Bel Canto(20)

She looked at the body beside her as if she was noticing it for the first time. “He says he has the flu. I think he’s very nervous.”

Speaking in the very smallest of whispers, the sound of her voice was thrilling, even if he wasn’t exactly sure what she was saying.

“Translator!” General Alfredo called out.

Ruben had meant to stand and extend his hand to Gen, but Gen, younger, made it to his feet more quickly and reached down to help the Vice President. He took Ruben’s arm, as if the Vice President had been struck suddenly blind, and led him forward through the room. How quickly one could form attachments under circumstances like these, what bold conclusions a man could come to: Roxane Coss was the woman he had always loved; Gen Watanabe was his son; his house was no longer his own; his life as he knew it, his political life, was dead. Ruben Iglesias wondered if all hostages, all over the world, felt more or less the same way.

“Gen,” Messner said, and shook his hand somberly, as if offering condolences. “The Vice President should have medicine.” He said this in French for Gen to translate.

“Too much time is spent discussing the needs of a foolish man,” General Benjamin said.

“Ice?” Ruben offered himself, as suddenly his mind was filled with the pleasures of ice, of the snow on the tops of the Andes, of those sweet Olympic skaters on television, young girls wearing handkerchiefs of diaphanous gauze around their doll-like waists. He was burning alive now and the silver blades of their skates shot up arches of blue-white chips. He wanted to be buried in ice.

“Ishmael,” the General said impatiently to one of the boys. “Into the kitchen. Get him a towel and ice.”

Ishmael, one of the young boys holding up the wall, a small one with the worst shoes of all, looked pleased. Maybe he was proud of having been chosen for the task, maybe he wanted to help the Vice President, maybe he wanted a shot at the kitchen, where surely trays of leftover crackers and melted canapés were waiting. “No one gives my people ice when they need ice,” General Alfredo said bitterly.

“Certainly,” Messner said, half listening to Gen’s translation. “Have you reached some kind of compromise here?”

“We’ll let you have the women,” General Alfredo said. “We have no interest in harming women. The workers can go, the priests, anyone who is sick. After that we’ll review the list of who we have. There may be a few more to go after that. In return we’ll want supplies.” He produced a piece of paper, neatly folded, from his front pocket and clamped it between the three remaining fingers of his left hand. “These are the things we’ll need. The second page is to be read to the press. Our demands.” Alfredo had been so certain their plan would turn out better than this. It had been his cousin, after all, who had once worked on the air-conditioning system of this house and had managed to steal a copy of the blueprints.

Messner took the papers and scanned them for a minute and then asked Gen to read them. Gen was surprised to find his hands trembling. He could never remember an instance when what he was translating had actually affected him. “On behalf of the people, La Familia de Martin Suarez has taken hostage—”

Messner raised his hand for Gen to stop. “La Familia de Martin Suarez?”

The General nodded.

“Not La Dirección Auténtica?” Messner kept his voice down.

“You said we were reasonable men,” General Alfredo said, his voice swelling with the insult. “What do you think? Do you think La Dirección Auténtica would be talking to you? Do you think we would be letting the women go? I know LDA. In LDA, the ones who are not useful are shot. Who have we shot? We are trying to do something for the people, can you understand that?” He took a step towards Messner, who knew how it was intended, but Gen moved quietly between them.

“We are trying to do something for the people,” Gen said, keeping his tone deliberate and slow. The second part of the sentence, “Can you understand that?” was irrelevant and so he left it off.

Messner apologized for his mistake. An honest mistake. They were not LDA. He had to concentrate to keep the corners of his mouth from bending up. “How long before the first group can be released?”

General Alfredo could not speak to him. He ground down on his teeth. Even General Hector, who had the least to say, spat on the Savonnière carpet. Ishmael returned with two dishtowels full of ice cubes, a sign of the great abundance the kitchen held. General Benjamin batted one of the sacks from his hand, sending the clear diamond ice tripping and bouncing across the carpet. Anyone close enough scooped up the extra cubes and slipped them into their mouths. Ishmael, frightened now, quickly gave the remaining bag to the Vice President with a slight bow of the head. Ruben returned the nod, thinking it best not to draw any more attention to himself than was absolutely necessary, as clearly it would take little to provoke another gun butt to the side of the head. He touched the ice to his face and winced with the pain and the deep, deep pleasure of the cold.

General Benjamin cleared his throat and pulled himself together. “We’ll divide them up now,” he said. First he spoke to his troops. “Look alert. On your guard.” The boys against the wall straightened out their legs and lifted their guns to their chests. “Everyone on your feet,” he said.

“I beg for your attention,” Gen said in Japanese. “It is now time to stand.” If the terrorists minded speaking, they made an exception for Gen. He repeated the sentence again in as many languages as he could think of. He said it in languages he knew he need not include, Serbo-Croatian and Cantonese, just because there was comfort in speaking and no one tried to stop him. “Stand up,” is not a message that needed translation in the first place. People are sheep about certain things. When some begin to stand, the rest will follow.