Tender is the Flesh(24)

They hear sounds from the street and the kids come in.





20




The kids are twins. A girl and a boy. They barely speak and when they do, it’s to each other in whispers, using secret codes and words with meanings that are only implied. He looks at them as though they were a strange animal made up of two separate parts activated by a single mind. His sister insists on calling them “the kids”, when everyone else refers to them as “the twins”. His sister and her idiotic rules.

The twins sit down at the dining-room table without saying hello.

“You didn’t say hi to Uncle Marquitos.”

He gets up from the kitchen table and walks slowly to the dining room. What he wants is for the formality to be over, to end this obligatory visit as soon as possible.

“Hi, Uncle Marquitos.”

They say this in unison, mechanically, imitating a robot. They hold in their laughter, which shows in their eyes. They stare at him without blinking, waiting for a reaction. But he sits down on a chair and pours himself some water, doesn’t pay them any attention.

His sister serves the meal without noticing anything. She takes away his glass of water and replaces it with lemonade. “You forgot this in the kitchen, Marquitos. I made it just for you.”

Though the twins aren’t identical, their sealed and unwavering bond gives them an ominous air. The unconscious gestures that are duplicated, the identical gaze, the pacts of silence, make others uncomfortable. He knows they have a secret language, one it’s unlikely even his sister can decipher. The words that only the two of them understand turn others into foreigners, strangers, make them illiterate. His sister’s children are also a cliché: the evil twins.

His sister serves him the meatless food. It’s cold. Flavourless.

“Is it good?”

“Yes.”

The twins eat the special kidneys prepared with lemon and herbs, the potatoes à la proven?ale and the peas. They savour the meat while they look at him with curiosity. He sees the boy, Estebancito, gesture to the girl, Maru. He always laughs at the thought of the catastrophic dilemma his sister would have found herself in if she’d had two girls or two boys. Naming children after their parents is stripping them of an identity, reminding them who they belong to.

The twins laugh, give each other signs, whisper. The hair on both of their heads is dirty, or oily.

“Kids, we’re having lunch with your uncle. Don’t be rude. Your father and I talked to you about this. At the table we don’t whisper, we talk like adults, understood?”

Estebancito looks at him with a sparkle in his eyes, a sparkle full of words like woods of splintered trees and silent tornadoes. But it’s Maru who speaks. “We’re trying to guess what Uncle Marquitos tastes like.”

His sister takes her knife and stabs it into the table. The sound is furious, swift. “Enough,” she says slowly, weighing the word, controlling it. The twins look at her with surprise. He’s never seen his sister react this way. He looks at her silently and chews a bit more of his cold rice, feeling sad about the whole scene.

“I’ve had it with this game. We don’t eat people. Or are the two of you savages?”

She shouts the question. Then she looks at the knife stuck in the table and runs to the toilet, as though awaking from a trance.

Maru, or Marisita, as his sister calls her, looks at the piece of special kidney she’s about to put in her mouth, and with a hint of a smile, winks at her brother. His niece’s words are like pieces of glass melting in extreme heat, like ravens pecking out eyes in slow motion.

“Mum’s crazy.”

She says this in the voice of a little girl, pouting and moving her index finger in circles near her temple.

Estebancito looks at her and laughs. He appears to find everything highly comical. He says, “The game’s called Exquisite Corpse. Want to play?”

His sister comes back. She looks at him, embarrassed, somewhat resigned. “I apologize,” she says. “It’s a game that’s popular now and they don’t understand they’re not allowed to play it.”

He drinks some water. She keeps talking and it’s like she figures he wants an explanation he hasn’t asked for.

“The problem is social media and those little virtual groups they’re part of, that’s where these things get started. You have no idea because you’re never online.”

She notices the knife is still stuck in the table and yanks it out quickly as if nothing had happened, as if she hadn’t overreacted.

He knows that if he gets up and leaves as though he’s been offended, he’ll have to go through the whole thing again soon, because his sister will ask him over as many times as are needed to apologize. Instead, he restricts himself to saying, “I think Estebancito must taste a bit rancid, like a pig that’s been fattened for too long, and Maru not unlike pink salmon, a bit on the strong side, but delicious.”

At first the twins look at him without understanding. They’ve never had pork or salmon. Then they smile, amused. His sister looks at him and doesn’t say anything. She’s only able to take another sip of water and eat. Her words get stuck inside her as though trapped in vacuum packed plastic bags.

“So tell me, Marquitos, does the plant sell heads to individual households, to someone like myself?”