Bel Canto(102)

“I’m happy,” Roxane said, and then she looked at Gen and said it again. He kissed her.

“The restaurants won’t be open yet,” Edith said. She scanned the square with one hand shading her eyes. It was like an ancient, abandoned city, something brought up clean from an archaeological dig. No part of Paris was ever like this. “Go and see if there’s a bar somewhere, will you? We should have a glass of wine to toast. Roxane and I can wait here. These streets weren’t meant for heels.”

Thibault felt a small flush of panic, but just as quickly he got hold of it. The square was too open, too quiet. He had felt better inside the church. “A drink, absolutely.” He kissed her once near her eye and then kissed her again on the lips. It was a wedding day, after all, a wedding day in Italy.

“You don’t mind waiting?” Gen asked Roxane.

She smiled at him. “Married women don’t mind waiting.”

Edith Thibault took her hand and admired the bright new ring. “They mind it terribly, but they would still like a glass of wine.”

The two women sat down on the edge of a fountain, Roxane with a bouquet of flowers in her lap, and watched as the men wandered off down one of the narrow, identical streets. When they turned out of sight Edith thought she had made a mistake. She and Roxane should have taken off their shoes and gone along.

Gen and Thibault crossed two piazzas before either of them said anything and their silence made the clap of their heels echo up the high walls. “So you’ll live in Milan,” Thibault said.

“It’s a beautiful city.”

“And your work?”Because Gen’s work had been Mr. Hosokawa.

“I mostly translate books now. It leaves my schedule more flexible. I like to go to rehearsals with Roxane.”

“Yes, of course,” Thibault said absently, and pushed his hands deep into his pockets as they walked. “I miss hearing her sing.”

“You should come visit.”

A boy on a bright red moped sped past and then two men with dachshunds came out of a bakery and walked towards them. The city wasn’t deserted after all. “Will you miss Japan?”

Gen shook his head. “It’s better for her here, better for me, too, I’m sure. All opera singers should live in Italy.” He pointed to the building on the corner. “There’s a bar that’s open.”

Thibault stopped. He would have missed it. He hadn’t been paying attention. “Good, then we’ve done our job. Let’s go back for our wives.”

But Gen didn’t turn. He stared at the bar for a long time as if it were a place he had once lived years before.

Thibault asked him if something was wrong. He froze up like that from time to time himself.

“I wanted to ask you,” Gen said, but it took him another minute to find the words. “Carmen and Beatriz are never mentioned in the papers. Everything I’ve read says there were fifty-nine men and one woman. Is that the way they reported it in France?”

Thibault said there had been no mention of the girls.

Gen nodded. “I suppose it makes a better story that way, fifty-nine and one.” He wore a white rose boutonniere on his wedding suit. Edith had brought it for him in a cardboard box along with the bouquet of white roses for Roxane to carry. She had pinned the flower on his lapel herself. “I’ve called the papers and asked them to publish a correction, but no one is interested. It’s almost as if they never existed.”

“Nothing you read in the papers is true,” Thibault said. He was thinking about the first time they had to cook dinner, all those chickens, and the girls and Ishmael coming in with the knives.

Still Gen wouldn’t look at him. He talked as if he were telling the story to the bar. “I called Ruben, did I tell you that? I called to tell him about the wedding. He said that he thought we should wait, that we would be wrong to rush into anything. He was very kind about it, you know how Ruben would be. But we didn’t want to wait. I love Roxane.”

“No,” Thibault said. “You did the right thing. Getting married was the best thing that ever happened to me.” Though now he was wondering about Carmen. Why had he never thought of it before? He could plainly remember them together, time after time standing at the back of the room, whispering, the way her face brightened when she turned it to Gen. Thibault did not wish to see her face again.

“When I hear Roxane sing I am still able to think well of the world,” Gen said. “This is a world in which someone could have written such music, a world in which she can still sing that music with so much compassion. That’s proof of something, isn’t it? I don’t think I would last a day without that now.”

Even when Thibault closed his eyes and rubbed them with his thumb and forefinger he could still see Carmen. Her hair in a braid on the back of her slender neck. She is laughing. “She is a beautiful girl,” he said. They had found the bar. He needed to get back to Edith now. He looped his arm around his friend’s shoulder and guided him back in the direction of the Piazza San Martino. He felt himself growing breathless, and he had to concentrate on the muscles in his legs to keep from running. He was sure that Gen and Roxane had married for love, the love of each other and the love of all the people they remembered.

When they turned the corner the street opened into the bright square and there the wives were, still sitting on the edge of the fountain. They were looking in the direction of the cathedral but then Edith turned and when she saw him, the joy in her face! They stood up and walked towards the two men, Edith with her dark hair shining, Roxane still in her hat. Either one of them could have been the bride. Thibault was sure there had never been such beautiful women, and the beautiful women came to them and held out their arms.