Tender is the Flesh(34)
“Because it is. But that’s what’s incredible, that we accept our excesses, that we naturalize 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 centre 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 the 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, labelled 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 heads.
5
Urlet sees him out, but at the entrance to the parlour 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 heads. His is one of the largest breeding centres, but over time he began sending Krieg sick and violent heads, he’d be late with orders, and inject the product with experimental drugs to tenderize the meat. He hasn’t ordered heads from the breeding centre 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, mate? 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 Centre provides half the country with heads and exports a huge volume of product. But he also knows that the centre 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 honour,” Urlet says.
They step into the parlour where the hunters are seated in the 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 high backs with seats of red velvet, and the candelabra 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.”