Bel Canto(77)

“You know Carmen,” Roxane said to Gen. They were on their way back to see how the chess game was progressing but she stopped him in the middle of the hall when they were far from any door.

“Carmen?”

“I know you know who she is, but you know her a little, too, don’t know? I’ve seen the two of you speaking.”

“Of course.” Gen felt a flush rising up in his chest and he willed it not to go any farther, as if one could will such a thing.

But Roxane wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes seemed slightly out of focus, like she was tired. It was only noon but she was often tired after she sang in the morning. The guards would let her go upstairs alone to go back to sleep. If Carmen wasn’t on watch sometimes she would find her and take her wrist and Carmen would follow her. It was so much easier to sleep when she was there. Carmen was probably twenty years younger than she was, but there was something about her, something that settled Roxane down. “She’s a sweet girl. She brings me breakfast in the morning. Sometimes I open the door to my room at night and she’s sleeping in the hall,” she said. “Not all the time.”

Not all the time. Not when she was with him.

Roxane looked back at him and smiled a little. “Poor Gen, you’re always in the middle of everything. Anyone who has a secret has to take it through you.”

“I’m sure there’s plenty I miss.”

“I need you to do me a favor, just like everybody else. I need you to do something.” Because if Messner was right, if it was still going to be a very long time that they were held hostage, then she deserved to have this. And if, at the end of that long time, they were killed anyway, because that was always the talk, that the military would shoot them to pin it on the terrorists, or that the terrorists would kill them in a moment of desperation (though she found this harder to believe), then she deserved it all the more. And if the third scenario were true, that they would be released quickly and unharmed, that they all would go back to their regular lives and put this behind them, then she would deserve it most of all, because certainly then she would not see Katsumi Hosokawa again. “Find Carmen tonight and tell her to sleep somewhere else. Tell her she shouldn’t come up with breakfast in the morning. You’d do that for me?”

Gen nodded.

But that wasn’t asking for quite enough. That wasn’t asking for everything because she had no way of telling Mr. Hosokawa he should come to her tonight. She wanted to ask him to come to her room but there was only one way of doing that, to ask Gen to go to him and say it in Japanese, and what did she mean to say, exactly? That she meant for him to stay the night? And Gen would have to ask Carmen to find a way to get Mr. Hosokawa upstairs, and what if they were found out, what would happen to Mr. Hosokawa then, and Carmen? It used to be if you met someone and you wanted to see them, maybe you went out to dinner, had a drink. She leaned back against the wall. Two boys with guns walked by but they never teased or poked when Roxane was there. Once they had passed, she took a deep breath and told Gen everything she wanted. He did not tell her this was all insanity. He listened to her as if she wasn’t asking for anything unusual at all, nodding while she spoke. Maybe a translator was not unlike a doctor, a lawyer, a priest even. They must have some code of ethics that prevented them from gossiping. And even if she wasn’t positive then of his loyalty to her, she knew he would do everything possible to protect Mr. Hosokawa.

Ruben Iglesias went into what he still thought of as the guest room, but was now the Generals’ office, in order to empty the wastebaskets. He was going from room to room with a large green trash bag, taking not only what had been thrown away in the cans but what was on the floor as well: pop bottles, banana peels, the bits of the newspaper which had been edited out. Ruben surreptitiously deposited those into his pockets to read late at night with a flashlight. Mr. Hosokawa and Ishmael were playing chess and he stood in the door for a minute to watch. He was very proud of Ishmael, who was so much brighter than the other boys. Ruben had bought that set to teach the game to his son, Marco, but he still felt the boy was too young to learn. General Benjamin was sitting on the couch and after a while he looked up at Ruben. The sight of his eye, so badly infected, took Ruben’s breath away.

“That Ishmael, he’s a fast learner,” General Benjamin said. “Nobody taught him the game, you know. He just picked it up from watching.” The boy’s accomplishment had put him in a good mood. It reminded him of when he used to be a schoolteacher.

“Come into the hall for a moment,” Ruben said to him quietly. “I must speak to you about something.”

“Then speak to me here.”

Ruben cast his eyes towards the boy, indicating that this was a private matter between men. Benjamin sighed and pushed himself off the couch. “Everyone has a problem,” he said.

Outside the doorway, Ruben put down his bag of trash. He did not like to speak to the Generals. His first encounter with them had set a precedent which he followed, but no decent man could pretend not to notice such a thing.

“What is it you need?” Benjamin said, his voice heavy.

“What you need,” Ruben said. He reached into his pocket and took out a bottle of pills with his name on them. “Antibiotics. Look, they gave me more than I would ever need. They stopped the infection in my face.”

“Good for you,” General Benjamin said.