Bel Canto(40)

Oscar shuddered at the thought. As he was ready to play the part of the boy again he could see the lines of boys forming around his house, boys ready to assuage the awful grief of his daughters now that their father was held hostage. Pilar, how awful this must be for you. Isabelle, you mustn’t stay shut away. Teresa, your father wouldn’t want such suffering. Look at this, I brought you some flowers (or a bird, a skein of yarn, a colored pencil. IT MADE NO DIFFERENCE). Would his wife have the sense to lock the door? She would never have sense enough to believe that the boys meant them any harm. She believed their lies now just as she had believed him then, when she was a girl and he had come to call while her father lay dying from cancer.

What was he thinking of, chasing after an opera singer? Who were those two girls anyway, Beatriz and Carmen? What were they doing here? Where were their fathers? Probably gunned down in some countryside revolution. What could such girls do to keep the boys away without fathers to protect them? Everywhere in this house there were boys, those awful, surly boys with their greasy hair and bitten fingernails, hoping to touch a breast.

“You look bad,” the Vice President said. “All this talk of love isn’t agreeing with you.”

“When will we get out of here?” Oscar said. He sat down on the sofa and dropped his head onto his knees as if dizzy.

“Get out of here? You’re the one who said we would be shot.”

“I’ve changed my mind. No one is going to kill me. I may kill someone, but no one is going to kill me.”

Ruben sat down beside him and leaned his good cheek against his friend’s broad shoulder. “I won’t complain about your inconsistencies. I like this talk better anyhow. Let’s assume we’ll live.” He sat up again. “Here, wait here. I’m going to the kitchen to get you some ice. You won’t believe how much better ice can make you feel.”

“Do you play the piano?” Roxane Coss said to Gen.

He hadn’t seen her coming. His back was to the room while he watched the garúa from the bay window. He was learning to relax as he watched it, to not strain his eyes. He was beginning to think he could see things. Mr. Hosokawa looked at Gen expectantly, clearly anxious to know what she was saying, and for a minute Gen was confused as to whether he should answer her or translate first as the question was directed to him. He translated and then told her no, he was sorry to say he did not.

“I thought you might,” she said. “You seem to know how to do so many things.” She looked towards his companion. “What about Mr. Hosokawa?”

Mr. Hosokawa shook his head sadly. Until their capture, he had thought of his life in terms of achievement and success. Now it struck him as a long list of failures: he didn’t speak English or Italian or Spanish. He didn’t play the piano. He had never even tried to play the piano. He and Gen didn’t have a single lesson between them.

Roxane Coss looked across the room as if she were looking for her accompanist, but he was already half a world away, his grave now covered by an early Swedish frost. “I keep telling myself that this is going to be over soon, that I’m just taking a vacation from work.” She looked up at Gen. “Not that I think this is a vacation.”

“Of course.”

“We’ve been in this miserable place nearly two weeks. I’ve never gone a week without singing unless I was sick. I’m going to have to start practicing soon.” She leaned in towards the two of them and they bent towards her reflexively. “I really don’t want to sing here. I don’t want to give them the satisfaction. Do you think it would be worth it to wait another couple of days? Do you think they’ll let us go by then?” She glanced over the room again to see if there was a particularly elegant pair of hands folded across a lap.

“Surely someone here must play,” Gen said, not wanting to address the other issue.

“The piano is very good. I can play a little but not to accompany myself. I somehow doubt they’d go out and kidnap a new accompanist for me.” Then she spoke directly to Mr. Hosokawa. “I don’t know what to do with myself when I’m not singing. I don’t have any talent for vacations.”

“I feel very much the same way,” he said, his voice growing fainter with each word, “when I am not able to listen to opera.”

For this Roxane smiled. Such a dignified man. In the others she could see a look of fear, the occasional brush of panic. Not that there was anything wrong with panic given their circumstances, she had cried herself to sleep most nights. But it never seemed to touch Mr. Hosokawa, or he managed not to show it. And when she stood near him she somehow did not feel the panic herself, though she couldn’t explain it. Near him, it felt like she was stepping out of a harsh light and into someplace quiet and dark, like she was wrapping herself up in the heavy velvet of the stage curtains where no one could see her. “You should help me find an accompanist,” she told him, “and both of our problems will be solved.”

All of her makeup was gone now. For the first few days she bothered to go to the lavatory and put on lipstick from the tube she carried in her evening bag. Then her hair went back in a tight elastic and she was wearing someone else’s clothes that did not exactly fit. Mr. Hosokawa thought that every day she was lovelier. He had wanted so many times to ask her to sing but he never would have since singing for him was the thing that had brought her all the trouble in the first place. He wasn’t able to ask her for a hand of cards or for her thoughts on the garúa. He did not seek her out at all and so Gen did not either. In fact both of them had noticed that (with the exception of the priest, whom she could not understand) all the men in their desire to speak to her had decided to leave her alone as if it was some sort of respect, so alone she sat, hour after hour. Sometimes she cried and other times she thumbed through books or took naps on the sofa. It was a pleasure to watch her sleep. Roxane was the only hostage to have the privilege of a bedroom and her own guard, who slept outside her door, though whether that was to keep her in or to keep other people out no one was entirely sure. Now that they knew the guard was Carmen, they wondered if she was only trying to keep herself safe by staying near such an important person.