“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.