Саманта Швеблин - Mouthful of Birds

“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…”