Tender is the Flesh(2)
He gets out of the shower and barely dries himself off. In the mirror, he sees there are bags under his eyes. He believes in a theory that some people have tried to talk about. But those who have done so publicly have been silenced. The most eminent zoologist, whose articles claimed the virus was a lie, had an opportune accident. He thinks it was all staged to reduce overpopulation. For as long as he can recall, there’s been talk of the scarcity of resources. He remembers the riots in countries like China, where people killed each other as a result of overcrowding, though none of the media outlets reported the news from this angle. The person who said that the world was going to explode was his father: “The planet is going to burst at any minute. You’ll see, Son, it’s either going to be blown to bits or all of us are going to die from some plague. Look at what’s happening in China, they’ve already started killing themselves because there’s so many people, there’s no room for them all. And here, there’s still room here, but we’re running out of water, food, air. Everything’s going to hell.” He’d looked at his father almost with pity because he’d thought he was just an old man rambling on. But now he knows his father had been right.
The purge had resulted in other benefits: the population and poverty had been reduced, and there was meat. Prices were high, but the market was growing at an accelerated rate. There were massive protests, hunger strikes, complaints filed by human rights organizations, and at the same time, articles, research and news stories that had an impact on public opinion. Prestigious universities claimed that animal protein was necessary to live, doctors confirmed that plant protein didn’t contain all the essential amino acids, experts assured that gas emissions had been reduced, but malnutrition was on the rise, magazines published articles on the dark side of vegetables. The protest centres began to disperse and the media went on reporting cases of people they said had died of the animal virus.
The heat continues to suffocate him. He walks to the porch naked. The air is still. He lies down in the hammock and tries to sleep. A commercial plays again and again in his mind. A woman who’s beautiful but dressed conservatively is putting dinner on the table for her three children and husband. She looks at the camera and says: “I serve my family special food, it’s the same meat as always, but tastier.” The whole family smiles and eats their dinner. The government, his government, decided to resignify the product. They gave human meat the name “special meat”. Instead of just “meat”, now there’s “special tenderloin”, “special cutlets”, “special kidneys”.
He doesn’t call it special meat. He uses technical words to refer to what is a human but will never be a person, to what is always a product. To the number of heads to be processed, to the lot waiting in the unloading yard, to the slaughter line that must run in a constant and orderly manner, to the excrement that needs to be sold for manure, to the offal sector. No one can call them humans because that would mean giving them an identity. They call them product, or meat, or food. Except for him, he would prefer not to have to call them by any name.
2
The road to the tannery always seems long to him. It’s a dirt road that runs straight, past kilometres and kilometres of empty fields. Once there were cows, sheep, horses. Now there isn’t anything, not that can be seen with the naked eye.
His phone rings. He pulls over and answers the call. It’s his mother-in-law, and he tells her he can’t talk because he’s on the road. She speaks in a low voice, in a whisper. She tells him that Cecilia is doing better, but that she needs more time, she’s not ready to move back yet. He doesn’t say anything and she hangs up.
The tannery oppresses him. It’s the smell of waste water full of hair, earth, oil, blood, refuse, fat and chemicals. And it’s Se?or Urami.
The desolate landscape forces him to remember, to question, yet again, why he’s still in this line of work. He was only at the Cypress for a year after he’d finished secondary school. Then he decided to study veterinary science. His father had approved and been happy about it. But not long after, the animal virus became an epidemic. He moved back home because his father had lost his mind. The doctors diagnosed him with senile dementia, but he knows his father couldn’t handle the Transition. Many people suffered an acute depression and gave up on life, others dissociated themselves from reality, some simply committed suicide.
He sees the sign, “Hifu Tannery. 3 km”. Se?or Urami, the tannery’s Japanese owner, despises the world in general and loves skin in particular.
As he drives along the deserted road, he slowly shakes his head because he doesn’t want to remember. But he does. His father talking about the books that watched over him at night, his father accusing the neighbours of being hitmen, his father dancing with his dead wife, his father lost in the fields in his underwear, singing the national anthem to a tree, his father in a nursing home, the processing plant sold to pay off the debt and keep the house, his father’s absent gaze to this day, when he visits.
He enters the tannery and feels something strike him in the chest. It’s the smell of the chemicals that halt the process of skin decomposition. It’s a smell that chokes him. The employees work in complete silence. At first glance, it seems almost transcendental, a Zen-like silence, but it’s Se?or Urami, who’s observing them from up in his office. Not only does he watch the employees and monitor their work, he has cameras all over the tannery.