Tender is the Flesh(5)
Egmont wants to go into the cage, but stops himself. The stud moves, looks at him, and he takes a step back. El Gringo doesn’t realize how uncomfortable the German is and so he keeps talking, says that studs are purchased according to the feed conversion ratio and the quality of their musculature, but he’s proud not to have bought this one; he raised him, he clarifies for the second time. He explains how artificial insemination is fundamental in order to avoid disease and how it enables the production of more homogeneous lots for the processing plants, among many other benefits. El Gringo winks at the German and finishes off by saying, “It’s only worth the investment if you’re dealing with more than a hundred heads because we’re talking a lot of money for maintenance and specialized staff.”
The German speaks into the device and asks why they use the teaser stud since these are not pigs nor are they horses, they’re humans, and why does the stud mount the females, he wants to know, he shouldn’t be allowed to, he says, it’s hardly hygienic. A man’s voice translates. It sounds more natural than the woman’s voice.
El Gringo laughs a little uncomfortably. No one calls them humans, not here, not where it’s prohibited. “No, of course they’re not pigs, though genetically they’re quite similar. But they don’t carry the virus.” Then it’s silent; the voice on the machine cracks. El Gringo looks it over. He hits it a little and it starts. “This male is capable of detecting when a female is in silent heat and he leaves her in optimal condition for me. We realized that when the stud mounts a female, she’s more willing to be inseminated. But he’s had a vasectomy so he can’t impregnate her; we’ve got to have genetic control. In any case, he’s examined regularly. He’s clean and vaccinated.”
He sees the way the space fills with El Gringo’s words. They’re light words, they weigh nothing. They’re words he feels mix with others that are incomprehensible, the mechanical words spoken by an artificial voice, a voice that doesn’t know that all these words can conceal him, even suffocate him.
The German looks silently at the stud and there’s something like envy or admiration in his eyes. He laughs and says, “This guy doesn’t lead too bad a life.” The machine translates. El Gringo looks at Egmont with surprise and laughs to hide the mix of irritation and disgust he feels.
As he watches El Gringo respond to Egmont, he sees the way questions arise and get clogged in the man’s brain: How is Egmont capable of comparing himself to a head? How could he want to be one of them, an animal? After a long and uncomfortable silence, El Gringo answers, “It’s short-lived, when the stud’s of no more use, he’s sent to the processing plant like the rest.”
El Gringo keeps talking as though there were no other option. The owner of Tod Voldelig is nervous, beads of sweat slide down his forehead and are held up, just barely, in the pits of his face. Egmont asks if the heads talk. He’s surprised it’s so quiet. El Gringo tells him they’re isolated in incubators from when they’re little, and later on in cages. He says their vocal cords are removed so they’re easier to control. “No one wants them to talk because meat doesn’t talk,” he says. “They do communicate, but with simplified language. We know if they’re cold, hot, the basics.”
The stud scratches a testicle. On his forehead, an interlocking “T” and “V” have been branded with hot iron. He’s naked, like all the heads in all the breeding centres. His gaze is opaque, as though behind the impossibility of uttering words madness lurks.
“Next year, I’ll be showing him at the Rural Society,” El Gringo says in a triumphant voice, and he laughs and it sounds like a rat scratching at a wall. Egmont looks at him without understanding and El Gringo explains that the Rural Society gives prizes for the best heads from the purest races.
They walk past the cages. El Gringo steps away from Egmont and approaches him, just as he’s thinking there must be more than 200 in the barn. And it’s not the only barn. The man puts a hand on his shoulder. The hand is heavy. He feels the heat, the sweat, coming off this hand that’s starting to dampen his shirt. In a low voice, El Gringo says, “Tejo, listen, I’ll send the new lot over next week. Premium meat, export quality. I’ll throw in a few FGPs.”
He feels El Gringo’s wheezing breath next to his ear. “Last month you sent us a lot with two sick heads. The Food Standards Agency didn’t authorize packaging. We had to throw them to the Scavengers. Krieg told me to tell you that if it happens again, he’ll take his business elsewhere.”
El Gringo nods. “I’ll finish up with Egmont and we’ll discuss it,” he says, and leads them to his office.
There are no Japanese secretaries and no red tea. There’s barely any space in the room and the walls are made of fibreboard. This is what he’s thinking when El Gringo hands him a brochure and says, “Here, Tejo, read this,” before explaining to Egmont that he’s exporting blood from a special lot of impregnated females. He clarifies that the blood has special properties. The brochure’s large red letters say that the procedure reduces the number of unproductive hours of the merchandise.
He thinks: merchandise, another word that obscures the world.
El Gringo is still talking. He clarifies that the uses of blood from pregnant females are infinite. He says that in the past the blood business wasn’t exploited because it was illegal. And that he gets paid a fortune because when blood is drawn from a female, inevitably she ends up aborting after becoming anaemic. The machine translates. The words fall onto the table with a weight that’s disconcerting. El Gringo tells Egmont that this is a business worth investing in.