Tender is the Flesh(44)
He agrees with everything she says, but he can’t bear her words, which are like tiny tadpoles dragging themselves along, leaving behind a sticky trail, slithering until they pile up, one on top of the other, and rot, vitiating the air with their rancid smell. He doesn’t answer because he also knows that she has few female employees working for her. And if one of them were to get pregnant, she’d look down on her, disregard her.
She shows him a cage and tells him that the specimen is a heroin addict. They’ve been supplying him with the drug for years to understand why addiction occurs. “When we nullify him, we’ll study his brain,” she says. Nullify, he thinks, another word that silences the horror.
Doctor Valka keeps talking, but again he’s no longer listening. He sees specimens without eyes, others hooked up to tubes, breathing in nicotine all day long, other specimens have apparatuses on their heads, stuck to their skulls, some look like they’re being starved, some have wires sticking out of every part of their body; he sees assistants performing vivisections, others pulling pieces of skin off the arms of specimens who haven’t been given anaesthesia, and heads in cages that he knows have electrified floors. He thinks that the processing plant is better than this place, at least there death comes quickly.
They walk past a room with a specimen on a table. The specimen’s chest has been cut open and his heart is beating. Several people stand around the table, studying him. Doctor Valka stops to look through the window. She says that it’s wonderful to be able to record organ function when the specimen is alive and conscious. They gave him a mild sedative, she says, so he wouldn’t faint from the pain. Excitedly she adds, “What a beautiful, beating heart! Isn’t it incredible?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“What was that?” she says.
“I didn’t say anything,” he tells her, but this time he looks her in the eye in a way that shows he’s had enough and is impatient.
She regards him silently, her eyes moving from top to bottom, as though she were scanning him. It’s a look intended to demonstrate her authority, but he ignores it. It’s as though she doesn’t know what to do with his indifference, and she takes him to a new room, one he’s never been in. There are females in cages with their babies. They go up to a cage where a female appears to be dead and a baby that’s two or three years old doesn’t stop crying. She explains that they’ve sedated the mother to study the infant’s reactions.
“What’s the point? Isn’t it obvious how the infant is going to react?” he asks her.
She doesn’t answer and keeps walking, striking her cane against the floor, marking each step, containing her rage. She doesn’t know how to react to his disinterest and he couldn’t care less that she’s growing impatient. The prospect of her complaining to Krieg doesn’t bother him either. Better if she complains, he thinks, that way I can be sure I won’t ever have to come back.
They walk past another room he can’t recall having seen. But they don’t go in. Through the windows, he sees animals in cages. He can make out dogs, rabbits, a few cats. “Are you trying to find a cure for the virus? I ask because you have animals in there. Isn’t that dangerous?” he says to Valka.
“Everything we do here is confidential. That’s why any visitor who sets foot in this laboratory signs a confidentiality agreement.”
“Of course.”
“I’m only interested in discussing experiments for which I require specimens you can obtain.”
Doctor Valka never calls him by his name because she can’t be bothered to memorize it. He suspects that the caged animals are a front. As long as someone is studying them and trying to find a cure, the virus is real.
“Isn’t it strange that no one’s found a cure? What with laboratories that are so advanced they’re able to carry out cutting-edge experiments…”
The doctor doesn’t look at him, or answer, but he feels that the little tadpoles in her throat are on the verge of bursting.
“I need strong specimens. Let me show you.”
She takes him to a room on another floor where the specimens, all males, are sitting on seats similar to those found in cars. They’ve been immobilized and each head is inside what looks like a square helmet made of metal bars. An assistant pushes a button and the helmet-like structure moves very fast, striking the specimen’s head against a board that senses and registers the quantity, velocity and impact of the strikes. Some of the specimens appear to be dead because they don’t react when the assistants try to wake them. Others look around disoriented, and have pained expressions on their faces. Valka says, “We simulate automobile accidents and collect data so that safer cars can be built. That’s why we need more male specimens, strong ones, so that they can withstand several trials.”
He knows that she expects him to say something about the wonderful work they’re doing, work that could save lives, but the only thing he feels is the stone pressing against his chest.
An assistant approaches them and hands the doctor something to sign.
“What is this? Why am I only being asked to sign this now? Why didn’t you give it to me earlier?”
“I did give it to you, Doctor, but you told me to come back later.”
“That’s not an acceptable answer. If I say later it means now, especially if it’s something this important. I’m paying you to think. Now leave.”