Bel Canto(60)

“Chess, sir? I know how to play. I wouldn’t say I was very good.”

The General tented his fingers and pressed them to his lips. “I’ll send you the girls to help in the kitchen,” he said. The shingles had just begun to close in on his eye. It was clear, even at this early stage, that the results would be disastrous.

“If we could have one more.Maybe Ishmael. He’s a very good boy.”

“Two is enough.”

“Mr. Hosokawa plays chess,” Gen said. He should not be offering his employer up for any services in exchange for an extra boy to chop but the fact was that Mr. Hosokawa was quite brilliant where chess was concerned. He was always asking Gen to play with him on long flights and was always disappointed that Gen could not last more than twenty moves. He thought that Mr. Hosokawa might enjoy the game as much as General Benjamin.

Benjamin looked up, his swollen red face seemed to show pleasure. “I found a set in the little boy’s room. It’s good to think that they would teach the game of chess to so young a boy. I think it is a remarkable tool for character. I taught all of my children to play chess.”

That was something Gen had never considered, that General Benjamin had children, that he had a home or a wife or any kind of existence outside of the group that was here. Gen had never stopped to think about where they lived, but wouldn’t it be in a tent somewhere, hammocks strung between the muscular limbs of jungle trees? Or was it a regular job to be a revolutionary? Did he kiss his wife good-bye in the morning, leave her sitting at the table in her bathrobe drinking coca tea? Did he come home in the evening and set up the chessboard while he stretched his legs and smoked a cigarette? “I wish I were better at the game.”

“Well, possibly I could teach you something. I can’t imagine what I would have to teach you.” General Benjamin, all of the soldiers, had an enormous respect for Gen’s abilities with languages. They imagined that if he could speak in Russian and English and French, he could probably do anything.

“I would appreciate that,” Gen said.

Benjamin nodded his head. “Please ask your Mr. Hosokawa if he would come at his convenience. There would be no need for translation. Here, write down the words for check and checkmate in Japanese. I could trouble myself to learn that much if he would come for a game.” General Benjamin took one of the crumpled sheets of newspaper and straightened it out again. He handed Gen a pencil and above the headlines Gen wrote the two words. The headline he saw said Poco Esperanza. Little Hope.

“I’ll send in some help for dinner,” the General said. “They will come directly.”

Gen bowed his head. Perhaps it was more respect than was deserved but there was no one there to see him do it.

It would appear that all their choices had been taken away, locked in a house with an armed teenaged boy pressed sullenly against every door. No freedom, no trust, not even enough freedom or trust to deserve a knife with which to cut up a chicken. The simplest things they believed, that they had the right to open a door, that they were free to step outside, were no longer true. But this was true instead: Gen did not go first to Mr. Hosokawa. Gen did not go and tell him about the chess. If he waited instead until tonight what difference could it make? Mr. Hosokawa would never know he had delayed. There certainly was no one else who spoke both Spanish and Japanese to tell him. On the far side of the room, Mr. Hosokawa sat with Roxane Coss on the rosewood piano bench. Leave him there. He was glad to be with her. She was teaching him something on the piano, her hands and then his hands tracing over the keys. The stark, repetitive notes made background music for the room. It was too soon to say anything for sure but he seemed to show more promise for music than he did for learning Spanish. Leave him there for now. Even from this distance Gen could see the way she leaned against him when she reached the lower keys. Mr. Hosokawa was happy, Gen did not need to see his face to know that. He had known his employer to be intelligent, driven, reasonable, and while Gen had never thought him an unhappy man he had never thought he took any particular pleasure in his life. So why not leave this pleasure undisturbed? Gen could simply make the decision himself and then Mr. Hosokawa could practice uninterrupted and Gen could go back to the kitchen where Vice President Iglesias and Ambassador Thibault were discussing sauces.

I’ll send you the girls to help in the kitchen, was what General Benjamin had said.

The words looped through Gen’s head like the plucked-out refrain of “Clair de Lune.” He went to the kitchen and when he pushed through the swinging door he held up both his hands, a prizefighter after an effortless knockout.

“Ah, look at that!” the Vice President cried. “The genius boy returns triumphant.”

“We’re wasting him on kitchen help and knives,” Thibault said in the good Spanish he had acquired when he first thought he would be the French ambassador to Spain. “We should send this young man to Northern Ireland. We should send him to the Gaza Strip.”

“We should give him Messner’s job. Then maybe we’d get out of here.”

“It was only a few knives,” Gen said humbly.

“Did you get to speak to Benjamin?” Ruben asked.

“Of course he spoke to Benjamin.” Thibault was flipping through a cookbook from the stack in front of him. The way his finger quickly traced back and forth across the lines he appeared to be speed-reading it. “He was successful, wasn’t he? You know Alfredo and Hector would have insisted on raw chicken. Better to toughen up the men. What did the good comrade say?”