
She looks at him and points to the TV. She laughs. He does too, without knowing what he’s laughing at or why, but he does it anyway, and pulls her a little closer. Jasmine doesn’t make any sounds, but her smile vibrates throughout her body and he finds it infectious.
He runs his hand over her belly. She’s eight months pregnant.
2
He has to get going, but first he wants to have some mate with Jasmine. The water’s already been heated on the stove. It took him a lot of time to get her to understand the concept of fire, its dangers and uses. Whenever he lit the burner, she took off and ran to the other end of the house. Her fear turned into wonder. Then all she wanted to do was touch the white and blue that could sometimes be yellow, that seemed to dance, that was alive. She’d touch the flames until they burned her and then pull her hand away quickly, frightened. She’d suck on her fingers and step back a little, but then she’d move closer and do it again and again. Slowly, fire became part of her daily life, her new reality.
When he’s had one last sip of mate, he kisses her, and, as he does every day, walks her to the room where he keeps her locked up. He turns the bolt in the front door and gets into his car. She’ll be fine watching the TV he mounted on the wall, sleeping, drawing with the crayons he left her, eating the food he made for her, flipping through the pages of books she doesn’t understand. He wishes he could teach her to read, but what’s the point if she can’t speak and will never be part of a society that sees her only as an edible product? The mark on her forehead, the huge, clear, indestructible mark, forces him to keep her locked up in the house.
He drives to the plant quickly. He intends to get what needs to be done over with and go back home. But his phone rings. He sees it’s Cecilia and pulls over to the side of the road. She’s been calling more often lately. He’s afraid she wants to come home. There’s no way he can tell her what’s going on. She wouldn’t understand. He’s been trying to avoid her, but that’s just made it worse. She can feel his impatience, sees that the pain has become something else. She says, “You’re different”; “Your face has changed”; “Why didn’t you pick up the other day, are you that busy?”; “You’ve already forgotten about me, about us.” The “us” she refers to isn’t limited to her and him, it includes Leo, but saying so out loud would be cruel.
When he arrives at the plant, he nods to the security guard and parks his car. He doesn’t care whether the man is reading the paper, doesn’t even bother to check who he is. He no longer stops for a smoke, his arms propped up on the car roof. What he does is go straight to Krieg’s office. He gives Mari a quick kiss on the cheek, and she says: “Hi, Marcos. You’re really late, love. Señor Krieg is downstairs. The people from that church are here and he’s gone to deal with them.” This last part she says with annoyance. “They’re showing up more and more often.” He doesn’t say anything, though he knows he’s late and, what’s more, that the people from the church were early. He goes downstairs quickly and runs through the hallways without greeting the workers on the way.
The lobby is where they meet suppliers and people who don’t work at the plant. Krieg is standing there, not saying a thing, swaying slowly, almost imperceptibly, as though he had no choice. He looks uncomfortable. In front of him, there’s a delegation of about ten people. They’re dressed in white tunics and their heads are shaved. They watch Krieg in silence. One of them wears a red tunic.
He goes up to them and shakes the hand of each one. Then he apologizes for being late. Krieg says that Marcos, the manager, will now look after them, and excuses himself to take a phone call.
Krieg walks away quickly without looking back, as though the members of the church were contagious. He runs his hands over his trousers, cleansing himself of something that could be sweat or rage.
Once Krieg is gone, he goes up to the man he recognizes as the spiritual master, which is what they call the leader, and holds out his hand. He asks the man for the papers that permit and certify the sacrifice. He looks them over and sees that everything is in order. The spiritual master tells him that the church member who will be immolated has been examined by a doctor and has prepared his testament and performed his departure ritual. The man gives him another piece of paper that’s been stamped and certified by a notary and says, “I, Gastón Schafe, authorize my body to be used as food for other people,” and contains a signature and ID number. Gastón Schafe steps forward in his red tunic. He’s a seventy-year-old man.
Gastón Schafe smiles and recites the Church of the Immolation’s creed passionately and with conviction: “The human being is the cause of all evil in this world. We are our own virus.”
All of the church members raise their hands and shout, “Virus.”
Gastón Schafe continues, “We are the worst kind of vermin, destroying our planet, starving our fellow man.”
“Fellow man,” shout the church members.<
br />
“My life will truly take on meaning once my body feeds another human being, one who truly needs it. Why waste my protein value in a meaningless cremation? I’ve lived my life, that’s good enough for me.”
In unison, all the church members shout, “Save the planet, immolate yourself!”
A few months back, a young woman had been chosen for sacrifice. In the middle of the church’s discourse, Mari came downstairs shouting. A young woman committing suicide was an atrocity, she said, no one was saving the planet, the whole thing was nonsense, she wouldn’t allow a bunch of lunatics to brainwash a woman so young, they should be embarrassed, maybe consider mass suicide, and if they really wanted to help, why didn’t they donate all their organs. A Church of the Immolation whose members were alive was utterly grotesque, she shouted, until finally he wrapped his arms around her and took her to another room. He sat Mari down and gave her a glass of water and waited until she was calm. She cried a little and then composed herself. “Why don’t they just give themselves to the black market, why do they have to come here?” Mari asked him, her face contorted.
“Because they need things to be legal so the church can remain in operation, they need the certificates.”
Krieg let the incident go because he agreed with everything she’d said.
The plant is under an obligation to deal with the church and “go through the whole grim ordeal,” as Mari puts it. None of the processing plants wanted anything to do with them. The church fought for years until the government gave in and the two sides signed an agreement. Their success occurred only after the addition of a member who had high-ranking contacts and a lot of means. Eventually the government came to an arrangement with a few processing plants that now deal with the church members. In exchange, they’re given tax breaks. That eliminated the problem of a group of lunatics who jeopardized the whole false structure built around the legitimization of cannibalism. If a person with a first and last name can be eaten legally, and they’re not considered a product, what’s stopping anyone from eating anyone else? But the government didn’t stipulate what was to be done with the meat because it’s meat no one wants to consume, not if they know where it comes from and have to pay market value for it. A while back, Krieg made a call when it came to the Church of the Immolation. The sacrificed person’s meat would be given a special certificate for consumption by those most in need, with no further explanation. The members take this certificate and file it away along with the others they’ve been given over the years. The reality is that the meat really does go to those most in need, the Scavengers, who are already lurking close to the fence. Because they know a feast awaits them. It doesn’t matter if it’s old meat, for them it’s a delicacy because it’s fresh. But the problem with the Scavengers is that they’re marginalized and society regards them as being of no value. That’s why the immolated person can’t be told their body will be disemboweled, torn apart, chewed up, and devoured by outcasts, undesirables.
He gives the church members time to say goodbye to the person who’s about to be sacrificed, to Gastón Schafe, who appears to be in a state of ecstasy. He knows it won’t last long: when they reach the box sector, Gastón Schafe will probably vomit, or cry, or want to escape, or wet himself. Those who don’t are either heavily drugged or severely psychotic. He’s aware that the plant’s employees have placed bets. While he waits for the hugs to end, he wonders what Jasmine is doing. At first he had to leave her locked up in the barn so she wouldn’t hurt herself or destroy the house. He asked Krieg for the holiday he hadn’t taken and spent several weeks at home, teaching her how to live in a house, how to sit down at the table for dinner, how to hold a fork, how to clean herself, how to pick up a glass of water, how to open a fridge, how to use the toilet. He had to teach her not to feel fear. Fear that was learned, ingrained, accepted.
Gastón Schafe steps forward and raises his hands in front of him. He gives himself over with dramatic gestures, as though the whole ritual had some value. He recites, “As Jesus said: Take and eat of my body.”
Listening to Gastón Schafe’s triumphant voice, he’s the only one who sees the decadence to the whole scene.
The decadence and the insanity.
He waits for the rest of the group to leave. A security guard walks them to the exit. “Carlitos, see them out,” he tells the guard, with a gesture that Carlitos knows means, See them out and make sure they don’t return.
He asks Gastón Schafe to take a seat and offers him a glass of water. The head are required to undergo a complete fast before slaughter, but the rules don’t matter here. This meat is for the Scavengers, who don’t care about subtleties, or norms, or violations. His objective is for the man to be as calm as possible, given the circumstances. He goes to get the glass of water and speaks to Carlitos, who confirms that the church members have left. They all got into a white van and he saw them drive away.
Gastón Schafe takes the glass of water, unaware that it contains a tranquilizer, a weak one, but one that’s strong enough to ensure the man’s reaction will be as minimal and nonviolent as possible when they reach the boxes. He started using the tranquilizers fairly recently, after a situation arose with the young woman about to be sacrificed. The whole plant had been involved. It had happened on the day he’d learned that Jasmine was pregnant. That morning, he’d given her a home pregnancy test after noticing that in addition to not menstruating, she’d gained a bit of weight. At first he’d felt happiness, or something like it. Then it was fear he felt. Then confusion. What was he going to do? The baby couldn’t be his, not officially, not if he didn’t want them to take it away, put it in a breeding center, and send Jasmine and himself straight to the Municipal Slaughterhouse. He hadn’t planned on going in to work that day, but Mari had called and said it was urgent: “That church is here, the Immolation Church, they’re driving me crazy, they changed the date on me and now they’re here and telling me I’m the one who made a mistake. And Krieg’s not here and I’m not about to deal with them. Just imagine, Marcos, I want to shake them to their senses, they’re all crazy, I can’t even look at them.” He hung up and drove to the plant. But he couldn’t think of anything other than the baby, his child. The child that was really his. He would come up with something to ensure no one took it away. When he got to the plant, he was impatient with the church members. That Claudia Ramos, the woman about to be sacrificed, was young didn’t matter to him. He didn’t think to have someone see the church members to the exit, and took Claudia Ramos straight to the boxes. Nor did it matter to him that she was looking through the windows into the offal and slitting rooms and that with each step she was becoming increasingly pale and nervous. He didn’t take into account that Sergio was on break and that Ricardo, the less-experienced stunner, was working. Nor did he think twice when they entered the box sector’s lounge and Ricardo grabbed her arm as though she were an animal. Ricardo tried to remove her tunic so she’d be naked for stunning and was somewhat violent and disrespectful with her. Claudia Ramos broke free, frightened, and ran off. She ran desperately through the plant, from room to room, shouting, “I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die,” until she reached the unloading sector and saw a lot of head coming down from the trucks. She went straight for them, yelling, “No, don’t kill us, please, no, don’t kill us, don’t kill us.” He looked on as Sergio, who had seen her approaching at full speed, and knew she was from the Church of the Immolation because head don’t talk, grabbed his club (which he was never without) and stunned her with such precision that they were all amazed. He’d run after Claudia Ramos, but hadn’t been able to catch her. When he saw Sergio stun her, he breathed a sigh of relief. Then he called security on his walkie-talkie and asked if the church members had left. “Just now,” the guard answered. It was then that he ordered two workers to take the woman to the Scavenger sector. An unconscious Claudia Ramos was cut to pieces with machetes and knives, and devoured by the Scavengers lurking nearby, meters away from the electric fence. Krieg l
earned of what had happened but didn’t give the incident much thought; as the owner of the plant, he’d had it with the Church. But unlike Krieg, he understood that it couldn’t happen again, that if Sergio hadn’t stunned her, it could have been worse.
Gastón Schafe stumbles a little. The tranquilizer has taken effect. They pass the offal and slitting rooms, but the windows are covered. Then they’re at the boxes. Sergio is waiting for them at the door. Gastón Schafe is a little pale, but he’s keeping it together. Sergio takes off his tunic and shoes. Gastón Schafe is now naked. He trembles a little and looks around, confused. He’s about to speak, but Sergio grabs his arm carefully, and blindfolds him. Sergio guides Gastón Schafe into the box. The man moves desperately, says something that’s not clear. As he watches Sergio handle Gastón Schafe, he thinks they’ll have to increase the dose of the tranquilizer. Sergio adjusts the stainless steel shackle around the man’s neck and talks to him. He seems to calm down, or at least stop moving and talking. Sergio raises the club and hits him on the forehead. Gastón Schafe falls. Two workers pick him up and take him to the Scavenger sector.
The electric fence can’t silence the cries and the sound of the machetes slicing open his body, the Scavengers fighting for the best piece of Gastón Schafe.
3
He gets home tired. Before opening Jasmine’s room, he takes a shower, otherwise she won’t let him do so in peace. She’ll try to get under the water with him, kiss him, hug him. He understands she’s alone all day, that when he gets home she wants to follow him around the house.
He opens the door and Jasmine greets him with a hug. He forgets about Gastón Schafe, Mari, and the boxes.
There are mattresses on the floor. The room contains no furniture within reach; nothing that could hurt her. He set it up this way when he found out she was pregnant. He didn’t want to risk something happening to his child and took all the necessary precautions. Jasmine learned to relieve herself in a bucket that he cleans every day, and also to wait for him. She’s able to move freely within the four walls adapted so that nothing happens to her.
Tender Is the Flesh Page 10