Ann Patchett (12 page)

The accompanist’s health seemed temporarily
revived by his fury and for a moment the blood rushed back into his gray
cheeks. “All women are released!” He shook his hands in the air as if he were
trying to rush crows from a cornfield, his quickly blueing lips were bright
with the foam of his spit. Gen relayed the information in Spanish.

“Christopf, here,” Roxane said, and gave a
small wave as if they had only been briefly separated at a party.

“Take me instead,” the accompanist howled, his
knees swaying dangerously towards another buckle. It was a delightfully
old-fashioned offer, though every person in the room knew that no one wanted
him and everyone wanted her.

“Put him outside,” General Alfredo said.

Two of the boys stepped forward, but the
accompanist, who no one thought was capable of escape in his state of rapid and
mysterious
deterioration,
darted past them and sat
down hard on the floor beside Roxane Coss. One of the boys pointed his gun
towards the center of his big blond head.

“Don’t shoot her accidentally,” General Alfredo
said.

“What is he
saying!
”
Roxane Coss wailed.

Reluctantly, Gen told her.

Accidentally.
That was how people got shot at
these things. No real malice, just a bullet a few inches out of place. Roxane
Coss cursed every last person in the room as she held her breath. To die
because an underskilled terrorist had poor aim was hardly how she had meant to
go. The accompanist’s breathing was insanely rapid and thin. He closed his eyes
and put his head against her leg. His final burst of passion had been enough
for him. Just that quickly he was asleep.

“For the sake of God,” said General Benjamin,
making one of the largest mistakes in a takeover that had been nothing but a
series of mistakes, “just leave him there.”

As soon as the words were spoken, the
accompanist fell forward and vomited up a mouthful of pale yellow foam. Roxane
was trying to straighten his legs out again, this time with no one to help her.
“At least drag him back outside,” she said viciously. “Can’t you see there’s
something wrong with him?” Anyone could see there was something terribly,
terribly wrong with him. His skin was wet and cold, the color of the inner
flesh of fish gone
bad
.

Gen put in the request but it was ignored. “No
President, one opera singer,” General Benjamin said. “It’s a rotten exchange if
you ask me.”

“She’s worth more with the piano player,”
General Alfredo said.

“You couldn’t get a dollar for him.”

“We keep her,” General Hector said quietly, and
the subject of opera singers was closed. Though Hector was the least likely to
speak, all of the soldiers were most afraid of him. Even the other two Generals
exercised caution.

All of the hostages, even Gen, were on the
other side of the room from where Roxane and her accompanist were pressed
against the wall. Father Arguedas said a prayer quietly and then went to help
her. When General Benjamin told him to return to his side of the room he smiled
and nodded as if the General was making a little joke and in that sense was not
committing a sin. The priest was amazed by the rushing of his heart, by the
fear that swept through his legs and made them weak. It was not a fear of being
shot, of course, he did not believe they would shoot him, and if they did,
well, that would be that. The fear came from the smell of the little
bell-shaped lilies and the warm yellow light of her hair. Not since he was
fourteen, the year he gave his heart to Christ and put all of those worries
behind him, had such things moved him. And why did he feel, in the midst of all
this fear and confusion, in the mortal danger of so many lives, the wild
giddiness of good luck? What unimaginable good luck! That he had been
befriended by Ana Loya, cousin of the Vice President’s wife, that she had made
such an extravagant request on his behalf, that the request had been graciously
granted so that he was allowed to stand in the very back of the room to hear,
for the first time in his life, the living opera, and not just sung but sung by
Roxane Coss, who was by anyone’s account the greatest soprano of our time. That
she would have come to such a country to begin with would have been enough. The
honor he would have felt lying on his single cot in the basement of the rectory
just knowing that she was for one night in the same city in which he lived
would have been a miraculous gift. But that he had been allowed to see her and
then, by fate (which may well portend awful things, but was still, as was all
fate,
God’s will,
His wish) he was here now, coming
forward to help her with the cumbersome arrangement of her accompanist’s gangly
limbs, coming close enough to smell the lilies and see her smooth white skin
disappearing into the neck of her pistachio-colored gown. He could see that a
few of her hairpins remained in place on the crown of her head so that her hair
did not fall in her eyes. What a gift, he could not think of it otherwise. Because
he believed that such a voice must come from God, then it was God’s love he was
standing next to now. And the trembling in his chest, his shaking hands, that
was only fitting. How could his heart not be filled with love to be so close to
God?

She smiled at him, a smile that was kind but
utterly in keeping with the circumstances at hand. “Do you know why they’re
detaining me?” she whispered.

At the sound of her voice he felt his first
wave of disappointment. Not in her, never, but in himself.
English.
Everyone said it would be important to learn English. What was it the tourists
said? “Have a nice way?” But what if that was an inappropriate response? What
if it was in some way hurtful? It could be asking for something, camera film or
directions or
money
. He prayed. Finally, sadly, he
said the only word he was sure of, “English.”

“Ah,” she said, nodding in sympathy and turning
her attention back to her work.

When they had settled the accompanist so that
he at least appeared comfortable, Father Arguedas took his own handkerchief and
wiped the pale sheen of vomit away. He would in no way pretend to have any real
medical knowledge, but certainly he spent a great deal of time visiting the
sick and the sacrament he had most often performed was viaticum, and given
those two experiences he had to say that this man who had played the piano so
beautifully looked closer to viaticum than he did to the anointing of the sick.
“Catholic?” he asked Roxane Coss, touching the accompanist’s chest.

She had no idea whether or not the man who
played the piano for her had a relationship with God, much less what church
that relationship might be conducted through. She shrugged. At least she could
communicate with the priest this much.

“Católica?”
he said, strictly for his own
curiosity, and pointed, politely, to her.

“Me?” she said, touching the front of her
dress. “Yes.” Then she nodded.
“Sí, Católica.”
Two
simple words but she was proud of herself for answering in Spanish.

He smiled at that. As for the accompanist, if
he was dying, if he was Catholic, those were two fairly big ifs. But where the
matter of the soul’s everlasting rest was concerned, it was better to err on
the side of caution. If he mistakenly gave last rites to a Jew who then
recovered, what harm had he done but taken up a little bit of his time, the
time of an unconscious political hostage at that. He patted Roxane’s hand. It
was like a child’s hand! So pale and soft, rounded on the top. On one finger
she wore a dark green stone the size of a quail’s egg that was surrounded in a
fiery ring of diamonds. Normally, when he saw women wearing rings like that he
wished they would make them contributions to the poor, but today found himself
imagining the pleasure of gently sliding such a ring onto her finger. This
thought, he was sure, was inappropriate, and he felt a nervous dampness creep
across his forehead.
And he without a handkerchief.
He
excused himself to go and speak to the Generals.

“That man there,” Father Arguedas said,
lowering his voice, “I believe he is dying.”

“He isn’t dying,” General Alfredo said. “He’s
trying to get her out. He is pretending to die.”

“I don’t believe so.
The
pulse, the color of the skin.”
He looked back over his shoulder, past
the grand piano and huge bouquets of lilies and roses arranged for a party long
since over, to the spot where the accompanist lay on the edge of carpet like
something large and spilled. “Some things one can’t pretend.”

“He chose to stay. We put him out the door and
he came back. Those are not the actions of a dying man.” General Alfredo turned
his head away. He rubbed his hand. Ten years those fingers had been gone and
still they ached.

“Go back to where you were told to wait,”
General Benjamin said to the priest. He was enjoying a breath of false relief
seeing half of the people gone, as if half of his problems were solved. He knew
it to be false but he wanted some quiet time in which to enjoy it. The room
looked wide open.

“I would like some oil from the kitchen to
perform last rites.”

“No kitchen,” General Benjamin said, wagging
his head. He lit a cigarette in order to be rude to the young priest. He wanted
the priest and the accompanist to have left when they were told to leave. People
shouldn’t be allowed to decide that they wished to remain a hostage. He had
very little experience being rude to priests and he needed the cigarette as a
prop. He shook out the match and dropped it on the carpet. He wanted to blow
the smoke forward but could not.

“I can do it without the oil,” Father Arguedas
said.

“No last rites,” General Alfredo said. “He
isn’t dying.”

“I was only asking for the oil,” the priest
said respectfully. “I wasn’t asking about the last rites.”

Each of the Generals meant to stop him, to slap
him, to have one of the soldiers march him back in line with a gun in his back,
but none felt able to do so. That was either the power of the Church or the
power of the opera singer leaning over the man they took to be her lover. Father
Arguedas returned to Roxane Coss and her accompanist. She had unbuttoned the
top of his shirt and was listening to his chest. Her hair spilled over his neck
and shoulders in a way that would have thrilled the accompanist immeasurably if
he had been conscious, but she could not wake him.
Nor could
the priest.
Father Arguedas knelt beside him and began the prayer of
last rites. Perhaps it was grander when one had the vestments and robes, when
there was oil to work with, the beauty of candles, but a simple prayer felt in
some ways closer to God. He hoped the accompanist was a Catholic. He hoped that
his soul would speed towards the open arms of Christ.

“God the father of mercies, through the death
and resurrection of His Son has reconciled the world to
Himself
and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the
ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace.” Father Arguedas felt
a rush of tenderness for this man, an almost choking bond of love. He had
played for her. He had heard her voice day after day and been shaped by it. With
great sincerity he whispered, “I absolve you from your sins,” into the
chalk-white ear. And truly, he did forgive the accompanist for everything he
might have done, “in the name of the Father, and the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit.”

“Last rites?”
Roxane Coss said
,
taking the cold, damp hand that had worked so tirelessly on her behalf. She
didn’t know the language, but the rituals of Catholicism were recognizable
anywhere. This could not be a good sign.

“Through the holy mysteries of our redemption,
may almighty God release you from all punishments in this life and in the life
to
come.
May He open to you the gates of paradise and
welcome you to everlasting joy.”

Roxane Coss looked dazed, as if the hypnotist
had swung his watch but had not yet snapped his fingers. “He was a very good
pianist,” she said. She wanted to join in, but frankly, no longer remembered
the prayers. She added, “He was punctual.”

“Let us ask the Lord to come to our brother
with His merciful love, and grant him relief through this holy anointing.” Father
Arguedas touched his thumb to his tongue because he needed something wet and
could think of nothing else. He marked the accompanist’s forehead, saying,
“Through this holy anointing may the Lord in His love and mercy help you with
the grace of the Holy Spirit.”

Roxane could see the nuns standing over her as
she memorized her prayers. She could see the dark rosewood rosaries hanging
from their
waists,
she could smell the coffee on their
breath and a faint odor of perspiration in the fabric of their dresses, Sister
Joan and Sister Mary Joseph and Sister Serena. She could remember each of them
but not a single word of prayer. “Sometimes we ordered sandwiches and coffee
after rehearsal,” she said, though the priest could not understand her and the
accompanist no longer heard her voice. “We talked some then.” He had told her
about his childhood. He was from
Sweden
,
or
Norway
?
He talked about how cold it was in the winters but how he never really noticed,
growing up there. His mother wouldn’t let him play any sort of ball games
because she was so worried about his hands. Not after all the money she had
spent on piano lessons.