Bel Canto(57)
“It’s nothing as formal as that,” Gen said. “I’m happy to speak to Miss Coss. We can go now. I’ll tell her whatever you want to say.”
At that the great Russian paled and took three nervous puffs off his cigarette. So massive were this man’s lungs that the little cigarette was all but finished off by his sudden burst of attention. “There is no rush for this, my friend.”
“Unless we’re released tomorrow.”
He nodded and smiled. “You let me escape from nothing.” He pointed his smoked-out cigarette at Gen. “You are thinking. You are telling me it is time to declare myself.”
Gen thought he might have misunderstood the verb to declare. It could have other meanings. He could speak Russian, but his understanding lacked nuance. “I’m not telling you anything other than that Miss Coss is right there if you want to speak to her.”
“Let’s call it tomorrow, shall we? I’ll speak in the morning”—he clapped a hand down on Gen’s shoulder—“in case we are so fortunate. Is the morning fine with you?”
“I’ll be here.”
“Just after she sings,” he said. Then he added, “But without rushing her any.”
Gen told him that sounded reasonable.
“Good, good. That will give me time to prepare my thoughts. I will be awake all night. You are very good. Your Russian is very good.”
“Thank you,” Gen said. He had hoped that maybe they could talk for a while about Pushkin. There were things he wanted to know about Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades, but Fyodorov was gone, lumbering back to his corner like a fighter ready for the second round. The other two Russians were waiting for him, smoking.
The Vice President was standing in the kitchen looking into a box of vegetables, crookneck squash and dark purple eggplants, tomatoes and sweet yellow onions. He took this as a bad sign that the people who surrounded the house were growing bored with their kidnapping. How long did these crises ever last? Six hours? Two days? After that they lobbed in some tear gas and everyone surrendered. But somehow these cut-rate terrorists had thwarted any rescue. Maybe it was because there were so many hostages. Maybe it was the wall around the vice-presidential house, or their fear of accidentally killing Roxane Coss. For whatever reason, their situation had already crawled past its second week. It was completely conceivable that they were no longer on the front page of the paper or that they had already fallen to the second or even the third story on the evening news. People had gotten on with their lives. A more practical stand was being taken, as evidenced by the food in front of him. The Vice President imagined his group the survivors of a shipwreck who watched helplessly while the last search-and-rescue helicopter spun north towards the mainland. The evidence was in the food. At first it had all been prepared, sandwiches or casseroles of pulled chicken and rice. Then it came in needing some assembly, bread and meat and cheese wrapped on separate trays. But this, this was something else entirely. Fifteen raw chickens, pink and cold, their stomachs greasing the counter, boxes of vegetables, bags of dried beans, tins of shortening. Certainly it was enough food, the chickens appeared to have been robust, but the question was how did one effect the transformation? How did what was here become dinner? Ruben believed the question was his responsibility to answer but he knew nothing of his own kitchen. He did not know where the colander was. He did not know marjoram from thyme. He wondered if his wife would have known. Truthfully, they had been taken care of for too long. He had realized that in these past weeks as he swept the floors and folded up the bedding. Perhaps he had been useful in society, but as far as household matters were concerned he had become some kind of fancy lapdog. As a boy he had received no domestic training. He had never once been asked to set a table or peel a carrot. His sisters made his bed and folded his clothes. It had taken a state of captivity to force him to figure out the operation of his own washer and dryer. Every day there was a never-ending list of things that needed to be attended to. If he worked without stop from the moment he woke up in the morning until he fell into an exhausted heap on his pile of blankets, he could not keep the house in the manner to which he had been accustomed to seeing it. How this house had sung just a short while ago! There was no telling how many girls came and went, dusting and buffing, ironing shirts and handkerchiefs, mopping the most imperceptible cobwebs from the corners of his ceiling. They polished the brass strips at the base of the front door. They kept the pantry filled with sweet cakes and pickled beets. They left the vaguest scent of their own bath powder (which his wife bought each of them for their birthdays every year, a generous round container with a fat down puff on top) behind them in the rooms and so everything smelled like a fistful of hyacinth sprinkled with talc. Not one thing in the house demanded his attention, not one object asked for his intercession. Even his own children were bathed and brushed and put to bed by lovely hired hands. It was perfect, always and completely perfect.
And his guests! Who were these men who never took their dishes to the sink? At least the terrorists he could forgive. They were for the most part children, and besides, they had been raised in the jungle. (At this he thought of his own mother, who would call to him when he forgot to close the front door, “I should send you to live in the jungle where you wouldn’t be bothered by things like doors!”) The hostages were accustomed to valets and secretaries, and while they had cooks and maids they probably never saw them. Not only were their households run for them, they were run so silently, so efficiently, that they never had to encounter the operations.