What kind of medications were they?
IB: Stimulants, monoamine inhibitors, antidepressants—the kind of drugs taken by patients who are bipolar, schizophrenic.
RRS: Those kinds of drugs already exist. You have stated that your job was to invent new medications.
IB: It’s true that medications that control the symptoms of these psychiatric conditions do already exist. In our line of research, we were looking to formulate compounds that cure these and other conditions and syndromes.
JAS: We understand that the victim worked in the lab although he had an office on the executive floor.
IB: The victim was a scientist of the highest caliber. He always spent the first part of his morning in the office: he took care of his administrative duties, putting the bureaucratic matters of the division in order. After lunch he’d put on his lab coat and work in the lab with us until six p.m.
RRS: You worked together? What I mean is, on the same projects?
IB: We helped each other, but everyone had a different project.
JAS: Him too?
IB: Yes. We never found out exactly what it was. It was a . . . secret project, so to speak. He accepted the help we offered only reluctantly. Once I managed to read his notes and glimpse his drawing of molecular models. Right away I knew that his research revolved around emotions.
JAS: How did you know?
IB: It was obvious.
RRS: Why?
IB: Because of his notes and the molecular models.
[laughter]
IB: The compound he was trying to stabilize was intended to adhere to the dendrites of the cerebral amygdala and restore the polarity of the axoplasm. The intercellular space is positive; the interior of the cell, negative. The greater the difference in electrical charge between the two, the greater the available voltage will be to create synapses. . . . I thought you didn’t appreciate scientific pretension, Detective.
RRS: And you’re not mistaken. Could you, in language so simple that even the most moronic of us could understand, tell us what the effect of this secret formula was?
IB: To electrify that part of the brain where the conscious self is manifest—like a defibrillator.
[laughter]
IB: You find it funny.
RRS: Forgive us, Doctor, it’s just that, in our experience, the people who have need of a medication like that tend to look for a simpler method to electrify their brains. A slippery bathtub and a toaster or a hairdryer does the trick.
IB: Detectives, if you’ve had enough biochemistry for one day, I’ll be going now. I have a lot to do and I still don’t see how this line of interrogation could help the prosecutor lock up a confessed murderer.
JAS: Please, Doctor, don’t go. Trust us. Everything serves a purpose. I promise that we’ll pick up the pace. Tell us, Doctor, what was your boss like, personally speaking?
IB: Reserved. Extremely introverted. A control freak, perhaps, and obsessive—but what scientist isn’t?
RRS: How did he treat his employees?
IB: With courtesy and respect. He was one of the politest, most well-mannered men I’ve ever known in my entire life.
4. HEART-SHAPED / CENTRIFUGAL FORCE
The situation deteriorated over time, in some respects. As the relationships among the three friends fell apart, each woman’s relationship with me grew stronger. And as each of their relationships with me grew stronger, the greater was my confusion about it. Mysteriously, our work environment became increasingly childish. If Mathilde and I worked longer than was strictly necessary on a given task, Patricia Julia and Isadore would become furious with Mathilde; out of revenge, they wouldn’t speak to her for the rest of the day, and they’d punish me by treating me with cool disdain. If, during lunch, Isadore and I sat down together to chat, the other two would join forces to chastise us with their collective indifference. The same would happen with Mathilde and Isadore if I dared to walk Patricia Julia to her car and if she lingered in order to talk with me a while in the parking lot. There was no way to maintain harmony. I was always doing something that upset our precarious balance, and I couldn’t remedy the problem because I couldn’t imagine what the problem might be.
Over time, and despite everything, we came to know one another quite well. Better said: I came to know them quite well. Terrified they’d discover my secret, I had no choice but to maintain my distance. So great was their zeal for asking me personal questions, for finding reasons to be near me, for initiating, through all possible means, conversations that had nothing to do with work, that many times I began to suspect that they were plotting my destruction.
The most insistent of the three was, without a doubt, Mathilde. About a month into our professional coexistence, she took up the habit of arriving earlier than the others, waiting in her car until I arrived, and only then getting out. She’d bid me good morning and immediately relieve me of my briefcase, or whatever else I was holding.
“Give it to me,” she’d say. “That’s what I’m here for.”
“That isn’t necessary, Álvarez,” I’d resist. “I can manage on my own.”
“Oh!” she’d fume. “You just love to annoy me. Call me Mathilde!”
“Okay,” I’d say, “Mathilde, I can manage on my own.”
“Perhaps,” she’d reply, feigning anger. “Now give it to me and stop arguing.”
Et cetera.
I remember the last time she was in my office.
“Helllloooo,” she said, poking her head in the door. Loyda, my secretary, never could restrain her.
“Miss,” I said with theatrical seriousness. We never got tired of this game.
“I’m sorry, sir,” interjected Loyda, too late. “I told her that. . . .”
“Thank you, Loyda,” I said. “It’s all right.”
“Yes, sir,” said Loyda, retreating, but not before directing an intense look of hatred at Mathilde. As soon as she’d closed the door, Mathilde stuck her tongue out at her.
“What is it?” I said, not getting up. Mathilde walked over and sat on the edge of my desk, to my right, as usual. She was wearing a sky blue mini-skirt. Once again I was visited by that terrible sensation of vertigo, as though a chloroform-soaked handkerchief had just been waved under my nose.
“Nothing,” she said, crossing her firm, pink legs. The feeling of succumbing to a powerful narcotic intensified; it’s possible that the lavender-scented lotion she used to moisturize her thighs was causing me to have an allergic reaction. “I left the centrifuge separating cells for a primary culture. It will be finished in half an hour.”
“Excellent,”
