Bel Canto(55)

“Look at the big hand,” he said, tapping the crystal with his nail. “When it gets to the twelve here at the top then you know it’s time.”

She studied the watch closely. It was beautiful, really, the round glass, the soft brown leather band, the hand that was no bigger than a hair that did a slow and constant sweep across the face. As presents went, she thought this was the nicest, better even than the locket because the watch actually did something. “This one?” she said, pointing out one of the three hands. Three hands, how queer.

“The minute hand on twelve and the hour hand, the little one, on one. That’s easy enough.”

But it wasn’t quite easy enough and Beatriz was afraid she would forget. She was afraid she would read it wrong and then miss the show altogether. She was afraid she would get it wrong and have to ask again, in which case Gen was sure to make fun of her. It was better when he just told her it was time. That was his job. She had a lot of work to do and all the hostages were lazy. “I’m not interested in this,” she said, and tried to undo the strap.

“What is the problem?” Mr. Hosokawa said. “Doesn’t she like it?”

“She thinks it’s too complicated.”

“Nonsense.” Mr. Hosokawa put his hand over Beatriz’s wrist to stop her. “Look at this. It’s very simple.” He held out his wrist and showed her his own watch, which was dazzling compared to Gen’s, a bright coin of rose-colored gold. “Two hands,” he said, taking hold of both her hands. “Just like you. Very simple.” Gen translated.

“Three hands,” Beatriz said, pointing out the only one that seemed to move.

“Those are the seconds. Sixty seconds in a minute, one minute, one circle, pushing the big hand forward one minute.” Mr. Hosokawa explained time, seconds to minutes to hours. He could not remember when he had last looked at his watch or wondered about the hour of the day.

Beatriz nodded. She ran her finger around the face of Gen’s watch. “It’s almost now,” she said.

“Seven more minutes,” Gen said.

“I’ll go and wait.” She considered thanking him but she wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do. She could have taken the watch from him. She could have demanded it.

“Does Carmen watch the program?” Gen asked.

“Sometimes,” Beatriz said. “But then she forgets. She isn’t true to it like I am. She has duty outside today, so she won’t be watching it unless she stands at the window. When I have duty outside I stand at the window.”

Gen glanced towards the tall French doors at the end of the room that led out onto the garden. There was nothing there. Only the garúa and the flowers which were starting to overgrow their beds.

Beatriz knew what he was looking for and she was angry. She liked Gen a little and he should have liked her because he had given her a present. “Take your turn,” she said bitterly. “The boys are all waiting at different windows. They’re all watching for her, too. Maybe you should go and stand with them.” It wasn’t true, of course. There was no dating allowed in the ranks and that was a rule that was never broken.

“She had asked me a question,” Gen started, but his voice didn’t sound natural and so he decided to forget it. It wasn’t as if he owed Beatriz any sort of explanation.

“I’ll tell her you gave your watch to me.” She looked at her wrist. “Four more minutes.”

“You should run,” Gen said. “You’ll lose your spot on the couch.”

Beatriz left but she didn’t run. She walked away like a girl who knew exactly how much time she had.

“What did she say?” Mr. Hosokawa asked Gen. “Was she happy with the watch?”

Gen translated the question into English for Roxane and then answered them both that there would be no way to tell if she was happy or not.

“I think you’re smart to give it to her,” Roxane said. “She’ll be less likely to shoot someone who’s given her such a nice gift.”

But who’s to say what kept a person from shooting? “Would you excuse me?”

Mr. Hosokawa let Gen go. It used to be that he wanted Gen with him all the time in case he thought of something to say, but he was learning to find some comfort in the quiet. Roxane put her hands on the piano and picked out the opening lines of “Clair de Lune.” Then she took one of Mr. Hosokawa’s hands and tapped the notes again, very slow and beautiful and sad. He followed her again and again until he could do it quite well on his own.

Gen went to the window and watched. The drizzling rain had stopped but the air was still heavy and gray as if it were dusk. Gen glanced at his watch, knowing it was too early to be dark, and found his watch gone. Why was he waiting for her? Because he wanted to teach her to read? He had plenty to do without taking that on as well. Every person in the room had a thought that was in need of translation. He was lucky to find a minute alone, a minute to look out of the window. He didn’t need another job.

“I have watched out this window for hours,” a man said to him in Russian. “Nothing ever comes. I can promise you that.”

“Sometimes it’s enough just to look,” Gen said, keeping his eyes straight ahead. He almost never had the opportunity to speak in Russian. It was a language he used for reading Pushkin and Turgenev. It sounded good to hear his own voice managing so many sharp consonants even if he knew his accent was poor. He should practice. It was an opportunity if one chose to see it that way, so many native speakers in one room. Victor Fyodorov was a tall man with large hands and a great wall of a chest. The three Russians, Fyodorov, Ledbed, and Berezovsky, mostly kept to themselves, playing cards and smoking from a seemingly inexhaustible supply of cigarettes, the source of which no one was exactly sure. While the French could make out a few words of Spanish and the Italians remembered some of their school French, Russian, like Japanese, was an island of a language. Even the simplest phrases were met with blank expressions.