Tender is the Flesh(18)
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 every so often he takes out 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 stretches it in the 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 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, oesophagus 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 colour, 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 that he actually spends most of his life supervising a group of people who, following his orders, slit the 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 heads 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 chainsaws 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 chainsaw 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 chainsaw 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 who 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 neighbourhood, 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 chainsaw 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 chainsaw. A few heads 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 heads could understand what he was saying. Someone was able to hit him 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 heads that escaped didn’t get very far and were put back in their cages.