Ann Patchett (14 page)

“All of you go back,” General Benjamin said,
not wanting to watch another touching exchange. He went and sat down in one of
the large wing-backed chairs near the fireplace and lit a cigarette. There was
nothing to do. He couldn’t strike her the way he should have, surely there
would have been an insurrection in the living room and he wasn’t certain that
the younger members of his army would not shoot in her defense. What he didn’t
understand was why he felt grief for the accompanist. Alfredo was
right,
it wasn’t as if this was the first person to die. Most
days it seemed like half the people he knew were dead. The thing was the people
he knew had been murdered, slaughtered in a host of ways that prevented him
from sleeping well at night, and this man, the accompanist, had simply died. Somehow,
those two things did not seem exactly the same. He thought of his brother in
prison, his brother, as good as dead, sitting day after day in a cold, dark
hole. He wondered if his brother could stay alive a little while longer, maybe
just a day or two, until their demands were met and he could be released. The
accompanist’s death had worried him. People could simply die if no one got to
them in time. He looked up from his cigarette. “Get away from here,” he said to
the crowd, and with that they all stepped away. Even Roxane got up and left her
corpse as she was told. She seemed tired now. He commanded his troops to resume
their positions. The guests were to go and sit and wait.

Alfredo went to the phone and picked it up
hesitantly, as if he wasn’t exactly sure what it could do. Warfare should not
include cellular
phones,
it made everything seem less
serious. He reached into one of the many pockets on his green fatigue pants and
pulled out a business card and dialed Messner. He told him there had been an
illness, no, a death, and that they needed to negotiate the retrieval of the
body.

Without the accompanist, everything was
different. One would think the sentence should read:
Without
the extra one hundred and seventeen hostages, everything was different,
or
Now that terrorists had said they were not there to kill
them
,
everything seemed different
. But that
wasn’t true. It was the accompanist they felt the loss of, even all the men who
had so recently sent their wives and lovers outside, watched them walk away in
the full splendor of their evening dress, they were thinking of the dead man. They
had not known him at all. Many assumed he was an American. There they were,
steadily producing insulin as a matter of course while another man died without
it so that he could stay with the woman he loved. Each asked himself if he
would have done the same and each decided the chances were good that he would
not. The accompanist embodied a certain recklessness of love that they had not
possessed since their youth. What they did not understand was that Roxane Coss,
who now sat in the corner of one of the large down sofas, weeping quietly into
Mr. Hosokawa’s handkerchief, had never been in love with her accompanist, that
she had hardly known him at all except in a professional capacity, and that
when he had tried to express his feelings to her it turned out to be a
disastrous mistake. The kind of love that offers its life so easily, so
stupidly, is always the love that is not returned. Simon Thibault would never
die in a foolish gesture for Edith. On the contrary, he would take
every cowardly recourse
available to him to ensure that
their lives were spent together. But without all the necessary facts, no one
understood what had happened, and all they could think was that the accompanist
had been a better, braver man, that he had loved more fully than they were
capable of loving.

Everything was slack now. The huge arrangements
of flowers that were placed around the room were already
wilting,
the smallest edge of brown trimmed the petals of the white roses. The
half-empty glasses of champagne that sat on end tables and sideboards were flat
and warm. The young guards were so exhausted that some fell asleep against the
wall and slid down to the floor without waking. The guests stayed in the living
room, whispering a little but mostly being quiet. They curled into overstuffed
chairs and slept. They did not test the patience of their guards. They took
cushions off the sofa and stretched out on the floor in a way that was
reminiscent of the night before but much better. They knew they were to stay in
the living room, be mostly quiet,
avoid
sudden moves. No
one considered slipping out of the bathroom window when they took themselves to
the lavatory unattended, maybe out of some unspoken gentleman’s agreement. A
certain forced respect had been shown to the body of the accompanist,
their
accompanist, and now they had to try to live up to
the standards he had set.

When Messner came in he asked first to see Roxane
Coss. His lips seemed thinner now, stern, and he thoughtlessly spoke in German.
Gen pushed up heavily from his chair and went to tell them what was being said.
The Generals pointed to the woman on the couch, whose face was still pressed
into a handkerchief.

“And she will be coming out now,” Messner said,
not as a question.

“The President is coming over?” General Alfredo
said.

“You do expect to let her ride home with the
body.” It was not the Messner they had seen before. The sight of a room full of
hostages forced to lie on the floor, the battered Vice President, the boys with
their weapons, all of that had only made him tired, but he was angry now. Angry
with nothing but a small red plus sign strapped over his upper arm to protect
himself from a roomful of guns.

His anger seemed to inspire an extraordinary
patience in the Generals. “The dead,” Hector explained, “know nothing of who is
sitting beside them.”

“You said
all
women.”

“We came up through the air-conditioning
vents,” General Benjamin said, and then after a pause he added a descriptive
phrase. “Like moles.”

“I need to know if I can trust you,” Messner
said. Gen only wished he could parody the weight of his voice, the way he
struck every word like a soft mallet against a drum. “If you tell me something,
am I to believe you?”

“We set free the servants, the ill, and all of
the women but one. Perhaps there is something about this one that interests
you. Perhaps if we had kept another it wouldn’t have mattered so much to you.”

“Am I to believe you?”

General Benjamin thought about this for a
moment. He lifted his hand as if to stroke his cheek but then thought better of
it. “We are not on the same side.”

“The Swiss never take sides,” Messner said. “We
are only on the side of the Swiss.”

None of the Generals had anything more to say
to Messner, who needed no confirmation that the accompanist lying at his feet
was, indeed, dead. The priest had covered the body with a tablecloth and the
tablecloth stayed in place. Messner went out the door without pleasantries and
returned an hour later with a helper. They brought in a rolling gurney of the
type that comes from an ambulance, covered in boxes and sacks, and when they
were unloaded Messner and his helper lowered the gurney and tried to tug the
large man up. They ultimately had to be assisted by several of the younger
terrorists. Death had made the body dense, as if every recital
performed,
each day’s never-ending practice, came back in
those final moments and balanced like lead bars across his chest. When he was
in place and strapped down, his fine hands dangling from beneath the cutwork
tablecloth, they took him away. Roxane Coss turned her head as if to study the
couch pillows. Mr. Hosokawa wondered if she was thinking about Brunhilde, if
she was wishing for a horse that would take her into the fire after her lover’s
corpse.

“I don’t think they should have brought the
food in like that,” the Vice President said to a stranger sitting beside him,
although he was hungry and curious as to what was in the bags. “I think they
could have made two separate trips, out of respect.” The late afternoon light
was slanting through the tall windows of the living room, making heavy gold
strokes across the floor. It was a lovely room, Ruben thought, a lovely time of
day to be in the room. He very rarely was home before dark and often he wasn’t
home at all, out representing the President on one trip or another. The ice in
his towel had almost completely melted and the sleeve of his starched dress
shirt was soaked from where the water had trickled steadily down his arm. Still,
the cool wet towel felt good on his swollen face. He wondered where his wife
and children would sleep tonight, if the President and his wife would invite
them into their home as a matter of good publicity or if they would go to a
guarded room in a hotel. He hoped she would go to her cousin Ana’s. At least
Ana would comfort her, at least she would make some fun for the children and
listen to the girls tell their stories about being kidnapped. They would have
to double up in extra beds and sleep on pull-out sofas, but that would be all
right. That would be better than the Masudas’ chilly guest suite, where
certainly Esmeralda would be made to sleep in the servants’ quarters.

On the other side of the room near a large bank
of windows, Gen and Mr. Hosokawa sat away from the rest of their countrymen. It
was a complicated form of politeness in which the other men would not have
joined them unless invited. Even in these uncharted circumstances the social
order stood firm. Mr. Hosokawa was not much in the mood for company. “He was a
magnificent accompanist,” he said to Gen. “I’ve heard my share of them.” Of all
the men in the room, Mr. Hosokawa was the only one who continued to wear his
jacket and tie. His suit had somehow remained remarkably uncreased.

“Would you like me to tell her?”

“What?”

“About the accompanist,” Gen said.

Mr. Hosokawa looked to Roxane Coss, whose face
was still turned behind the curtain of her own hair. Even though there were men
sitting on the sofa where she sat, she was clearly alone. The priest was near
her but not with her. His eyes were closed and his lips shaped small, silent
words of prayer. “Oh, I’m sure she knows it.” Then he added doubtfully, “I’m
sure everyone has told her.”

Gen did not press his point. He waited. It was
not his role to advise Mr. Hosokawa. He knew the secret was to wait and let him
come to his own conclusions.

“If it doesn’t appear to be disturbing her,” he
said, “perhaps you could give my condolences. Tell her I thought her
accompanist was a brave and talented man.” He looked at Gen directly, something
that was uncommon between them.

“What if I am responsible for this death?” he
said.

“How could that be possible?”

“It was my birthday. They came here for me.”

“They came here to work,” Gen said. “They don’t
know you.”

Mr. Hosokawa, the day after his fifty-third
birthday, looked suddenly old. He had made a mistake, accepting such a gift,
and now it seemed to be pulling the years from his life. “Tell her,
though,
tell her I am especially grieved.”

Gen nodded, stood up, and crossed the room. It
was a huge room. Even if you didn’t count the grand entry hall on one end and
dining room on the other, the living room was cavernous, with three separate
areas set up with couches and chairs, living rooms within living rooms. The
furniture had been moved aside for the recital and then had slowly been dragged
back into mismatched configurations as the remaining guests made themselves
comfortable. If there had been a reception desk it would have seemed very much
like an enormous hotel lobby. If there had been a piano player, Gen thought,
but then stopped himself. Roxane Coss was alone, but not too far away a young
terrorist stood behind her, his rifle held close to his chest. Gen had seen
this boy before. He was the one who had held Roxane Coss’s hand when they were
first on the floor. Why did he remember it was this one when all the others
blurred together? It was something about his face, which was delicate, intelligent
somehow, and it set him apart. Gen felt uncomfortable for having noticed this
at all. Then the boy raised his eyes from the floor and saw Gen looking. They
stared at one another for an instant and then both just as quickly looked away.
There was a strange sensation low in Gen’s stomach. It made it easier to speak
to Roxane Coss. She did not frighten him the way this boy did.

“Forgive me,” he said to the opera singer. He
shook the boy from his mind. Never in a lifetime would Gen have come to her
on his own
. Never would he find the courage to express his
own sympathies and remorse, in the same way that Mr. Hosokawa would not have
the courage to speak to her even if his English had been perfect. But together
they moved through the world quite easily, two small halves of courage making a
brave whole.

“Gen,” she said. She smiled sadly, her eyes
still red and damp. She reached up from the couch and took his hand. Of all the
people in the room, his was the only name she was sure of and it gave her
comfort to say it aloud.
“Gen, thank you for before, for
stopping them.”

“I didn’t stop anyone.” He shook his head. He
was surprised to hear his name come out of her mouth. Surprised by the way it
sounded.
Surprised by the touch of her hand.