Tender is the Flesh(29)

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 off the initials that certify the female is First Generation Pure. There are twenty of them, one for each of her years in the breeding centre.

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 colour. They’re perhaps grey, 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 towards 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 been 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





1




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 programme 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 3,000 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 San Francisco de Asís 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 learnt 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.