Bel Canto(26)

“Let us ask the Lord to come to our brother with His merciful love, and grant him relief through this holy anointing.” Father Arguedas touched his thumb to his tongue because he needed something wet and could think of nothing else. He marked the accompanist’s forehead, saying, “Through this holy anointing may the Lord in His love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit.”

Roxane could see the nuns standing over her as she memorized her prayers. She could see the dark rosewood rosaries hanging from their waists, she could smell the coffee on their breath and a faint odor of perspiration in the fabric of their dresses, Sister Joan and Sister Mary Joseph and Sister Serena. She could remember each of them but not a single word of prayer. “Sometimes we ordered sandwiches and coffee after rehearsal,” she said, though the priest could not understand her and the accompanist no longer heard her voice. “We talked some then.” He had told her about his childhood. He was from Sweden, or Norway? He talked about how cold it was in the winters but how he never really noticed, growing up there. His mother wouldn’t let him play any sort of ball games because she was so worried about his hands. Not after all the money she had spent on piano lessons.

Father Arguedas anointed the accompanist’s hands, saying, “May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up.”

Roxane picked up some of his fine blond hair and held it over her fingers. It looked anemic. It looked like it belonged to a person who wasn’t long for this world. The truth was, she had hated the accompanist a little. For months they had worked together amicably. He knew his music. He played with passion but never tried to overshadow her. He was quiet and reserved and she liked that about him. She did not try to draw him out. She never thought about him enough to wonder if she should. Then it was decided that he would come with her on this trip. No sooner had the wheels of the plane lifted up from the tarmac than the accompanist grabbed her hand and told her about the impossible burden of love he had been living with. Didn’t she know? All those days of being next to her, of hearing her sing. He leaned into her seat and tried to press his ear against her chest but she pushed him away. It was like that every minute of the eighteen-hour flight. It was like that in the limousine to the hotel. He pleaded and wept like a child. He cataloged every outfit she had worn to every rehearsal. Outside the car window an impenetrable wall of leaves and vines sped past. Where was she going? He crept one finger over to touch her skirt and she knocked it away with the back of her hand.

Roxane bowed her head and closed her eyes, pressed her hands together with the strands of his hair caught in between. “A prayer can just be something nice,” Sister Joan had said. Sister Joan was her favorite, young and nearly pretty. She kept chocolate in her desk. “It isn’t always the things you want. It can be the things you appreciate.” Sister Joan would often ask Roxane to sing for the children before assembly, “Oh Mary We Crown Thee with Flowers Today,” even in the dead of a Chicago winter.

“He always wanted to hear about Chicago, I grew up in Chicago,” she whispered. “He wanted to know what it was like to grow up near an opera house. He said, now that he was in Italy he could never leave. He said he couldn’t bear those cold northern winters now.”

Father Arguedas looked up at her, desperate to know what she was saying. Was it confession, prayer?

“Maybe it was something he ate,” she said. “There could be a food he was allergic to. Maybe he was sick before we got here.” Certainly, he was not the man she had known.

They were all three quiet for a while, the accompanist with his eyes closed, the opera singer and the priest both staring down at those closed eyes. Then something occurred to Roxane Coss and without hesitation she reached into his pockets and pulled out his wallet and handkerchief and a roll of mints. She flipped through the wallet and put it down. His passport was there: Sweden. She slipped her hands deep into his pants pockets, at which point Father Arguedas stopped his prayers to watch her. There she found a hypodermic needle, used and capped, and a small glass vile with a rubber top, empty but for a drop or two circling the bottom. Insulin. All out of insulin. They would be back at the hotel by midnight, they had been promised. There was no reason to bring more than one shot along. She scrambled to her feet, the necessary proof in her upturned palms. Father Arguedas raised his head as she rushed to the Generals. “Diabetic!” she cried, a word that had to be more or less the same in any language. Those medical terms came off Latin roots, the single tree they should all understand. She turned her head towards the men’s wall, where they were all watching, like this was any other night at the opera and tonight’s performance was the tragic death of the accompanist, Il Pianoforte Triste.

“Diabetic,” she said to Gen.

Gen, who had wanted to give the priest his chance, came forward now and explained what the Generals must, without benefit of translation, have understood: the man was in a diabetic coma, which meant that somewhere out there was the medicine needed to save him if he was still alive. They went over to see, General Benjamin dropping his cigarette into the marble fireplace which was big enough to hold three good-sized children. In fact, the Vice President’s own three children had crowded in there together after it had been emptied of ashes and scrubbed down, and pretended to be cooked by witches. Father Arguedas had finished the formal prayer and now simply knelt beside the accompanist, his hands wrapped together, his head bowed, praying silently that the man would find solace and joy in God’s eternal love now that he was dead.