Bel Canto(54)

And so that left his own family, his wife and two daughters. They were the question. If he had not drawn happiness from them then the fault was completely his own. His wife had been the daughter of his uncle’s friend. The country was past the age of arranged marriages and yet essentially a wife had been found for him because there was no time for him to find his own. They sat in her parents’ living room during their courtship, eating candy, speaking little. He was so tired then, always working, and even after they married sometimes he would forget he had a wife at all. He would come home at four in the morning and be startled to see her there in the bed, her long dark hair spilling over his pillows. So this is my wife, he would think to himself, and fall asleep beside her. Not that things had stayed that way. They had come to depend on one another. They were a family. She was an excellent wife, an excellent mother, and surely he had loved her in his own fashion, but happiness? That was not something he thought of when he remembered his wife. Even as he could picture her waiting for him to come home from work, a drink poured, the mail opened and sorted, it was not happiness for either of them that he saw but a kind of efficiency that made their lives run smoothly. She was an honorable woman, a dutiful wife. He had seen her reading mystery novels but she never spoke of them. She wrote beautiful cards. She was a comfort to their children. He wondered suddenly if he knew her at all. He wondered if he had ever made her happy. His happiness was something kept apart, after he had come in from dinner meetings and there was time to spend with his stereo. Happiness, if he was right to use that word, was something that until now he had only experienced in music. He was still experiencing it in music. The difference was that now the music was a person. She sat beside him on the sofa reading. She asked him to sit beside her at the piano. On occasion she took his hand, a gesture so startling and wonderful that he could barely inhale. She asked him, do you like this piece? She asked him, what would you like me to sing? These were things he never could have imagined: the warmth of a person and the music together. Yes, her voice, more than anything her voice, but there were also her fine hands to consider, the bright rope of her hair lying across her shoulder, the pale, soft skin of her neck. There was her enormous power. Had he ever known a businessman who commanded such respect? More than all of it was the mystery of why she had chosen him to sit next to. Could it be possible that such happiness had existed in the world all along and he had never once heard mention of it?

Mr. Hosokawa remembered himself. He filled his glass. When he came back, Roxane was sitting at the piano with Gen. “I’ve kept you waiting too long,” he said.

She took the glass and listened to the translation. “That’s because the water is perfect,” she said. “Perfect takes a longer time.”

Gen exchanged their sentences like a bank teller pushing stacks of currency back and forth over a smooth marble countertop. He only half listened to what they were saying. He was still trying to puzzle out his night. It was not a dream. He didn’t have those kinds of dreams. The girl he had watched, the girl named Carmen, had asked him a question and he had agreed, but where was she now? All morning he hadn’t seen her. He had tried to look discreetly in the halls but the boys with guns kept corralling him back into the living room. Some days they were open to hostages wandering around and other days they seemed to think life’s greatest pleasure was nudging people backwards with a gun. Where was he supposed to meet her and when? He hadn’t asked any questions. Despite her clear instructions, he hadn’t been able to go back to sleep after she left last night. He couldn’t stop wondering how a girl like that had come through the air-conditioner vents with criminals. But what did he know? Maybe she had killed people before. Perhaps she robbed banks or threw Molotov cocktails through embassy windows. Maybe Messner was right, these were modern times.

Beatriz came up and gave Gen two hard taps on the shoulder, interrupting both Mr. Hosokawa’s conversation with Roxane and his own private thoughts. “Is it time for Maria yet?” she said, not wanting to be late for the soap opera. As soon as she had spoken, she slipped the damp end of her braid back into her mouth and began the serious business of nibbling again. Gen imagined a knotted tumor of hair growing in her stomach.

“Fifteen minutes,” he said, looking at his watch. Like so many other things, the beginning of the soap opera had become his responsibility.

“Come and tell me when.”

“Is this about her program?” Roxane asked.

Gen nodded to her and then said to Beatriz in Spanish, “I’ll show you on the clock.”

“I don’t care about the clock,” Beatriz said.

“You ask me every day. You ask me five times.”

“I ask other people, too,” she said sharply. “It’s not just you.” Her small eyes grew smaller as she puzzled whether or not she was being insulted.

Gen took off his watch. “Hold out your wrist.”

“You’re going to give it to her?” Mr. Hosokawa asked.

“Why?” Beatriz said suspiciously.

Gen said in Japanese, “I’m better off without it.” Then he said to Beatriz, “I’m going to make you a present.”

She liked the idea of presents even though she’d had almost no experience of them personally. On the program, Maria’s boyfriend gave her a present, a heart-shaped locket with his own picture inside. He put it around her neck before she sent him away. But once he had gone she held it to her lips and cried and cried. A present seemed like a wonderful gesture. Beatriz held out her wrist and Gen fastened on the watch.