The story
Sandoval went around the streets, sitting in all the cafes he found on his way. In the afternoon he returned to the other Sandra’s house. She hadn’t arrived by nine, nor by ten, nor by eleven. He watched the news on TV. Nothing. No pollution, no crime. He grabbed an empty notebook that he found on the shelf and started to write. The first thing that came to mind was the idea of a transplant. The idea of a man’s head being transplanted onto the body of a woman. It wasn’t easy to describe:
The doctor came and very gravely told me that not only would I be completely dependent on others every moment, due to a mistake, but that my wife Lisa would not survive the accident.
“Her brain has ceased to function.”
I had been in a coma for two months. Meanwhile to me it seemed my new life would be impossible, not being able to use any of my limbs. My friends had stopped coming to see me. It was really hard for them. Without her it would be harder yet. Perhaps she and her love could help me but now at this moment the very idea of going on living seemed like a joke to me.
“You could just kill me and it’s over.”
“You still have a lot of life left in you.”
“Ï don’t think so. I don’t think this is life. I can see now that this is not life, or it’s very little life.”
“I don’t have an answer for that but I can tell you that most people in a case like yours create a life after becoming paralyzed. You have a daughter.”
“It’s better that she doesn’t find out and doesn’t know.”
The doctor thought for a while. It was clear he thought I was right. Not only right, but completely right, and more than that. It was evident that he would not want to live in my condition and he was not totally convinced of what he was saying.
“You don’t really believe that?”
“It is the way I see it. Every day I see people who want to live.”
“But not Ramón Sampedro.”
“That is one case. It is a famous right to die case. I can understand Sampedro. But what it is or isn’t, it’s an exceptional case.”
He kept thinking. In the abstract.
The room was green, all green. I was near the door with two other infirm people between my bed and the window. They could hear what we were saying through the beige curtain. The light was florescent, which gave everything a deathly look.
“But I wasn’t going to talk to you about this. Not this time. Maybe tomorrow. It’s about your wife. We are asking your permission to transplant her organs.”
“Oh, and just how am I going to sign that?”
It was the first thing that came to my mind, that my hands couldn’t sign or write anything. I still aspired to be a writer. It was always my dream. Long term. Well, not so much, I had already written some stories and poems. One story had been published ten years ago in a magazine, and two poems.
But right away I thought that I wouldn’t be able to do that. I couldn’t allow them to destroy Lisa’s body. Lisa my love. She was a ballerina. All her life was spent taking care of her body, raising it to a sublime level.
“That is not a problem. You can sign with your mouth.”
“The mouth is for speaking.”
And I suddenly remembered one of those ridiculous chats I used to have with her. I told her I had thought of a story after reading an article where a crazy doctor said that heads could be transplanted. A doctor who had done several experiments with monkeys, changing the head of one to another. Kureishi had already written a story about an old man who had a whole body transplanted onto him when his body completely ceased to function. They transplanted the body of a young man onto him.
“I can’t do that doctor. Lisa is a ballerina.”
“Yes that is true. Her body is intact. She is a sculpture. Her vertebral column is perfect. I never saw a vertebral column like hers except in textbooks.”
“I want to see her. Right now.”
The doctor called in seven nurses and I was taken on my rolling bed to the place where Lisa was. There were three on each side to lift half of my body and I saw her. I asked them to take off the sheet. There she was, nude. As slender as always. I wept. For the first time since the accident, I wept.
“I want to go back. Right now.”
I was transported to my room.
The doctor returned after a quarter of an hour.
“I know what I want now,” I told him.
“You’re going to sign.”
“Yes, but not what you think.”
I went quite a while without saying anything until he said:
“Well, so you’re going to sign.”
“A head transplant. My head.”
“I don’t understand,” said the doctor, and I could see that he truly did not understand.
“Yes, yes I understand you. I have a body that doesn’t work and she has a head. Transplant a head, or a body, however you call it,”
“But that is something that has never been done. It’s very dangerous. And we would have to see if your bodies are compatible to adapt to each other. There’s the blood type and many other things.”
“Well, let’s see how it’s done with all the patients that are going to receive transplants.”
“No, no man that’s not possible.”
“That’s what I will sign. Nothing else. I can’t sign for Lisa’s body to be dismembered. She is a ballerina”
He wrote for hours without stopping, until he heard the key in the door. Sandra entered and was talking with a man. “Yes, but what do you say about that? If you don’t even believe it.” Sandra and the man went directly to the bedroom without noticing that he was in the kitchen.
Sandoval began to hear moaning and decided to leave the house with the notebook without making noise. He sat down in the café which was open and continued to write:
An hour later at eleven pm all kinds of doctors began coming and going. Some spoke to me and others just looked at me. Until the director of the hospital arrived.
“I am the director of the hospital.”
“Fine.”
“And I am a neurologist.”
“Even better.”
“I have thought about your proposal. Well, we’ve all thought about it. We have got fifteen doctors together. And we’ve thought about it.”
“I have already decided.”
“What we think is that you would go insane.”
“And don’t you think that I’m going to go insane in a bed or in a wheelchair the rest of my life?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well I think so. But it would be a more normal insanity. More comfortable for you all. You know something? You’re not going to believe this but I once talked with my wife about this very same thing. We talked about the possibility of living with her body and my head. We talked about an accident. Of course at the time it was pure insanity. I told her I had an idea of writing a story about that topic. We used to say a lot of crazy things. Sometimes we would go to completely imaginary worlds.”
“You did? And what did she say?”
“Nothing. That is, she didn’t say anything. We both laughed at the idea. I think she would agree that her body should keep on living. I do believe that. She loves her body. She is a ballerina.””
“Yes, yes I know that. The truth is, technically it could be done. And you even have the same blood type and nearly the same size head. But you should know that nobody here has the least bit of experience with this type of transplant. Not even with animals. Nobody has done anything like that. We could ask a specialist to come over from the United States but I don’t know how much time we have, no more than a few days, three or four. And I have to tell you that nobody can give you the least idea of what would happen to your hormone levels. Your wife is 32 years old and her hormones could make your hypothalamus go crazy.”
“It’s worth trying.”
.”You have a daughter...”
“Yes, exactly. I have a daughter, and better that she have
a mother or a father and not a dead mother and a father like me.”
“But she could end up without either.”
“She has already ended up without either... It’s up to you if she ends up with one.”
In the early hours of dawn, with the first rays of the sun, all kinds of individuals began coming and going. For two days they didn’t stop: doctors, reporters, attorneys, priests, rabbis, judges, women, men, everything other than what I would be in a few days, a few hours.
“What WOULD I be in a few hours?”
That is what a reporter asked. He asked if I ever had homosexual relations. I told him that, yes, one time like all men of my generation.
“Only one time?”
You could see that he was disappointed. Better to live in the body of a woman than to continue like this, he thinks. He is afraid. You can see that he is afraid to talk to me. To touch his mind on something like what he is seeing, something he is writing about. I’m going to put you in the morning edition in two hours, on the first page. I need something to catch the readers’ attention. You might think it’s not much, a head transplant between a man and a woman. You don’t even need me. You don’t think it’s much. Yes, do it with your head. It’s not small potatoes. Not small potatoes. Nothing like this has ever been done. You’re a trailblazer. It looks like the doctors are on our side. But they are afraid of giving a resounding yes. They are in favor of attempting a transplant.”
“But are you sure this is what you want?”
“Well, of course not, I’ve never been sure of anything. But I am sure I will sign and that I do it without any remorse.
“But I say,” said the reporter, “come on, but to be a woman, menstruation, breasts, all at once.”
“Life,” I say. “Life, to be able to walk, to go get a glass, grasp a fork. Maybe we aren’t so different. Hundreds of sex changes are done every year. Why NOT be a woman? To be able to move....”
The parade continued with nurses, and at about seven there was a lady lawyer sitting on my bed. She was on my side. The hospital was on my side. But we need a judge to approve the transplant. A psychologist will arrive in a few minutes to confirm that you are in a condition to make such a decision. “Things began to bore me.
The relationship became routine. A little strange and complicated. She would let him sleep while she was at work. Sometimes they would make love and sometimes she would come home with a lover. Sometimes with the soldier, and she would go directly to the bedroom. That was the signal for him and he needed to leave and continue writing in the café.
After going round and round with the transplant, Sandoval left this narrative and began to tell about what his father had told him. They were marvelous stories that he had told him about a world which no longer existed, or did exist beyond the cemetery, of the war, of the valley and the zone from which he could not leave.
For eighteen months he would write down everything he had been told.
THE END
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