Ann Patchett (43 page)

Glorious light.

Vice President Ruben Iglesias, who thought he
would not live to feel once again the sensation of grass beneath his feet,
stepped off the shale stone walkway and sank into the luxury of his own yard. He
had stared at it every day from the living-room window but now that he was
actually there it seemed like a new world. Had he ever walked around his own
lawn in the evening? Had he made a mental note of the trees, the miraculous
flowering bushes that grew up around the wall? What were they called? He dropped
his face into the nest of deep purple blossoms and inhaled. Dear God, if he
were to get out of this alive he would be attentive to his plants. Maybe he
would work as a gardener. The new leaves were bright green and velvety to
touch. He stroked them between his thumb and forefinger, careful not to bruise.
Too many evenings he had come home after dark. He saw the life in his garden as
a series of shadows and silhouettes. If there was ever such a thing as a second
chance he would have his coffee outside in the morning. He would come home to
have lunch with his wife in the afternoons on a blanket beneath the trees. His
two girls would be in school, but he would hold his son on his knees and teach
him the names of birds. How had he come to live in such a beautiful place? He
walked through the grass towards the west side of the house and the grass was
so heavy he knew it would be difficult to cut. He liked it that way. Maybe he
would never have the grass mown again. If a man had a ten-foot wall then he
could do whatever he wanted with his yard. He could make love to his wife late
at night in the place where the wall made a pocket of lawn and three slender
trees grew in a semicircle. They could come out after the children were in bed,
after the servants were asleep, and who would see them? The earth they lie down
on is as soft as their bed. He pictured her long dark hair undone and spread
over the heavy grass. He would be a better husband in the future, a better
father. He got on his knees and reached between the tall yellow lilies. He
pulled up a weed that was as high as the flowers, its stem as thick as a
finger, then another, and another. He filled his hands with green stems, roots
and dirt. There was a great deal of work to be done.

The soldiers did not push the people or direct
them in any way. They simply stood against the wall, spacing themselves apart
at regular intervals. They leaned against the wall and took in the sun. It was
good to do something different. It was good even to all be armed again, to be a
line of soldiers holding guns. The hostages raised their arms above their heads
and stretched. Some of them lay down in the grass, others examined the flowers.
Gen was not looking at the plants, he was looking at the soldiers, and when he
found Carmen she gave him a very small nod and pointed the tip of her rifle
ever so slightly in the direction of Cesar’s tree. Everyone looked so glad to
be out in the daylight. Carmen wanted to say, I did this for you. I’m the one
who asked, but she kept perfectly quiet. She had to look away from Gen to keep
from smiling.

Gen found Roxane with Mr. Hosokawa, walking
hand in hand, as if this was some other garden and they were alone. They looked
different this morning, not so improbable together, and Gen wondered if he
looked different as well. He thought perhaps he shouldn’t bother them, but he
had no idea how long they would be allowed to stay outside.

“I’ve located the boy,” Gen said.

“The boy?”
Mr. Hosokawa said.

“The singer.”

“Oh, yes, the boy, of course.”

Gen said it again in English and together the
three of them walked to a tree near the very back section of wall.

“He’s up there?” Roxane said, but she could
barely concentrate, the breeze distracted her, the lush intertwining plants. She
felt the sun curving over her cheeks. She wanted to touch the
wall,
she wanted to tangle her fingers up in the grass. She
had never given a thought to grass before in her life.

“This is his tree.”

Roxane cocked her head back and sure enough she
saw the bottom soles of two boots dangling in the branchs. She could make out
his shirt, the underside of his chin.
“Cesar?”

A face looked down between the leaves.

“Tell him he sings beautifully,” she said to
Gen. “Tell him I want to be his teacher.”

“She’s fooling me,” Cesar called down.

“Why do you think we’re all outside?” Gen said.
“Does this look like fooling to you? She wanted to come outside and talk to
you, and the Generals decided that everyone could come along. Doesn’t that seem
important enough to you?”

It was true. Cesar could see everything from
where he sat. All three of the Generals and every one of the soldiers except
Gilbert and Jesus were outside. They must have been left behind to guard the
house. Every one of the hostages was walking around the yard like he was drunk
or blind, touching and sniffing, weaving and then suddenly sitting down. They
were in love with the place. They wouldn’t leave if you tore the wall down. If
you poked them in the back with your gun and told them to get going they would
still run to you. “So you’re outside,” Cesar said.

“He isn’t planning on staying in that tree, is
he?” Roxane asked.

It was remarkable even to Cesar that he had not
been called down for duty. He would have gone. He could only imagine that in
the excitement of deciding to let everyone outside he had been forgotten. He
had been forgotten by everyone but Roxane Coss.

“She doesn’t think I’m a fool?”

“He wants to know if you think he’s a fool,”
Gen said.

She sighed at the self-indulgence of children. “Staying
up in the tree seems foolish, but the singing, not at all.”

“Foolish for the tree and not the singing,” Gen
reported. “Come down and talk to her.”

“I’m not sure,” Cesar said. But he was sure. He
had already pictured the two of them singing together, their voices rising,
their hands clasped.

“What are you going to do, live in the tree?” Gen
called. His neck was aching from dropping his head back.

“How do you sound so much like Carmen?” Cesar
said. He reached down and took hold of the branch beneath him. He had been up
there a long time. One of his legs was stiff and the other was completely
asleep. When his feet hit the ground they did nothing to support him and he
fell into a pile at their feet, striking his head against the trunk of the tree
that had held him.

Roxane Coss dropped to her knees and put her
hands on either side of the boy’s head. She could feel the blood jumping in his
temples. “My God, I didn’t mean for him to throw himself out of the tree.”

Mr. Hosokawa caught a flash of a smile cross
Cesar’s face. It was released and then just as quickly suppressed, though the
boy never opened his eyes. “Tell her he’s fine,” Mr. Hosokawa said to Gen. “And
tell the boy he can get up now.”

Gen helped Cesar into a sitting position,
leaned him like a floppy doll against the tree. Though Cesar’s head was
splitting he didn’t mind opening his eyes. Roxane Coss was crouching down so
close to him it was as if he could see inside her. Look at the blue of her
eyes! They were so much deeper, more complicated than he could have imagined
from a distance. She still had on a bathrobe and white pajamas and not twelve
centimeters from his nose her pajamas formed a
V
where he could see the place her breasts came together. Who was this old
Japanese man who was always with her? He looked too much like the President. In
fact, Cesar suspected that maybe he
was
the
President,
regardless of any lies he might have told, right
in front of them the whole time.

“Pay attention,” she said, and then the
translator said it in Spanish. She sang five notes. She wanted him to listen
and repeat, to follow the notes. He could see right inside her mouth, a damp,
pink cave. It was the most intimate thing of all.

He opened his mouth and croaked a little,
then
he touched his head with his fingertips.

“That’s all right,” she said. “You can sing
later. Did you sing at home, before you came here?”

Certainly he sang the way people will sing, not
thinking about it when he was doing something else. He could mimic the people
they heard sometimes when the radio worked, but that wasn’t about singing so
much as it was about making people laugh.

“Does he want to learn? Would he be willing to
practice very hard to see if he has a real voice?”

“To practice with her?” Cesar asked Gen. “Just
the two of us?”

“I imagine there would be other people there.”

Cesar touched Gen’s sleeve. “Tell her I’m shy. Tell
her I’d work much better if we could be alone.”

“Once you learn English you can tell her that
yourself,” Gen said.

“What does he want?” Mr. Hosokawa said. He was
standing over them, trying to keep the sun out of Roxane’s eyes.

“Impossible things,” Gen said. Then he said to
the boy in Spanish, “Yes or no, do you want her to teach you to sing?”

“Of course I do,” Cesar said.

“We’ll start this afternoon,” Roxane said. “We’ll
start with scales.” She picked up Cesar’s hand and patted it. He turned pale
again and closed his eyes.

“Let him rest,” Mr. Hosokawa said. “The boy
wants to sleep.”

Lothar Falken put his hands flat against the
wall and stretched his hamstrings, pressing one heel down and then the other. He
touched his toes and rocked his hips from side to side and when he felt his
legs were warm and limber he began to run barefoot through the grass. The
soldiers bristled at first, leaned forward,
aimed
their rifles halfheartedly in his general direction, but he kept running. It
was a large yard in terms of the size of lawns in cities, but it was still
small in terms of a track, and a few minutes after Lothar had gone outside the
sight of any one person, he had looped back around again, his head up, his arms
pumping by his chest. He was a slender man with long, graceful legs, and while
it might have gone unnoticed while he was lying on the couch, here in the sun,
running rings around the vice-presidential mansion, it was easy to see that the
manufacturer of German pharmaceuticals had once been an athlete. With every lap
he felt his body again, the relation of muscle to bone, the oxygen stirring his
blood. He kicked his feet high behind him, every step going deep into the thick
grass. After a while Manuel Flores of
Spain
began to run alongside him,
keeping pace at first and then falling back. Simon Thibault began to run and
proved himself to be almost Falken’s match. Victor Fyodorov handed his
cigarette to his friend Yegor and joined in for two rounds. Such a beautiful
day, to run seemed only fitting. He collapsed exactly where he had started, his
heart beating at the cage of his ribs with a manic fury.

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.”