Bel Canto(35)

Time could barely pull the second hand forward on the clock and yet look at all that had been accomplished—could it only have been a week? To have gone from guns being pushed into backs to most of the guns being locked up in a broom closet should have taken no less than a year, but already the captors knew the hostages would not mount an insurrection and in return the hostages knew, or almost knew, they would not be shot by the terrorists. Of course there were still guards. Two boys patrolled outside in the garden and three circled the rooms of the house, their weapons pointed out like canes for the blind. The Generals continued to give them orders. One of the boys, from time to time, would take a little poke at one of the guests with the muzzle of his gun and tell him to go to the other side of the room for no reason at all other than the pleasure of seeing them move. At night there were sentries, but by twelve o’clock they had always fallen asleep. They did not wake when their weapons slipped from their fingers and clattered on the floor.

For the guests of Mr. Hosokawa’s birthday party, most of the day was spent wandering from window to window, maybe playing a hand of cards or looking at a magazine, as if the world had become a giant train station in which everything was delayed until further notice. It was this absence of time that had everyone confused. General Benjamin had found a heavy crayon that belonged to Marco, the young son of the Vice President, and every day he made a thick blue slash on the wall in the dining room, six slashes down and then one across to indicate a week had passed. He imagined his brother in solitary confinement, Luis, forced to make scratches against the brick with his fingernail in order to remember the days. Of course, in a house there were more traditional ways of keeping track of time. There were several calendars, a date book and planner in the kitchen by the phone, and many of the men wore watches which gave the date as well as the time. And if any of those methods were to fail they could easily turn on the radio or television and hear what day it was while listening to news of themselves. But still General Benjamin thought that the old-fashioned way was the best. He sharpened his crayon with a gutting knife and added another slash to his collection on the wall. It galled Ruben Iglesias no end. He would have punished his children sharply were they to do such a barbaric thing.

Without exception, these were men who were largely unfamiliar with the concept of free time. The ones who were very rich stayed at their offices late into the evening. They sat in the backseats of cars and dictated letters while their drivers shepherded them home. The ones who were young and very poor worked just as hard, albeit at a different kind of work. There was wood to be cut or sweet potatoes to be dug out of the ground. There were drills to be learned with the guns, how to run, how to hide. Now a great, unfamiliar idleness had fallen on them and they sat and they stared at one another, their fingers drumming incessantly on the arms of chairs.

But in this vast ocean of time Mr. Hosokawa could not seem to startle up any concern for Nansei. While he stared at the weather he never wondered if his abduction had affected stock prices. He did not care who was making his decisions, sitting at his desk. The company that had been his life, his son, had fallen away from him as thoughtlessly as a coin is dropped. He took a small spiral notebook from the pocket of his tuxedo jacket and, after inquiring as to the correct spelling from Gen, added the word garúa to his list. Incentive was key. No matter how many times Mr. Hosokawa had listened to his Italian tapes in Japan he could remember nothing that was on them. No sooner had he heard the beautiful words, dimora, patrono, than they vanished from memory. But after only one week of captivity look at all the Spanish he had learned! Ahora was now; sentarse, sit; ponerse de pie, stand up; sue?o, sleep, and requetebueno was very good, but it was always spoken with a certain coarseness and condescension that told the listener not that he had done well but that he was too stupid to merit high expectations. And it wasn’t just the language that had to be overcome, there were all the names to learn as well, those of the hostages, those of the captors when you could get one of them to tell you his name. The people were from so many different countries that there were no easy tricks of association, no familiar toehold from which to pull oneself up. The room was full of men he did not know and should know, though they all smiled and nodded to one another. He would have to work harder to introduce himself. At Nansei he had made a point of learning the names of as many of his employees as was possible. He remembered the names of the businessmen he entertained and the names of their wives whom he inquired after and never met.

Mr. Hosokawa had not led a static life. As he built his company, he learned. But this was a different sort of learning he did now. This was the learning of childhood. May I sit? May I stand? Thank you. Please. What was the word for apple, for bread? And he remembered what they told him because, unlike the Italian tapes, in this case remembering was all. He could see now the full extent to which he had relied on Gen in the past, how much he relied on him now, though now he often had to wait with his questions while Gen translated something for the Generals. Two days ago Vice President Iglesias had very kindly given Mr. Hosokawa this notebook and a pen from a drawer in the kitchen. “Here,” he said. “Consider it a late birthday present.” In that notebook Mr. Hosokawa printed the alphabet and had Gen write out the numbers from one to ten and every day he planned to add more words in Spanish. He wrote them over and over, keeping his writing very small because even though paper was plentiful now, it occurred to him that a time could come when he would have to be careful with such things. When had he last written something down? His thoughts were entered, recorded, transmitted. It was in this simple repetition, the rediscovery of his own penmanship, that Mr. Hosokawa found solace. He began to think about Italian again, and thought he might ask Gen to include just a word or two every day from that language as well. There were two Italians in their group and when he heard them speak he could feel himself straining to understand as if he were listening to a bad phone connection. Italian was so close to his heart. And English. He would enjoy being able to speak to Miss Coss.