Bel Canto(59)

“Possibly, but I imagine someone cooked her food for her.”

Roxane, now out of the conversational loop, leaned back against the gold silk cushions of the sofa, held her hands up, and shrugged. It was a charming gesture. Such smooth hands that had never washed a dish or shelled a pea. “Tell him his scar is looking so much better,” she said to Gen. “I want to say something nice. Thank God that girl of his was still around when it happened. Otherwise he might have asked me to sew his face up for him, too.”

“Should I tell him you don’t sew?” Gen said.

“Better he hears it now.” The soprano smiled again and waved good-bye to the Vice President.

“Do you know how to cook?” Ruben asked Gen.

Gen ignored the question. “I’ve heard Simon Thibault complain a great deal about the food. He sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. Anyway, he’s French. The French know how to cook.”

“Two minutes ago I would have said the same thing about women,” Ruben said.

But Simon Thibault proved to be a better bet. His face lit up at the mention of raw chickens. “And vegetables?” he said. “Praise God, something that hasn’t already been ruined.”

“This is your man,” Gen said.

Together the three of them walked to the kitchen, making their way through the maze of men and boys who loitered in the great hall of the living room. Thibault immediately went to the vegetables. He took an eggplant out of the box and rolled it in his hands. He could almost make out his own reflection in its shiny skin. He put his nose to the deep purple patent leather. It didn’t smell like much and yet there was something vaguely dark and loamy, something alive that made him want to bite down. “This is a good kitchen,” he said. “Let me see your pans.”

So Ruben opened up the drawers and cabinets and Simon Thibault began his systematic inventory, wire whisks and mixing bowls, lemon squeezers, parchment paper, double boilers. Every imaginable pot in every imaginable size, all the way up to something that weighed thirty pounds empty and could have concealed a small-boned two-year-old child. It was a kitchen that was accustomed to cocktail suppers for five hundred. A kitchen braced to feed the masses. “Where are the knives?” Thibault said.

“The knifes are in the belts of the hoodlums,” the Vice President said. “They plan to either hack us up with the meat cleaver or saw us to death with the bread knife.”

Thibault drummed his fingers on the steel countertops. It was a nice look, but in their home in Paris he and Edith had marble. What a beautiful pastry crust one could make on marble! “It’s not a bad idea,” he said, “not bad. I’d just as soon they keep the knives. Gen, go and tell the Generals we will have to cook our food or eat our chickens raw, not that they would balk at a raw chicken. Tell them we understand we are morally unqualified to handle the cutlery and we need some guards, two or three, to slice and dice. Ask them to send the girls and maybe that very small boy.”

“Ishmael,” Ruben said.

“That’s a boy who can take responsibility,” Thibault said.

The guards had changed their shifts, or at least he saw two more young soldiers pull on their caps and head outside, but Gen didn’t see Carmen. If she had come in she was off somewhere in a part of the house that was off-limits to hostages. Discreetly, he looked for her everyplace he was allowed to go, but he had no luck. “General Benjamin,” he said, finding the General going over the newspaper with a pair of scissors in the dining room. He was cutting out the articles that concerned them, as if he could keep them in the dark by editing the paper. The television stayed on all hours but the guests were always driven out of the room when the news came on. Still, they heard bits and pieces from the hall. “There has been a change in the food, sir.” Even though Thibault was the diplomat, Gen believed that he probably had a better chance of getting what they wanted. It was the difference in their natures. The French had very little experience in being deferential.

“And that change?” The General did not look up.

“It isn’t cooked, sir. They’ve sent in boxes of vegetables, some chickens.” At least the chickens were plucked. At least they were dead. It was probably only a matter of time before dinner walked through the door on its own, that their milk showed up still tucked warmly inside its goat.

“So cook it.” He snipped a straight line up the middle of the third page.

“The Vice President and Ambassador Thibault are planning to do that but they need to request some knives.”

“No knives,” the General said absently.

Gen waited for a moment. General Benjamin crumpled up the articles he had removed and set them in a pile of tight little balls of paper. “Unfortunately, that’s a problem. I know very little about cooking myself but I understand that knifes are imperative for the preparation of food.”

“No knives.”

“Perhaps then if the knives came with people. If you could requisition a few soldiers to do the chopping, then there would be control over the knives. It’s a great deal of food. There are fifty-eight people after all.”

General Benjamin sighed. “I know how many people are here. I would appreciate not having to hear it from you.” He smoothed out what was left of the paper and folded it up again. “Tell me something, Gen. Do you play chess?”