Bel Canto(84)

Through the nursery, where a moon-shaped night-light still glowed faintly from a wall socket illuminating a cast of lonesome dolls, past yet another bathroom with a white porcelain tub that was bigger than some canoes Carmen had ridden in, and out into the main hall, where the house became again the house that they knew, wide and gracious and grand. Carmen led Mr. Hosokawa to the third door and then she stopped. This was where she slept most nights, the little sleeping she did. She had been holding on to his hand ever since she had led him away from Beatriz and she was holding it now. It seemed they had come a very long way, but the Vice President’s children could make it from their mother’s bedroom, through the nursery, cutting through Esmeralda’s room and down the back stairs to the kitchen in well under a minute, even though they had been told to never run in the house. Carmen liked Mr. Hosokawa. She wished she could tell him so, but if she had had the language she wouldn’t have had the courage. Instead she pressed his hand once and then let it go.

Mr. Hosokawa bowed to her, his face pointing down towards his knees, and he held this position for what seemed to Carmen to be too long. Then he stood again and opened the door.

There was a high window in the upstairs hallway and the main staircase was flooded with the bright light of the moon, but Carmen didn’t take the front stairs. She navigated her course backwards, through the nursery and past the bed where Beatriz was sleeping deeply. Carmen stopped to untangle the rifle’s trigger from her fingers. She leaned the gun against the wall and pulled a coverlet up over her shoulders. She hoped that Beatriz would not decide to tell in the morning, or better yet that she would wake up thinking it was all a dream. Coming down the kitchen stairs, Carmen felt a different kind of wild heartbeat. She imagined Roxane Coss on the other side of the door, anxious from all the waiting. She imagined Mr. Hosokawa, silent and dignified, taking her into his arms. The sweetness of that touch, the security inside the embrace, Carmen raised her hand to the thin pricking of sweat on the back of her neck. She was silent, but still the stairs came faster now, four, three, two, one, then she was through the hallway, the kitchen. She skidded to a stop just inside the wondrous world of the china closet, where Gen sat on the floor, an unopened book on his knees. When he looked up she put her fingers to her lips. So much brightness in her face, her cheeks flushed, her eyes open wide. When she turned away, of course he would stand and follow her.

How much luck is one person entitled to in a night? Does it come in a limited allotment, like milk in a bottle, and when so much has been poured out then only so much is left? Or was luck a matter of the day, and on the day you’re lucky you are limitlessly lucky? If it was the former, then surely Carmen had used up all her luck getting Mr. Hosokawa safely into Roxane Coss’s bedroom. But if it was the latter, and in her bones she felt this was the truth, then this was her night. If all the saints in heaven were behind her now, then her luck must be good for a few more hours. Carmen took Gen’s hand and led him through the kitchen and onto the back porch, where he had never been before. She opened up the door, simply put her hand on the knob and turned it, and together they walked out into the night.

Look at this night: the moon a floodlight washing over what had once been an orderly garden, the moonlight pouring over the high stucco wall like water. The air smelled of the thick jasmine vines and the evening lilies that had long ago finished their work and closed up for the day. The grass was high, past their ankles and brushing heavy against their calves, and it made a shushing sound as they walked so they stopped to look up at the stars, forgetting that they were right in the middle of a city block. There weren’t more than half a dozen stars to see.

Carmen went outside all the time. Even in the rain she had gone out every day to walk on guard or simply to stretch her legs, but for Gen the night seemed miraculous, the air and the sky, the soft crush of grass beneath his heel. He was back in the world and the world looked, on that night, to be an incomprehensibly beautiful place. Such a limited view he was given yet still he would swear to it, the world was beautiful.

For the rest of Gen’s life he will remember this night in two completely different ways.

First, he will imagine what he did not do:

In this version, he takes Carmen’s hand and leads her out the gate at the end of the front walkway. There are military guards on the other side of the wall but they, too, are young and asleep, and together they pass them and simply walk out into the capital city of the host country. Nobody knows to stop them. They are not famous and nobody cares. They go to an airport and find a flight back to Japan and they live there, together, happily and forever.

Then he will imagine exactly what did happen:

It did not occur to him to leave, as it does not occur to a dog to leave once he has been trained to stay in the yard. He only feels blessed for the little freedom he is given. Carmen takes his hand and together they walk to the place where Esmeralda held picnics for the Vice President’s children, a place where the wall curves back and makes a pocket of grass and slender trees and there is no clear view of the house. Carmen kisses him and he kisses her and from then on he will never be able to separate the smell of her from the smell of night. They are deep in the lush growth of grass, in a part of the yard that is covered in shadows thrown down by the wall, and Gen can see nothing. Later, he would remember that his friend, Mr. Hosokawa, was inside that house on the second floor, in bed with the singer, but on that night he does not think of them at all. Carmen has pulled off her jacket even though there’s a cool breeze. She unbuttons his shirt while he covers her breasts with his hands. In the dark they are not themselves at all. They are confident. Gen pulls her down and she pulls him down. They defy gravity in their slow tumble to earth. Neither of them wear shoes and their pants slip off, too big for them anyway, and that feeling, that first luxury of skin touching skin.