4
“Have you ever eaten something that’s alive?”
“I haven’t.”
“There’s a vibration, a subtle and fragile heat, that makes a living being particularly delicious. You’re extracting life by the mouthful. It’s the pleasure of knowing that because of your intent, your actions, this being has ceased to exist. It’s the feeling of a complex and precious organism expiring little by little, and also becoming part of you. For always. I find this miracle fascinating. This possibility of an indissoluble union.”
Urlet is drinking wine from a glass that looks like an antique chalice. It’s a transparent red, made of etched crystal, and has strange figures on it. The figures could be naked women dancing around a bonfire. Or not. They’re abstract. Perhaps men howling. Urlet picks the glass up by the stem and raises it very slowly, as though it were an object of extraordinary value. The cup is the same colour as the band he wears around his ring finger.
He looks at Urlet’s nails, he always does, and can’t help but feel disgust. The man’s nails are neat but long. There’s something hypnotic and primitive about them. There’s something of a wail, of an ancient presence to them. Something about Urlet’s nails creates a need to feel the touch of his fingers.
It occurs to him that he only has to see the man a few times a year and he’s glad.
Urlet is sitting against the tall back of an armchair made of dark wood. Behind him hang half a dozen human heads. His hunting trophies. He always clarifies, to whoever will listen, that over the years these were the toughest heads to hunt, those that posed “monstrous and invigorating challenges”. Next to the heads hang framed antique photographs. They’re classic photographs of black people being hunted in Africa before the Transition. The largest and sharpest image shows a white hunter down on his knees holding a rifle, and behind him, on stakes, the heads of four black men. The hunter is smiling.
He finds it difficult to determine Urlet’s age. The man is one of those people who seems to have been part of the world since the
beginning, but who have a certain vitality, and as a result appear young. Forty, fifty, Urlet could be seventy. Impossible to know.
Urlet remains silent and looks at him.
He thinks that Urlet collects words in addition to trophies.
They’re worth as much to the man as a head hanging on the wall. His Spanish is near perfect and he expresses himself in a precious manner.
Urlet selects each word as though the wind would carry it away if he didn’t, as though his sentences could be vitrified in the air, and he could take hold of them and lock them away with a key in some piece of furniture, but not just any piece, an antique, an art nouveau piece with glass doors.
Urlet left Romania after the Transition. The hunting of humans was prohibited there and he’d owned a game reserve for animals. He wanted to stay in the business and decided to move elsewhere.
He never knows what to say to Urlet. The man looks at him as though in expectation of some revelatory sentence or lucid word, but he just wants to leave. He says the first thing that comes to mind nervously, because he can’t hold Urlet’s gaze, nor can he stop the feeling that inside this man there’s a presence, something clawing at his body, trying to get out.
“Sure, it must be fascinating to eat something that’s alive.”
Urlet makes a slight movement with his mouth. It’s a gesture of contempt. He sees this clearly and recognizes it as such because on every visit, at some point during their conversation, Urlet finds a way to make his displeasure known. Displeasure at this man who repeats his words or who has nothing new to add or whose responses don’t allow for further elaboration. But Urlet’s gestures are measured and he takes care to ensure they go almost unnoticed. He smiles right away and says, “Indeed, my dear cavaler.”
Urlet never uses his name and always addresses him with formality. He calls him cavaler, Romanian for gentleman.
It’s daytime, but in Urlet’s office, behind the imposing desk of black wood, behind the chair that looks like a throne, below the stuffed heads and photographs, are lit candles. As though the space were a great altar, as though the heads were holy objects from some private religion, Urlet’s religion, dedicated to the collection of humans, words, photographs, flavours, souls, meats, books, presences.
The walls of the office are lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with old books. Most of the titles are in Romanian, and though he’s at a distance he can make out a few: Necronomicon, The Book of Saint Cyprian, Enchiridion of Pope Leo, The Grand Grimoire, Book of the Dead.
They hear the laughter of the hunters returning from the game reserve.
Urlet gives him the paperwork for the next order. He can’t help but shudder when one of the man’s fingernails grazes his hand. He pulls it away quickly, unable to hide his disgust, unwilling to look Urlet in the eye, because he’s afraid that the presence, the entity that lives under the man’s skin, will cease clawing at him and be set free. Is it the soul of a being Urlet ate alive, one that got trapped inside him, he wonders.
He looks at the order and sees the red circle Urlet has drawn around “impregnated females”.
“I don’t want any more females that haven’t been impregnated.
They’re idiotic and submissive.”
“That’s fine. Impregnated females cost three times as much. From four months on, the cost goes up further.”
“Not a problem. I want a few with the fetus developed, so it can be eaten afterwards.”
“That’s fine. I see you’ve increased the number of males.”
“The males you deliver are the best on the market. They’re increasingly agile and intelligent, as if that were possible.”
An assistant knocks softly on the door. Urlet tells him to come in.
The assistant goes up to Urlet and whispers something in his ear. Urlet gestures to the man, who leaves in silence, closing the door behind him.
Still seated, uncomfortable, unsure what to do, he sees the assistant leave and the smile that forms on Urlet’s face. Urlet taps the table with his nails slowly. He doesn’t stop grinning.
“My dear cavaler, fate has smiled down upon me. Some time ago, I implemented a programme that allows celebrities who have fallen from grace by amassing large debts to settle their accounts here.”
“What do you mean? I don’t follow.”
Urlet takes another sip of wine. He waits a few seconds before answering.
“They are required to remain on the game reserve for one week, three days or a few hours, depending on the amount they owe, and if the hunters aren’t able to get them, and they survive the adventure, I guarantee the cancellation of all of their debt.”
“So they’re willing to die because they owe money?”
“There are people willing to do atrocious things for a lot less, cavaler. Like hunting someone who’s famous and eating them.”
Urlet’s answer perplexes him. He never would have thought the man capable of judging someone for eating a person. “Does this pose a moral dilemma for you? Do you find it atrocious?” he asks.
“Not at all. The human being is complex and I find the vile acts, contradictions and sublimities characteristic of our condition astonishing. Our existence would be an exasperating shade of grey if we were all flawless.”
“But then why do you consider it atrocious?”
“Because it is. But that’s what’s incredible, that we accept our excesses, that we naturalize them, that we embrace our primitive essence.”
Urlet pauses to pour more wine and offers him some. He doesn’t accept, says he has to drive. Urlet resumes, speaking slowly. He touches the band around his ring finger, moves it. “After all, since the world began, we’ve been eating each other. If not symbolically, then we’ve been literally gorging on each other. The Transition has enabled us to be less hypocritical.”
Urlet gets up slowly and says, “Follow me, cavaler. Let us take pleasure in the atrocity.”
He thinks that the only thing he wants to do is go home and be with Jasmine and put his hand on her belly. But there’s something about Urlet that’s magnetic and repulsive. He gets up and follows him.
They walk over to a large window that opens onto the game reserve. In the stone courtyard, half a dozen hunters are taking pictures with their trophies. Some of them are kneeling down on the ground, over the bodies of their prey. Two of the hunters have grabbed hold of their preys’ hair, and are displaying the raised heads. One has shot an impregnated female. He figures she’s about six months.
In the centre of the group, one hunter has his prey upright. The male is propped against the hunter’s body and an assistant is supporting him from behind. He’s the best catch, the one worth the most. The male’s clothes are dirty, but they’re clearly expensive, good quality. He recognizes the male as a musician, as the rock star who’s gone into debt. But he can’t remember his name, just knows he was very famous.
The assistants go up to the hunters and ask for their rifles. The hunters drape their prey over their shoulders and go to a barn where each is weighed, labelled and delivered to the chefs, who will cut them up and separate the pieces they’ll cook from those that will be vacuum sealed for the hunters to take with them.
The game reserve offers hunters a packaging service for their heads.