(Last page)
The class began to dissect the frogs. The instructor performed each
step of the dissection while clarifying what it was that he was doing.
When he made the first cut down the frog's midsection, he referred
to previous exercises; whenever he shifted from scalpel to scissors
or vice versa, he justified his choice; he reiterated the importance
of referring to the diagrams on the board; he necessitated caution
in exposing the frog's heart from behind the other organs. As he discussed
the circulatory system he revealed the insides of the frog, snipping
away at the trunk muscles until only the flesh up the jaw and the
limbs remained intact. All the while the frog's eyes were open, but
if it felt anything, which it was not supposed to, it did not express
it in any way. So the young instructor's gloved hands moved on with
precision, never losing purpose.
Finally, Gilbert set down his tools and surveyed the room. Most of
the students had finished dissecting as well and were now merely studying
the frogs' elements in detail. As Gilbert stepped from his desk to
check on how his students were doing, a shadow moved across the doorway
of the laboratory. Mang Ed's face popped through the door.
"The frogs turned out good, Manong, they did?"
"Yes, they did."
Gilbert checked on each of the splayed frogs and quizzed the students
who had dissected them. They could answer most of his questions, and
he seemed pleased. He became rather amiable in the way he told them
how to preserve the frogs for grading. By the time he reached the
third table he was congratulating the students, so the class relaxed,
cleaning up their workplaces with satisfaction. The laboratory began
to reverberate with the students' collective noise and the teacher
did not mind it at all. He was even smiling when he got to the workplace
at the end of the last table. But the students there, Ms. Torres and
Ms. Salvador, did not look the least bit happy.
Ms. Torres stood quietly some feet away from the table. She had removed
her gloves and her hands now covered her mouth. When Gilbert asked
her what the matter was, her pretty face contorted with emotion. "Oh,
Sir Gil!" she exclaimed. "It's the frog!"
Claire Salvador sat at the workplace, apparently engrossed in studying
the dissected animal. She was bent over the dissecting pan and she
blocked the frog from anyone's view. Gilbert observed the calmness
with which Claire sat brooding over the dissecting pan: there seemed
to be nothing wrong at all.
Ms. Torres, however, was attracting attention. Most of her classmates
who had already begun to leave the room came back to crowd around
her. Gilbert frowned.
"What in the world is the matter with you, Ms. Torres?"
"Oh, sir! I was sure we had pithed him right! He said we had pithed
him right!" she cried, flinging out a hand to point to the tall gangly
boy with glasses. Briefly a delicate fragrance filled the air about
her.
"What, me?" came the astonished reply. "I said 'we have to pith him
right'! Then you took off all excited and I thought you were going
to finish the job by yourself!"
Gilbert walked briskly to where Claire sat. He almost slipped, because
the workplace was near the sink and there were drops of water everywhere
on the floor, but at the moment he did not scold anyone. He peered
around Claire but she would not move aside, so he had to look over
her shoulder. Ms. Torres continued to talk, all in a flurry.
"I should have realized it before we made the first cut! But he didn't
move a single muscle when I pinned him to the pan, so I thought the
pithing had worked… we had second thoughts when he started blinking,
but I thought it was just the water or something—"
Gilbert groaned. The frog lay on the pan, legs and forelimbs splayed
by several pins. It was a small frog compared to the others. It lay
there with its underside neatly sliced open, its organs in perfect
shape and color, all blood vessels whole and in place, the little
heart thumping soundly. Everything was as it should be-except for
the way the forelimbs and the remnants of its chest muscles heaved
every few seconds.
"Oh, when we made the first cut—really, the instant we pricked
his skin with the scalpel—oh, I should have known then because
his arms twitched a little… but I thought it was nothing at all—!"
All the organs were intact, truly in perfect condition: the spleen
was a splendid midnight-blue, the liver was shiny and black, the fat
bodies glistened yellow, the lungs expanded and contracted like pink
balloons made of fine mesh, and the heart—the heart was vibrant,
positively vibrant. It pumped blood vigorously, rhythmically, and
the blood vessels looked like they would throb with the sheer intensity
of life flowing through them.
The students had squeezed next to Gilbert and Claire as well, and
all seemed enraptured with the vitality of the frog—until its
upper body struggled to rise again. A long, terrible upheaval.
"Oh, there, there! His organs might fall out of his body—how
absolutely horrible! He had only twitched when we cut him but as we
cut him up more he… oh, with every snip, with every slice, he heaved
like that, so bad that we had to hold him down to the pan with more
pins—"
"Be quiet," ordered Gilbert. "He's a strong fellow," he murmured
to Claire. "But I think it's time you puncture his lungs."
Claire said nothing. Her eyes were fixed on the pinned frog, and
in her right hand she held a probe, in her left, a scalpel. With the
scalpel she traced rather awkwardly a dark, prominent vein that ran
from the frog's heart to its kidneys.
"If you puncture his lungs he'll go better than, say, if you cut
an artery, or pop the heart," Gilbert continued. "Less pain for the
fellow."
When she still did not pierce the frog's lungs, Gilbert straightened
up and dismissed the other students, telling them that they were done
for the day. The students moved away from Claire's workplace and picked
up their things but they lingered near the door. Ms. Torres joined
them, still hysterical, and her classmates gathered around to comfort
her.
"It's sort of unfair, sir."
Gilbert took a seat beside Claire. "What is?"
"Less pain."
Her slight frame was tense, and the expression on her face was grave
and thoughtful. Gilbert watched as the mutilated frog heaved again;
he watched her left hand trace the vein up… down… up… the blade bypassed
the lungs and touched the pulsating heart. He watched her wrist.
"I guess that must have hurt," he blurted out. The cuff on her left
sleeve had shifted, revealing part of the scar that he had earlier
seen.
She straightened up a little and glanced over to where her classmates
were gathered around Ms. Torres. Even Mang Ed was there, listening
with fascination.
"I don't know, sir," she finally said.
He scowled. "Why, Ms. Salvador? It's stupid to-"
"Of course," she cut him off. "Of course you're right, sir." She
stared down at the frog. Its lungs were like pink balloons.
"Of course, sir!" she said again. "All this is just hormones or neurotransmitters
or whatever, like it says in the textbook." She did not remove her
eyes from the frog. Then finally, she punctured the pink balloons
with the tip of the scalpel. The frog tried to raise its upper body
again, as if it wanted to make the most of its last breath. Its lungs
deflated slowly, but the heart thumped on.
"In a sense, frogs are lucky," she said, frowning. Her eyes never
left the frog. "They don't bleed so much when you cut them."
She touched the tip of the scalpel to a torn chest muscle, and the
muscle quivered almost imperceptibly. Her face wrinkled up in distress.
A moment later she was crying silently.
Gilbert bolted up and bumped his head against Mang Ed's bony elbow.
"Good grief, watch it, Mang Ed! Your elbow's sharp enough to stab
anyone!"
"Forgive me, Manong, but what has happened? The students, they are
all so excited!"
Gilbert shook his head. "You shouldn't be here, you know." He grabbed
Mang Ed's arm and started to lead him away. "Come on, I'll clean up
here."
"It is the frog, is it not, Manong?" Mang Ed peered over Claire's
shoulder. The girl quickly wiped at her face with her arm, but the
old janitor did not notice, mesmerized as he was by the frog pinned
to the dissecting pan. Some spots on its limbs were twitching and
its heart still throbbed. Mang Ed's face crumpled in sorrow. "Oh,
poor creature!" he wailed. "Poor creature!"
"Come on, this isn't your place," Gilbert told him, looking towards
the door. His students were still there. "I've already dismissed you,"
he glowered. When nobody made a move to leave he let go of Mang Ed
and took a step forward. They hurried off.
"Why has no one ended its suffering?" Mang Ed was asking as he snatched
the scalpel from Claire.
"No, Mang Ed—" she started in surprise.
Gilbert glanced back at them. He realized at once what the old janitor
meant to do. In his annoyance, he shoved Mang Ed away.
"Son of a—" the old janitor croaked as he stumbled backwards,
towards the cabinet of jars. The area was near the sink and there
were drops of water everywhere. The force of Gilbert's shove sent
him reeling against the glass casing of the cabinet. As the old man
tried to keep his balance his elbows pushed back against the glass.
The case did not give, despite the thinness of the glass, and up to
a certain point he managed to raise himself up. But the floor was
slippery, and he fell back onto the cabinet hard. And Mang Ed's elbows
were sharp and bony.
The part of the glass casing that Mang Ed hit cracked, broke and
then shattered. But that was not the worst part. Mang Ed, having destroyed
the glass case, was already partly inside the cabinet. His arms were
splintered with bits of glass and his footing was still unsure. Claire's
classmates, whom Gilbert had already dismissed, all returned to the
laboratory when they heard the new commotion. Many of them arrived
in time to see the old janitor hit the glass. As they observed Mang
Ed's disoriented attempts to regain his footing and the way his arms
flailed wildly about, what happened next did not come as shocking
a sight as it could have been had it not seemed like the only logical
consequence.
Mang Ed knocked over one of the enormous, formaldehyde-filled jars.
The jar teetered first to one side then regained its equilibrium,
and it would have been saved had Mang Ed at that precise moment calmed
down a little. But his arms swung frantically, until a row of jars
were rolling past the cabinet's frame and crashing onto the floor.
The formaldehyde splashed everywhere, hosts of little fish and slender
black snakes streamed out, broken glass scattered all over. Mang Ed
slid down to the floor in formaldehyde.
"You stupid old fool!" Gilbert yelled, swiping at the splotches on
his trousers. Claire could only cough in shock, but maybe she was
merely overwhelmed by the smell of the powerful chemical that had
delayed for years—perhaps for decades—the decay of nameless
fish and dead serpents.
The rest of the class stood by the door. While most of them gawked,
a few had the sense to run and get help. Gilbert fussed angrily over
his pants—the smell of the chemical was awful—while Claire
rose to his feet and stared at Mang Ed.
"Get some help!" she shouted to her classmates, and a few more of
the onlookers upped and ran.
Perhaps the reason for Claire's urgency was the strange hue that
was spreading through the amber-colored chemical. The pool of formaldehyde
solution had begun to take on a reddish tinge. Blood was trickling
down the janitor's arms. Gilbert froze when he saw this, but Mang
Ed, seated on the floor amidst the snakes and fish, soaked in the
rancid preservative, started to giggle.
"Yes, Manong, your old man and I will have a good laugh over this,
we will," he drawled. Tears were running down his cheeks, mucus was
trickling from his nose to his gray mustache, but perhaps the formaldehyde
was the reason.
"Oh, Manong Ed!" Gilbert cried. He moved to go to him, but did not.
Among the people whom the students had called on for help, the chair
of the department came first, followed by the building's security
guard, then the other members of the maintenance crew. They checked
on Mang Ed and decided to take him to the infirmary. A stretcher was
called in, and all those who had rushed to the janitor's assistance
accompanied him out the building.
Gilbert and Claire Salvador remained behind, despite the state that
the laboratory was in. The smell of the ancient formaldehyde solution
had turned the ventilation sour, and the fish and the snakes formed
a scaly carpet on the floor. The big glassy eyes made a nightmarish
sight.
For a long while neither teacher nor student said anything. Then
at one point, he finally addressed her.
"I hope the frog is dead by now."
She eyed the dissecting pan. When she glanced back at him, there
was a little smile on her lips.
He smiled too. Then he walked to the sink, stepping onto the carpet
of scales, into the amber-colored sea. There was no avoiding that.
He was trembling as he turned on the faucet and allowed the water
to surge down his hands. The smile had frozen on his face, and he
smelled like fish and snakes, dead fish and snakes. A minute passed
before he turned the water off, and then, slowly, he looked out the
window. Two young janitors, the same ones who had laughed at Mang
Ed an hour or so earlier, were again hunting frogs in the bog.
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