The Hormone Factory (3 page)

That was Aaron to a T. Never so much as opened his mouth, sat through every meeting like a slab of beef on a meat hook; but he was always prepared to come up with a laundry list of objections afterward, pointing out where I’d slipped up. The annoying thing was that he was often right. I was used to his silent, watchful presence, and I have to admit that in some ways I relied on it. He was my disapproving conscience, always reminding me of my weaknesses.

It was true, I had promised Levine the moon, intoxicated as this mere sausage maker had been by the grand possibilities the
fellow had rattled off. Naturally, I wouldn’t give my brother the satisfaction of being right.

“Fools are always the first to judge,” I said, fixing him with a withering stare. “Trust me, I know what I’m doing. We are at the start of something radically new; you’ve got to have the courage of your convictions, you have to go big, and put all your cards on the table. Collaborating with Levine is going to make us huge, I feel it in my bones, we’re on the cusp of doing something truly groundbreaking, and you’re whining about the chump change that’s needed to make it come true?”

Aaron shrugged his shoulders, heaved himself off the armrest, and shuffled to the door. With his hand on the doorknob, he turned and said, “You’re quite right, you have dug up an excellent candidate, and it’s more than likely he’ll make good on his promises. You’re the one with the business instinct around here. I’d nevertheless like to give you a piece of advice, something I’m not often in the habit of doing: please make sure the De Paauw factories retain their autonomy, that we don’t wind up shackled hand and foot to some professor who, aside from what’s good for the company, has his own reputation and his future in academe to think about.” Then he shut the door behind him.

• • •

My brother was right, of course. Rafaël—who proposed that we call each other by our first names, lulling me into thinking the negotiation was going to be a piece of cake (as I’ve already told you, I was just starting out in my career, and still somewhat wet behind the ears)—turned out to be a master negotiator, not at all inclined to be flexible. He knew he had stoked my greed with his vow to make my dream come true. I found myself unable to heed Aaron’s warning. Never again in my life have I groveled the way
I did when drawing up that contract. Rafaël Levine and I became partners in the newly formed Farmacom. The De Paauw Slaughterhouse and Meatpacking factories were to supply Levine with everything he needed to turn his shabby University of Amsterdam lab into a world-class institute. Funds would be put at his disposal to hire scientific personnel and to furnish his laboratory with the most up-to-date equipment, to put him in a position to win the global race to be first. He was given free rein on how he chose to run the institute and his research program. Moreover, at our own site a new installation annexed to the De Paauw Slaughterhouse and Meatpacking Co. would be built as an additional research and manufacturing facility for the new hormones. In return, Levine would advise us on the best extraction and production methods, and would market his inventions only with our explicit permission. It seemed only fair to make him a shareholder and member of the new company’s board of directors. Altogether a win-win situation, as they call it these days. I was reasonably satisfied with the way things had gone so far. But just as I was starting to lean back in my chair, thinking we had come to the end of our negotiation, Levine leaned forward in his.

“Just a few minor points,” he said, taking a big pull on his Cuban cigar. “I assume you are aware that the generally accepted standard of scientific inquiry is that it should always steer clear of anything that isn’t strictly pure, impartial research. The fact that I am prepared to stake my name and reputation on Farmacom and your meatpacking business is due to my sincere desire to make the new cures commercially available. That is why I have agreed to enter into a partnership for which I am bound to be heavily criticized. I am taking a big risk here. In return, I want you to give me the final say over the staff we take on at
Farmacom, as well as over any new hires at De Paauw involved with pharmaceutical production. Furthermore,” he went on, “I insist on having a veto over any new drug that as a scientist I am unable in good conscience to endorse. And finally, I propose that we plow ten percent of Farmacom’s net profits back into some scientific inquiry of my choosing.” He gazed at me amiably. I could just see Aaron’s triumphant grin, and opened my mouth to object, to protect the family firm’s autonomy.

“As far as I’m concerned, my dear Motke,” Levine went on before I could get a word in, “this is not up for negotiation. My honor and good name are of supreme importance to me. They mean more to me than my wife and five children put together. I have worked all my life to preserve them, and I shall never give anyone else the power to ruin them. So either you agree to my proposal, or we end this here and now and go our separate ways.”

I gulped. Over the past few days I’d already been envisioning a factory floor humming with insulin production and an office buzzing with orders coming in from all over the world. Then I remembered Aaron’s face just before he’d shut my office door behind him. Yes, I was taking a big risk in agreeing to these terms, but wanting to win means grabbing the bull by the horns. Isn’t there always some risk associated with progress; don’t you have to be prepared to play for high stakes if you want to succeed?

Rafaël sat back in his chair, puffed out a ring of smoke, and gazed at it thoughtfully as if it held the future. There wasn’t a trace of anxiety on his face. I was offering him an entire research institute, a potential goldmine, but he looked as if he’d be just as happy to walk out the door—and, indeed, straight into the arms of another meatpacker. Would Bartelsma or Van der Vlis make him the same kind of offer? I couldn’t imagine those dimwits
having the imagination, the vision to take this on. Which was exactly why I had to act right away.

I could deal with Aaron’s scorn.

• • •

A few days later—it was the summer of 1923—Rafaël Levine and I, in the presence of Aaron and a number of attorneys, signed the contract detailing the most stringent partnership I have ever entered into, a partnership that was to bring us spectacular success. And one which, thanks to the vagaries of history, I was able to wriggle out of some twenty years later.

Horace said it best:
“Make money, my son, honestly if you can, but make money!”
That is what I have done, without worrying too much about getting my hands dirty if necessary. It may not be altogether a fluke that I did not find the courage to terminate this groundbreaking partnership until Aaron’s silent, reproachful presence had been snuffed out in a cloud of Zyklon B.

6 …

Pain, paralysis, and the cussed helplessness that goes with it all. That’s the worst. I, the guy who couldn’t be pinned down, am finally forced to lie helpless, age ninety-seven, in Mizie’s clutches. Her moment of revenge has come at last. She’s had to wait a long time, but every loathsome, slow-moving second that I’m confined here on my stinking cot, not the conjugal four-poster but an adjustable hospital bed with metal rails, is balm to her wounded soul. Here I lie, imprisoned in a body that no longer works, in a bed that looks a lot like the cages that once housed our lab animals. She subjects me to my many daily treatments with barely concealed glee. My once pearly-white teeth are now yellowed and stained; every night I have to surrender the dentures stopping up the gaps in my formerly seductive smile. She holds out her hand with that haughty, condescending little smile of hers, which betrays both triumph and a glint of martyrdom as a widow-in-waiting. It must be a pleasure for her to see me lying here like this, with my fallen cheeks, my old man’s chops. I can read her sense of victory in the twinkle in her eyes; her pretense at sadness doesn’t fool me. I’m finally no longer in any condition to be unfaithful to her, at least not physically. Ah, these revolting diapers, they’ve turned me into an overgrown baby. That’s
why I am now obliged to allow the cute young thing, whom in my younger days I’d have hoist on my own petard, if you know what I mean, to soap my flaccid genitals with a pink washcloth under the watchful eye of my lawful wife. Next, once Mizie has turned me on my side, she’ll get to work lathering my buttocks, and then towel off the whole shebang before slapping a clean giant diaper on my ass again. It is utter humiliation; it can’t get any worse than this.

I’ve tried in my own way to live my life as a mensch, and I now realize that I’ve completely failed.

I console myself with the thought that even Mizie, still in the prime of her life, with her saintly airs that make me want to vomit, with her façade of decency and virtue, is driven by self-interest, by the need to dominate and gloat.

Oh death, where is thy sting, so that I won’t have to go on seeing snatches of my deplorable life flash before my eyes—they come looming up out of nowhere, only to disappear again into this fog of gloom.

I do have the odd moment of solace when I recall something I can be proud of. The satisfaction of having lived at a time when there were still new things to be discovered, and my good fortune to have been in a position to facilitate those discoveries. I find myself returning to the days when the technology was evolving by leaps and bounds, and I was buoyed with the knowledge that my entrepreneurial spirit was making a difference, and leading to cures for fatal diseases. Those consoling memories make me smile and, just for an instant, resign me to my fate.

But far more often it’s memories of the women that come and disturb my peace of mind—always the women. They were both my greatest joy and my life’s most terrible curse. It was that blasted libido of mine that kept me endlessly chasing skirts. I
was addicted to the thrill of the chase, which would sometimes propel both my conquest and me to the brink of disaster.

Now that my decrepit body’s testosterone motor has finally sputtered its last, they loom up before me, always in my weakest moments, the Furies of my past. They take on, as ever, the face and form of Rivka, Rosie, and Bertha, the three great mothers of vengeance. They pound on the inside of my skull, screeching, giving me a tongue-lashing for the many times it seems I made the wrong choice.

I stretch out my arms toward Death, who’s just sitting there smirking on the metal rail of my bed, and am forced to watch him turn around and slowly back away, calling to me from a distance, “Not now, not yet, your time has not yet come.” I hear his cold laugh, and there is no place for me to hide.

7 …

Women are the Achilles’ heel of anyone calling himself a man. We all get taken in by them, somehow, sometime. We may
think
it’s our brain that drives our body, like the diesel engine that drove the truck collecting the urine of pregnant mares, but in fact we are constantly at the mercy of our pecker, our dick, our cock. That self-willed organ dominated my mind and controlled the way I behaved—it got the better of my reason and simply took over. How I hated having those urges control my life! And yet how I loved it too! That’s why it is with a mixture of relief and profound grief that I now behold my member in its current state, a soft, droopy, flabby, unresponsive little appendage dangling under a quivering hunk of belly fat like a decomposing bit of offal, emitting a steady drip of smelly dribble all day long, because, see now, I’m not the only one to have lost control; the beast has too.

I have never lacked for attention. Women are attracted to men who play it big; there’s nothing more seductive than a man upon whom fortune has smiled. Women used to swarm around me, attracted like bees to honey. No wonder my name is De Paauw, the peacock! Such a proud creature, that likes to show off to the little woman in all its resplendent, glimmering
glory! My own plumage comes down to a set of regular features: a powerful nose, a bold chin, a fine head of black hair, expressive dark eyes, and a well-proportioned body. And just as the peacock’s splendid tail hides a trembling little
tuches
that can barely contain itself, so the beast, lurking deep within my bespoke suit, lifts its head, waiting for the moment when I’ll set it free. I’m a hunter, I can’t help it. Once I have caught my prey and devoured it from front to back and from top to bottom, it’s time to go out again and stalk a fresh quarry; that’s just the way it is.

If it had been up to me I would never have gotten married—why restrict yourself to a single dish when there’s a whole world of delicacies to be sampled? Monogamy doesn’t really exist; monogamy is the most unnatural idea ever to have made it into law. As far as the man goes, anyway. After all, the male is programmed to catch and pursue, it’s our instinct, we’re driven to do it. It isn’t selfishness, it’s a fundamental necessity—the species must live on. And it’s the woman’s job to nurture. Why else would she carry the child to term, endure excruciating pains pushing it out, and then nurse it? And if she were just allowed to scamper off instead of staying home breast-feeding the little nipper, the world would be teeming with neglected brats in no time, wouldn’t it? There are of course some species, the emperor penguin for instance, where it’s the male who takes on the responsibility of caring for the egg and hatchling. But the pathetic flap of flab dangling down over papa penguin’s feet like an old crone’s potbelly says it all. No wonder it’s an endangered species on the way out. An evolutionary cock-up, and therefore doomed to extinction.

A man does have responsibilities, of course. I’m not the type to saddle a woman with a kid and then say it’s
her
problem. You’ve got to take responsibility; if you get in a jam, you’ve got
to pay up. Preferably for an abortion, although not every girl will agree to have one. Twice in my life I got into a fix where money wouldn’t make an unwanted pregnancy go away. Sixty years ago, at the time when we were discovering one magnificent hormone after another, I got Rosie in the family way. There were circumstances that prevented me from helping her properly. And then of course there was Rivka, whom I met at a party at Rafaël’s in the summer of 1923, when we had just forged our partnership.