Bel Canto(68)

“Translator?” Fyodorov said, his voice a little worried this time.

Carmen leaned forward and kissed him. There was no time for kissing but she wanted him to know that in the future there would be. A kiss in so much loneliness was like a hand pulling you up out of the water, scooping you up from a place of drowning and into the reckless abundance of air. A kiss, another kiss. “Go,” she whispered.

And Gen, who wanted no more in the world than this girl and the walls of this bathroom, kissed her again. He was breathless and dizzy and had to lean a moment against her shoulder before he could step away. Carmen got off the sink and stood behind the door, opened the door, and sent him back out into the world.

“Are you unwell?” Fyodorov asked, more in irritation than concern. Now the back of his shirt was clinging damply to his shoulders. Didn’t the translator know this would not be easy for him? All of the time he had spent, first considering whether or not he should speak and then deciding to speak, then after that decision was made there was the decision as to what should be said. In his heart the feelings were clear, but to translate such feelings into words was another matter entirely. Ledbed and Berezovsky were sympathetic, but then they were Russians. They understood the pain of Fyodorov’s love. Frankly, they experienced similar pains themselves. It was not impossible that they would eventually find their own nerve and approach the translator to approach the soprano. The more Fyodorov spoke of his heart’s desire, the more they were sure it was a malady with which they had all been infected.

“I apologize for the delay,” Gen said. The room before him melted and waved like a horizon line in the desert. He leaned back against the closed bathroom door. She was in there, not two and a half centimeters of wood away from him.

“You look unwell,” the Russian said, and now he was concerned. He had a fondness for the translator. “Your voice sounds weak.”

“I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

“You are pale, I think. Your eyes are very damp. Perhaps if you are truly ill the Generals will let you go. Since the accompanist, they claim to be very sympathetic in matters of health.”

Gen blinked in an attempt to still the swaying furniture, but the bright stripes of an ottoman continued to pulse in the rhythm of his blood. He stood up straight and shook his head. “Look at me,” he said uncertainly, “fine now. I have no intention of leaving.” He looked at the sun pouring in through the tall windows, the shadows of the leaves falling across the carpet. Finally, standing here with the Russian, Gen could understand what Carmen was saying. Look at this room! The draperies and chandeliers, the soft, deep cushions of the sofas, the colors, gold and green and blue, every shade a jewel. Who would not want to be in this room?

Fyodorov smiled and slapped the translator on the back. “What a man you are! You are all for the people. Ah, how greatly I admire you.”

“All for the people,” Gen repeated. The Slavic language was pear brandy on his tongue.

“Then we will go to speak to Roxane Coss! There is no time for me to wash again. If I was to stop I would lose my nerve forever.”

Gen led the way to the kitchen but he might as well have been walking alone. He had not one thought for Fyodorov, for how he felt or what he might wish to say. Gen’s head was filled with Carmen. Carmen up on the sink. He would always remember her there. Years from now when he would think of her it would always be as she was on that day, sitting up on the black marble, her heavy work boots patched with electrical tape, her hands flat out on the cool sink top. Her hair hung loose and straight, parted in the middle, tucked behind such delicate ears. He thought of the kiss, her arms around his back, but the greatest pleasure was seeing her face, the sweet exact shape of a heart, her dark brown eyes and such unruly eyebrows, the round mouth he wanted to touch. Mr. Hosokawa was easily distracted from his studies. Tell him a word one day and he may well have forgotten it the next. He laughed off his mistakes, put tiny check marks by the words he had misspelled. Not Carmen. To tell something to Carmen was to have it sewn forever into the silky folds of her brain. She closed her eyes and said the word, spelled it aloud and on paper, and then she owned it. He did not need to ask her again. They went forward, pressing on through the night as if they were being hunted down by wolves. She wanted more of everything. More vocabulary, more verbs. She wanted him to explain the rules of grammar and punctuation. She wanted gerunds and infinitives and participles. At the end of the lesson, when they were both too tired for another word, she would lean back against the cupboards in the china closet and yawn. “Tell me about commas,” she would say, the plates towering over her head, a service in gold for twenty-four, a service with a wide cobalt-blue band around the edge for sixty, each cup hanging still on its own cup hook.

“It’s so late. You don’t need to know about commas tonight.”

She folded her arms across her narrow chest, slid her back towards the floor. “Commas end the sentence,” she said, forcing him to correct her, to explain.

Gen closed his eyes, leaned forward, and put his head on his knees. Sleep was a country for which he could not obtain a visa. “Commas,” he said through a yawn, “pause the sentence and separate ideas.”

“Ah,” said Fyodorov, “she is with your employer.”

Gen looked up and Carmen was gone and he was in the kitchen with Fyodorov. The china closet was only five feet away. As far as he knew, he and Carmen were the only ones who went in there at all. Mr. Hosokawa and Roxane were standing at the sink. It was odd the way they never spoke and yet always seemed to be engaged in a conversation. Ignacio, Guadalupe, and Humberto were at the breakfast table cleaning guns, a puzzle of disconnected metal spreading out on newspapers before them as they rubbed oil into each part. Thibault sat at the table with them, reading cookbooks.