The Hormone Factory: A Novel

by Saskia Goldschmidt

  Watching from the sidelines, I began to be afraid, more afraid than I had ever been before in my life, even when I was the one playing with fire. My fear started stalking me like some cowardly assassin. A blanket of foreboding threatened to suffocate me; I just couldn’t seem to shake it off. And as old age began sneaking up on me, it ruined any remaining moments of triumph and joy. It was as if the cesspool of my forgotten misdeeds had gradually become clogged up, and Ezra’s philandering was the last straw that caused it to back up and overflow. Everything I had been so good at sweeping under the rug was coming up to the surface in the form of a crushing dread that one fine day, all my transgressions and failings would be made public. I was consumed with the thought that someone was going to out me and reveal how the royal merchant, recipient of an honorary doctorate from a highly respected university, proud bearer of the title of commander in the Order of Orange-Nassau, had wronged his female employees, his brother, and his mentor. A fear like some invasive weed overtook me that I or, even worse, my son would be found out, our life’s work snatched out of our hands by heartless assholes and greedy pigs with no idea what it means to sacrifice yourself and your loved ones for a higher purpose.

  Now that I have one foot in the grave, that fear has turned into harsh, bitter reality. Ah, the agony, that I am alive to see this! The papers here are running triumphant headlines like “PRIDE OF THE PEACOCKS MUST HAVE A FALL!” Our country’s yellow press is drooling over my son’s disgrace just as they did twenty-five years ago when my brother, my poor brother, got it in the neck. There on the front page is my Ezra, my son, lured into a trap by the vultures wanting to destroy him. That too is a replay of Aaron’s plight: Ezra isn’t just being punished for his own offense, his own peccadillo. What else can it mean but that Death has decided not to take me before making sure that I get it; that with this arrest, Ezra, my Achilles’ heel, is also being punished for his father’s sins?

  Meanwhile, the television keeps on spewing its venomous pictures. It’s showing the young woman, the martyred victim, behind a forest of microphones, being bombarded with questions.

  I can’t seem to make heads or tails of it; it’s all mumbo jumbo, and the subtitles are too small for me to read. The press mob is peppering her with rapid-fire questions, like circus knife-throwers hurling daggers at a target. The little tart is dolled up for the occasion in a demure little dress, but a high neckline and below-the-knee skirt can’t disguise what a slut she really is. I’m still perfectly capable of gauging what’s underneath, or in this case what’s behind that forest of microphones. I just know the lying bitch was hired by those American bastards, the ones who are set on having the public offering go through and therefore can’t wait to kick Ezra out on his ass.

  Just look at her flaunting her primly clothed chassis, as if that nylon schmatta she’s wearing conceals a bastion of puritan prudery, instead of a sexy bod with pointy, provocative tits no man can avoid staring at, with curves just begging to be stroked, pinched, or sucked, and a pussy hiding under that skirt demanding to be plugged. Those dark eyes with their come-hither look belie the sob story she’s reciting; no doubt she was thoroughly coached by those shyster lawyers. The inviting eyes, the nervous pout, the chewed lip, the tip of the tongue emerging every once in a while to lick the modestly painted mouth, the awkward and rather jerky gestures of the fingers, as if to underscore and confirm what she is saying—the way she’s standing there, she looks just like the tootsie I once picked up in that Greenwich Village bar twenty-odd years ago. Only this time she’s playing the role of a lifetime; it’s her one shot at preening in the spotlight, pretending to be an innocent, abused, downtrodden, and dishonored Madonna.

  Actually, she’s also very like—yes, come to think of it, she is remarkably like Rosie was, with her wavy black hair, the sinewy body, the jiggly fingers I so often saw performing their singular hand dance back in my office. Wait—how long ago was that?

  Could it be that my son, my blood, my youngest, has fallen into a trap that was set in order to punish his father?

  A trap set, for instance, by the three Furies, those harpies Rivka, Rosie, and fat Bertha, who continue to torment me as I lie on this jailhouse cot with their heart-wrenching screams, their eyes dripping blood, and their cries for revenge? Or else there’s Aaron—the image I have of him looking at me with such hatred and despair, the ghostly picture that’s forever scored into my brain; a stabbing, aching wound constantly reminding me how terribly much I miss my twin. And finally, Levine and his Dauphine, the old tart whispering Judas Iscariot! while the professor stares at me in outrage.

  No, no, no! There’s no such thing as coincidence! This viper isn’t just some random sexpot coming out of nowhere to be accidentally violated by my son; no, my Ezra was tricked into it, and just as he was about to stop our firm’s being stolen from us too! But it wasn’t only those greedy grab artists who set the snare; surely this is also a booby trap carefully planned and executed by three generations of bitter women. This is an act of vengeance, payback for the wham-bang-thank-you-ma’am that may have resulted in two little girl-bastards, and it’s come after decades of silence, a calm that had lulled me into a false sense of security. I thought that by now all the old wounds were healed, including those of my alleged victims.

  I want to shout at my boy, “They’re out to wring your neck! It’s not just those American vultures who’ve set this phony-innocent slut on you; her mother and grandmother must have something to do with it too. The sanctimonious bitches have used her as the sacrificial lamb to lure you to the stake; it’s their way of venting the bitter grudge they’ve been harboring for years. They’re exacting their vengeance by wounding me in my weakest spot. They’ve found the way to stab me in the heart—by crushing, squeezing, destroying my son, my Achilles’ heel. And in doing so they’re sending our company down the tubes to boot.”

  I must tell the young thing, so that she can warn my son. He must be allowed to establish his innocence by exposing the malicious intent of that little cunt. I’ve got to tell her, if it’s the last thing I do in this goddamn world.

  My roar makes the young thing nearly fall off her sentry chair next to my jailhouse bed. She leans over me making shushing sounds, talks to me in soothing tones, and turns off the television.

  Oh sweet tarnation, grant me just one last coherent sentence so that I can save my son from his imminent doom. But the attempt to twist my old geezer’s tongue into the right groove makes me gag. A coughing fit leaves me breathless, squeaking, rattling, gasping for air. “Not yet, not yet,” I scream, I have to get that sentence out, but the massive coughing fit is choking me. The young thing hovers over me, helpless. She pulls me up to a sitting position in an attempt to let me recover my breath.

  I can’t get any air; I grab at my throat and hear a weird squeaking sound coming out of my mouth. The young thing starts whacking me on the back as if to wallop the life back into me. I hear a rattling sound, and then my body slumps in her arms. She lowers me carefully back onto the mattress.

  Then she walks out of the room to wake up Mizie.

  afterword

  I grew up in a family buzzing with unspoken stories. My Jewish father survived the concentration camp Bergen Belsen; many members of his family never “returned.” The fate of the murdered relatives was a touchy subject, one we knew was best to avoid, as was my father’s concentration camp experience, which was never mentioned. Yet my father sprinkled almost every conversation with words, phrases, and expressions alluding to the horrors he had suffered. From a very young age we learned that words such as “family,” “brother,” “father,” “cousin,” “grandfather,” “pain,” “anger,” “hunger,” “turnip,” “sickness,” “weakness,” and “war” were a minefield to be avoided at all costs, although they were also very much a frame of reference. Everything we felt, experienced, or thought paled in comparison with the horrors of the camps and the ordeals to which my father and his family had been subjected. Growing up in that ki
nd of atmosphere leaves its mark on you.

  It took me more than fifty years to find the courage to research my family’s history and to probe what kind of influence that history and my father’s concentration camp stay had on me. That inquiry resulted in my first book, the nonfiction Obliged to Be Happy: A Portrait of a Family (Amsterdam: Cossee, 2011). My research took me to the NIOD (Netherlands Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies). There I came across the file of Professor Laqueur, a famous pharmacologist and clinician, one of the founders of the pharmaceutical company Organon and the man who discovered testosterone. More important, he also happened to be my father’s first father-in-law. In 1941 my father had married Renate Laqueur, the professor’s flamboyant daughter, who was responsible for saving my father’s life in the camps, scavenging for food and taking care of him when he grew too weak to walk or even lift an arm. Renate and my father divorced in 1950—“Marriage isn’t made to withstand hell,” was how Renate explained their breakup.

  My father always talked about his former father-in-law with deep respect; he admired Laqueur’s erudition, his refinement, and his intelligence. So I was intrigued to come across the following article in a German journal:

  In March a report appeared in the local paper regarding Organon in the town of Oss concerning the director, Mr. van Zwanenberg in particular, who has apparently been abusing the girls working in his factory for years. That fact has been known in Oss for quite a while, but nobody has heretofore dared to lodge a complaint, since almost everyone who lives in Oss either works for the firm or depends on it for his income.

  The article goes on for four pages, citing reports in the Nazi press and implicating other directors of the firm, alleging, at the very least, that they were aware of the abuse, or were guilty of it themselves. Professor Laqueur was also named. Although the tone of the article was clearly anti-Semitic, it nonetheless roused my interest and made me wonder to what extent these accusations had a basis in truth.

  Organon was founded at an exciting time. The great hormone search was in full swing; there was a race on to be the first to produce and market the new miracle drugs. The owners of the Van Zwanenberg slaughterhouse and meat factories were the first industrialists in the Netherlands to seek a close collaboration with the scientific community. They approached the famous pharmacologist Professor Laqueur, and the outcome was a company that was to grow into one of the country’s first multinationals.

  Organon was a vigorous participant in the rush to be the first to extract hormones. This was the time of the so-called hormone bubble; in labs all over the world scientists worked hard to isolate hormones and discover which bodily functions they influenced. Experimentation with medical compounds was not yet bound by government regulation, and the ethics of animal and human testing were left to the scientist and his own conscience. The tension between the interests of science and commerce was a crucial part of the equation.

  I was curious to find out more about the men who’d committed themselves so fanatically to this cause. They were without a doubt ambitious and passionate, wanting to take humankind to the next level through their inventions and willing to sacrifice anything to be the best, to smash boundaries, to not be forgotten. How did their interests coincide and where did they collide?

  I was granted permission to delve into the company archives of Organon, now part of the American company MSD but still headquartered in the town of Oss. After weeks of researching, reading, and speaking with the locals and the company’s archivist, I had the germ of my novel.

  To begin with, there was the matter of the brothers who were the directors of the slaughterhouse and meat factories. One of them, Saal van Zwanenberg, struck me as very ambitious. He was the one who looked for a scientist with whom he could start a hormone factory. He put his heart and soul into building that company, which became the first to produce hormone preparations on an industrial scale. At the time of the German occupation in 1940, he miraculously managed to flee the country, and to this day he is considered to be Organon’s founding father, the simple boy with only three years of secondary schooling who became a captain of industry and a knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau, and was awarded an honorary doctorate.

  The other brother appeared to be his opposite. It was he who was sentenced to two years in prison for the sexual abuse of several underage employees. I encountered the shocking court report, where his practices were recounted in detail, in the Brabant Historic Information Centre (BHIC). A year and a half after his release in 1940, he was killed in Auschwitz. The contrast between the two brothers, the exemplary one and the bad one, the successful one and the loser, couldn’t possibly be any greater. Their story was so black and white that I began to question it. History is often reduced to simple truths, and in my opinion, this was a far too simple depiction of the truth, inspiring me to conjure up another version and give it a new dimension. This invented story, less black and white, is one in which good and evil are not so easy to distinguish from each other.

  The once so inspiring collaboration between the businessman Van Zwanenberg and the scientist Laqueur had apparently degenerated over the years into a bitter fight. By the end, the two men wouldn’t give each other the time of the day. Too many cooks spoil the broth, and after the war Van Zwanenberg cut Laqueur out of the company. That raises the question: How does a man justify to himself betraying the person to whom he owes his success when it becomes convenient? Another question is: Why are successful men often so incredibly careless when it comes to sex? Why are they prepared to risk their entire careers for a brief sexual encounter? Powerful men often grant themselves extraordinary privileges and do not consider non-consensual sex as abuse or rape. They delude themselves into thinking that an ordinary girl should consider it an honor when a powerful man wants to sleep with her, whether willing or not.

  In brief, the relatively factual history of the triumphant rise of a Dutch company that became a worldwide success combined with the imagined personal histories of the men who made that possible are the ingredients of The Hormone Factory, a fictional tale inspired by the history of the founding of Organon. The novel explores the mind-set of the men who contributed to progress and science, how they trod the thin line between humility and power, between scientific research and personal satisfaction, between the possibilities of progress and the limitations of the human mind. The form I selected is that of the protagonist lying on his deathbed looking back on his life, because that is the time of reckoning, the time to ask yourself the question: Have I been a decent human being, a mensch?

  —Saskia Goldschmidt

  1887 Van Zwanenberg Slaughterhouse and Factories is founded in Oss (provincial town in the south of Holland) by the twin brothers Van Zwanenberg.

  1923 Saal van Zwanenberg establishes Organon to develop new medicine from meat waste.

  1925 Chemists Ernst Laqueur and Jacques van Oss join Zwanenberg at Organon.

  1930 Organon has a series of successful discoveries. They have international success applying hormones in medicine, leading to the birth of the contraceptive pill.

  1938 One of the brothers is sentenced to prison for sexual abuse of one of the employees and will not survive deportation to Auschwitz.

  1945 The other brother returns from England after World War II to continue his successes as businessman and benefactor.

  2012 Saskia Goldschmidt was inspired by the story of the twin brothers to write the novel The Hormone Factory.

  Saskia Goldschmidt was born in 1954 in the Netherlands and has been a drama teacher and children’s theater director for twenty-five years. The Hormone Factory is her first novel. She lives in Amsterdam.

  Hester Velmans is a novelist, editor, and translator of French and Dutch literary fiction. Her translation of Lulu Wang’s The Lily Theater was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and she was awarded the Vondel Prize for Translation for her rendition of Renate Dorrestein’s A Heart of Stone. She lives in Massachusetts.

 
 

  Saskia Goldschmidt, The Hormone Factory: A Novel