Chapter Ten Summary

Lucho Abril Marroquin is a young and successful pharmaceutical salesman for Bayer Laboratories. He has left his beautiful wife at home for his usual work in Peru, visiting doctors and pharmacies to give Bayer samples and literature. On his way home, while going over a bridge, he gets into a terrible accident, running over a young girl. Lucho's shouts for an ambulance or doctor, and is met by a Guardia Civil officer. Just as the officer kneels beside Lucho and the lifeless child, an out-of-control truck barrels toward the bridge and all three of them are struck. The child and officer are killed and Lucho spends a month in the hospital.

The couple learned that they would have a baby, and Lucho begins to have violent nightmares of mutilating or murdering his own child, causing his wife to miscarry from the...