Tender Is the Flesh

by Agustina Bazterrica

  It’s been a long time since he felt that this house was his home. It was a space in which to sleep and eat. A place of broken words and silences encapsulated between walls, of accumulated sadnesses that splintered the air, scraped away at it, split open the particles of oxygen. A house where madness was brewing, where it lurked, imminent.

  But ever since Jasmine arrived, the house has been full of her wild smell and her bright and silent laughter.

  He goes into the room that was once Leo’s. He’s taken down the wallpaper with boats on it and painted the room white. There’s also a new cot and furniture. Buying these things wasn’t an option, so he built them by hand. He didn’t want to arouse suspicion. After his day at the plant, he likes to get down on the floor and imagine what color he’s going to paint the cot. He wants to decide the moment the baby is born. When he looks his child in the eye, he imagines he’ll know what color to choose. For the first few months, the baby will sleep by his side, next to his bed, in a temporary cot.

  That way he can make sure this child doesn’t stop breathing.

  Jasmine always sits with him in the baby’s room. He prefers it this way, for her to follow him around. All the drawers in the house have locks on them. One day when he got home from the plant, Jasmine had taken out all the knives. She’d cut one of her hands. She was sitting on the floor, covered in the blood that was slowly dripping from her. He panicked. But it was only a superficial wound. He treated it, cleaned her up, and locked away the knives. And the forks and spoons. When he cleaned the floor, he discovered that she’d been trying to draw on the wood. That’s when he bought her the crayons and paper.

  He also bought cameras that connect to his phone so that while he’s at the plant he can see what Jasmine is doing in the room. She spends hours watching television, sleeping, drawing, staring at a fixed point. At times, it seems she’s thinking, like she really can.

  4

  “Have you ever eaten something that’s alive?”

  “I haven’t.”

  “There’s a vibration, a subtle and fragile heat, that makes a living being particularly delicious. You’re extracting life by the mouthful. It’s the pleasure of knowing that because of your intent, your actions, this being has ceased to exist. It’s the feeling of a complex and precious organism expiring little by little, and also becoming part of you. For always. I find this miracle fascinating. This possibility of an indissoluble union.”

  Urlet is drinking wine from a glass that looks like an antique chalice. It’s a transparent red, made of etched crystal, and has strange figures on it. The figures could be naked women dancing around a bonfire. Or not. They’re abstract. Perhaps men howling. Urlet picks the glass up by the stem and raises it very slowly, as though it were an object of extraordinary value. The cup is the same color as the band he wears around his ring finger.

  He looks at Urlet’s nails, he always does, and can’t help but feel disgust. The man’s nails are neat but long. There’s something hypnotic and primitive about them. There’s something of a wail, of an ancient presence to them. Something about Urlet’s nails creates a need to feel the touch of his fingers.

  It occurs to him that he only has to see the man a few times a year, and he’s glad.

  Urlet is sitting against the tall back of an armchair made of dark wood. Behind him hang half a dozen human heads. His hunting trophies. He always clarifies, to whomever will listen, that over the years these were the toughest head to hunt, those that posed “monstrous and invigorating challenges.” Next to the heads hang framed photographs. They’re antique photographs of black people being hunted in Africa before the Transition. The largest and sharpest image shows a white hunter down on his knees holding a rifle, and behind him, on stakes, the heads of four black men. The hunter is smiling.

  He finds it difficult to determine Urlet’s age. The man is one of those people who seem to have been part of the world since the beginning, but who have a certain vitality, and as a result appear young. Forty, fifty, Urlet could be seventy. Impossible to know.

  Urlet remains silent and looks at him.

  He thinks that Urlet collects words in addition to trophies. They’re worth as much to the man as a head hanging on the wall. His Spanish is near-perfect and he expresses himself in a precious manner. Urlet selects each word as though the wind would carry it away if he didn’t, as though his sentences could be vitrified in the air, and he could take hold of them and lock them away with a key in some piece of furniture, but not just any piece, an antique, an art nouveau piece with glass doors.

  Urlet left Romania after the Transition. The hunting of humans was prohibited there and he’d owned a game reserve for animals. He wanted to stay in the business and decided to move elsewhere.

  He never knows what to say to Urlet. The man looks at him as though in expectation of some revelatory sentence or lucid word, but he just wants to leave. He says the first thing that comes to mind nervously, because he can’t hold Urlet’s gaze, nor can he stop the feeling that inside this man there’s a presence, something clawing at his body, trying to get out.

  “Sure, it must be fascinating to eat something that’s alive.”

  Urlet makes a slight movement with his mouth. It’s a gesture of contempt. He sees this clearly and recognizes it as such because on every visit, at some point during their conversation, Urlet finds a way to make his displeasure known. Displeasure at this man who repeats his words or who has nothing new to add or whose responses don’t allow for further elaboration. But Urlet’s gestures are measured and he takes care to ensure they go almost unnoticed. He smiles right away and says, “Indeed, my dear cavaler.”

  Urlet never uses his name and always addresses him with formality. He calls him cavaler, Romanian for gentleman.

  It’s daytime, but in Urlet’s office, behind the imposing desk of black wood, behind the chair that looks like a throne, below the stuffed heads and photographs, are lit candles. As though the space were a great altar, as though the heads were holy objects from some private religion, Urlet’s religion, dedicated to the collection of humans, words, photographs, flavors, souls, meats, books, presences.

  The walls of the office are lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with old books. Most of the titles are in Romanian, and though he’s at a distance he can make out a few: Necronomicon, The Book of Saint Cyprian, Enchiridion of Pope Leo, The Grand Grimoire, Book of the Dead.

  They hear the laughter of the hunters returning from the game reserve.

  Urlet gives him the paperwork for the next order. He can’t help but shudder when one of the man’s fingernails grazes his hand. He pulls it away quickly, unable to hide his disgust, unwilling to look Urlet in the eye, because he’s afraid that the presence, the entity that lives under the man’s skin, will cease clawing at him and be set free. Is it the soul of a being Urlet ate alive, one that got trapped inside him? he wonders.

  He looks at the order and sees the red circle Urlet has drawn around “impregnated females.”

  “I don’t want any more females that haven’t been impregnated. They’re idiotic and submissive.”

  “That’s fine. Impregnated females cost three times as much. From four months on, the cost goes up further.”

  “Not a problem. I want a few with the fetus developed, so it can be eaten afterward.”

  “That’s fine. I see you’ve increased the number of males.”

  “The males you deliver are the best on the market. They’re increasingly agile and intelligent, as if that were possible.”

  An assistant knocks softly on the door. Urlet tells him to come in. The assistant goes up to Urlet and whispers something in his ear. Urlet gestures to the man, who leaves in silence, closing the door behind him.

  Still seated, uncomfortable, unsure what to do, he sees the assistant leave and the smile that forms on Urlet’s face. Urlet taps the table with his nails slowly. He doesn’t stop grinning.

  “My dear cavaler, fate has smiled down upon me. Some time ag
o, I implemented a program that allows celebrities who have fallen from grace by amassing large debts to settle their accounts here.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t follow.”

  Urlet takes another sip of wine. He waits a few seconds before answering.

  “They are required to remain on the game reserve for one week, three days, or a few hours, depending on the amount they owe, and if the hunters aren’t able to get them and they survive the adventure, I guarantee the cancellation of all their debt.”

  “So they’re willing to die because they owe money?”

  “There are people willing to do atrocious things for a lot less, cavaler. Like hunting someone who’s famous and eating them.”

  Urlet’s answer perplexes him. He never would have thought the man capable of judging someone for eating a person. “Does this pose a moral dilemma for you? Do you find it atrocious?” he asks.

  “Not at all. The human being is complex and I find the vile acts, contradictions, and sublimities characteristic of our condition astonishing. Our existence would be an exasperating shade of gray if we were all flawless.”

  “But then why do you consider it atrocious?”

  “Because it is. But that’s what’s incredible, that we accept our excesses, that we normalize them, that we embrace our primitive essence.”

  Urlet pauses to pour more wine and offers him some. He doesn’t accept, says he has to drive. Urlet resumes, speaking slowly. He touches the band around his ring finger, moves it. “After all, since the world began, we’ve been eating each other. If not symbolically, then we’ve been literally gorging on each other. The Transition has enabled us to be less hypocritical.”

  Urlet gets up slowly and says, “Follow me, cavaler. Let us take pleasure in the atrocity.”

  He thinks that the only thing he wants to do is go home and be with Jasmine and put his hand on her belly. But there’s something about Urlet that’s magnetic and repulsive. He gets up and follows him.

  They walk over to a large window that opens onto the game reserve. In the stone courtyard, half a dozen hunters are taking pictures with their trophies. Some of them are kneeling down on the ground, over the bodies of their prey. Two of the hunters have grabbed hold of their preys’ hair, and are displaying the raised heads. One has shot an impregnated female. He figures she’s about six months.

  In the center of the group, one hunter has his prey upright. The male is propped against the hunter’s body and an assistant is supporting him from behind. He’s the best catch, the one worth the most. The male’s clothes are dirty, but they’re clearly expensive, good quality. He recognizes the male as a musician, as a rock star who’s gone into debt. But he can’t remember his name, just knows he was very famous.

  The assistants go up to the hunters and ask for their rifles. The hunters drape their prey over their shoulders and go to a barn where each is weighed, labeled, and delivered to the chefs, who will cut them up and separate the pieces they’ll cook from those that will be vacuum-sealed for the hunters to take with them.

  The game reserve offers hunters a packaging service for their head.

  5

  Urlet sees him out, but at the entrance to the parlor they run into a hunter who arrived after the others. It’s Guerrero Iraola, a man he knows well. Guerrero Iraola used to provide the plant with head. His is one of the largest breeding centers, but over time he began sending Krieg sick and violent head, he’d be late with orders, and would inject the product with experimental drugs to tenderize the meat. He hasn’t ordered head from the breeding center since then because ultimately the meat was low-grade and he grew tired of the dismissive way things were handled, of never being able to speak to Guerrero Iraola directly, of having to go through three secretaries to talk to the man for less than five minutes.

  “Marcos Tejo! How are you doing, man? It’s been forever.”

  “I’m doing well, very well.”

  “Urlet, this gentleman is sitting down for a meal with us. No discussion,” Guerrero Iraola says, in a mix of Spanish and stilted English.

  “As you wish,” Urlet says, and nods slightly. Then he gestures to one of the assistants and says something in his ear.

  “Join us for lunch, the hunt was pretty spectacular,” Guerrero Iraola says, switching to English again. “We all want to try Ulises Vox.”

  Right, that’s the name of the rock star who had gone into debt, he thinks. The possibility of eating the man seems aberrant to him, and he says, “I have a long trip home.”

  “No discussion,” Guerrero Iraola repeats in English. “For old times’ sake, since I hope they’ll return.”

  He knows that being taken off the list of providers didn’t make much of a difference to the man, at least not economically. After all, the Guerrero Iraola Breeding Center provides half the country with head and exports a huge volume of product. But he also knows that the center took a hit in terms of prestige because the Krieg Processing Plant is the most reputable in the business. But there’s a rule that’s never broken: stay on good terms with the providers, even this one who exasperates him with the mix of Spanish and English he uses to show his roots, so that everyone knows he went to private bilingual schools, and that he comes from a long line of breeders, first of animals and now of humans. One never knows if they’ll have to do business with someone like him again.

  Urlet doesn’t give him a chance to answer and says, “Of course the cavaler will be delighted to join us. My assistants are adding a plate to the table.”

  “Great,” Guerrero Iraola says in English, then continues in Spanish. “And I imagine that you, sir, will be joining us as well?”

  “It will be an honor,” Urlet says.

  They step into the parlor, where the hunters are seated in high-backed leather armchairs, smoking cigars. They’ve already taken off their boots and vests, and the assistants have given them jackets and ties for lunch.

  An assistant rings a bell and they all get up and move to the dining room, where a table has been set with dinnerware from England, silver knives, crystal glasses. The napkins are embroidered with the game reserve’s initials. The chairs have seats of red velvet, and the candelabras have been lit.

  Before he enters the dining room, he’s asked to follow an assistant. The man hands him a jacket to try on and a matching tie. He thinks that all the preparations are ridiculous, but he has to respect Urlet’s rules.

  When he enters the dining room, the other hunters look at him with surprise, as though he were an intruder. But Guerrero Iraola introduces him. “This is Marcos Tejo, the right-hand man at the Krieg Processing Plant. This guy’s one of the most knowledgeable in the business,” Guerrero Iraola says, switching to English again. “He’s the most respected and most demanding.”

  He’d never introduce himself this way to anyone. If he had to honestly tell others who he was, he’d say: This is Marcos Tejo, a man whose son died and who moves through life with a hole in his chest. A man who’s married to a broken woman. This man slaughters humans because he needs to support his father, who’s lost his mind, is locked up in a nursing home, and doesn’t recognize him. He’s going to have a child with a female specimen, one of the most serious crimes a person can commit, but he doesn’t care in the slightest, and the child is going to be his.

  The hunters greet him and Guerrero Iraola tells him to take a seat by his side.

  He needs to be on his way home. The trip is going to take several hours. But he glances at his phone and sees that Jasmine is sleeping, and relaxes.

  The assistants serve fennel-and-anise soup followed by a starter of fingers in a sherry reduction with candied vegetables. But they don’t use the Spanish word for fingers. They say “fresh fingers,” in English, as if doing so could disguise the fact that what’s being served are the fingers of several humans who were breathing a few hours ago.

  Guerrero Iraola is talking about the Lulú cabaret. He’s using code words because it’s known that the place is a seedy club involve
d in human trafficking, with one minor difference: after paying for sex, a client can also pay to eat the woman he’s slept with. It’s extremely pricey but the option exists, even if it’s illegal. Everyone is involved: politicians, the police, judges. Each takes their cut because human trafficking has gone from being the third largest industry to the first. Only a few of the women are eaten, but from time to time it happens, that’s what Guerrero Iraola is telling them, emphasizing in English that he paid “billions, billions” for a stunning blonde who drove him wild, and afterward he of course “had to take things further.” The hunters laugh and clink their glasses, celebrating his decision.

  “So how was she?” one of the youngest hunters asks him.

  Guerrero Iraola can only raise his fingers to his mouth in a gesture indicating that she was tasty. No one can admit in public that they’ve eaten a person with a first and last name, except in the case of the musician who gave his consent. But Guerrero Iraola hints at it to show Krieg’s right-hand man he’s got the money to pay for it. That’s why Guerrero Iraola invited him to lunch, to rub his face in it. He hears one of the hunters, who’s sitting close by, whisper to another that the stunning blonde was in fact a young virgin of fourteen who needed to be tenderized and that Guerrero Iraola destroyed her in bed, raping her for hours. The man says he was there and that the child was half dead when they took her away to be slaughtered.

  It occurs to him that in this case, the flesh trade is literal, and he’s disgusted. While he thinks about this, he tries to eat the candied vegetables, avoiding the fingers that have been cut into small pieces.

  He’s sitting next to Urlet, and the man looks at him and says into his ear, “You have to respect what’s being served, cavaler. Every dish contains death. Think of it as a sacrifice that some have made for others.”