Mouthful of Birds

THE HEAVY SUITCASE OF BENAVIDES

He returns to the room carrying a suitcase. Durable, lined in brown leather, it stands on four wheels and offers up its handle elegantly at knee level. He doesn’t regret his actions. He thinks that the stabbing of his wife had been fair, but he also knows that few people would understand his reasons. And that’s why he opts for the following plan: Wrap the body in garbage bags to keep the blood from seeping. Open the suitcase next to the bed and take every pain required to bend the body of a woman dead after twenty-nine years of marriage, and push it toward the floor so it falls into the suitcase. Unaffectionately cram the extra flesh into the free space, finally getting the body to fit. Once that’s done, more out of diligence than caution, gather the bloody sheets and put them into the washing machine. Swaddled in leather atop four now buckling wheels, the woman’s weight doesn’t diminish in the slightest, and though Benavides is small, he has to lean down a little to reach the handle, a gesture that lends neither grace nor efficiency to his task. But Benavides is an organized man, and within a few hours he’s out on the street, at night, taking short steps and pulling the suitcase behind him, walking toward Dr. Corrales’s house.

Dr. Corrales lives nearby. There’s a large, plant-covered gate above which loom the residence’s upper floors; Benavides rings the doorbell. A feminine voice on the intercom says, “Hello?” And Benavides says, “It’s Benavides, I need to talk to Dr. Corrales.” The intercom crackles like it’s on its last legs, then falls silent. Standing on tiptoe, Benavides peers between the lush plants growing on the other side of the brick wall, but he can’t see anything. He rings the doorbell again. The voice on the intercom says, “Hello?” And Benavides says, again, “It’s Benavides, I want to talk to Dr. Corrales.”

The device makes the same noises and is silent again. Benavides, perhaps tired out by the tensions of the day, lays the suitcase on the ground and sits down on it. A while later, the gate opens and some men emerge, saying their goodbyes. Benavides stands up and looks at the men, but doesn’t see Dr. Corrales among them.

“I need to speak to Dr. Corrales,” says Benavides.

One of the men asks his name.

“Benavides.”

The man tells him to wait a moment and goes back inside the house. The rest of the men look at Benavides curiously. Some minutes later, the man who had gone inside returns:

“The doctor is waiting for you,” he tells Benavides, and Benavides takes hold of his suitcase and enters the house with the man.

It’s no surprise to find Dr. Corrales in the midst of displaying his talents before a dozen of his disciples. Sitting upright at the piano, surrounded by young and beautiful admirers, he gives himself over to a sonata that grows more demanding by the second. Benavides waits among the columns in the center of the hall until the performance ends, and the men who had surrounded Dr. Corrales applaud and open up the semicircle they had formed around him. Dr. Corrales gratefully accepts the glass of champagne he is offered. A man approaches the doctor and whispers something in his ear, looking over at Benavides. Corrales smiles and motions Benavides over. Benavides and his suitcase approach.

“How are you, Benavides…?”

“Doctor, I need to speak with you in private.”

“Tell me, Benavides, we’re all friends here…”

“Telling you is no problem, Doctor. The thing is that…” Benavides looks at his suitcase. “It’s that I need to show you something.”

Dr. Corrales lights a cigarette and studies the suitcase.

“All right, no matter. I’ll give you five minutes, Benavides. Come with me to my study.”

The white marble stairs are hard for Benavides, who bears the inconvenience of that oversize suitcase. The next staircase, which starts on the second floor, is worse still. It’s too narrow, with high, short steps framed by dark corridor walls papered in brown, black, and wine-colored arabesques, and it makes Benavides’s efforts into an exaggerated struggle. Dragging the heavy suitcase step by step, he is soon drenched in sweat, while Dr. Corrales’s agile and unhampered body bounds away and disappears up the stairs. And perhaps it’s the damp, dark solitude in which Benavides finds himself that makes him reflect on and doubt the present. Not the immediate present—that is, the present of the stairs, the effort, and the sweat—but that of the murder. Maybe this is when he tells himself it could all be a dream, that he’s been fantasizing again about killing his wife. He wonders if he is now climbing the stairs to his doctor’s study—the doctor he has imposed upon at two-thirty in the morning, taking him away from his famous and prestigious guests—only to have to tell him, Look, Doctor, I’m sorry, but this has all been a mistake. What to do, then? It would be senseless to lie and useless to run back down the stairs, given that in his next session with the doctor he would have to tell the truth anyway, and he’d also have to come up with some excuse that would justify fleeing in the wee morning hours with a heavy suitcase in tow.

At the top of the stairs Benavides finds Dr. Corrales waiting by the small door to his study, waving him in. Once inside, the doctor turns on a small lamp; its tenuous light barely illuminates the space around them. He motions Benavides to a chair on the other side of the desk. Without letting go of the suitcase handle, Benavides obeys. The doctor puts on a pair of glasses and searches in his file cabinet for the last name Benavides.

“Very well, why are we in such a hurry to move your next session up thirty-eight hours?”

Benavides shifts in his seat.

“Doctor, this is all a big misunderstanding, I owe you an apology. You see…”

Dr. Corrales observes Benavides over his eyeglasses.

“It’s a dream. I mean… I’m confused, for a moment I thought I had killed my wife and stuffed her into this suitcase, and now I understand that really—”

Dr. Corrales interrupts him:

“Let’s see if I understand, Benavides… You barge into my house at two-thirty in the morning while I’m having an intimate party, with a suitcase you say holds your wife, murdered and stuffed inside, and now you’re trying to convince me that it’s all a dream so you can get up and leave, just like that…”

Benavides clutches the handle.

“You think I’m stupid, Benavides.”

“No, Doctor.”

Dr. Corrales looks at him for a moment. A few seconds at him, a few seconds at his suitcase. He doesn’t seem to be annoyed or put out. It rather seems that, somewhere deep inside him, he has already made some kind of decision.

“Stand up!”

“Yes, Doctor.”

Benavides stands up without letting go of the handle, a hindrance that makes him lean slightly to his right.

“You, sir, are highly upset. Exhausted. We’re going to try to calm down, okay?”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Leave your wife here and follow me.”

“My wife?”

“Didn’t you say that was your wife?”

Corrales is already heading for the door, but Benavides is unable to let go of the suitcase handle.

“Relax, Benavides. You’re overexcited. You need rest. I’ll give you a room, you can sleep for a bit, and in the meantime I’ll think about what we’ll do. How does that sound?”

“No, Doctor, I’d rather…”

Corrales pushes a glass of water toward Benavides. He gives him two white pills.

“This will help you,” he says, and he watches until Benavides obeys and swallows them.

He urges Benavides to leave the study without the suitcase.

“We’ll come back for her later,” says Corrales.

They walk down a carpeted hallway along which every few feet there are two doors across from each other. Corrales stops before the third set of doors and opens the one on the right.

“Your room,” he announces. “Rest while I take care of your problem.”

Benavides wakes up in the light of a new day, and for a moment he believes himself to be in his own bed, beside his wife, on an ordinary unhappy morning. Quickly, he realizes his situation.

What to do with his wretchedness? To think that just a few rooms away his wife awaits him stuffed inside a suitcase. He is sure he will hear the doctor’s voice on the other side of the door: Wake up, Benavides, your problem is solved, or Good morning, Benavides, I’m here with your wife and she’s feeling better now, or simply Wake up, Benavides, it was all a bad dream, let’s have some breakfast while we wait for your taxi. It’s the problem’s prompt resolution that matters here, not the manner by which it is solved.

But time passes and nothing happens. Every object is composed of millions of shifting particles, and yet Benavides cannot perceive anything in the room that could be considered movement. Finally, he stands up. He’s slept in his clothes, so now he only has to put on his shoes. He opens the door. His eyes hurt from the light coming in the windows at the end of the hallway. He isn’t sure which of the many doors leads to the room where he left his wife the night before.

He finds the study, and matters get worse. What it holds, or more like what it doesn’t hold, is distressing. Inside the room, nothing that resembles a suitcase. And the wretchedness finds Benavides even in a house that isn’t his: someone has taken his wife. Walking quickly, he searches the second floor, goes down the stairs, crosses the central hall toward more corridors, enters parts of the house heretofore unknown to him: there are even more hallways, other rooms, winter gardens distributed capriciously throughout the massive house, and a large kitchen into which he bursts, exhausted, only to have three meticulously uniformed cooks look at him for a few seconds, their faces betraying no surprise. But Dr. Corrales is nowhere to be found, and Benavides does not see his suitcase or any other, and he certainly does not find his wife up walking and talking. The women in the kitchen return to their culinary tasks.

“I’m looking for Dr. Corrales.”

“He’s having breakfast,” says one of the women.

Benavides looks back for a moment toward the empty hallways, then turns back to the kitchen.

“Where?”

“He’s having breakfast,” repeats the woman. “We don’t know where.”

Benavides turns back to the hallway. Dr. Corrales is there behind him, holding a steaming cup of coffee and a half-finished piece of cheese bread.

“You arrived last night in very poor condition, Benavides. A lot of alcohol. I stored your suitcase in the garage. Shall I call a car for you?”

“You don’t understand. There was an incident last night, a problem, at my house, you see…”

“I understand, Benavides. You know that you don’t have to explain anything here, you just take it easy and be on your way,” says Corrales, offering a piece of cheese bread to Benavides.

“No, thank you,” says Benavides. “It’s about my wife.”

“Yes, I know, it’s almost always about that, but what can we do…”

“No, you don’t understand, my wife is dead.”

“Why do you keep repeating that, Benavides? I tell you, I do understand… Mine has been dead since the day we got married. Every once in a while she speaks: she insists that I’m fat, that we have to do something about my mother, and then there’s the matter of the environment… but you mustn’t concern yourself with them…”

“No, look, give me my suitcase and I’ll show you.”

“In the garage, Benavides. I’ll leave you to it now because I have patients waiting.”

“No, listen…”

“Go home: have yourself a shower, and before you go to bed, take these pills for me, and you’ll just see how well you sleep.”

Benavides refuses the pills.

“Come with me, I beg you. I need to show you what I have in the suitcase.”

Corrales finishes his bread. He sighs and nods, looking at his empty mug.

They go out the front door and cross the garden. As they walk, a tingling feeling intensifies Benavides’s nerves. They enter through the front of the garage. Inside, it’s dark. Corrales turns on the light and everything is illuminated: tool benches, boxes of old files, broken appliances, and the suitcase, alone and upright in the middle of the garage.

“Show me, Benavides.”

Benavides walks over to the suitcase and rolls it slowly. He moves it with the intention of laying it down; he has the hope he will feel the light weight of an empty valise. Then it would all be a mistake, as Corrales himself explained last night when Benavides had shown up—drunk, as Corrales said just now. I’m sorry, Corrales, I swear this won’t happen again, he will have to say. Or maybe, on opening the suitcase and finding it empty, his eyes would meet Corrales’s complicit gaze; maybe Corrales would say, It’s over, Benavides, you don’t owe me anything. But when he takes the handle, the weight of a body much like his wife’s reminds him that actions have consequences. His face goes pale, he feels weak, and the suitcase falls onto its side with a thud and stains the floor with a dark, thick liquid.

“Do you feel all right, Benavides?”

Benavides replies, “Yes, of course.” He can’t think of anything but the twisted-up body. The suitcase gives off a smell of putrefaction.

“What’s in it, Benavides?”

Then Benavides discovers his error: trusting Dr. Corrales, having faith in the doctor. As if a man dedicated to health in life could ever contend with death. So he says, “Nothing.”

“What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”

“I mean, don’t worry about it. You go see your patients now and I’ll manage here.”

“Is this a joke?”

Corrales approaches. Benavides bends down and holds on to the buckles so Corrales can’t open them, but the doctor kneels down next to him and says, “Let me see, come now, move.” And with a simple shove, Benavides falls over. Corrales struggles with the buckles but can’t open them: pushed to their limit by the suitcase’s excess load, they resist.

“Help me,” orders Corrales.

“No, look here…”

“I’m telling you to help me, Benavides. Stop this nonsense,” says Corrales, indicating Benavides should sit on the suitcase. Benavides finds the most opportune spot on the irregular leather surface, and puts the weight of his body on top of his wife’s. Corrales is strong, and together they finally manage to unbuckle the clasps.

Benavides stands up and moves away from the suitcase that, though now unbuckled, has still not been opened. He doesn’t want to see. Rapid pulses squeeze his heart. Corrales studies the scene. He knows, thinks Benavides when he sees the doctor stand up and walk toward him. Corrales stops beside him and looks at the suitcase. In a low voice, almost hypnotized, he orders Benavides:

“Open it.”

Benavides stays where he is. Maybe he thinks that this is the end, or maybe he’s not thinking about anything, but ultimately he obeys and walks over to the suitcase. When he opens it, he forgets Corrales for a moment: his wife is curled up like a fetus, her head bent inward, her knees and elbows forced into the rigid, leather-lined box, her fat filling up all the empty space. What a thing, nostalgia, Benavides says to himself. All those years just to see her like this.

Threads of blood trickle toward him over the floor. Corrales’s voice returns him to reality:

“Benavides…” And the doctor’s cracked voice betrays his anguish.

“Benavides…” Corrales, walking slowly, approaches the suitcase without taking his eyes from its contents. His eyes, full of tears, finally turn to meet Benavides’s gaze. “Benavides… This is drastic. It’s… It’s… wonderful,” he concludes.

Benavides, dubious, stays silent. He looks back at the suitcase but what he sees is what is there: his wife, purple, coiled like a worm in tomato sauce.

“Wonderful,” repeats Corrales, shaking his head. He looks at the suitcase for a moment, then at Benavides, as if he can’t understand how Benavides has been able to do such a thing for himself. “You are a genius. And to think that I underestimated you, Benavides. A genius. Let’s see. Let me clear my head—it’s no small thing you’re proposing with this…” He rests his arm around Benavides’s shoulders with friendly enthusiasm. “Well, let me offer you a drink. Believe it or not, I know just the person you need.”

Corrales lets go of Benavides and heads toward the garage exit.

“Genius, truly beautiful,” he repeats in a low voice as he walks away. Benavides takes a moment to react, but as soon as he understands that he’s about to be left alone, he looks at his suitcase one last time and runs after the doctor.

Olives, sliced cheese and salami, potato chips, little cheese-flavored crackers, onion and ham. Everything neatly arranged on a large wooden tray on the coffee table in the main living room, along with three fine crystal glasses into which Corrales pours white wine.

“Donorio, this is my friend Benavides, the man I’ve told you so much about.”

Donorio curiously studies Benavides’s small body and finally puts out his hand. Corrales smiles, pours more wine, and invites the men to eat something.

“Donorio, you have no idea what you’re about to see,” says Corrales. “Now, I don’t want to sound arrogant, I know you have experience with great artists. But even so, I don’t think you can imagine what we’ve got prepared for you. Isn’t that right, Benavides?”

Benavides finishes off his wine in one gulp.

“I want to see it,” says Donorio.

They cross in the night from the house to the garage. Corrales goes first, enjoying the slow walk toward success; Donorio follows, distrustful but curious. Finally, lagging, sensing the suitcase nearby, Benavides feels his fragile nerves gather into large and fibrous knots.

Corrales has the men enter in darkness, since he prefers the impact the sudden image will have when he turns on the light.

“Benavides, guide Donorio to you-know-what and let me know when he’s ready.”

Benavides stops in the center of the garage. Feeling his way in the darkness, guided by the sounds, Donorio comments:

“There’s a strange smell… as though of…”

“Here comes the light,” says Corrales, and in effect, with the tips of Benavides’s and Donorio’s shoes nearly touching the pool of thick blood, it appears in front of them, horrible, defiant, authentically innovative: the work.

What is violence if not this very thing we are witness to now? thinks Donorio, and a shiver runs from his legs to the nape of his neck. Violence reproduced before his eyes in its most primitive form. Savage. He could touch it, smell it. It was fresh and intact and awaiting a response from its viewers.

Corrales joins them.

“This is going to go over well,” says Donorio.

Corrales nods. Beside them, Benavides’s small body trembles. His weak voice speaks for the first time in Donorio’s presence.

“You don’t understand,” he manages to say.

“How could we not, Benavides?” says Corrales.

“It’s extraordinary!” says Donorio. “Horror and beauty! What a combination…”

“Horror, yes, but…” Benavides stammers, looking at his wife. “I mean that…”

“You’re going to be rich, famous! There is zero competition with a work like this one. The public will fall at your feet.”

“Trust him, Benavides, Donorio is the best there is.”

“Oh, no, Benavides here is the best,” concludes Donorio. “I’m just a curator, my part is minimal. The important thing here is the work, Violence, understand?”

“My wife.”

“No, Benavides, believe me, I know marketing and that won’t work. The title is Violence.”

A new anguish, uncontrollable. And Benavides confesses:

“I killed her. I killed her… then I just wanted to hide her.”

Corrales gives Benavides a few affectionate pats on the back, but his attention is directed purely and exclusively at Donorio’s instructions.

“It’ll be best if we conserve it in a cold environment. Do you have air-conditioning in the garage?”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“I killed her!” Benavides falls to his knees.

“Good, then let’s start by refrigerating the place. I’m going to make a couple of calls.” Donorio takes a few steps toward the door but soon he stops and turns toward Corrales, full of sincerity. Benavides’s wailing obliges him to raise his voice: “I’m grateful to you for thinking of me. This is a big opportunity.”

“Me, I killed her, like this…” Benavides pounds his closed fists on the floor. “I killed her like this.”

“Donorio, ask for the phone and take care of what you need to do,” says Corrales as he walks the curator to the door.

“Like this, I killed her like this.”

Benavides drags himself over the floor in no particular direction, pounding against the floor whatever objects he finds. “Like that, like that!”

“Don’t amuse yourself here, Corrales,” says Donorio, already in the doorway. “There will be time later for contemplation and delight.”

“I understand perfectly. You go on and we’ll catch up with you.”

Donorio nods and goes out into the garden. When Corrales turns, a now listless Benavides is pounding on his wife’s body.

“I did it. Me,” Benavides mutters. Corrales stops him.

“Leave her be, Benavides! She’s perfect like that, don’t ruin her.”

“But I killed her…”

“Yes, Benavides, yes. We know it was you, no one is going to take that away from you,” says Corrales as he helps Benavides stand up. He adds: “Trust us with this, you’ll just see how you take your place among the stars.”

“The sky?” asks Benavides. “With my wife?”

He feels that something is wrong in his head, there’s something he can’t manage to understand, and his body falls, collapsing beside the suitcase.

In the light of a new day, Benavides wakes up and opens his eyes. For a moment he believes he is in his own bed, beside his wife, on a normal unhappy morning. But soon he remembers the truth and sits up. Where is his wife now? In the garage? Still in the suitcase? Has Donorio taken her? Corrales? He leaves the room. He’s been wearing the same clothes for two days now, and in the hallway’s harsh light he can see that parts of his clothes are taking on a grayish hue. Although he estimates he has slept for a prudent number of hours, he has not rested. He feels exhausted, and he realizes that once again he must scour the rooms in search of Dr. Corrales. After some time, once he has checked the study, the first-floor rooms, the entrance hall, the living room, the hallways around the winter gardens, Benavides—fortuitously, as on the previous day—comes across the kitchen and asks the women:

“Corrales?”

They reply in the negative.

This time Benavides will not go looking for him. Some men wait apathetically for others to command them. But he will solve this on his own, and at once. He will call a taxi and take his wife home. He’s already leaving the house and crossing the garden. Halfway to the garage he stops: in front of its open doors he sees a dozen men dressed in blue rushing about. On their backs gleams a logo printed on a white rectangle: “Museum of Modern Art. Installation and Transportation.” Benavides realizes that the garage has been entirely emptied out. That is, all the furniture, every item or object that once formed part of the household landscape, has been removed, and now, in a larger, empty space, alone, unique, original, sits the work. And there are Corrales and Donorio, attentive, cordial, open to the artist’s feelings:

“How did you sleep, Benavides?”

“That’s my wife.”

Corrales looks at Donorio, and in his voice is the slow melody of growing disappointment.

“I told you, Donorio, this kind of site-specific exhibit is not to the artist’s liking. We should have brought the work to the museum.”

“My wife.”

“I’ve been working in this field for years, Corrales. Believe me, the public will prefer it this way.”

“But she’s my wife.”

“But, Benavides, you are not an artist for the common man. Your work is directed at a select audience of intellectuals, minds that scorn even the innovations of the museum, men who appreciate something more, above and beyond the simple work. That is…”

Donorio’s arm gestures in a flourish toward the garage, while Benavides and Corrales await his conclusion.

“Context,” Donorio finishes.

“Beautiful, quite so… How absurd to question his strategy,” says Corrales.

“But she’s my wife,” Benavides repeats.

“Benavides, please, this subject has already been discussed. The subject is not ‘the wife,’ it’s ‘violence’… Let’s not go back over this, I beg you. We’ve agreed,” he sighs. “As I was saying: context. In any case, we’re going to add certain elements. Getting out of the museum is a novel way to go, but we must maintain standards, the right environment.”

“Yes, of course…” says Corrales.

Benavides repeats once more what he has already said over and over. He moves away from the men and approaches the suitcase. Donorio signals to the men in blue; Benavides makes a break for it. Someone shouts, “Don’t let him touch it!” and everyone stops what they’re doing to run after Benavides’s short steps, and he barely manages to touch the suitcase’s handle before a dozen heavy blue bodies pile on top of him. What a disgrace, his disgrace; in the darkness of other men’s weight, he concludes that death must be something like this. From far away, Donorio’s voice reaches him: precise instructions to be executed upon his own person. And that is the end of his short third day.

Benavides wakes up in the light of a new day, still far from his bed and his wife. This time he goes barefoot, without even shielding his body from the cold; he stands up and goes right out of the room, down the hallway and the stairs, out of the house and across the garden to reach the garage. The men in blue are gone. They’ve hung bright halogen lights from the ceiling, and there, in the middle of the room, the open suitcase frames the coiled body of his abandoned wife.

The blow from behind is hard, on the nape of his neck, and there ends his fourth day.

Benavides wakes up on the night of the fourth day, and without hesitating he puts his feet into his shoes and leaves the room. The nighttime light shines in through the hallway windows to guide him on his gloomy tour. What brings a man like him to flee the house of his doctor at that hour of the night? Can a professional like Corrales, surely under strict orders from Donorio, refuse to let him see his wife? Were the restrictions part of a treatment of utmost rigor, a strategy to cure him from an illness, surely venereal, that brought him to hallucinate strange murders or to doubt his very own doctor? While he goes down the main stairs with painstaking care, Benavides wonders if these men want something in particular from his wife, whether for some reason they have seen in her things that they don’t see in other women. Pleasant memories assault him like a wave of jealousy and desire; in the end, his wife is his wife and no one else’s.

In the darkness it’s hard to find the door out to the garden, where flashing signs light up the surroundings for seconds at a time. Soon he will reach the garage, he will get his wife out of there and go home with her in a taxi. So thinks Benavides until he discovers that his glory will be short-lived.

That is, until he receives, a little more to the left this time, that day’s second blow to the head.

“The man’s in bad shape, Corrales.”

“It’s the pressure. Success is not easily assimilated by small bodies, and we have to give him time.”

“But the opening is tomorrow.”

“And is he necessary, Donorio? Is it necessary to expose him like this?”

“Without the artist, the opening loses meaning. It’s what I was talking about with context. Do you remember, Corrales?”

“Yes, of course.”

“If the public recognizes themselves in the artist, the work’s effect is magnified. Do the test yourself; think what would have happened if on Sunday night, instead of Benavides, the work had been brought to you by an athletic bodybuilder with long hair and stylish shoes…”

“No, no, of course. Don’t think me stupid, either; the difference is… vast.”

“Violent, Corrales, like the work.”

On the bed, Benavides opens his eyes to find the two men in the room with him, sitting in armchairs.

“How do you feel, Benavides?”

Benavides closes his eyes.

“It seems he’s regained consciousness…”

Benavides opens his eyes again. Dr. Corrales comes over to raise his eyelids and study his left eye.

“Perhaps he loses his memory intermittently,” says Corrales as he shines the bright beam of a small flashlight into the center of a restless pupil.

“Are you feeling well, Benavides?”

Benavides screams, “I killed my wife, of my own volition and by myself!” and without taking his eyes from the men, he clutches the sweaty sheets.

Corrales makes an admonishing gesture, and his eyes meet Donorio’s. Both men’s thoughts hold unfocused doubts and the beginnings of disillusionment.

The finished installation galvanizes the media to announce the event. People form expectations and clamor for advance tickets. The air grows polluted with an anxious public’s murmurings and rises to the ears of Benavides, who—for the fifth day in a row—wakes up in this house. What is a man like him doing in this room, so far from his home and his wife? Can a doctor like Corrales enter with a formal suit folded over his right arm and a set of clean underwear in his left, and say, “The socks will be a bit baggy, but the suit is just right for a man like you”? Corrales sits at the foot of the bed and gives the patient’s legs a few pats, perhaps out of an affection that developed a while ago but of which Benavides has no memory, and finally he smiles and says things like “How well you’re looking, Benavides,” or “How I envy you, Benavides, an artist like yourself, on a day like today, with an eager public and the press on fire,” or “Don’t be nervous, there’s every indication the opening will be a success.” But Benavides is not happy: a night watchman, perhaps even Donorio himself, is monitoring the entrance to the garage, where his wife is waiting. It’s an inaccessible zone for a body as prone to being beaten as his, and it’s lit up, even in the shadows of night, with two potent spotlights at either side of the door, and, above them, bright signs that shamelessly pay homage to this kidnapping. It’s gotten to the point that Benavides cannot distinguish evil intentions from good ones, or evaluate his doctor’s postures with any certainty. He watches Corrales stretch the socks, and he sinks into a sudden unease.

Some hours later, doctor and patient study their suited-up bodies before the mirror.

“You see that it’s your size, Benavides?”

Benavides stands motionless while Corrales adjusts his tie for him.

“Perfect.” He points to their bodies in the mirror. “Just wait till the girls see you like this.”

After some respectful knocks at the door they hear the voice of one of the women:

“Mr. Donorio sent me to tell you that everything is ready, but if the artist needs, he can wait.”

“Not at all, let him know we’ll be right down.”

The room is large, but small compared with the crowd that has gathered. Many people didn’t get in and are waiting in the front yard, peering through the living room windows or standing in line at the door guarded by the men in blue. Inside, with the work still hidden behind a red velvet curtain, the public’s fervor grows.

Donorio takes the microphone.

“Ladies, gentlemen…”

The audience listens to the speaker.

“Today is a very special day, for me and for all of you…”

A few timid comments float up from the crowd and are lost in the thickness of a growing silence.

“Art is memorious, dear audience, and from the least likely molecules of this, our society, true artists majestically emerge. Ladies, gentlemen, scholars, I wish to introduce you to a dreamer, a friend, but above all else an artist on whom the world cannot turn its back… Benavides, if you would…”

Amid the crowd’s thundering applause, pushed forward by Corrales, Benavides makes his way toward Donorio, who has accompanied his words with a gesture of welcome. When the artist ascends to the stage and discovers the audience, the audience discovers in him the candid, humble features of pure and sincere creation. An excited ovation grows. It calms, or pauses briefly, when Donorio returns to the microphone. The monologue continues, but the audience does not take their eyes from the artist, who studies the ceiling and the walls. One hundred pairs of eyes expectantly follow the creative movement of the artist, so removed from their gazes and their praise.

“…something of the past remains in our collective memory, in the brilliant minds of our artists. Horror, hatred, death, all throb intensely in their persecuted minds…”

The artist discovers the large red velvet curtain to one side of the stage, behind which, one presumes, the work awaits. But what is it that so disturbs the artist? Why, in his simple, genius face, do pale glimmers of fear suddenly emerge?

“Gentlemen, ladies, what you are about to see goes beyond the superfluous emotions of common art. The work, this work, is the answer. Benavides, we’re listening,” says Donorio, and finally he leaves the microphone and cedes his place to the artist.

The audience waits. A man in blue runs to the microphone and lowers it to Benavides’s height. Benavides looks at the microphone like someone studying the weight of a crime, its punishment. He takes three steps forward. It seems he is going to speak.

Donorio looks for the complicit gaze of Corrales, who keeps his eyes on the artist, proud, as though looking at a child who has finally become a man. Benavides turns toward the curtain, and then back toward the audience. There is a thrilling silence. Then Benavides takes the microphone and says:

“I killed her.”

The message takes time to sink in. Once the audience processes the words and understands their meaning, they start slowly to applaud, moved. Euphoria breaks out. He says he killed her, they say to one another. Now, that is intense, they comment. Pure poetry, shouts someone in the back. The evening’s first tears of emotion fall. On one side of the stage Corrales nods along with the general murmur. Donorio moves the artist aside and returns to his position. Two men in blue come onstage and stand to either side of the red cloth. And Donorio says:

“Friends, the work…”

And like the sun brings light or like the artist discovers the most human truths, the curtain that had covered the creation now, slowly before the collective hunger, falls to the floor. And there is the work: violent, real, carnally alive. Donorio has lost the public’s attention, but even so he names it. He pronounces the title, savoring every letter:

“Violence.”

And the name lands: it descends to the crowd, and the crowd explodes.

The euphoria is uncontainable. People shove, try to climb onstage. A dozen men in blue form a barrier that blocks their advance. But the audience wants to see, and the barrier gives way. Excitement. Commotion. Something emanates from that work and it drives them mad. The sovereign image of the purple body. Death a few feet away. Human flesh, human skin. Giant thighs. Coiled in a suitcase. Squeezed into the leather. And the smell. The artist is still very close to the suitcase. Too exposed. His singular face stands out in the crowd, and they discover him. There is a surprising moment. When they realize it’s him, they lift him up, pass him from hand to hand. Corrales shouts: “The artist!” and some men in blue leave their human barricade to rescue Benavides. The audience, after hearing Corrales’s cries, lets go of Benavides, and he is lost among the people like a pearl in muddy water. After the stillness of married life, this unprecedented experience excites him. Hidden in the crowd, concealed even from the crowd itself, he moves through the euphoric bodies toward the nucleus of the disturbance. There are shouts, shoves, people fight to get a better view. Then Benavides feels a chasm open. It opens in front of him and separates him from the rest of humanity. Corrales sees it all, because he intuits the artist’s feelings. He has bet on Benavides’s future. He wishes, in the small man, for a kind of discovery: the ancestral pleasure of knowing oneself a creator, anxiety contained. He wants to see Benavides’s hands squeeze absent matter in the air, seek something to knead, sense the scant time and the colossal task, forget the leisurely latency of the common man. To see, before his candidly expectant eyes, the matter: dozens of bodies that throb and wait, the primordial mass to be rent, coiled, forced, to attain, majestically, under the expert hand of a practiced superior, the precise measures of the leather suitcase.

And though none of that happens, Corrales does not feel frustrated. His close relationship with human processes fills him with faith. Donorio smiles at him. Benavides, finally restrained by the custodians, withdraws through the main door.

With growing enthusiasm, everyone welcomes smiling waitresses bearing champagne. The opening has been a success.