Ann Patchett (39 page)

When the time came to sleep, Mr. Hosokawa lay
flat on his back and looked at his watch by the bright light of the moon. He
was afraid he would fall asleep and he knew he would never fall asleep. He
marveled at Gen, who took measured, peaceful breaths on the floor beside him. What
he didn’t know was that Gen woke up every morning at two
A.M.
, as
regular as a baby waking for food, and slipped out of the living room without
ever being missed. Mr. Hosokawa watched the night guard circle, Beatriz and
Sergio, and lowered his eyelids whenever they came near. They stopped to watch
certain members of his group sleep. They whispered to one another and nodded.
By one o’clock they had disappeared exactly the way Gen said they would. This
was the world of the night of which he knew nothing. Mr. Hosokawa could feel
his pulse pushing in his temples, his wrists,
his
neck. He pointed his toes. This was the hour. He had been sleeping forever. He
had been dead. Now he was suddenly, completely alive.

At five minutes until two, Gen sat up as if an
alarm had gone off. He stood, looked at his employer, and together they crossed
the living room, placing their feet down gently between their sleeping friends
and acquaintances. There were the Argentinians. There were the Portuguese. The
Germans slept near the Italians. The Russians were safe in the dining room.
There was Kato, his dear hands folded on his chest, his fingers twitching
almost imperceptibly in his sleep, like a dog dreaming of Schubert. There was
the priest, rolled over on his side, both hands under one cheek. Scattered
among them were a handful of soldiers sprawled on their backs as if sleep was a
car that had hit them dead on, their necks twisted sideways, their mouths
wrenched open,
their
rifles resting in their open
hands like ripe fruit.

In a hallway off the kitchen, Carmen was
waiting exactly as Gen said she would be, her dark hair tied into a braid, her
feet bare. She looked at Gen first, and he touched her shoulder lightly instead
of speaking, and everything was understood among the three of them. There was
no sense in waiting, as waiting would have only made it worse. Carmen would
have liked to have been in the china closet now, her legs across Gen’s lap,
reading aloud the practice paragraph he had written up for her, but she had
made her choice. She had agreed. She said a quick prayer to the saint who ignored
her now and crossed herself as quickly, lightly, as a hummingbird touching down
four times. Then she turned and went down the hall, Mr. Hosokawa moving
silently behind her. Gen watched them as they turned away, never having
realized it would be worse to be left behind.

When they got to the staircase, a narrow,
twisting affair whose boards were cheap and only good enough to carry servants
from one floor to the other, Carmen turned and looked at Mr. Hosokawa. She
leaned over and touched his ankle and then touched her own, she moved their
feet together, and when she stood up he nodded to her. It was very dark and as
they took the stairs it would get darker. Never had her prayers failed her
completely. She tried to believe this was only a lesson, a necessary delay, and
that if they were to get caught she would not be alone forever.

All Mr. Hosokawa could see now was the outline
of her narrow back. He tried to do what she told him, to place his foot exactly
in the place her foot had left, but he couldn’t help think about how much
smaller she was. Captivity had made him thinner, and as he took the stairs he
was grateful for every pound he had lost. He held his breath and listened.
Truly, they were silent. He had never been so aware of the complete absence of
sound. He had not climbed a set of stairs in the months he had been inside this
house and the very act felt brave and daring. How right it was to climb! How
happy he was to finally have the chance to risk himself. When they reached the
top, Carmen pushed open the door with her fingertips and a little light fell
onto her face, a reassurance that at least part of the trip was behind them
now. She turned and smiled at him. She was a beautiful girl. She was
his own
daughter.

They took the slim hallway to the nanny’s room,
and when she opened that door there was the slightest hint of a whine.
Still no noise from the two of them, but a small sound from the
door.
There was also someone in the bed. It didn’t happen often. The
girl who watched the children had the least comfortable bed in the whole house
and rarely would anyone fall asleep there, but it did happen, tonight it
happened. Carmen put her hand against Mr. Hosokawa’s chest so they could wait
for a minute for the room to forget the sound the door had made. She could feel
his heart beating so clearly it was as if she were holding it in her hand. Carmen
took a breath and waited,
then
she nodded without
looking back and moved one foot forward. Maybe this was hard but it was not
impossible. It was nothing compared to breaking into the mansion through the
air vents. There had been other nights when she had found people sleeping in
this bed.

It was Beatriz. She had lain down in the middle
of night watch. Everyone did it. Carmen certainly had. It was too long to stay awake.
Sergio would be in some other room, slumped over in a hard and guilty sleep. Beatriz
did not have a blanket over her and her boots were on. In her sleep she cradled
her rifle in her arms like a child. Mr. Hosokawa tried to make his feet move
forward, but now he was afraid. He closed his eyes and thought of Roxane Coss,
he thought of love and tried to say a prayer to love, and when he opened his
eyes, Beatriz sat up in bed and just as quickly raised her gun. Just as
quickly, Carmen stepped between them. These two things Mr. Hosokawa was sure
of: Beatriz pointed the rifle at him and Carmen came in front of the gun. She
went to Beatriz, who should have been her friend, the only other girl in a
troop of so many men, and grabbed her and held her tight, leaving the rifle to
point at the ceiling.

“What are you doing?” Beatriz hissed. Even she
knew this was a quiet business. “Get away from me.”

But Carmen held her. She practically fell into
her she was so frightened and so oddly relieved now that she had been caught. “Don’t
tell,” she whispered in the other girl’s ear.

“You’re taking him upstairs? You are in so much
trouble.” Beatriz struggled and found Carmen stronger than she had imagined. Or
maybe it was just that she had been so deeply asleep. Asleep on
guard,
and maybe Carmen meant to tell.

“Shh,” Carmen said. She buried her nose in the
loose hair where Beatriz’s braid had unraveled in her sleep and kept her grip
tight. For a second she forgot about Mr. Hosokawa and it was only the two of
them, only this immediate problem. She could feel Beatriz’s back was still warm
from the bed and the barrel of the gun pressed cold into her cheek, and even
though she had not thought to ask for help, she heard the beloved voice of
Saint Rose of
Lima
say to her, “Tell the truth.”

“He’s in love with the opera singer,” Carmen
said. She didn’t care about secrets now. Her only hope was to do what she was
told. “They wanted to be alone together.”

“They would kill you for this,” Beatriz said,
though she thought that probably wasn’t true.

“Help me,” Carmen said. She meant to say it
only to her saint, but the words slipped from her lips in desperation. Beatriz
thought for a moment she heard the voice of the priest. He had forgiven her. He
had instructed her towards kindness. She thought of her own sins and the chance
to forgive the sins of others, and she
raised
up what
she could of her pinned-down arm and put it lightly on Carmen’s back.

“She loves him?” Beatriz said.

“I’m going to bring him back in two hours.”

Beatriz shifted herself in Carmen’s arms and
this time Carmen let her go. She could barely make out Carmen’s face. She could
not be entirely sure it was Mr. Hosokawa there in the darkness. He had taught
her to tell time. He had always smiled at her. Once, when they reached the door
to the kitchen at the same time, he bowed to her. Beatriz closed her eyes,
searched the darkness for her own pile of sins. “I won’t tell,” she whispered.
And again, for the second time that day, she felt a loosening as some of her
burden was lifted from her.

Carmen kissed her cheek. She was full of
gratitude. She felt for the first time that she was lucky. Then she stepped
back into the shadows. Beatriz had meant to extract a promise from her in
return, that she wouldn’t tell that she had seen her sleeping, but
of course she wouldn’t tell, she couldn’t
. Beatriz lay back
on the bed, though she hadn’t meant to, and in a minute she was asleep and the
whole business was over with as suddenly as it had all begun.

Through the nursery, where a moon-shaped
night-light still glowed faintly from a wall socket illuminating a cast of
lonesome dolls, past yet another bathroom with a white porcelain tub that was
bigger than some canoes Carmen had ridden in, and out into the main hall, where
the house became again the house that they knew, wide and gracious and grand. Carmen
led Mr. Hosokawa to the third door and then she stopped. This was where she
slept most nights, the little sleeping she did. She had been holding on to his
hand ever since she had led him away from Beatriz and she was holding it now. It
seemed they had come a very long way, but the Vice President’s children could
make it from their mother’s bedroom, through the nursery, cutting through
Esmeralda’s room and down the back stairs to the kitchen in well under a
minute, even though they had been told to never run in the house. Carmen liked
Mr. Hosokawa. She wished she could tell him so, but if she had had the language
she wouldn’t have had the courage. Instead she pressed his hand once and then
let it go.

Mr. Hosokawa bowed to her, his face pointing
down towards his knees, and he held this position for what seemed to Carmen to
be too long. Then he stood again and opened the door.

There was a high window in the upstairs hallway
and the main staircase was flooded with the bright light of the moon, but
Carmen didn’t take the front stairs. She navigated her course backwards,
through the nursery and past the bed where Beatriz was sleeping deeply. Carmen
stopped to untangle the rifle’s trigger from her fingers. She leaned the gun
against the wall and pulled a coverlet up over her shoulders. She hoped that
Beatriz would not decide to tell in the morning, or better yet that she would
wake up thinking it was all a dream. Coming down the kitchen stairs, Carmen
felt a different kind of wild heartbeat. She imagined Roxane Coss on the other
side of the door, anxious from all the waiting. She imagined Mr. Hosokawa,
silent and dignified, taking her into his arms. The sweetness of that touch,
the security inside the embrace, Carmen raised her hand to the thin pricking of
sweat on the back of her neck. She was silent, but still the stairs came faster
now, four, three, two, one, then she was through the hallway, the kitchen. She
skidded to a stop just inside the wondrous world of the china closet, where Gen
sat on the floor, an unopened book on his knees. When he looked up she put her
fingers to her lips. So much brightness in her face, her cheeks flushed, her
eyes open wide. When she turned away, of course he would stand and follow her.

How much luck is one person entitled to in a
night? Does it come in a limited allotment, like milk in a bottle, and when so
much has been poured out then only so much is left? Or was luck a matter of the
day, and on the day you’re lucky you are limitlessly lucky? If it was the
former, then surely Carmen had used up all her luck getting Mr. Hosokawa safely
into Roxane Coss’s bedroom. But if it was the latter, and in her bones she felt
this was the truth, then this was her night. If all the saints in heaven were
behind her now, then her luck must be good for a few more hours. Carmen took
Gen’s hand and led him through the kitchen and onto the back porch, where he
had never been before. She opened up the door, simply put her hand on the knob
and turned it, and together they walked out into the night.

Look at this night: the moon a floodlight
washing over what had once been an orderly garden, the moonlight pouring over
the high stucco wall like water. The air smelled of the thick jasmine vines and
the evening lilies that had long ago finished their work and closed up for the
day. The grass was high, past their ankles and brushing heavy against their
calves, and it made a shushing sound as they walked so they stopped to look up
at the stars, forgetting that they were right in the middle of a city block. There
weren’t more than half a dozen stars to see.

Carmen went outside all the time. Even in the
rain she had gone out every day to walk on guard or simply to stretch her legs,
but for Gen the night seemed miraculous, the air and the sky, the soft crush of
grass beneath his heel. He was back in the world and the world looked, on that
night, to be an incomprehensibly beautiful place. Such a limited view he was
given yet still he would swear to it, the world was beautiful.

For the rest of Gen’s life he will remember
this night in two completely different ways.

First, he will imagine what he did not do:

In this version, he takes Carmen’s hand and
leads her out the gate at the end of the front walkway. There are military
guards on the other side of the wall but they, too, are young and asleep, and
together they pass them and simply walk out into the capital city of the host
country. Nobody knows to stop them. They are not famous and nobody cares. They
go to an airport and find a flight back to
Japan
and they live there,
together, happily and forever.