Authors: Bel Canto
Ann Patchett (8 page)
No one on the floor raised a hand and the
conclusion was that no doctors were present. But that wasn’t true. Dr. Gomez
was lying in the back, almost to the dining room, and his wife was stabbing him
sharply in the ribs with two red lacquered fingernails. He had given up his
practice years ago to become a hospital administrator. When was the last time
he had sewn a man up? In his days of practice he had been a pulmonologist. Certainly
he had not run a needle through skin since his residency. He was probably no
more qualified to do a decent job than his wife, who at least kept a canvas of
petit point going all the time. Without taking a single stitch he saw how the
whole thing would unravel: there would be an infection, certainly; they would
not bring in the necessary antibiotics; later the wound would have to be
opened, drained, resewn. Right there on the Vice President’s
face
.
He shuddered at the thought of it. It would not go well. People would blame
him. There would be publicity later. A doctor, the head of the hospital,
killing a man perhaps, even though no one could say it was his fault. He felt
his hands shaking. He was only lying there and still his hands trembled against
his chest. What hands were these to sew a man’s face, to leave a scar for which
they would both become known? And then there was
this girl
descending the staircase with her basket, looking so much like hope
itself. She was an angel! He had never been able to find such
intelligent-looking girls to work on the hospital floors, such pretty girls who
could keep their uniforms so clean.
“Get up there!” his wife hissed. “Or I’ll raise
your arm for you.”
The doctor closed his eyes and gently wagged
his head from side to side in a way that would attract no attention to
himself
. Whatever would happen would happen. The stitches
would neither save the man nor kill him. That card was already played and there
was nothing to do but wait and see the outcome.
Esmeralda handed the basket to Joachim Messner
but she did not step away. Instead, she lifted the lid, which was lined in a
padded rose-covered print, took a needle from the tomato-shaped cushion and a
spool of black thread, and threaded the needle. She bit off the thread with a
delicate snap and made a neat little knot at the end. All of the men, even the
Generals, watched her as if she was doing something quite miraculous, something
far beyond needles and thread that they could never have managed themselves. Then
she reached into her skirt pocket and took out a bottle of rubbing alcohol into
which she lowered the needle and bounced it up and down several times.
Sterilization.
And here she was a simple country girl.
Nothing could have been as thoughtful. She pulled the needle up holding only
the knot on the thread and extended it to Joachim Messner.
“Ah,” he said, taking the knot between his
forefinger and thumb.
There was some discussion. First it was thought
that they could both stand and then it seemed better for the Vice President to
sit down and then best of all for him to lie down near a table lamp where the
light was best. The two men were stalling, each dreading it more than the
other. Messner rubbed his hands in alcohol three times. Iglesias was thinking
he would rather be hit by the gun again. He lay down on the carpet away from
his wife and children and Messner bent over him, leaning in and then blocking
his own light, leaning back and turning the Vice President’s head one way and
then the other. The Vice President tried to make
himself
think of something pleasant and so he thought of Esmeralda. It was really quite
remarkable how she managed things. Perhaps his wife had taught her that, the
concept of bacteria, the need to keep things clean. How lucky he was to have
such a girl looking after his children. The blood no longer pulsed but it
continued to seep, and Messner stopped to blot it away with a napkin. Considering
the circumstances, the blaring messages pouring in through the windows, the
constant on and off of sirens, the hostages stretched across the floor, the
terrorists sleepy with their guns and knives, you would have thought that no
one would care what became of Ruben Iglesias’s cheek, and yet the people craned
their necks up like turtles to see what would happen next, to see the needle go
down for that first stick.
“Five minutes is what you have left,” General
Alfredo said.
Joachim Messner pinched the skin closed with
his left hand and with his right put the needle in. Thinking that a quick
movement would be kinder, he misjudged the thickness of the material at hand
and drove the needle hard into the bone. Both men made a noise that was less
than a scream, sharp but small, and Messner jerked the needle out again with
some effort, leaving them exactly where they had started. Except that now the
little hole was working up a drop of blood
itself
.
No one had asked for her but there was
Esmeralda cleaning her hands. She had a look on her face the Vice President had
seen her use with his children. They had tried at something and failed and she
had let things go far enough. She took the needle and thread from Joachim
Messner and bobbed it again in the alcohol. It was with great relief that he
moved aside. He did not care about her intentions or qualifications, he only
watched her as she bent beside the light.
Ruben Iglesias thought her face was kind in the
beatific manner of saints, even though she was not exactly smiling. He was
grateful for her serious brown eyes, which were now just inches from his own. He
would not close his eyes, no matter how great the temptation. He knew that he
would never again see such concentration and compassion focused on his face
even if he were to survive this ordeal and live to be a hundred. When the
needle came towards him he held still and breathed in the grassy smell of her
hair. He did feel like a button that had come undone, a pair of child’s
trousers spread across her warm lap that she sewed in the evening. It was not
so bad. He was simply one more thing for Esmeralda to put together again,
something else in need of repair. It
hurt,
the little
needle. He did not like to see it pass before his eye. He did not like the
small tug at the end of every stitch that made him feel like a trout, caught. But
he was grateful to be so close to this girl he saw every day. There she was on
the lawn with his children, sitting on a sheet beneath a tree, pouring them tea
in chipped cups, Marco on her lap, his daughters, Rosa and Imelda, holding
dolls. There she was backing into the hallway, good night, good night, she
says, no more water, go to sleep, close your eyes, good night. She was silent
in her concentration and still the very thought of her voice made him relax,
and though it hurt he knew he would be sorry when it was over, when her hip was
no longer pressed against his waist. Then she was finished and she made another
knot. Like a kiss she leaned down to him and bit the thread, her lips having no
choice but to brush the seam her hands had made. He could hear the quick
cutting of her teeth, the disconnection of what bound them, and then she sat up
again. She ran her hand across the top of his head, a gift for what he had
suffered.
Pretty Esmeralda.
“Very brave,” she said.
Anyone who was close enough to see them smiled
and sighed. She had done such nice work, laid down a neat train track of even
black stitches along the side of his head. It was what one would expect from a
girl who had been raised to sew. Marco shinnied back into Esmeralda’s arms when
she went to rejoin them. He pressed his head against her breasts and breathed
her in. The Vice President himself did not move, the pain and the pleasure of
it were all colliding and he released himself into the moment. He closed his
eyes as if he had been given a proper anesthetic.
“Both of you,” the General said to Messner and
Gen. “Go lie down. We’ll discuss this.” He used his gun to point to the floor,
someplace not too close by.
Messner did not try to resume negotiations. “I
don’t lie down,” he said, but his voice was tired enough that one might have
thought he would have liked to. “I wait outside. I’ll come back again in one
hour.” With that he gave a courteous nod to Gen and simply opened the door and
let himself out. Gen wondered if he might do the
same,
explain that he would be waiting outside. But Gen knew he was not Messner.
There was no putting one’s finger on it exactly, but it was as if there would
be no point in shooting Messner. He seemed like someone who had been shot every
day of his life and had simply had enough of it. Gen, on the other hand, his
mind still full of stitches, was feeling decidedly mortal. Mortal and loyal,
and he went to take his place beside Mr. Hosokawa.
“What did they say?” Mr. Hosokawa whispered.
“I think they’ll let the women go. It isn’t
decided yet, but they seem to want to. They say there are too many of us.” On
every side of him was a person, some not six centimeters away. He felt like he
was taking the Yamanote line into the
Mr. Hosokawa closed his eyes and felt
a calmness
spread over him like a soft blanket. “Good,” he
said. Roxane Coss would be released, safely off in time to sing in
a few days the scare of this event would leave her. She would follow their fate
through the safety of the newspaper. She would tell the story at cocktail
parties and people would be amazed. But people were always amazed. In
singing Gilda the first week. It seemed to him the perfect coincidence. She is
singing Gilda and he is still a boy with his father in
from so far away and yet still her voice is as clear and delicate as it had
been when he was standing close enough to touch her. Her bold gestures, her
stage makeup, are perfect from a distance. She sings with her father,
Rigoletto. She tells her father she loves him while in the high stands the boy
Katsumi Hosokawa takes his father’s hand. The opera pulls up from the tapestry
rugs and the half-empty glasses of pisco sours in the living room, it moves
away from specific birthdays and factory plans. It rises and turns above the
host country until, gently, it lands on the stage, where it becomes its whole
self, something distant and beautiful. All of the orchestra supports her now,
it reaches with the voices, lifts the voices up,
the
beautiful voice of Roxane Coss is singing her Gilda to the young Katsumi
Hosokawa.
Her voice vibrating the tiny bones deep inside his
ear.
Her voice stays inside him, becomes him. She is singing her part to
him, and to a thousand other people. He is anonymous, equal, loved.
Lying on the floor at opposite ends of the room
were two priests of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Monsignor Rolland was
behind the sofa the Thibaults were in front of, having thought it would be
better to stay away from the windows in case a shooting were to occur. As a
leader of his people he had a responsibility to protect himself. Catholic
priests had often been targets in political
uprisings,
you only needed to look at the papers. His vestments were damp with sweat.
Death was a holy mystery. Its timing was for God alone to decide. But there
were vital reasons for him to live. It was thought that the Monsignor was
virtually guaranteed the spot of bishop if and when the present, ancient Bishop
Romero completed his tenure through death. It was Monsignor Rolland, after all,
who attended the functions and brokered the deals that made a wider path for
the church. Nothing in the world was absolutely certain, not even Catholicism
in these poverty-stricken jungles. Just look at the encroaching tide of
Mormons, with their money and their missionaries. The gall of sending
missionaries into a Catholic country! As if they were savages ready for
conversion. Lying with his head on a small sofa pillow that he had managed to
discreetly pilfer on his way to the floor, his hips still gave him pain and he
thought of how, when this was over, there would be a long, hot bath and then he
would take at the very least three days in his own soft bed. Of course, there
was a positive way of looking at things, assuming there was no overt madness
and he was released in the first wave of hostages, the kidnapping could be just
the thing to seal the Monsignor’s fate. The publicity of being kidnapped could
make a holy martyr even of a man who had escaped unhurt.
And this would have been exactly the case, were
it not for a young priest who was lying on the cold marble floor in the front
hallway. Monsignor Rolland had met Father Arguedas, had been present when he
received holy orders two years ago, but of this he had no memory. This country
did not suffer from a lack of young men wanting to sign up for the priesthood. With
their short dark hair and stiff black shirts these priests were as indistinguishable
from one another as the children in their first communion whites. The Monsignor
had no idea that Father Arguedas was even in the room, never once having set
eyes on him during the course of the evening. So how did a young priest come to
be invited to a party at the home of the Vice President?
Father Arguedas was twenty-six years old and
worked as a third-tier parish priest on the other side of the capital city,
lighting candles, serving communion, and maintaining duties no higher than
those of a well-established altar boy. In the few moments of his day that were
not consumed by loving God through prayer and serving the flock through deeds,
he went to the library at the university and listened to opera. He sat in the
basement, protected by the wings of an old wooden carrel, and listened to
recordings through a set of giant black headphones that were too tight and made
his head ache. The university was hardly wealthy and opera was not a priority
for spending, so the collection was still on heavy records instead of compact
discs. Although there were some pieces he liked better than others, Father
Arguedas listened without discrimination, everything from
Die
Zauberflöte
to
Trouble in Tahiti
. He closed
his eyes and silently mouthed along the words he did not understand. At first
he cursed the ones before him, the ones who left their fingerprints on the
records, or scratched them or, worse, simply took one record away, so that
there was no third act for
Lulu
. Then he remembered
himself as a priest and went to his knees on the cement floor of the library
basement.