Tender is the Flesh(35)



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, 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 resignify 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 involved 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 afterwards, 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.”

Urlet’s nails graze his hand again and he shudders. He thinks he can hear the scratching under the man’s skin, the contained wail, the presence that wants to get out. He swallows the “fresh fingers” because he wants this to be over with, to leave as quickly as possible. Urlet’s false theories are not something he cares to argue about. He’s not going to tell the man that a sacrifice generally requires consent from the person being sacrificed, nor will he comment that everything contains death, not just this dish, and that he, Urlet, is also dying with every second that passes, like all of them.

To his surprise, the fingers are exquisite. He realizes how much he misses eating meat.

An assistant brings out a single plate and serves it to the hunter who killed the musician. Solemnly the assistant says, “The tongue of Ulises Vox marinated in fine herbs, served over kimchi and lemon-dressed potatoes.”

They all applaud and laugh. Someone says, “It’s a privilege to eat Ulises’s tongue. You’ll have to sing one of his songs afterwards so we can see if you sound like him.”

They all burst into laughter. Except for him. He doesn’t laugh.

The rest of the diners are served the heart, eyes, kidneys and buttocks. Ulises Vox’s penis is placed in front of Guerrero Iraola, who requested it.

“Looks like he had a big one,” Guerrero Iraola says.

“What, are you a fag now, eating a dick,” one of them says to him.

They all laugh.

“No, it makes me more potent sexually. It’s an aphrodisiac,” Guerrero Iraola answers seriously, and looks at the man who called him a fag with contempt.

They all go quiet. No one wants to contradict him because he’s a man with a lot of power. To change the subject and release the tension, someone asks, “What’s this we’re eating, this kimchi?”

There’s silence. No one knows what kimchi is, not even Guerrero Iraola, a man who’s had some education, who’s travelled the world, who speaks different languages. Urlet does a very good job of hiding his displeasure at dining with the uncultured, unrefined people that surround him. But he doesn’t hide it completely. There’s a hint of disdain in his voice when he answers. “Kimchi is a food prepared with vegetables that have been fermented for one month. It’s Korean in origin. The benefits are numerous, among them that it’s a probiotic. Nothing but the best for my guests.”

Agustina Bazterrica's Books