Ann Patchett (47 page)

It was a fine time, except for the fact that
Messner didn’t linger anymore. He was thinner now. His clothes hung from his
shoulders as if they were sitting alone on a wire coat hanger. He only dropped
things off and then was in a hurry to get away.

Cesar had his lesson in the morning, and no
matter how hard he begged them to go outside, everyone sat down and listened. He
was improving so quickly, even the other boys knew that what they were seeing
was more interesting than television. He didn’t sound a thing like Roxane
anymore. He was finding his own depth. Every morning, he unfolded his voice
before them like a rare jeweled fan; the more you listened, the more intricate
it became. The crowd assembled in the living room could always count on the
fact that he would be even better than he had been the day before. That was
what was so astonishing about it. He had yet to show the slightest hint of
finding the edges of what he was capable of. He sang with hypnotic passion and
then with passionate lust. How impossible it seemed, so much voice pouring out
of such an average boy. His arms still hung useless at his sides.

When Cesar released his final note, they were
raucous, stamping their feet and whistling. “Hail, Cesar!” they
called,
hostage and terrorist alike. He was their boy. There
was not a man or woman there who did not acclaim his greatness.

Thibault leaned over and whispered in the Vice
President’s ear. “One must wonder how our diva is taking this.”

“With a brave face, no doubt,” Ruben whispered
back, and then he put two fingers in his mouth and blew a long, high whistle.

Cesar took a few nervous bows and when he was
through the crowd began to call for Roxane. “Sing! Sing!” they demanded. She
shook her head several times, but they did not accept this. It only made them
call out more. When she finally stood she was laughing, because who did not
feel the joy in such music? She raised her hands to try and silence them.

“Only one!” she said. “I can’t compete with
this.” She leaned over and whispered in Kato’s ear and he nodded. What was she
whispering? They did not speak the same language.

Kato had transcribed the music from
Il Barbiere di Siviglia
for the piano and his fingers
sprang high off the keys as if they were scorching to the touch. There was a
time when she had missed the orchestra, the sweet weight of so many violins in
front of her, but she never thought about it now. She stepped into the music as
if it was a cool stream on a hot day and began “Una Voce Poco Fa.” The music
sounded exactly right to her now, and she thought this was the way Rossini had
always intended it to be. Despite what anyone might whisper, she could
certainly compete, and she could win. Her singing was a meringue, and when she
trilled past the highest notes she put her hands on her hips and rocked them
back and forth, smiling wickedly at the audience. She was an actress, too. She
must teach that part to Cesar.
A thousand wayward tricks,
and subtle wiles, I’d play before they should guide my will.
They
cheered for her. Oh, how they loved those ridiculously high notes, the
impossible acrobatics that she tossed off as if they were nothing at all. At
the end she made them dizzy, and then she threw up her hands and said,
“Outside, all of you,” and even though they didn’t know what she was saying,
they followed her command and went out into the sunlight.

Mr. Hosokawa laughed and kissed her cheek. Who
could believe such a woman existed? He went to the kitchen to make her a cup of
tea and Cesar sat beside her on the piano bench, hoping that his lesson might
be extended now that everyone was gone.

The rest went outside to play soccer or sit in
the grass and watch the soccer game. Ruben had been able to petition a spade
and a small hand rake from the gardener’s shed, which was locked, and he turned
over the soil in the flower beds, which he had meticulously cleared of weeds
and grass. Ishmael skipped the game in order to help him. He didn’t mind. He
never liked to play. Ruben gave him a silver serving spoon with which to dig. “My
father had a wonderful way with plants,” Ruben told him. “All he had to do was
say a few kind words to the ground and here they would come. He had meant to be
a farmer, like his father, but the drought caught them all.” Ruben shrugged and
slipped his spade into the hard soil, turned it over.

“He would be proud of us now,” Ishmael said.

The boys who were on guard climbed into the ivy
banks at the edge of the yard, leaned their guns against the stucco wall, and
joined the game. The runners gave up their running to play. “Una Voce Poco Fa”
still bounced around in their heads, and even though they could not hum it,
they chased the ball to the rhythm of the song. Beatriz had gotten the ball
away from Simon Thibault and kicked it over to Jesus, who had a clear shot to
take it past two chairs that were set up as the goal, and the Generals yelled
to him, “Now!
Now!”
The light was cut to lace by the
trees that had grown so thick with leaves in the last few months but still the
light was everywhere. It was early, hours before lunch. Kato left the piano and
came outside to sit on the grass in the sun beside Gen, so the only sound was
the kick of the ball, the calling of names, Gilbert, Francisco, Paco, as they
ran.

When Roxane Coss screamed it was because she
saw a man she didn’t recognize walking quickly into the room. She wasn’t
startled by his uniform or by his gun, she was used to those, but the way he
came towards them was terrifying. He walked like no wall could stop him.
Whatever he meant to do, his mind was made up, and nothing she could say or
sing would ever make a difference. Cesar jumped up from the piano bench where
he had been sitting and before he had gotten anywhere close to the door he was
shot. He fell straight forward, not putting out his hands to save himself, not
calling for anyone to help. Roxane crouched beneath the piano, her voice
sounding out the alarm. She crawled towards the boy who she was sure was meant
to be the greatest singer of his time, and covered his body with her own, lest
something else should happen to him. She could feel his warm blood soaking her
shirt, wetting her skin. She took his head in her hands and kissed his cheeks.

At the sound of the shot it seemed the man with
the gun divided, first into two and then four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two,
sixty-four. With every loud pop more came and they spread through the house and
jumped through the windows, poured through the doors into the garden. No one
could see where they had come from, only that they were everywhere. Their boots
seemed to kick the house apart, to open up every entrance. They covered the
playing field while the ball was still rolling away from the game. The guns fired
over and over and it was impossible to say if the ones who were dropping were
trying to protect themselves or if they had been hit. It was an instant and in
that instant everything that had been known about the world was forgotten and
relearned. The men were shouting something, but with the rushing of blood in
his ears, the sickening spin of adrenaline, the deafness left over from the
gunfire, not even Gen could understand them. He saw General Benjamin look back
towards the wall, possibly gauging its height, and then with a shot Benjamin
was down, the bullet catching him squarely in the side of his head. In one shot
he lost both his life and the life of his brother, Luis, who would soon be
taken from prison and executed for conspiracy. General Alfredo had already
fallen. Humberto, Ignacio, Guadalupe, dead. Then Lothar Falken put his hands up
and Father Arguedas put his hands up, Bernardo and Sergio and Beatriz put their
hands up.
“Ort und Stelle bleiben!”
Lothar said,
stay put,
but where was the translator?
German was useless to him now. General Hector started to put up his hands but
he was shot before they had passed his chest.

The strangers cut the group apart as if they
knew every member intimately. There was not a second’s hesitation as to who was
to be pulled away, handed down the line of men towards the back of the house
where the sounds of guns being fired reported back to them without any pause. There
were not that many people in the house. Even if they meant to shoot every one
of them a hundred times, they would not have fired so many shots. Ranato was
off his feet, twisting and screaming like a wild animal as he was pulled away
by two men, each holding one of his arms. Father Arguedas rushed forward to
help the boy and then just as quickly he was hit. He thought he had been shot,
a bullet bearing in to the back of his neck, and in that moment he remembered
his God. But when he was on the grass he knew he was wrong. He was very much
alive. He opened his eyes and found himself looking at Ishmael, his friend, not
two minutes dead. The Vice President was crying into the boy’s neck, his eyes
pressed closed, his mouth stretched open wide. He was holding his child’s
lovely head in his hands. In Ishmael’s hands was the spoon with which he had
been digging.

Beatriz held her hands up straight above her
head and the sun hit the crystal of Gen’s watch and threw a perfect circle of
light against the wall. All around her were the people she knew. There was
General Hector
lying
on his side, his glasses gone,
his shirt a soggy mess. There was Gilbert, who once she had kissed out of
boredom. He was flat on his back, his arms stretched out to the sides as if he
meant to fly. Then there was someone else, but that was awful. She couldn’t
tell who it was. She felt afraid of them now, the people she knew. She had more
in common with the strangers who were shooting because she and they were all
alive. She would keep her arms the straightest of them all. That was the
difference. She would do exactly what she was told and she would be spared. She
closed her eyes and looked for her dark pile of sins, hoping she could release
a few more on her own without the help of the priest, thinking that fewer sins
would give her a lightness that these new men would recognize. But the sins were
gone. She looked and looked behind the darkness of her eyelids but there was
not a single sin left and she was amazed. She heard Oscar Mendoza calling her
name, “Beatriz! Beatriz!” and she opened her eyes. He was coming towards her,
his arms stretched out. He was running towards her like a lover and she smiled
at him. Then she heard another gunshot but this time it knocked her off her
feet. A pain exploded up high in her chest and spit her out of this terrible
world.

Gen saw Beatriz fall and called for Carmen. Where
was Carmen? He did not know if she was outside. He could not see her anywhere.
No one was
more clever
than Carmen. No one was more
likely to escape, unless she did something stupid. What if she had some idea of
saving him? “She is my wife! She is my wife!” he cried into the bedlam, because
that was the only plan he had ever devised, even though he had never asked her
to marry him, or asked the priest to bless them. She was his wife in every way
that mattered and that would save her.

But nothing could save her. Carmen was already
dead, killed right at the start. She had been in the kitchen putting the dishes
back into the china closet when Mr. Hosokawa came in to make the tea. He bowed
to her, which always made her smile shyly. He had not reached the kettle when
they heard Roxane Coss. Not a song but a scream and then a long, wolflike howl.
Together they turned towards the door, Mr. Hosokawa and Carmen. They ran
together down the hallway, Carmen, younger, faster, in front of him. They were
through the dining room when they heard the shot that brought down Cesar. They
stepped into the living room just as a man with a gun turned to face them, just
as Roxane took the body of her student in her arms. Time, so long suspended,
now came back with such force that it overlapped and everything happened at
once. Roxane saw them as the man with the gun saw them, Carmen saw Cesar, and
Mr. Hosokawa saw Carmen and he scooped her from the space in front of him, the
force of his arm hitting the side of her waist like a blow. He was in front of
her the instant she was being thrown behind him, the instant the man who saw
her standing in front, separate from Mr. Hosokawa, fired his gun. From six feet
away there would have been no missing her except for the confusion, the firing
of guns, the frenzy of voices,
the
man who was on the
list to save stepping in front of her. One shot fixed them together in a
pairing no one had considered before: Carmen and Mr. Hosokawa, her head just to
the left of his as if she was looking over his shoulder.

epilogue

w
hen
the ceremony was over, the wedding
party walked out into the late afternoon sun. Edith Thibault kissed the bride
and groom and then kissed her own husband for good measure. There was
a brightness
in her that the other three lacked. She still
believed she was lucky. She had been the one who insisted that she and Simon
come to
Lucca
for the day to be witnesses for Gen and Roxane. It was only right to wish them
well. “I thought it was beautiful,” she said in French. The four of them spoke
French.

Thibault held his wife’s arm as if he was
dizzy. It would have been nice if someone had thought to fly Father Arguedas up
to perform the ceremony, but no one had thought of it and now the thing was
done. The French government fully expected Thibault would resume his post after
an adequate period of rest, but when the Thibaults left the house for
Paris
they took all of
their personal belongings with them. Simon and Edith would never set foot in
that godforsaken country again.
Quel bled,
they said
now.