Bel Canto(44)

Messner submitted to this drill with patience. He opened his briefcase and slipped off his shoes. He held his arms out straight to either side and moved his sock feet wide apart so that the strange little hands could rummage around his body as they saw fit. Once, one of them tickled him on the ribs and Messner brought his arm down sharply. “?Basta!” he said. He had never seen such an unprofessional group of terrorists. It was a complete and utter mystery to him how they had ever managed to overtake the house.

General Benjamin swatted Ranato, the boy who had tickled Messner, and took his gun away from him. All he had hoped for was some semblance of military order. “There is no call for that,” he said sharply.

Messner sat down in a chair and retied his shoes. He was irritated with the whole lot of them. By now this trip should be forgotten, the snapshots developed, shared, and placed into an album. He should be back in his overpriced apartment in Geneva with the good view and the Danish Modern furniture he had so carefully collected. He should be taking a packet of mail from the cool hands of his secretary in the morning. Instead he went to work, inquiring how the group was doing. He had been practicing his Spanish, and even though he kept Gen close by, for a sense of security as much as a backup for his vocabulary, he was able to conduct much of the informal conversation on his own.

“We are growing tired of this,” the General said, and ran his hands back over his head. “We want to know why your people cannot find resolution. Must we start killing hostages to get your attention?”

“Well, first off, they are not my people.” Messner pulled the laces tight. “Nor is it my attention you should be trying for. Don’t kill anyone for my benefit. You have my complete attention. I should have gone home a week ago.”

“We all should have gone home a week ago,” General Benjamin sighed. “But we have to see our brothers released.” For General Benjamin, of course, this meant both his philosophical comrades and his literal brother, Luis. Luis, who had committed the crime of distributing flyers for a political protest and was now buried alive in a high-altitude prison. Before his brother’s arrest, Benjamin had not been a general at all. He had taught grade school. He had lived in the south of the country near the ocean. He had never had a moment’s trouble with his nerves.

“That is the issue,” Messner said, looking over the room, doing a quick tally of all present.

“And is there progress?”

“Nothing I’ve heard of today.” He reached into his case and took out a sheaf of papers. “I have these for you. Their demands. If there’s anything new you want me to request—”

“Se?orita Coss,” General Benjamin said, hitching his thumb in her direction. “There’s something she wants.”

“Ah, yes.”

“There is always something for Se?orita Coss,” the General said. “Kidnapping women is a different business entirely from the kidnapping of men. I hadn’t thought of it before. For our people, freedom. For her, something else, dresses possibly.”

“I’ll see about it,” Messner said, and tipped his head, but he didn’t get up to leave right away. “Is there anything I can get for you?” He indicated nothing directly but he was wondering about the shingles, which every day seemed to cast their coarse red net another millimeter across the General’s face and would soon be dipping their fingers into the cool water of his left eye.

“There is nothing I require.”

Messner nodded and excused himself. He preferred Benjamin to the other two. He found him to be a reasonable man, possibly even intelligent. Still, he worked hard to prevent any feeling of real fondness for him, for any of them, captors or hostages. Fondness often prevented one from doing the most effective job. Besides, Messner knew how these stories usually ended. It seemed better to avoid much personal involvement.

But no sensible rules applied to Roxane Coss. Most days there was something she wanted, and while the Generals could care less about the requests of the other hostages they were quick to give in to her. Every time she asked for something, Messner would feel his heart quicken slightly, as if it was him she wanted to see. One day it was dental floss, one day a muffler, then some herbal throat lozenges that Messner was proud to note came from Switzerland. Other hostages had gotten into the habit of asking Roxane when there was something that they needed. When she asked for men’s socks or sailing magazines, she never blinked.

“Have you heard the good news?” Roxane said.

“There’s good news now?” Messner tried to be rational. He tried to understand what it was about her. Standing next to her, he could look down on the place where her hair parted. She was just like the rest of them, wasn’t she? Except, perhaps, for the color of her eyes.

“Mr. Kato plays the piano.”

At the mention of his name, Kato stood up from the piano bench and bowed to Messner. They had not been introduced before. All of the hostages greatly admired Messner, both for his calm demeanor and his seemingly magic ability to go in and out of the front door at will.

“At least I’m going to be able to practice again,” Roxane said. “On the off chance that we ever get out of here, I still want to be able to sing.”

Messner said he hoped he would have an opportunity to hear the rehearsals. For a brief, disquieting moment Messner felt something that was not unlike jealousy. The hostages were there all the time, so if she decided to sing first thing in the morning or in the middle of the night, they would be able to hear her. He had bought himself a portable CD player and as much of her music as he could find. At night he lay in his two-star hotel room paid for by the International Red Cross and listened to her sing Norma and La Sonnambula. He would be lying alone in his uncomfortable bed looking at the spidery cracks in the ceiling and they would all be there in the grand living room of the vice-presidential estate while she sang “Casta Diva.”