Bel Canto(93)

While the others ran, Ruben Iglesias weeded one of the many flower beds. It was a small gesture in the face of so much work but all he knew to do was start. Oscar Mendoza and the young priest knelt to help him.

“Ishmael,” the Vice President called out to his friend. “Why are you standing there holding up the wall? Come over here and get to work. We can use that rifle you’re so proud of to aerate the soil.”

“Don’t pick on the boy,” Oscar Mendoza said. “He’s the only one I like.”

“You know I can’t come over,” Ishmael said, shifting his rifle to his other shoulder.

“Ah, you could come over,” Ruben said. “You just don’t want to get your hands dirty. You’re keeping them nice for the chess games. You don’t want to work.” Ruben smiled at the boy. Truly, he wished he could come over. He would teach him which of the plants were weeds. He found himself thinking that Ishmael could be his son, his other son. They were both on the small side, and anyway, people would believe whatever you told them. There would be plenty of room for one more small boy.

“I work,” Ishmael said.

“I’ve seen him,” Oscar Mendoza said, rubbing the dirt from his hands. “He does more than all the others. Not so big perhaps, but he’s strong as an ox, and smart. You have to be smart to win chess games.” The big man leaned towards the wall, towards the boy. “Ishmael, I would give you a job, if you wanted one. When this is over you could come and work for me.”

Ishmael was used to being teased. He had been teased cruelly by his brothers. He had been teased plenty by the other soldiers. Once they called him a bucket and tied his feet together and lowered him upside down into the well until the top of his head sank into cold water. He liked the Vice President’s way of teasing because it made him feel singled out as someone special. But Oscar Mendoza he wasn’t sure of. There was nothing in his expression that gave the joke away.

“Do you want a job?” Oscar said.

“He doesn’t need a job,” Ruben said, pulling a stack of weeds into his lap. He saw his chance. Oscar had given him the opening. “He’ll live with me. He’ll have everything he needs.”

Oscar looked at his friend and each man saw that the other one was serious. “Every man needs a job,” he said. “He will live with you and work for me. Does that sound fine, Ishmael?”

Ishmael put his gun between his feet and looked at them. He would live in this house? He would stay on? He would have a job and earn his own money? He knew he should laugh and tell them to leave him alone. He should make a joke of it himself: No, he would never be caught dead living in such a place. That was the only way to manage if you were the person being teased. Laugh back at them. But he couldn’t. He wanted too much to believe they were telling him the truth. “Yes.” That was all he could say.

Oscar Mendoza held out his dirty hand to Ruben Iglesias and they shook. “We’re shaking for you,” Ruben said, his voice betraying his happiness. “This seals the deal.” He would have another son. The boy would be legally adopted. The boy would be known after that as Ishmael Iglesias.

The priest, who had only been watching, now sat back on his heels, his grimy hands resting on his thighs. He felt something cold and startling move through his heart. The men should not be talking to Ishmael this way. They were forgetting the circumstances. The only way things could work would be for everything to stay exactly as it was, for no one to speak of the future as if speaking of it could bring it on.

“Father Arguedas here will teach you catechism. Won’t you, Father? You can come back to the house for the lessons and we’ll all have lunch together.” Ruben was lost in his story now. He wished he could call his wife and tell her the news. He would tell Messner and Messner would call her. Once she met the boy she would fall in love with him.

“Of course I will.” The priest’s voice was weak, but no one noticed it at all.





ten

mr. Hosokawa could find his way in the dark. Some nights he closed his eyes rather than strain them trying to see. He knew the schedule and habits of every guard, where they walked and when they slept. He knew who made their bed on the floor and how to step over them carefully. He felt the corners of walls with his fingertips, avoided boards that creaked, could turn a doorknob as silently as a leaf falls. He was so proficient at moving through the house that he thought that even if he had no place to go he might be tempted to get up and stretch his legs, go from room to room just because he could. It even occurred to him that he might be able to escape now if he wanted to, simply walk down the front path to the gate at night and set himself free. He did not want to.

Everything he knew he learned from Carmen, who taught him without benefit of a translator. To teach someone how to be perfectly quiet you don’t need to speak to them. Everything Mr. Hosokawa needed desperately to know Carmen taught him over two days. He still carried around his notebook, added ten new vocabulary words to his list every morning, but he struggled against the tide of memorization. For silence, though, he had a gift. He could tell from the approval in Carmen’s eyes, from the light touch of her fingers on the back of his hand. She taught him how to get from place to place in the house in plain sight of everyone and yet no one saw them because she was teaching him to be invisible. It was learning humility, to no longer assume that anyone would notice who you were or where you were going. It wasn’t until she began to teach him that Mr. Hosokawa saw Carmen’s genius, because her genius was to not be seen. How much harder that would be for a beautiful young girl in a house full of restless men, and yet he found that she drew almost no attention at all. She had managed to pass as a boy, and, more impressively, had managed to make herself utterly forgettable after she had been revealed as a beautiful girl. When Carmen walked through the room without wanting to be seen she hardly moved the air around her. She didn’t sneak. She did not dart to hide behind the piano and then a chair. She walked through the middle of the room, asking for nothing, keeping her head level, making no sound. In fact, she had been teaching him this lesson since the day they were first in the house together, but it was only now that he could understand it.