12
They leave the lounge. He tells them that they’re moving on to the slaughter sector. “Are we going in?” the shorter man asks.
He looks at the man severely. “No,” he says, “we’re not going in, because as I told you, our attire doesn’t meet regulations.”
The man looks at the floor and doesn’t answer, then impatiently puts his hands in his trouser pockets. He suspects this man is a fake applicant. Every so often people pretend to want the job so they can witness the killing. People who enjoy the process, for whom it’s a source of curiosity, an interesting anecdote to add to their lives. He thinks they’re people who don’t have the courage to accept and take on the weight of the work.
They walk through a hallway with a wide window that looks directly into the slitting room. The workers are dressed in white, inside the white room. But the apparent cleanliness is stained with the tonnes of blood that fall into the bleeding trough and splatter the walls, the coveralls, the floor, the hands.
The heads enter via an automatic rail. Three bodies are hanging face down. The first has had its throat slit, the other two wait their turn.
One of these is the female Sergio has just stunned. The worker presses a button and the body that’s been bled dry follows its course along the rail while the next body moves into place above the trough. With a swift movement, the worker slits the head’s throat. The body trembles slightly. The blood falls into the trough. It stains the worker’s apron, trousers and boots.
The shorter man asks what they do with the blood. He decides to ignore the man. The taller applicant answers for him, and says, “They use it to make fertilizer.” He looks at this man, who smiles and explains that his father worked briefly at a processing plant, one of the old ones, and that he taught him a thing or two. When he says “one of the old ones”, he lowers his head and his voice, as though he feels sadness or resignation.
“Cow blood was used to make fertilizer,” he tells the man. “This blood has other uses.” He doesn’t say what they are.
“Like to make some good blood sausage, am I right?” the shorter applicant says. He glares at the man and doesn’t answer.
He looks into the slitting room and sees the worker talking distractedly to another employee. It’s taking too long, he realizes. The female that Sergio stunned begins to move. The worker doesn’t see this. She shakes, slowly at first, and then more forcefully. The movement is so violent that she frees her feet from the loose straps that hold her up. She falls with a thud. She trembles on the floor and her white skin gets smeared with the blood of those whose throats were slit before her. The female raises an arm. She tries to stand up. The worker turns around and looks at her with indifference. He grabs a captive bolt pistol, puts it to her forehead and pulls the trigger. Then he hangs her back up.
The shorter applicant goes up to the window and watches the scene with a smirk on his face. The taller man covers his mouth.
While the applicants are standing there, he knocks on the glass.
The worker jumps. He hadn’t seen his boss in the window and knows the mistake could cost him his job. He motions to the worker to come out. The man asks for a replacement and leaves the slitting room.
He addresses the worker by name and tells him that what just happened can’t happen again. “This meat died in fear and it’s going to taste bad. You ruined Sergio’s work by taking too long.” The worker looks at the floor and tells him that it was a mistake, apologizes, says it won’t happen again. He tells the man that until further notice he’ll be moved to the offal room. The worker can’t hide the look of disgust on his face, but he nods.
The female that Sergio stunned is now being bled dry. There’s still one head whose throat needs to be slit.
He sees the taller man crouch down and put his head between his hands. The man remains there, and he goes over and pats him on the back, asks if he’s okay. The man doesn’t answer and only signals that he needs a minute. The other applicant continues to watch, fascinated, unaware of what’s happening behind him. The taller man stands up.
He’s gone white and beads of sweat have formed on his forehead. But he’s recovered and goes back to watching.
They see the way the female’s bloodless body moves along the rail until a worker undoes the straps around her feet and the body falls into a scalding tank where other corpses are floating in boiling water.
A different employee plunges the corpses below the surface with a
stick and moves them around. The taller applicant asks if their lungs fill with contaminated water when they’re pushed below the surface.
“Smart guy,” he thinks, and tells the man that yes, water does get in, but only a little, because they’re no longer breathing. He says that the plant’s next investment will be a spray-scalding system. “With these systems scalding occurs individually and vertically,” he explains.
The worker places one of the floating bodies inside the grill of the loading container, which lifts up and tosses it into the dehairing machine, where it begins to spin while a system of rollers equipped with scraper paddles removes the hair. This part of the process still gets to him. The bodies are spun at high speeds; it’s almost as if they were performing a strange and cryptic dance.