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Authors: Saskia Goldschmidt
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you remain true to Rivka, as you just promised, I’ll eat a kilo of raw pancreas. I’m giving you a year.”
Perhaps he was simply jealous of my captivating little wife, or of the fact that she was carrying my child. Although I never caught him showing the least bit of envy; he never appeared to have the hots for her, which worried me. I wondered if he might be a faggot, one of those nancy-boys, or even a pederast—a rather mortifying thought.
How had Aaron and I, with nearly identical genes, having shared the same womb for nine months, grown into such dissimilar people? It was as if our respective character traits had been concocted from two radically different formulae, so that on a cellular level there wasn’t a smidgen of genetic compatibility between us. In some primitive societies a multiple birth is regarded as an abomination, the work of evil spirits, or even proof of spousal infidelity. I can’t imagine my mother being guilty of the latter; I’ve never known a colder, less passionate woman. But in indigenous societies it’s not uncommon for the weaker of the twins to be killed. In that sense, I suppose the law of nature did win out in the end. I was incontestably the stronger one. Aaron’s number came up the year he turned forty-eight. My brother keeps popping up in my thoughts now that I’m shackled here to my prison bed; I no longer seem to have any control over it.
I never contributed to his happiness; I did contribute to his downfall. But in the end, you have to make your own way in life. And if you don’t, you run the risk of falling into the trap that someone else, or history, has laid for you.
• • •
Those were hectic times. My dream of conquering the world pharmaceutical market demanded an all-out effort and considerable manpower. Opening up export markets for the insulin, as well as any future products, was essential to Farmacom’s growth. Our sales territory had expanded exponentially when we acquired a German subsidiary; within a few years its sales were four times those of the parent company.
With our insulin on its way to conquering the world and the money pouring in, Levine was already on to the next big thing. Hormone research, he explained to me, depended on being able to come up with a reproducible test result. American scientists had discovered a method of determining when female mice came into heat. The mouse’s vagina gets swollen and moist when the female is ready to mate, as in all other mammals. In a neutered mouse, of course, this reaction will not occur. But the Americans had found out that just one milligram of the substance they had isolated, a certain secretion of the ovaries, was enough to make ten thousand neutered female mice hot to trot.
Levine and his team pounced on this discovery and, thanks to some fanatical researching, and with the help of thousands of live rats, mice, and rabbits, the placentas of innumerable cows, sows, and mares, and a handful of human placentas thrown in for good measure, they became the first in the world to standardize the invisible ovarian ingredient and make it ready for mass production.
Ah, the rutting hormone, that wonderful secretion that makes the female behave in ways men find so delightful! It is that elixir, hidden inside the female organs, that prompts her to open up, that makes her spread her legs, that makes her nipples swell, that makes her pussy wet, that breaks down her resistance. Asingle milligram is enough for ten thousand mice! Can you blame me, a full-blooded male, for having visions of paradise when I realized the possibilities of the stuff?
The raw material required for this estrus preparation turned out to be most readily available in the urine of pregnant mares. We collected thousands of liters of the stuff, a massive undertaking that had to be repeated every winter.
The farmers we approached were suspicious at first. Four and a half cents for a liter of horse piss? Jaspers, who managed our raw materials
Perhaps he was simply jealous of my captivating little wife, or of the fact that she was carrying my child. Although I never caught him showing the least bit of envy; he never appeared to have the hots for her, which worried me. I wondered if he might be a faggot, one of those nancy-boys, or even a pederast—a rather mortifying thought.
How had Aaron and I, with nearly identical genes, having shared the same womb for nine months, grown into such dissimilar people? It was as if our respective character traits had been concocted from two radically different formulae, so that on a cellular level there wasn’t a smidgen of genetic compatibility between us. In some primitive societies a multiple birth is regarded as an abomination, the work of evil spirits, or even proof of spousal infidelity. I can’t imagine my mother being guilty of the latter; I’ve never known a colder, less passionate woman. But in indigenous societies it’s not uncommon for the weaker of the twins to be killed. In that sense, I suppose the law of nature did win out in the end. I was incontestably the stronger one. Aaron’s number came up the year he turned forty-eight. My brother keeps popping up in my thoughts now that I’m shackled here to my prison bed; I no longer seem to have any control over it.
I never contributed to his happiness; I did contribute to his downfall. But in the end, you have to make your own way in life. And if you don’t, you run the risk of falling into the trap that someone else, or history, has laid for you.
• • •
Those were hectic times. My dream of conquering the world pharmaceutical market demanded an all-out effort and considerable manpower. Opening up export markets for the insulin, as well as any future products, was essential to Farmacom’s growth. Our sales territory had expanded exponentially when we acquired a German subsidiary; within a few years its sales were four times those of the parent company.
With our insulin on its way to conquering the world and the money pouring in, Levine was already on to the next big thing. Hormone research, he explained to me, depended on being able to come up with a reproducible test result. American scientists had discovered a method of determining when female mice came into heat. The mouse’s vagina gets swollen and moist when the female is ready to mate, as in all other mammals. In a neutered mouse, of course, this reaction will not occur. But the Americans had found out that just one milligram of the substance they had isolated, a certain secretion of the ovaries, was enough to make ten thousand neutered female mice hot to trot.
Levine and his team pounced on this discovery and, thanks to some fanatical researching, and with the help of thousands of live rats, mice, and rabbits, the placentas of innumerable cows, sows, and mares, and a handful of human placentas thrown in for good measure, they became the first in the world to standardize the invisible ovarian ingredient and make it ready for mass production.
Ah, the rutting hormone, that wonderful secretion that makes the female behave in ways men find so delightful! It is that elixir, hidden inside the female organs, that prompts her to open up, that makes her spread her legs, that makes her nipples swell, that makes her pussy wet, that breaks down her resistance. Asingle milligram is enough for ten thousand mice! Can you blame me, a full-blooded male, for having visions of paradise when I realized the possibilities of the stuff?
The raw material required for this estrus preparation turned out to be most readily available in the urine of pregnant mares. We collected thousands of liters of the stuff, a massive undertaking that had to be repeated every winter.
The farmers we approached were suspicious at first. Four and a half cents for a liter of horse piss? Jaspers, who managed our raw materials
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