The Hormone Factory (11 page)

“Gee, Mr. Motke,” she exclaimed in surprise, “ain’t you got ants in your pants! I never seen you this horny!” She looked up at me, amused.

I stayed inside her a while longer, my tormented soul slowly calming down. Once my breathing had returned to normal, I began petting her solicitously, more lovingly than I had ever done before with the broad, and then I took her another time. Afterward I thanked her and, before she left, slipped an unnecessarily generous sum into her apron pocket. I was genuinely grateful to her for giving me the opportunity to recover my old, inescapable self, and decided I’d never attempt to deny my true nature again. Living up to my brother’s standards was impossible; it would have derailed my marriage, my business, and my life.

• • •

And so it began all over again. Of course I had to take care that my activities did not become common knowledge. I knew Aaron would never have the guts to give me away, but caution was in order. My position as head of the firm required a great deal of integrity, naturally; a bad reputation would be bad for the entire company as well as for my ever-growing network of important connections. I was regarded as the point man for the Dutch meat industry. Not a Nobel Prize winner, certainly, but nothing to sneeze at either, for a high school dropout. My stellar reputation led to an invitation to chair the Netherlands Pork Board, an organization founded after the crash to bolster the national meat industry. I was delighted, naturally, to accept the position. Four years later, however, after a government inquiry into alleged conflicts of interest, I sadly had to resign. It had actually been quite a nice little sideline, and it was too bad that a few unusually vigilant politicians had made that glitch come to light. But since I had stepped down without a murmur of protest, I was invited to join the Council of Government Commissioners in return for being such a good sport and, on top of that, was appointed commercial adviser to the Dutch government on agrarian affairs. Those prestigious posts eventually led to an invitation from the Royal Palace. In time I became a welcome guest there, and was honored with the title of royal merchant, purveyor to the queen. I was gaining more respect abroad as well, and became adept at making friends in all the high places in the global business and diplomatic worlds.

I made it quite clear to the girls that the reason for their visits to my office were to remain our little secret, and if even a whisper came out about the encounters on my “Cozy Corner” (the tasteful sofa Rivka had picked out for me), it would mean
instant dismissal for them as well as any other family member in our employ. The threat was enough to do the trick. The depression had not yet run its course, and not one of the bimbos was prepared to jeopardize her job or those of her relatives. Besides, the wenches usually felt complicit. After all, hadn’t they been warned, both by the priest and by their parents, not to provoke a man’s lust? And I’d remind them ever so subtly that I had read an unmistakable invitation in their eyes, even if it hadn’t been conscious on their part. Finally, it was still a common adage in this provincial backwater that it was easier to watch a passel of fleas than to keep a young maid in line. So any girl who was a victim of sexual abuse must herself be partially to blame.

• • •

I hadn’t realized how dangerous my little game was until, some months after my failed attempt at self-restraint, I heard Bertha, who was waiting outside my door to be invited in, tell Agnes: “Just gonna go in there an’ earn meself a new summer frock …”

She walked in still grinning at her own little joke, but her smile froze when she saw my icy stare. She tried to give me a hug, but I slapped her arm away. “You’ve broken your side of the bargain,” I snapped. “Not a word to anyone; that was the deal.”

I glared at her. The slap seemed to have made little impression.

“Gee, Mr. Motke,” she wheedled, contrite, wagging her nicely filled ass, “ain’t
we
in a bad mood. Now don’t get yer knickers all in a twist … It was just jesting, an’ Agnes ain’t blind to the hanky-panky goin’ on in here, surely? I never done talk about it to no one else, promise. I wouldn’t dare …”

I told her to get out and thought about firing her, but decided not to, because a girl like that might create a stink once she was no longer dependent on me for her paycheck. No point digging
myself into a ditch. I did have another talk with her later and made it clear that there would be no more rendezvous on my sofa. I warned her again that if she whispered so much as one syllable about what we’d been up to, I would sack both her and her father, a glassblower in our factory. All I could hope for was that she would soon get embroiled in other escapades, and the trysts on my sofa would fade into the background.

“Playing with fire means you’ll eventually get burned,” I mused that day, thinking of the risks I brought onto myself through my capers with the factory girls. But as I read the mail, as I went over the monthly figures—which were up in spite of the recession—I decided that, in fact, my work was likewise nothing but a dangerous game that I played all day long. It’s what you do if you’re a successful entrepreneur. You have to throw your weight around, toot your own horn, score points, walk the finest of lines, lick people’s boots, make a big splash, bluff, gamble, and brag; short of that, you won’t get anywhere in a world where everyone is out to crush the competition.

The race had acquired a new dimension now that Rafaël was on the verge of tracking down the male hormone. We’d been behind the eight ball on insulin and the rutting hormone, secretions that had initially been isolated by others, but now Rafaël and his team of expert scientists appeared to have a real crack at beating their German rivals and becoming the first to isolate the male hormone. I couldn’t have asked for a more satisfying payback for all the cash, sweat, and tears we’d put in over the years than to see this discovery being made in our name. That was why I let nothing get in the way of Rafaël’s work. Despite my profound irritation at his exacting demands, I provided him with everything he needed to pry that precious little hormone out of those bull pizzles.

Running a business venture is playing with fire. If you’re scared of getting burned, you’ll never make it big. In my business life I ran one risk after another, all the livelong day. So why, of all things, give up those private moments of relaxation and bliss with my cuties? No, I had tried, and I couldn’t. The price was still much too high.

19 …

One day in the summer of 1935, I received an urgent request to come to Rafaël’s lab. When I got there he showed me a robust, proudly crowing cock that was restlessly pacing the confines of its small cage, waving its glossy tail and shaking the splendid bright-red comb that crowned its head. The rooster’s comb is the testament of male performance, the showcase of male virility. Like a man’s business suit, the cockscomb shows the little woman that if she takes her chances with him, she won’t be sorry. She can tell from the flamboyance of the headgear that its wearer is a superlative choice, guaranteed to deliver the finest offspring. Here, in Rafaël’s cage, was an extraordinarily fine specimen, crowing at the top of its lungs.

“Good-looking bird,” I commented, looking at Rafaël quizzically. I live in the countryside, where roosters are a dime a dozen; I didn’t need to waste precious time traveling to a lab in Amsterdam to admire one.

“Good-looking bird?” Rafaël scoffed. “An exceptional bird, this is. The finest cock I’ve ever seen in my life. This bird is our prize achievement. And do you want to know why?”

It had to be something to do with the search for the male hormone. But exactly what, I couldn’t say. This was typical of
Rafaël, to rub my reliance on him in my face. Was he doing it on purpose, did he get a kick out of revealing my ignorance? Or was I just being oversensitive?

“This, my dear Motke,” Rafaël went on, taking no notice of my annoyance, “this superb specimen, that given the chance will go for its rival’s jugular, that makes every hen that comes near go weak in the knees, this animal was, not so long ago, a capon, parted from its balls right here in the lab. And, as you may know, a capon’s flag droops at half mast, the comb vanishes, the cock becomes a lame duck, stops crowing, and turns into an emasculated wimp.”

I looked at him, incredulous. Was this it? Had they actually managed to isolate the male hormone?

“We’ve done it, Motke.” The words were uttered with such force that Rafaël might well have swallowed a dose of testosterone himself. “We have worked out the composition of the stuff. Behold this brilliant creature, risen like the phoenix from its miserable capon ashes; here is the apotheosis of our first wholly independent scientific discovery. For two weeks we’ve been injecting it with the bovine testicle extract, and behold, the neutered bird is transformed into this splendid, aggressive, crowing cock, sporting the world’s most spectacular comb. The article has already been sent off for publication. The world will very shortly hear about it. We
won
!”

We fell into each other’s arms, Rafaël enfolding me in his imposing girth. I had never been so warmly embraced by another man. My father wasn’t one for physical contact; he found it disgusting. When we were little, Aaron sometimes tried snuggling close to me, especially when he was scared or had been chewed out by my father, but I would invariably push him away. I hated the idea that my father might see us, and that the sharp gibes normally reserved for Aaron would also be directed at me.

Now I felt Rafaël’s heart beating against my chest, and, strange to say, I was flooded with a profound sense of peace. All the usual stress seemed to fade away, taking with it the burden of the heavy responsibilities that normally weighed me down. The economic crisis that was still raging, capable of sinking the entire global economy, the shouts of the bully across the border threatening to bring our whole world to an end, our firm getting panned for charging market prices for our medical products, the Church’s mistrust of our latest discoveries, which the papists claimed were blasphemous evils—all of it seemed to melt away like snow in the sun. Just for a moment, as I leaned against Rafaël’s chest, he became the father I never had. A powerful man, a winner, but one who didn’t need to prove his manhood by keeping others at a distance. No, he was the father with an unstinting heart. With that hug, Rafaël, the incomparable colossus from Amsterdam, the Prussian soldier, the Jewish Maecenas, allowed me, Motke, to share in his triumph. In that remarkable moment I felt a sense of connection stronger than I have ever had with a woman. Never would I feel closer to anyone in my life. A moment of total bliss, born from our combined near-superhuman effort, the absurd pressure we’d been under, and our daring, groundbreaking alliance that was about to bring us worldwide fame.

We had done it! We were the first in the world to isolate the male hormone!

20 …

One evening not long after that memorable day, Rivka and I set out for Amsterdam to celebrate with Rafaël, his Dauphine, his colleagues, and a few other friends the testosterone discovery as well as the publication of the related article in a scientific journal. Aaron stayed home. He seemed to be growing more morose by the day. My brother’s lethargy sometimes worried me, but on this particular occasion I didn’t care. I did not insist when he told me he’d rather stay home in his cold, lonely house, with its ingrained smell of cigarette smoke and stale whiskey.

The mood in Rafaël’s crowded house was exuberant, the dinner abundant, the consumption of alcohol prodigious. A grand opportunity to let our hair down, at a time when, aside from this triumph, there wasn’t much to celebrate.

One guest after another made a heartfelt toast; there were many predictions of a trip to Stockholm, since everyone there believed the Nobel Prize was in the bag. Rafaël reported on the League of Nations conference in London, where his discovery had received attention from the Health Committee. Salomons, my father-in-law, raised his glass to the late Dr. Brown-Séquard, the eccentric and much-maligned scientist who, in 1889, at the
age of seventy-two, had injected himself with blood taken from guinea pig testicles, suspecting it contained a substance capable of reversing the aging process, whereupon he said he felt thirty years younger. After some weeks of treating himself with the guinea pig blood, the old codger, who literally had one foot in the grave, was apparently able to run up and down stairs like a youngster, to put in long days at work, and, to his inexpressible delight, to get his rocks off again. His shrunken pecker seemed to have regained its ability to get up and go. The fellow had been drunk with joy. Even though the scientific community wrote him off as a charlatan and the articles he published were derided, especially on account of the sex, he did get the popular press interested, resulting in a veritable stampede to his Paris institute by graybeards eager to be injected with the elixir purported to restore their youthful vitality.

“To Brown-Séquard,” said Salomons, rising from his chair, “who was not deterred by the narrow-mindedness of the Philistines, and paved the way to the male hormone’s discovery, even if he couldn’t explain how it worked!”

The male hormone is capable of many things. But in my present state, a second youth, a miraculous resurrection from my metal cage, is no longer in the cards. Older than all those eager French geezers hoping for a new lease on life, and also wiser in the wake of a whole century of scientific progress, I know that for me there’s no turning back the clock.

At Levine’s party the possibilities of the new discovery were extensively debated. Wild fantasies about cures for all kinds of unlikely diseases flew back and forth across the table. It was pure speculation, of course; so far the stuff had only been tested on the caponized cocks and castrated mice, all turned into potent fertility machines after they were given the miracle drug.

It didn’t take long for the conversation to turn to the eunuchs of the past—the poor sods who were mutilated in ancient Egypt, Greece, and many Islamic countries, in order to guard the sultans’ harems. Castration was considered an effective precaution against any fornication between sentries and concubines.