Ann Patchett (40 page)

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.

Sometimes Gen will stop his memory there.

Her skin, the night, the grass, to
be outside and then to be inside Carmen.
He doesn’t know to want for more because
nothing in his life has been as much as this. At the very moment he could have
been taking her away, he is pulling her closer. Her hair is tangled around his
neck. On that night he thinks that no one has ever had so much and only later
will he know that he should have asked for more. His fingers slip into the soft
indentations between her ribs, the delicate gullies carved out by hunger. He
feels her teeth, takes her tongue. Carmen, Carmen, Carmen, Carmen. In the
future, he will try to say her name enough, but he never can.

Inside, the house slept, the guests and guards,
and no one knew the difference. The Japanese man and his beloved soprano
upstairs in bed, the translator and Carmen beneath the six stars outside,
nobody missed them. Only Simon Thibault was awake, and he woke up from dreaming
of Edith, his wife. When he was fully awake and could see where he was and
remember that she wasn’t there with him, he began to cry. He tried to stop
himself but he could see her so vividly. They had been in bed in the dream.
They had been making love and in that love each had gently said the other’s
name. When it was over, Edith had sat up in the tangle of blankets and wrapped
her blue scarf around his shoulders to keep him warm. Simon Thibault buried his
face in that scarf now but the crying only came harder. Nothing he could think
of would stop it, and after a while he didn’t even try.

nine

i
n
the morning everything was right. The
sun came pouring in through the windows and showed up a series of irregular
stains on the carpet. Outside, the birds whistled and called. Two of the boys,
Jesus and Sergio, circled the house, their boots heavy with dew, their rifles
raised. At home, they might have shot a bird or two but here shooting was
Strictly Prohibited Unless Absolutely Necessary. The birds darted past them,
their wings making a breeze in the boys’ hair. They looked in the window and
saw Carmen and Beatriz in the kitchen together, taking rolls out of large
plastic packages while eggs boiled to hard-cooked on the stove. They looked at
each other and Carmen smiled a little and Beatriz pretended not to see it,
which Carmen thought was probably a good
sign,
or good
enough. The room smelled of strong coffee. Carmen disappeared into the china
closet and came back carrying a stack of blue-and-gold plates with the word
Wedgwood
stamped on the bottom, because what was the good
of having them if they were never used?

Everything was like it was every other morning.
Except Roxane Coss did not come down to the piano.
Kato
had been waiting. After a while he stood up from the piano bench and stretched
his legs. He leaned over and picked out a piece of Schumann, the simple one
that everybody knows, music to pass the time. He didn’t even look at the keys.
It was as if he was talking to himself and didn’t seem to know that everyone
could hear him. Roxane was sleeping in. Carmen had not taken up her breakfast. It
was not such a terrible thing. She sang every day, after all, didn’t she
deserve to rest?

But wasn’t it strange that Mr. Hosokawa was
asleep as well? There on the couch, with everyone milling around him, he was
still on his back, his glasses folded closed on his chest, his lips parted. No
one ever saw him sleeping. He was always the first one up in the morning. Maybe
he was sick. Two of the boys, Guadalupe and Humberto, the inside morning
guards, leaned over the back of the couch and watched him to see if he was
still breathing, which he was, so they left him alone.

Quarter past eight, Beatriz knew because she
had the watch. Too much fucking, she thought, but didn’t say it to Carmen. She
was letting Carmen think she had forgotten when no such thing was true. She
didn’t know how she would use this information, but she savored it like unspent
money. There were so many possibilities for such knowledge.

People get used to their little routines. They
drank their coffee, brushed their teeth, and then they came into the living room
and Roxane Coss sang. That was morning. But now they watched the stairs. Where
was she? If she wasn’t sick then shouldn’t she be downstairs? Was consistency
too much to ask for? They gave her so much respect, glory, wasn’t it right to
think she would respect them in return? They watched Kato, who stood there like
the man at the train station who looks at the open train door long after all
the passengers have gotten off. The man who you know has been jilted long
before he realizes it himself. He tapped at the keys absently, still standing.
He was wondering at what point he could sit down and really play without her. It
was the first time Kato had to ask himself: What was he without her? What would
happen when all of this was over and he no longer spent entire days at the
piano, his nights reading over music? He was a pianist now. He had rows of fine
blue tendons in his fingers to prove it. Could he go back to that other life in
which he got up at four
A.M.
to play furtively for an hour
before work? What would happen when he was reinstated as a senior vice
president at Nansei and once again became the numbers man, the man without a
soprano? That’s all he would be. He remembered what had happened to the first
accompanist, how he chose to die rather than to go out in the world alone. The
chilling emptiness of Kato’s future made his fingers tighten and slip off the
keys without a sound.

And then something remarkable happened:

Someone else began to sing,
an
a
cappella voice from the far side of the room, a lovely, familiar
voice. People were confused at first and then one by one all the boys started
laughing, Humberto and Jesus, Sergio and Francisco, Gilbert, there were others
coming from down the hall, big belly laughs, laughs in which they were forced
to drape their arms around each other’s necks just to stand up, but Cesar kept
singing,
“Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore, non feci mai,”
from
Tosca
. And it
was
funny, because he so completely mimicked Roxane. It was as if while the rest of
them slept he had become her, the way she held out her hand when she sang,
Ever a fervent believer, I have laid flowers on the altar
.
It was uncanny, for certainly Cesar looked nothing like the Diva. He was a
spindly boy with blemished skin and two dozen silky black whiskers, but seeing him
was so much like seeing her, the way he tilted his head and then, just at the
very moment she would, closed his eyes. He didn’t seem to hear them laughing.
His gaze was unfocused. He was singing to no one in particular. It wasn’t that
he was mocking her so much as he was just trying to fill up the space where she
should have been. It would have been mocking if it had only been her gestures
he was repeating, but it wasn’t. It was her voice.
The
legendary voice of Roxane Coss.
He held his notes long and clear. He
reached down into the depths of his lungs for the power, the volume he had not
allowed himself when singing alone under his breath. He was singing now, a part
that was too high for him and yet he jumped up and grabbed onto the edge of the
note. He pulled himself up and held it. He had no idea what he was saying, but
he knew he was saying it correctly. He had paid too much attention to get it
wrong. He rolled the pronunciation of every word in a perfect arch over his
tongue. He was not a soprano. He did not know Italian. And yet somehow he gave
the illusion of both things and for a moment the room believed in him. The
boys’ laughter dissipated then vanished. Everyone, the guests, the boys, the
Generals, they were all looking at Cesar now. Carmen and Beatriz were drawn out
of the kitchen, their ears cocked, not at all sure if what was happening was
good or bad. Mr. Hosokawa, who knew the music better than all of them, woke up
thinking he was waking up to singing he knew, woke up thinking her voice was strange
this morning, and wondered if maybe she was tired, look, he was still asleep
himself. But he woke up thinking it was her voice.

It is not such a long piece and when it was
over Cesar barely took in breath. He went ahead because what if this was his
only chance to sing? He hadn’t meant to exactly, but when he saw that she
wasn’t coming down, that everyone was waiting, the notes welled up in his
throat like a wave and nothing he
could do would
have
held them down. How brilliant it was to sing! How wonderful to hear his own
voice now. He went on to the aria from
La Wally
. He
could only
sing the pieces that were Roxane’s favorites, the ones she sang over and over
again. Those were the only ones whose words he could be absolutely sure of, and
if he faked the words, made some sounds that were close but might mean
something else entirely, then everyone would see him as a fraud. Cesar did not
know that only four people in the house spoke Italian. It would have been
easier to sing something that they didn’t all associate with her, because how
could he not fail by comparison? But he had no choice, no other material to
chose
from. He didn’t know that there were songs for men and
songs for women, that different pieces were tailored to the abilities of
different voices. All he had heard were the parts for soprano, so why should
they not be his parts? He did not compare himself to her. There was no
comparison. She was the singer. He was only a boy who loved her by singing. Or
was it singing he loved? He could no longer remember. He was too far inside. He
closed his eyes and followed his voice. Somewhere far away he heard the piano
tailing him, then catching up,
then
leading him ahead.
The end of the aria was very high and he had no idea if he would make it. It
was like falling, no, like diving, twisting your body through the air without a
single thought as to how it might land.

Mr. Hosokawa was standing at the piano now in a
confusion of sleep, his hair disheveled, his shirttails crumpled behind him. He
simply didn’t know what to make of it. Part of him thought he should stop the
boy in case he was being disrespectful, but it was all too remarkable, really,
he loved
La Wally
. Still
, there was something
unnerving about watching this boy who now folded his hands over his heart the
way Roxane did; what came out of his mouth was not her but so oddly
reminiscent, as if it was only a poor recording of her voice that he was
hearing. He closed his eyes. Yes, there was a considerable difference. There
was no mistaking it now, but somehow this boy brought on the rocking sensation
of love. Mr. Hosokawa loved Roxane Coss. Perhaps the boy wasn’t even singing. Perhaps
his love was capable of turning the most ordinary objects into her.

Roxane Coss was standing among them listening. How
was it that no one saw her coming down the stairs? She had not stopped to dress
and was wearing a pair of white silk pajamas and the Vice President’s wife’s
blue alpaca robe even though it was too warm for this weather. Her feet were
bare and her hair was loose down her back. After so many months her roots had
grown out and it was easy to see that her hair was in fact a duller shade of
pale brown and thatched with shimmering silver. The boy was singing. His
singing had drawn her out of such a deep sleep. She would have slept for
several more hours but the singing woke her and she followed it down the stairs
in a state of confusion.
A recording?
A cappella?
But then she saw him, Cesar, a boy who had done
nothing to set himself apart until now. When did he learn to sing? Her mind was
racing in every direction. He was good. He was excellent. If someone was to run
across such raw talent in
Milan
, in
New York
, the boy would
be bundled off to a conservatory in a minute. He would be a star, because now
he was nothing, not a minute of training and listen to the depth in his tone! Listen
to the power that shook his narrow shoulders. He was careening towards the end,
towards a high C that he could not be prepared for. She knew the music as well
as she knew her own breath and she rushed towards him, as if he were a child in
the road, as if the note was a speeding car bearing down on him. She grabbed
his wrist.
“Detengase!
Basta!”
She didn’t know Spanish,
yet those two words she heard every day. Stop.
Enough.