Bel Canto(33)

The Vice President could not help himself. He was picking up glasses and putting them on a large silver tray he knew the maid kept in the sideboard in the dining room. When he went to the kitchen he was followed but not stopped and he took a minute to rest his cheek against the freezer door. He came back with a dark green plastic garbage bag and began to pick up the wrappers from the sandwiches. There were no crusts of bread left in the papers, only small pools of orange oil. They had all been hungry. He picked up the soda cans from the tables and rugs, even though the tables and rugs did not technically belong to him. He had been happy in this house. It had always been such a bright place when he came home, his children laughing, running down the hallways with their friends, the pretty Indian maids who waxed the floors down on their hands and knees despite the presence of an electric polisher in the broom closet, the smell of his wife’s perfume as she sat at the dressing table brushing her hair. It was his home. He had to make some attempt to put it back towards the familiar so as to keep things bearable.

“Are you comfortable?” he would say to his guests as he swept some tender crumbs into the palm of his hand. “Are you holding up all right?” He wanted to nose their shoes under the sofa. He wanted to drag the blue silk chair down to the other end of the room where it belonged, but decorum prohibited that.

He made another trip to the kitchen for a wet cloth, hoping to blot up something that looked like grape juice out of the tight knots of the Savonnière rug. At the far end of the room he saw the opera singer sitting with the Japanese man whose birthday was yesterday. Funny, but with the pain in his head now he could think of neither of their names. They were leaning towards one another and from time to time she would laugh and then he would nod happily. Was it her husband who had just died? The Japanese man would hum something and she would listen and nod and then, in a very quiet voice, she would sing it back to him. What a sweet sound. Over the constant ruckus of the messages being boomed in through the window it was hard to make out what it was she was singing. He could only hear the notes, the clear resonance of her voice, like when he was a boy and would run down the hill past the convent, how he could hear just a moment of the nuns’ singing, and how it was better that way, to fly past it rather than to stop and wait and listen. Running, the music flew into him, became the wind that pushed back his hair and the slap of his own feet on the pavement. Hearing her sing now, softly, as he sponged at the carpet, was like that. It was like hearing one bird answer another when you can only hear the reply and not the plaintive, original call.

When Messner was called again he came quickly. Ruben Iglesias, Vice President, houseboy, was sent to the door to let him in. Poor Messner looked more exhausted, more sunburned as the day went on. How long were these days? Had it been today that the accompanist had died? Had it only been last night that their clothes were fresh and they ate the little chops and listened to the aria of Dvo?ák? Or was Dvo?ák something they drank in small glasses after dinner? Had it been so recently that the room was still full of women and the sweet chiffon of their gowns, their jewelry and jeweled hair combs and tiny satin evening bags fashioned to look like peonies? Had it been just yesterday that the house was cleaned, the windowpanes and windowsills, the sheer curtains and heavy drapes washed and rehung, everything in immaculate order because the President and the famous Mr. Hosokawa, who might want to build a factory in their country, were coming to dinner? It was then that it struck the Vice President for the first time: why had Masuda asked him to have the party at his house? If this birthday was so important, why not the presidential palace? Why, if not because he knew all along that he had no intention of coming?

“I think you’re getting an infection,” Messner said, and touched the tips of his pale fingers to Ruben’s burning forehead. He flipped open his cellular phone and made a request for antibiotics in a combination of English and Spanish. “I don’t know what kind,” he said. “Whatever they give to people with smashed-up faces.” He put his hand over the bottom of the phone and said to Ruben, “Any—” He turned to Gen. “What is the word allergies?”

“Alergia.”

Ruben nodded his tender head. “Peanuts.”

“What is he calling about?” General Benjamin said to Gen.

Gen told him it was for medication for the Vice President.

“No medication. I haven’t given authorization for any medication,” General Alfredo said. What did this Vice President know about infection? The bullet in his stomach, now that was an infection to talk about.

“Certainly not insulin,” Messner said, flipping shut his phone.

Alfredo appeared not to hear him. He was shuffling his papers. “Here are the lists. This is who we are keeping. This is who we are letting go.” He put the yellow tablet pages on the table in front of Messner. “These are our demands. They’ve been updated. There will be no more releases until the demands are completely and fully met. We have been, as you say, very reasonable. Now is the time for the government to be reasonable.”

“I’ll tell them that,” Messner said, picking up the papers and folding them into his pocket.

“We’ve been very conscientious in matters of health,” Alfredo said.

Gen, suddenly tired, held up his hand for a moment to stop the dialogue, trying to remember the word for concienzudo in English. It came to him.

“Anyone needing medical attention will be released.”