Free Ann Patchett by Bel Canto

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
Tokyo
station at eight in the morning. He reached up and loosened his tie.
    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
Argentina
. Within
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
Buenos Aires
she would be
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
Tokyo
. He watches her from the high seats,
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