Ann Patchett (11 page)

For the most part the separation of hostages
was civil. No two had to be pried apart with a gun. When they knew their time
was really up the men and the women separated, as if a complicated dancing reel
were about to begin and soon they would join and split and change, passing
their partners off only to receive them back into their arms again.

Messner took a stack of business cards out of
his wallet and handed one to each of the Generals and one to Gen and one,
thoughtfully, to the Vice President, and then left the rest in a dish on the
coffee table. “This has my cell phone number,” he said. “That’s just me. You
want to talk to me, you call this number. They’re keeping the phone lines open
to the house for now.”

Each of them looked at the cards feeling
puzzled. It was as if he was asking them to lunch, as if he didn’t understand the
gravity of the situation.

“You may need something,” Messner said. “You
may want to talk to someone out there.”

Gen made a slight bow. He should have bowed to
the waist for Messner, to show him respect for coming into this place, for
risking his life for theirs, but he knew that no one would understand. Then Mr.
Hosokawa came up and took a card from the dish, shook Messner’s hand, and bowed
deeply, his face turned down to the floor.

After that the Generals Benjamin, Alfredo, and
Hector went to the men and from that pack cut out the workers, the waiters and
cooks and cleaning staff, and placed them with the women. It was their ultimate
intention to free the workers through revolution and they would not keep them
hostage. Then they asked if anyone was very ill and had Gen repeat the question
several times. Where one would think that every member would claim a faint
heart, the crowd was remarkably quiet. A handful of very old men shuffled
forward, a handsome Italian man showed a medical identification bracelet and
was reunited to the arms of his wife. Only one man lied and his lie was not
discovered: Dr. Gomez explained that his kidneys had failed years before and he
was late for dialysis already. His wife turned away from him, ashamed. The
sickest among them, the accompanist, appeared too confused to make the request
for himself and so was placed into a chair at the side where they would be
certain not to forget him. The priests were given leave as well. Monsignor
Rolland made the sign of the cross over those who remained, a lovely gesture,
and then walked away, but Father Arguedas, who really had no pressing duties to
attend to, requested permission to stay.

“Stay?” General Alfredo said.

“You’ll need a priest,” he said.

Alfredo smiled slightly, and this was a first. “Really,
you’ll want to go.”

“If the people are here through Sunday, you’ll
need someone to say mass.”

“We will pray on our own.”

“Respectfully, sir,” said the priest, his eyes
cast down. “I will stay.”

And with that the matter was closed. Monsignor
Rolland could do nothing but helplessly watch the whole thing. He was already
standing with the women and the shame of it filled him with murderous rage. He
could have choked the young priest to death with one hand, but it was too late.
He had already been saved.

The Vice President should have been given
medical leave but didn’t even bother asking. Instead, sick with fever and
holding a melted ice pack to his face, he was told to go out the door and down
to the heavy gate in the wall to announce the release to the press. He barely
had a second with his own wife, a decent woman who made the work of her life
the well-being of his career and never said a word as she watched him throw her
work away. He didn’t have a minute with his two daughters, Imelda and Rosa, who
had been so good, lying all day on their sides playing some complicated finger
game with each other that he could not recognize. He said nothing to Esmeralda
because there were no words to thank her. He was worried about her. If he was
killed, would they keep her on? He hoped so. She had such a lovely straight
back and was patient with the children. She had taught them to paint pictures
of animals on small rocks and from those rocks elaborate worlds were made. There
were plenty of them upstairs. Sooner or later he would be able to get away and
go and find them. His wife clutched at their son until he cried out from the
pressure of her hands. She was afraid they would try and take him to the side
with the men, but Ruben stroked her fingers and reassured her. “No one will
count him,” he said. He kissed Marco on the head, kissed his silky, deeply
boyish-smelling hair. Then he went to the door.

He was a better man for the job than President
Masuda. The President couldn’t say anything unless it was written down. He was
not a stupid man, but he lacked spontaneity. Besides, he had a temper and false
pride and would not stand being ordered from the floor to the door and back
again. He would say something unscripted and get himself shot, which would
eventually lead to everyone getting shot. For the first time he thought it was
better that Masuda had stayed home to watch his soap opera because Ruben could
be the servant, the straight man, and in doing so he could save the lives of
his wife and his children and their pretty governess and the famous Roxane
Coss. The particular job he had been given this time was in fact more suited to
the talents of a Vice President. Messner came out and joined him on the front
steps. The day had clouded over but the air was marvelous. The people at the
end of the walkway lowered their guns and out came the women, their dresses
shimmering in the late afternoon light. Were it not for all the police and
photographers, a person walking by might have thought it was a party where
every couple had fought and the women all took it upon themselves to leave
early and alone. They were crying, and their hair fell into tangled knots. Their
makeup was ruined and their skirts were held up in their fists. Most of them
carried their shoes or had left their shoes behind and their stockings were
torn on the flat shale stones of the front walk, though none of them noticed. There
should have been a sinking ship behind them, a burning building. The farther
they got from the house the harder they cried. The few men, the servants, the
infirm, came out behind them, looking helpless in the face of so much sadness
for which they were not responsible.

three

a
clarification: all of the women were released except one. She was somewhere
in the middle of the line. Like the other women, she was looking back into the
living room rather than out the open door, looking back to the floor on which
she’d slept like it hadn’t been a night but several years. She was looking back
at the men who wouldn’t be coming outside, none of whom she actually knew. Except
the Japanese gentleman whose party this had been, and she certainly didn’t
know
him, but he had been helpful with her accompanist,
and for that she searched him out and smiled at him. The men shifted from foot
to foot in their pack, all of them sad-eyed and nervous from the far side of
the room. Mr. Hosokawa returned her smile, a small, dignified acknowledgment,
and bowed his head. With the exception of Mr. Hosokawa, the men were not thinking
about Roxane Coss then. They had forgotten her and the dizzying heights of her
arias. They were watching their wives file out into the bright afternoon,
knowing it was a probability that they would never see them again. The love
they felt rose up into their throats and blocked the air. There went Edith
Thibault, the Vice President’s wife, the beautiful Esmeralda.

Roxane Coss was very nearly at the door,
perhaps half a dozen women away, when General Hector stepped forward and took
her arm. It was not a particularly aggressive gesture. He might have only been
trying to escort her
someplace,
perhaps he had wanted
her at the front of the line.
“Espera,”
he said, and
pointed over to the wall, where she should stand alone near a large Matisse
painting of pears and peaches in a bowl. It was one of only two works by
Matisse in the entire country and it had been borrowed from the art museum for
the party. Roxane, confused, looked at that moment to the translator.

“Wait,” Gen said softly in English, trying to make
the one word sound as benign as possible.
Wait,
after all, did not mean that she would never go, only that her leaving would be
delayed.

She took the word in, thought about it for a
moment. She still doubted that’s what he had meant even when she heard it in
English. As a child she had waited. She had waited at school in line for
auditions. But the truth was that in the last several years no one had asked
her to wait at all. People waited for her. She did not wait. And all of this,
the birthday party, the ridiculous country, the guns, the danger, the
waiting
involved in all of it was a mockery. She pulled
her arm back sharply and the jolt caused the General’s glasses to slip from his
nose. “Look,” she said to General Hector, no longer willing to tolerate his
hand on her skin. “Enough is enough.” Gen opened his mouth to translate and
then thought better of it. Besides, she was still speaking. “I came here to do
a job, to sing for a party, and I did that. I was told to sleep on the floor
with all of these people you have some reason to keep, and I did that, too. But
now it’s over.” She pointed towards the chair where her accompanist sat hunched
over. “He’s sick. I have to be with him,” she said, though it came off as the
least convincing of her arguments. Slumped forward in his chair, his arms
hanging from his sides like flags on an especially windless day, the
accompanist looked more dead than sick. He did not raise his head when she
spoke. The line had stopped moving, even the women who were free to go now stopped
to watch her, regardless of whether or not they had any idea of what she was
saying. It was in this moment of uncertainty, the inevitable pause that comes
before the
translation, that
Roxane Coss saw the
moment of her exit. She made a clean move towards the front door, which was
open, waiting. General Hector reached up to catch her and, missing her arm,
took her firmly by the hair. Such hair made a woman an easy target. It was like
being attached to several long soft ropes.

Three things happened in close succession:
first, Roxane Coss, lyric soprano, made a clear, high-pitched sound that came
from what appeared to be some combination of surprise and actual pain as the
tug caused her neck to snap backwards; second, every guest invited to the party
(with the exception of her accompanist) stepped forward, making it clear that
this was the moment for insurrection; third, every terrorist, ranging from the
ages of fourteen to forty-one, cocked the weapon he had been holding and the
great metallic click stilled them all like a film spliced into one single
frame. And there the room waited, time suspended, until Roxane Coss, without so
much as smoothing her dress or touching her hair, turned to go and stand beside
a painting that was, in all honesty, a minor work.

After that the Generals began arguing quietly
among themselves and even the foot soldiers, the little bandits, were leaning
in, trying to hear. Their voices blurred together. The word
woman
was heard and then the words
never
and
agreement
. And then one of them said in a voice
that was low and confused, “She could sing.” With their heads together there
was no telling who said it. It may well have been all of them, all of us.

There were worse reasons to keep a person
hostage. You keep someone always for what he or she is worth to you, for what
you can trade her for, money or freedom or somebody else you want more. Any
person can be a kind of trading chip when you find a way to hold her. So to
hold someone for song, because the thing longed for was the sound of her voice,
wasn’t it all the same? The terrorists, having no chance to get what they came
for, decided to take something else instead, something that they never in their
lives knew that they wanted until they crouched in the low, dark shaft of the
air-conditioning vents: opera. They decided to take that very thing for which
Mr. Hosokawa lived.

Roxane waited alone against the wall near the
bright, tumbling fruit and cried from frustration. The Generals began to raise
their voices while the rest of the women and then the servants filed out. The
men glowered and the young terrorists kept their weapons raised. The
accompanist, who had momentarily fallen asleep in his chair, roused himself
enough to stand and walked out of the room with the help of the kitchen staff,
never having realized that his companion was now behind him.

“This is better,” General Benjamin said,
walking a wide circle on the floor that had previously been covered in
hostages. “Now a man can breathe.”

From inside they could hear the extraneous
hostages being met with great applause and celebration. The bright pop of
camera flashes
raised
up over the other side of the
garden wall. In the midst of the confusion, the accompanist walked right back
in the front door, which no one had bothered to lock. He threw it open with
such force that it slammed back against the wall, the doorknob leaving a mark
in the wood. They would have shot him but they knew him. “Roxane Coss is not
outside,” he said in Swedish. His voice was thick, his consonants catching
between his teeth. “She is not outside!”

So slurred was the accompanist’s speech that it
took even Gen a minute to recognize the language. The Swedish he knew was
mostly from Bergman films. He had learned it as a college student, matching the
subtitles to the sounds. In Swedish, he could only converse on the darkest of
subjects. “She’s here,” Gen said.