eleven, whether he’d finished the article or not. If he hadn’t, he’d make a tiny dot in the margin with a pencil, always with a pencil, never with a pen. He abhorred physical exercise, practiced no sports, took no vacations, and had an aversion to the
Except for opera.
Horst Bittler adored the opera, especially Wagner, espe-cially Tannhauser, which he always referred to by its full title:
He’d never married, not because he was a misogynist, or because he had no interest in the other sex, but simply be-cause he was uncomfortable when anyone, man or woman, sought intimacy with him. In his younger days, when his hormones were still raging, he’d made occasional use of the prostitutes on the Rua Aurora, or in the neighborhood of the Jockey Club, but with the appearance of AIDS and advancing age, he’d taken to satisfying himself with mastur-bation. That, too, had a time allotted to it: before breakfast on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Like regular bowel movements, Bittler considered masturbation important to his health.
When he harvested an organ, he began the procedure promptly at midnight, always with his beloved Wagner play-ing over the loudspeaker system he’d installed in both of his operating rooms.
His lunch was served promptly at one and his dinner promptly at eight. He had seven luncheon menus and seven dinner menus, one for each day of the week, and they never varied.
All of his employees were well aware of his regular sched-ule, and if they suffered a lapse of memory about where he was or what he was doing at any given moment, they could find that schedule clearly posted in his outer office. His sec-retary, Gretchen, screened all of his calls. One of her princi-pal duties was to assure he was never interrupted.
After Clovis Oliveira left, Horst Bittler made a note in his agenda, registering the date and time of their next meet-ing. Then he called Gretchen and told her to summon Roberto Ribeiro. For the plan taking place in his mind, he was going to need a pilot, a very special kind of pilot, and Ribeiro was just the man to find him.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Clovis Oliveira sat back in his chair, his features contorted in disbelief.
“You can’t be serious,” he said.
“Oh, but I am,” Doctor Bittler said, “I’m absolutely serious.
It’s. .” Clovis fumbled for a word. Preposterous? Out-rageous? Immoral? What Bittler was proposing was all of those things.
“. . something you should have thought of as soon as you were informed that your son was going to need a new heart,” Bittler said. “And you needn’t look so shocked. There’s nothing new about it. It’s been going on for more than five hundred years, ever since white men first set foot in this country.”
Clovis’s head started to throb.
“Just because people have been preying on Indians for five hundred years doesn’t make it right.”
“I wasn’t initiating a discussion on ethics, I was citing a precedent. More coffee?”
Clovis shook his head.
Bittler served himself from the pot, selected a single cube of sugar with a pair of silver tongs, and dropped it into his cup.
“Right or wrong isn’t the issue here,” Bittler said. “Practicality is. I’ve offered you an option to save Raul’s life.” He took a long sip of his coffee and stared at Clovis over the rim of his cup. “The choice is yours. It’s that simple.”
“It’s
Bittler’s eyes narrowed in exasperation.
“To compare Indians with you and me,” he said, “is ludi-crous. You and I, Dr. Oliveira, contribute to society. I’m a doctor of medicine. I do transplants. I save lives. You’re a doctor of anthropology. You teach, you write, you add to the world’s general knowledge. Indians, on the other hand, are useless. Of our species, yes, but otherwise creatures living lives unworthy of being lived. What do Indians do for any-one? People like you and me, indeed!”
The throbbing in Clovis’s head turned to a steady ache.
“You’re talking about murder,” he said.
Bittler waved his hand in a dismissive gesture.
“Do you call slaughtering lambs for their meat murder? Cattle for their hides? Nonsense! Inferior creatures have been put on this earth to serve superior ones.”
“Indians aren’t inferior creatures.”
Bittler snorted.
“Of course they are. They live, today, much as the superi-or races lived six thousand years ago. In all that time, they’ve made no progress in anything of note. Not in science, not in technology, not in medicine, not in philosophy, or art or lit-erature or music.”
“They have other values, other knowledge. If I were to put you down into the heart of the Amazon without any of your modern devices, you wouldn’t last a week.”
“I’m not talking about survival. I’m talking about the higher things in life.”
Clovis ran a hand through his hair, as if he could wipe away the confusion inside his head. The hand came away wet with perspiration. Bittler sensed his desperation, pressed his point.
“Reflect upon this,” the surgeon said. “Indians have no birth certificates, no death certificates. As far as the bureau-cracy of this country is concerned, they’re nonentities. Who would know, when they’re gone, if they ever existed at all? We’ll cremate their bodies, leave no remains. You have nothing to fear from the authorities. The risk of discovery is so small it’s virtually nonexistent.”
Clovis put his fingertips on his temples, pressed hard. Bittler didn’t give him time to think, kept pouring on the arguments.
“And then there’s your wife to consider. If your son were to die, and your actions could have prevented it, what do you think it would do to your relationship? Could you look her in the face again? Would she ever forgive you?”
Clovis closed his eyes.
“There must be another solution,” he said. “Perhaps if an Indian child died of natural causes. .”
“You’re deluding yourself. There are certain requirements that have to be met. Allow me to enumerate them.” Bittler waited a beat and then continued. “First, the heart has to be the right size, which means it has to be removed from another infant. Second, it must conform to Raul’s blood and tissue type. Last, it has to be freshly removed from a living donor.”
“Donor, you call him a donor?”
“It’s the terminology we use, Dr. Oliveira. And it doesn’t matter if the child is a him, or a her, as long as the other con-ditions have been met. Now, when I say ‘freshly removed,’ I mean it ideally should have been pumping away merrily no more than three hours prior to popping it into refrigeration. And it mustn’t be allowed to remain there long. It would be best if we could initiate the implantation no longer than two hours later.”
Clovis tried to interrupt.
“I-”
Bittler held up a hand to silence him. “After having cho- sen an infant of suitable size, we’ll have to run some tests. It isn’t just any heart that will do. A negative result would mean we’d have to move on.”
“To another baby? You’d kill a second baby?”
“There’d be no need to euthanize anyone other than the donor. The tests can be run while the children are still alive. The medical records you’ve supplied indicate that your son is what we call a universal recipient, so it shouldn’t be diffi-cult to match him up, but a choice of hearts is essential if we’re to be guaranteed of success. Initially, I suggest that we procure two infants.”
“Two?”
