Bel Canto(5)

“Attention,” the man with the gun said in Spanish. “This is an arrest. We demand absolute cooperation and attention.”

Roughly two-thirds of the guests looked frightened, but a scattered third looked both frightened and puzzled. These were the ones leaning towards the man with the gun, instead of away from him. These were the ones that did not speak Spanish. They whispered quickly to their neighbors. The word atención was repeated in several languages. That word was clear enough.

General Alfredo had anticipated his announcement bringing about a sort of pricked, waiting silence, but no silence came. The whispering caused him to fire into the ceiling again, carelessly this time, hitting a light fixture, which exploded. The room was dimmer, and slivers of glass settled into shirt collars and rested on hair. “Arresto,” he repeated. “Detengase!”

It may seem surprising at first, such a large number of people unable to speak the language of the host country, but then you remember it was a gathering to promote foreign interest and the two guests of honor did not know ten words of Spanish between them, although arresto made logical sense to Roxane Coss and meant nothing to Mr. Hosokawa. They leaned forward as if it might make understanding easier. Miss Coss was not leaning far, as the accompanist had wrapped himself around her like a security wall, his body ready, anxious, to step in front of any bullet that might stray in her direction.

Gen Watanabe, the young man who worked as Mr. Hosokawa’s translator, leaned over and spoke the words in Japanese to his employer.

Not that it would have done him any good in these present circumstances, but Mr. Hosokawa had once tried to learn Italian from a set of tapes he listened to on airplanes. For business purposes he should have learned English, but he was more interested in improving his understanding of opera. “Il bigliettaio mi fece il biglietto,” the tape said. “Il bigliettaio mi fece il biglietto,” he mouthed back silently, not wanting to disturb the other passengers. But his efforts were minimal at best and in the end he made no progress. The sound of the language spoken made him long for the sound of the language sung and soon he was slipping Madama Butterfly into the CD player instead.

When he was younger, Mr. Hosokawa saw the great advantage of languages. When he was older he wished he had made the commitment to learn them. The translators! They were ever-changing, some good, some full of schoolboy stiffness, some utterly, hopelessly stupid. Some could hardly speak their native Japanese and continually halted conversations to look up a word in a dictionary. There were those who could perform their job well enough, but were not the sort of people one wished to travel with. Some would abandon him the moment the final sentence of a meeting was completed, leaving him stranded and mute if further negotiations were necessary. Others were dependent, wanting to stay with him through every meal, wanting to accompany him on his walks and recount for him every moment of their own lusterless childhoods. What he went through just for a mouthful of French, a few clear sentences of English. What he went through before Gen.

Gen Watanabe had been assigned to him at a conference on the worldwide distribution of goods in Greece. Normally, Mr. Hosokawa tried to avoid the surprise element local translators so often provided, but his secretary had been unable to locate a Greek translator who could travel on short notice. During the plane ride to Athens, Mr. Hosokawa did not talk with the two senior vice presidents and three sales managers who accompanied him on the trip. Instead, he listened to Maria Callas sing a collection of Greek songs on his Nansei headset, thinking philosophically if the meeting was unintelligible to him, at least he would have seen the country she considered her home. After waiting in line to have his passport stamped and his luggage rifled through, Mr. Hosokawa saw a young man holding a sign, Hosokawa, neatly lettered. The young man was Japanese, which, frankly, was a relief. It was easier to deal with a countryman who knew a little Greek than a Greek who knew a little Japanese. This translator was tall for being Japanese. His hair was heavy and long in the front and it brushed across the top rims of his small round glasses even as he tried to keep it parted to one side. He appeared to be quite young. It was the hair. The hair denoted to Mr. Hosokawa a lack of seriousness, or perhaps it was just the fact that the young man was in Athens rather than Tokyo that made him seem less serious. Mr. Hosokawa approached him, gave the slightest bow of acknowledgment that only included his neck and upper shoulders, a gesture that said, You have found me.

The young man reached forward and took Mr. Hosokawa’s briefcase, bowing as he did so to the waist. He bowed seriously, though somewhat less deeply, to both of the vice presidents and the three sales managers. He introduced himself as the translator, inquired after the comfort of the flight, gave the estimated driving time to the hotel and the starting time of the first meeting. In the crowded Athens airport, where every second man seemed to sport a mustache and an Uzi, among the jostling of bags and the din of shouting and overhead announcements, Mr. Hosokawa heard something in this young man’s voice, something familiar and soothing. It was not a musical voice, and yet it affected him like music. Speak again.

“Where are you from?” Mr. Hosokawa asked.

“Nagano city, sir.”

“Very beautiful, and the Olympics—”

Gen nodded, contributing no information about the Olympics.

Mr. Hosokawa struggled to come up with something else. It had been a long flight and it seemed that in the time he had been on the plane he had forgotten how to make conversation. He felt it should be incumbent upon Gen to attempt to draw him out. “And your family, are they still there?”