5
Urlet sees him out, but at the entrance to the parlour they run into a hunter who arrived after the others. It’s Guerrero Iraola, a man he knows well. Guerrero Iraola used to provide the plant with heads. His is one of the largest breeding centres, but over time he began sending Krieg sick and violent heads, he’d be late with orders, and inject the product with experimental drugs to tenderize the meat. He hasn’t ordered heads from the breeding centre since then because ultimately, the meat was low grade and he grew tired of the dismissive way things were handled, of never being able to speak to Guerrero Iraola directly, of having to go through three secretaries to talk to the man for less than five minutes.
“Marcos Tejo! How are you doing, mate? It’s been forever.”
“I’m doing well, very well.”
“Urlet, this gentleman is sitting down for a meal with us. No discussion,” Guerrero Iraola says, in a mix of Spanish and stilted English.
“As you wish,” Urlet says and nods slightly. Then he gestures to one of the assistants and says something in his ear.
“Join us for lunch, the hunt was pretty spectacular,” Guerrero Iraola says, switching to English again. “We all want to try Ulises Vox.”
Right, that’s the name of the rock star who had gone into debt, he thinks. The possibility of eating the man seems aberrant to him, and he says, “I have a long trip home.”
“No discussion,” Guerrero Iraola repeats in English. “For old times’ sake, since I hope they’ll return.”
He knows that being taken off the list of providers didn’t make much of a difference to the man, at least not economically. After all, the Guerrero Iraola Breeding Centre provides half the country with heads and exports a huge volume of product. But he also knows that the centre took a hit in terms of prestige because the Krieg Processing Plant is the most reputable in the business. But there’s a rule that’s never broken: stay on good terms with the providers, even this one who exasperates him with the mix of Spanish and English he uses to show his roots, so that everyone knows he went to private bilingual
schools, and that he comes from a long line of breeders, first of animals and now of humans. One never knows if they’ll have to do business with someone like him again.
Urlet doesn’t give him a chance to answer and says, “Of course, the cavaler will be delighted to join us. My assistants are adding a plate to the table.”
“Great,” Guerrero Iraola says in English, then continues in Spanish. “And I imagine that you, sir, will be joining us as well?”
“It will be an honour,” Urlet says.
They step into the parlour where the hunters are seated in the high-backed leather armchairs, smoking cigars. They’ve already taken off their boots and vests, and the assistants have given them jackets and ties for lunch.
An assistant rings a bell and they all get up and move to the dining room where a table has been set with dinnerware from England, silver knives, crystal glasses. The napkins are embroidered with the game reserve’s initials. The chairs have high backs with seats of red velvet, and the candelabra have been lit.
Before he enters the dining room, he’s asked to follow an assistant. The man hands him a jacket to try on and a matching tie. He thinks that all the preparations are ridiculous, but he has to respect Urlet’s rules.
When he enters the dining room, the other hunters look at him with surprise, as though he were an intruder. But Guerrero Iraola introduces him. “This is Marcos Tejo, the right-hand man at the Krieg Processing Plant. This guy’s one of the most knowledgeable in the business,” Guerrero Iraola says, switching to English again. “He’s the most respected and most demanding.”
He’d never introduce himself this way to anyone. If he had to honestly tell others who he was, he’d say: “This is Marcos Tejo, a man whose son died and who moves through life with a hole in his chest. A man who’s married to a broken woman. This man slaughters humans because he needs to support his father, who’s lost his mind, is locked up in a nursing home and doesn’t recognize him. He’s going to have a child with a female, one of the most serious crimes a person can commit, but he doesn’t care in the slightest, and the child is going to be his.”
The hunters greet him and Guerrero Iraola tells him to take a seat by his side.
He needs to be on his way home. The trip is going to take several hours. But he glances at his phone and sees that Jasmine is sleeping, and relaxes.
The assistants serve fennel and anise soup followed by a starter of fingers in a sherry reduction with candied vegetables. But they don’t use the Spanish word for fingers. They say “fresh fingers”, in English, as if doing so could resignify the fact that what’s being served are the fingers of several humans who were breathing a few hours ago.
Guerrero Iraola is talking about the Lulú cabaret. He’s using code words because it’s known that the place is a seedy club involved in human trafficking, with one minor difference: after paying for sex, a client can also pay to eat the woman he’s slept with. It’s extremely pricey but the option exists, even if it’s illegal. Everyone is involved: politicians, the police, judges. Each takes their cut because human trafficking has gone from being the third largest industry to the first.
Only a few of the women are eaten, but from time to time it happens, that’s what Guerrero Iraola is telling them, emphasizing in English that he paid “billions, billions” for a stunning blonde who drove him wild and afterwards, he of course, “had to take things further”. The hunters laugh and clink their glasses, celebrating his decision.
“So how was she?” one of the youngest hunters asks him.
Guerrero Iraola can only raise his fingers to his mouth in a gesture indicating that she was tasty. No one can admit in public that they’ve eaten a person with a first and last name, except in the case of the musician who gave his consent. But Guerrero Iraola hints at it to show Krieg’s right-hand man he’s got the money to pay for it. That’s why Guerrero Iraola invited him to lunch, to rub his face in it. He hears one of the hunters, who’s sitting close by, whisper to another that the stunning blonde was in fact a young virgin of fourteen who needed to be tenderized and that Guerrero Iraola destroyed her in bed, raping her for hours. The man says he was there and that the child was half- dead when they took her away to be slaughtered.
It occurs to him that in this case, the flesh trade is literal, and he’s disgusted. While he thinks about this, he tries to eat the candied vegetables, avoiding the fingers that have been cut into small pieces.
He’s sitting next to Urlet, and the man looks at him, and says into his ear, “You have to respect what’s being served, cavaler. Every dish contains death. Think of it as a sacrifice that some have made for others.”
Urlet’s nails graze his hand again and he shudders. He thinks he can hear the scratching under the man’s skin, the contained wail, the presence that wants to get out. He swallows the “fresh fingers” because he wants this to be over with, to leave as quickly as possible.
Urlet’s false theories are not something he cares to argue about. He’s not going to tell the man that a sacrifice generally requires consent from the person being sacrificed, nor will he comment that everything contains death, not just this dish, and that he, Urlet, is also dying with every second that passes, like all of them.
To his surprise, the fingers are exquisite. He realizes how much he misses eating meat.
An assistant brings out a single plate and serves it to the hunter who killed the musician. Solemnly the assistant says, “The tongue of Ulises Vox marinated in fine herbs, served over kimchi and lemon- dressed potatoes.”
They all applaud and laugh. Someone says, “It’s a privilege to eat Ulises’s tongue. You’ll have to sing one of his songs afterwards so we can see if you sound like him.”
They all burst into laughter. Except for him. He doesn’t laugh.
The rest of the diners are served the heart, eyes, kidneys and buttocks. Ulises Vox’s penis is placed in front of Guerrero Iraola, who requested it.
“Looks like he had a big one,” Guerrero Iraola says.
“What, are you a fag now, eating a dick,” one of them says to
him.
They all laugh.
“No, it makes me more potent sexually. It’s an aphrodisiac,”
Guerrero Iraola answers seriously, and looks at the man who called him a fag with contempt.
They all go quiet. No one wants to contradict him because he’s a man with a lot of power. To change the subject and release the tension, someone asks, “What’s this we’re eating, this kimchi?”
There’s silence. No one knows what kimchi is, not even Guerrero Iraola, a man who’s had some education, who’s travelled the world, who speaks different languages. Urlet does a very good job of hiding his displeasure at dining with the uncultured, unrefined people that surround him. But he doesn’t hide it completely. There’s a hint of disdain in his voice when he answers. “Kimchi is a food prepared with vegetables that have been fermented for one month. It’s Korean in origin. The benefits are numerous, among them that it’s a probiotic.
Nothing but the best for my guests.”
“We’re getting probiotics from all the hard drugs Ulises injected,” one of them says and they all laugh loudly.
Urlet doesn’t respond, just regards them with a half-smile stuck on his face. He looks at Urlet and knows that the entity, whatever it is that’s in there, scratching at the man’s skin from the inside, wants to howl and slice through the air with a sharp, cutting wail.
Guerrero Iraola gives them a look that restores order, and asks a question: “How was Ulises Vox hunted?”
“I caught him off guard in what appeared to be a hiding spot. He had the bad luck of moving just as I walked by,” the hunter says.
“Right, with your bionic ear, no one gets away,” says the man who shot the pregnant female.
“Lisandrito is a master,” Guerrero Iraola says, the last word in English, “like all of the Núñez Guevaras. The family’s got the best hunters in the country.” He points his fork full of flesh to the hunter and says, “Next time Urlet has a celebrity for us, leave him for me, kid.” It’s a clear threat and Lisandrito lowers his eyes.
Guerrero Iraola raises his glass and they all toast Lisandrito and his lineage of first-class hunters.
“How many days did he have left?” someone asks Urlet.
“Today was his last day. He had five hours left.”
They all applaud and clink their glasses.
Except for him. He’s thinking of Jasmine.