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.