Ann Patchett (24 page)

“Manuel sends you his best regards,” Messner
told Father Arguedas. “He said if there is anything else that is needed he will
find it for you.”

The priest knew he committed the sin of pride
and still he was overjoyed at having been able to play a role in bringing in
the music. He was still too dizzy from the sound of Roxane’s voice to express
himself
properly. He looked to see if the windows were open.
He hoped that Manuel had been able to hear a line, a note, from where he stood
on the sidewalk. What a blessing he had received in his captivity. The
mysteries of Christ’s love had never been closer to him, not when he said the
mass or received communion, not even on the day he took holy orders. He
realized now he was only just beginning to see the full extent to which it was
his destiny to follow, to walk blindly into fates he could never understand. In
fate there was reward, in turning over one’s heart to God there was a
magnificence that lay beyond description. At the moment one is sure that all is
lost, look at what is gained!

Roxane Coss did not sing again that day. Her
voice had been asked to do enough. Now she contented herself to look through
the scores, sitting on the small couch by the window with Mr. Hosokawa. When
one of them had something to say they would call to Gen, but what was
surprising was how rarely they needed him. He was a comfort to her. In the
absence of language, she believed that he agreed with her completely. She would
hum a little of the scores quietly so that he knew what she was looking at and
then they would look at the pages together. Mr. Hosokawa could not read music
but he accepted that. He did not speak the language of the libretto, the
singer, or the host. He was beginning to feel more at ease with all he had
lost, all he didn’t know. Instead, he was astonished by what he had: the chance
to sit beside this woman in the late afternoon light while she read. Her hand
brushed his as she set the pages down on the couch between them, and then her
hand rested on top of his hand while she continued to read.

After a while Kato approached them. He bowed to
Roxane and then bowed again to Mr. Hosokawa. “Do you think it would be all
right if I played?” Kato asked his employer.

“I think it would be fine,” Mr. Hosokawa said.

“You don’t think it would disturb her reading?”

Roxane watched while Mr. Hosokawa pantomimed
playing the piano and then nodded to Kato.

“Yes,” she said, nodding. She held out her hand
for the music.

Kato handed it to her. “Satie,” he said.

“Satie.” She smiled and nodded again. Kato went
to the piano and he played. It wasn’t like the last time he had played, when no
one could believe that such a talent had been in the room among them without
anyone knowing it. It was nothing like Roxane singing, where it seemed that
everyone’s heart would have to wait until she had finished before it could beat
again. The Satie was only music. They could hear its beauty without being
paralyzed by it. The men were able to read their books or look out the window
while Kato played. Roxane continued to leaf through the scores, though every
now and then she stopped and closed her eyes. Only Mr. Hosokawa and the priest
completely understood the importance of the music. Every note was distinct. It
was the measurement of the time which had gotten away from them. It was the
interpretation of their lives in the very moment they were being lived.

There was one other person there who understood
the music, but she was not a guest. Standing in the hallway, looking around the
corner to the living room, was Carmen, and Carmen, though she did not have the
words for it, understood everything perfectly. This was the happiest time of
her life and it was because of the music. When she was a child dreaming on her
pallet at night, she never dreamed of pleasures like these. None of her family,
left behind in the mountains, could have understood that there was a house made
of bricks and sealed glass windows that was never too hot or too cold. She
could not have believed that somewhere in the world there was a vast expanse of
carpet embroidered to look like a meadow of flowers, or that ceilings came tipped
in gold, or that there could be pale marble women who stood on either side of a
fireplace and balanced the mantelpiece on their heads. And that would have been
enough, the music and the paintings and the garden which she patrolled with her
rifle, but in addition there was food that came every day, so much food that
some was always wasted no matter how hard they tried to eat it all. There were
deep white bathtubs with an endless supply of hot water pouring out of the
curved silver spigots. There were stacks of soft white towels and pillows and
blankets trimmed in satin and so much space inside that you could wander off
and no one would know where you had gone. Yes, the Generals wanted something
better for the people, but weren’t they the people? Would it be the worst thing
in the world if nothing happened at all, if they all stayed together in this
generous house? Carmen prayed hard. She prayed while standing near the priest
in hopes it would give her request extra credibility. What she prayed for was
nothing. She prayed that God would look on them and see the beauty of their
existence and leave them alone.

*  *  *

It was Carmen’s night for watch. There was a
long wait before everyone had gone to sleep. Some of them read with
flashlights, others tossed and stretched in the great room where they all
bedded down together. They were like children, up and down for water and then
the bathroom. But once they were all still, she crept around their bodies and
went to look at Gen. He was in his usual place, sleeping on his back on the
floor next to the sofa where his employer slept. Gen had taken his glasses off
and in his sleep he held them lightly in one hand. He had a pleasant face, a
face that stored a wonderment of knowledge. She could see his eyes moving
quickly back and forth beneath the smooth, thin skin of his eyelids, but if he
was dreaming, everything else was still. His breathing was quiet and steady.
Carmen wished that she could see inside his mind. She wondered if it would look
crowded with words, compartments of language carefully fitted on top of each
other. Her own brain, by comparison, would be an empty closet. He could refuse
her and what would be the harm in that? She wouldn’t have anything less than
what she had now. All she had to do was ask. All she had to do was say the
words and yet the thought of it closed her throat entirely. What experience did
she have of piano music and paintings of the Madonna? What experience did she
have of asking? Carmen held her breath and stretched out on the floor next to
Gen. She was as silent as light on the leaves of trees. She
lay
on her side and put her mouth near his sleeping ear. She had no talent for
asking but she was a genius at being quiet. When they practiced their drills in
the woods it was Carmen who could run for a mile without breaking a twig. It
was Carmen who could walk up right behind you and tap you on the shoulder
without making a sound. She was the one they sent in first to unscrew the
covers from the air-conditioning vents because no one would notice her. No one
would hear a thing. She said a prayer to Saint Rose of
Lima
. She asked for courage. After so many
prayers offered for the gift of silence, she now asked for sound.

“Gen,” she whispered.

Gen was dreaming that he was standing on a
beach in
Greece
looking at the water. Somewhere behind him in the dunes someone was saying his
name.

Her heart was stuttering in her chest. The rush
of her blood made a roar in her ears. What she heard when she strained to
listen was the voice of the saint. “Now or never,” Saint Rose told her. “I am
with you only for this moment.”

“Gen.”

And now the voice that was calling was walking
away and Gen left the beach to follow it, followed the voice from sleep to
waking. It was always so confusing, waking up in the Vice President’s house. What
hotel room was this? Why was he on the floor? Then he remembered and all at
once he opened his eyes, thinking it was Mr. Hosokawa who needed him. He looked
up to the sofa but then he felt a hand on his shoulder. When he turned his head,
the beautiful boy was there. Not the boy. Carmen.
Her nose
very nearly touching his nose.
He was startled but not afraid. How odd
that she was lying down, was all he thought.

The military had recently given up on the
floodlights that had raged for so long outside the windows and now the night
looked like night again. “Carmen?” he said. Messner should see her like this,
in the moonlight. He had been so right about her face, her heart-shaped face.

“Very quiet,” she said deep into his ear. “Listen.”
But where were the words? She was so thankful to be lying down. The racing of
her heart was unbearable. Could he see her like this in the darkness, shaking? Could
he feel her vibration deep in the wood of the floor? Could he hear her skin
rustling inside the clothes she wore?

“Close your eyes,” Saint Rose told her. “Say
your prayer to me.”

All at once there was enough air to fill her
lungs. “Teach me to read,” she said quickly. “Teach me to make my letters in
Spanish.”

Gen looked at her. Her eyes were closed. It was
as if he had come to lie down beside her and not the other way around. Her
lashes were heavy and dark against the blush of her cheek. Was she asleep? Was
she talking in her sleep? He could have kissed her without moving an inch and
then he struck the thought from his mind.

“You want to read in Spanish,” Gen repeated,
his voice as small as her own.

Heaven, she thought. He knows how to be quiet. He
knows like me how to speak without making a sound. She took a breath and then
blinked her dark eyes open. “And English,” she whispered. She smiled. She could
not contain it. She had managed to ask him for everything she wanted.

Shy Carmen, always hanging back from the
others, who knew she could smile? But at the sight of that smile he would have
promised her anything. He was just barely awake. Or maybe he was not awake at
all. Had he wanted her and not known it? Had he wanted her so much that he
dreamed she was lying beside him now? The things our minds keep from us, Gen
thought. The secrets we keep even from ourselves. “Yes,” he said, “English.”

She was reckless and brave, so great was her
joy. She took her hand and put it over his eyes. She gently brushed his eyes
closed again. Her hand was cool and soft. It smelled of metal. “Go back to
sleep,” she said. “Go back to sleep.”

six

y
ears
later when this period of
internment was remembered by the people who were actually there, they saw it in
two distinct periods: before the box and after the box.

Before the box, the terrorists controlled the
Vice President’s home. The hostages, even when not being directly threatened,
mulled over the inevitability of their own deaths. Even if by some stroke of
great good fortune no one shot them in their sleep, they now understood exactly
what was in the cards, be it before their release or after. They would each and
every one of them
die
. Surely they had always known
this, but now death came and sat on their chests at night, peered cold and
hungry into their eyes. The world was a dangerous
place,
notions of personal safety were a fairy story told to children at bedtime. All
anyone had to do was turn the wrong corner and everything would be gone. They
thought about the senseless death of the first accompanist. They missed him,
and yet look how simply, how brilliantly he had been replaced. They missed
their daughters and their wives. They were alive in this house but what
difference did it make? Death was already sucking the air from the bottom of
their lungs. It left them weak and listless. Powerful heads of corporations
collapsed into chairs near the window and stared, diplomats flipped through
magazines without noticing the pictures. Some days there was barely enough
strength to turn the pages.

But after Messner brought the box into the
house everything changed. The terrorists continued to block the doors and carry
guns, but now Roxane Coss was in charge. She started the morning at six o’clock
because she woke up when the light came in through her window and when she woke
up she wanted to work. She took her bath and had two pieces of toast and a cup
of tea that Carmen made for her, brought up on a yellow wooden tray that the
Vice President had picked out for this purpose. Now that Roxane knew Carmen was
a girl she let her sit on the bed with her and drink out of her cup. She liked
to braid Carmen’s hair, which was as shiny and black as a pool of oil. Some
mornings the weight of Carmen’s hair between her fingers was the only thing
that made any sense at all to her. There was comfort in pretending that she had
been detained in order to braid the hair of this young woman. She was Mozart’s
Susanna. Carmen was the Countess Rosina. The hair folded and looped into heavy
black ribbons, perfectly ordered. There was nothing they could say to each
other. When Roxane was finished, Carmen would go and stand behind her, brushing
Roxane’s hair until it shined, then twist it into an identical braid. In this
way, only for the little time they had together in the mornings, they were
sisters, girlfriends, the same. They were happy together when it was just the
two of them alone. They never thought of Beatriz, who shot dice against the
pantry door in the kitchen with the boys.