Bel Canto(47)

“Give me the phone,” Simon Thibault said to Messner when they were done.

“He said one call.”

“I couldn’t care less what he said. Give me the goddamn phone.”

“Simon.”

“They’re watching television. Give me the phone.” The terrorists had removed all the cords from the phones.

Messner sighed and handed him the phone. “One minute.”

“I swear it,” Simon said. He was already dialing the number. The phone rang five times and then the answering machine picked up the line. It was his own voice, saying first in Spanish and then again in French that they were out, saying they would return the call. Why hadn’t Edith recorded the message? What had he been thinking of? He put his hand over his eyes and began to cry. The sound of his own voice was almost unbearable to him. When it stopped there was a long, dull tone. “Je t’adore,” he said. “Je t’aime, Je t’adore.”

*

Everyone was scattering now, wandering off to their chairs to nap or play a hand of solitaire. After Roxane walked away and Kato returned to the letter he had been writing to his sons (he had so much to tell them now!) Gen noticed that Carmen was still in her place on the other side of the room and that she wasn’t watching the singer or the accompanist anymore. She was watching him. He felt that same tightness he felt when she had looked at him before. That face, which had seemed pretty to a disadvantage when it was assigned to a boy, did not blink or move or even appear to breathe. Carmen did not wear her cap. Her eyes were large and dark and frozen onto Gen, as if by looking away she would be admitting that she had been looking in the first place.

Gen, in his genius for languages, was often at a loss for what to say when left with only his own words. If Mr. Hosokawa had still been sitting there he might have said to Gen, Go and see what that girl wants, and Gen would go and ask her without hesitation. It had occurred to him in his life that he had the soul of a machine and was only capable of motion when someone else turned the key. He was very good at working and he was very good at being by himself. Sitting alone in his apartment with books and tapes, he would pick up languages the way other men picked up women, with smooth talk and then later, passion. He would scatter books on the floor and pick them up at random. He read Czeslaw Milosz in Polish, Flaubert in French, Chekhov in Russian, Nabokov in English, Mann in German, then he switched them around: Milosz in French, Flaubert in Russian, Mann in English. It was like a game, a showy parlor trick he performed only for himself, in which the constant switching kept his mind sharp, but it was hardly the same thing as being able to approach a person who was looking at you intently from across a room. Perhaps the Generals were right about him after all.

Carmen wore a wide leather belt around her narrow waist and into the right side she had stuck a pistol. Her green fatigues were not dirty the way the fatigues of her compatriots were and the tear in the knee of her pants had been neatly sewn together with the same needle and thread Esmeralda had used to stitch together the Vice President’s face. Esmeralda had left the spool with the needle sticking out of it on the side table when she had finished her work and Carmen had surreptitiously dropped them into her pocket the first chance she got. She had been hoping to speak to the translator since she realized what it was he did, but couldn’t figure out a way to speak to him without letting him know she was a girl. Then Beatriz took care of that and now there was no secret, no reason to wait, except for the fact that she seemed to be stuck against the wall. He had seen her. He was looking at her now, and that seemed to be as far as things were able to progress. She could not walk away and she was equally unable to walk towards him. Life could very well be lived out in that spot. She tried to remember her aggressiveness, all the things the Generals had taught her in training, but it was one thing to take what you must for the good of the people and quite another to ask for something for yourself. She knew nothing at all about asking.

“Dear Gen,” Messner said, clapping a hand down on his shoulder. “I’ve never seen you sitting alone. You must feel at times that everyone has something to say and no one knows how to say it.”

“At times,” Gen said absently. He felt if he were to blow in her direction she would be lifted up in the current of air and would simply bob away like a feather.

“We are the handmaidens of circumstance, you and I.” Messner spoke to Gen in French, the language he spoke at home in Switzerland. “What would be the male equivalent to handmaiden?”

“Esclave,” Gen said.

“Yes, slave, of course, but it doesn’t sound as nice. I think I’ll stay with handmaidens. I don’t mind that.” Messner sat down next to Gen on the piano bench and let his eyes follow the course of Gen’s stare. “My God,” he said quietly. “Isn’t that a girl there?”

Gen told him it was.

“Where did she come from? There were no girls. Don’t tell me they’ve found a way to get more of their troops inside.”

“She was always here,” Gen said. “Two of them. We just didn’t notice. That’s Carmen. Beatriz, the other one, is in watching television.”

“We didn’t notice her?”

“Apparently not,” Gen said, feeling quite sure he had noticed.

“I was just in the den.”

“Then you overlooked Beatriz again.”