“A wonderful man, Ruben Iglesias. It almost makes me wish I was a citizen of this wretched country so that I could vote for him for President.” Fyodorov pulled the smoke through the cigarette and then expelled it slowly. He was trying to find the right way to begin his request. “You can imagine, we have been thinking a great deal about opera,” he said.
“Of course,” Gen said.
“Who knew that life could be so unexpected? I thought we would be dead by now, or if not dead then regularly begging for our lives, but instead I sit and I consider opera.”
“No one could have predicted.” Gen leaned forward imperceptibly to see if he could catch sight of Carmen before she passed completely from view, but he was too late.
“I have always been very interested in music. Opera in Russia is very important. You know that. It is virtually a sacred thing.”
“I can imagine.” Now he wished he had his watch. If he did he would be able to time her, to see how many minutes it took for her to go past the window again. She could become her own sort of clock. He thought about asking Fyodorov but clearly Fyodorov had his mind on other things.
“Opera came to Russia late. In Italy the language lent itself to this kind of singing but for us it took longer. It is, you know, a complicated language. The singers we have now in Russia are very great. I have no complaints about the talent our country possesses, but as I live now there is only one true genius. Many great singers, brilliant voices, but only one genius. She has never been to Russia that I know of. Wouldn’t you say the chances of finding oneself trapped in a house with true genius are remarkably small?”
“I would agree,” Gen said.
“To find myself here with her and to be unable to say anything it is, well, unfortunate. No, honestly, it is frustrating. What if we were released tomorrow? That is what I pray for and yet, wouldn’t I say to myself for the rest of my life, you never spoke to her? She was right there in the room with you and you didn’t bother to make arrangements to say something? What would it mean to live with such regret? I suppose it didn’t bother me much before she resumed her singing. I was preoccupied with my own thoughts, the circumstances at hand, but now with the music coming so regularly everything has changed. Don’t you find that to be true?”
And Gen had to agree. He hadn’t thought about it in exactly those terms before but it was true. There was some difference.
“And what are the chances, given that I am a hostage in a country I do not know with a woman I so sincerely admire that there would also be a man such as yourself who has a good heart and speaks both my language and hers? Tell me what the chances are? They are in the millions! This is, of course, why I have come to you. I am interested in engaging your services of translation.”
“It’s nothing as formal as that,” Gen said. “I’m happy to speak to Miss Coss. We can go now. I’ll tell her whatever you want to say.”
At that the great Russian paled and took three nervous puffs off his cigarette. So massive were this man’s lungs that the little cigarette was all but finished off by his sudden burst of attention. “There is no rush for this, my friend.”
“Unless we’re released tomorrow.”
He nodded and smiled. “You let me escape from nothing.” He pointed his smoked-out cigarette at Gen. “You are thinking. You are telling me it is time to declare myself.”
Gen thought he might have misunderstood the verb to declare. It could have other meanings. He could speak Russian, but his understanding lacked nuance. “I’m not telling you anything other than that Miss Coss is right there if you want to speak to her.”
“Let’s call it tomorrow, shall we? I’ll speak in the morning”—he clapped a hand down on Gen’s shoulder—“in case we are so fortunate. Is the morning fine with you?”
“I’ll be here.”
“Just after she sings,” he said. Then he added, “But without rushing her any.”
Gen told him that sounded reasonable.
“Good, good. That will give me time to prepare my thoughts. I will be awake all night. You are very good. Your Russian is very good.”
“Thank you,” Gen said. He had hoped that maybe they could talk for a while about Pushkin. There were things he wanted to know about Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades, but Fyodorov was gone, lumbering back to his corner like a fighter ready for the second round. The other two Russians were waiting for him, smoking.
The Vice President was standing in the kitchen looking into a box of vegetables, crookneck squash and dark purple eggplants, tomatoes and sweet yellow onions. He took this as a bad sign that the people who surrounded the house were growing bored with their kidnapping. How long did these crises ever last? Six hours? Two days? After that they lobbed in some tear gas and everyone surrendered. But somehow these cut-rate terrorists had thwarted any rescue. Maybe it was because there were so many hostages. Maybe it was the wall around the vice-presidential house, or their fear of accidentally killing Roxane Coss. For whatever reason, their situation had already crawled past its second week. It was completely conceivable that they were no longer on the front page of the paper or that they had already fallen to the second or even the third story on the evening news. People had gotten on with their lives. A more practical stand was being taken, as evidenced by the food in front of him. The Vice President imagined his group the survivors of a shipwreck who watched helplessly while the last search-and-rescue helicopter spun north towards the mainland. The evidence was in the food. At first it had all been prepared, sandwiches or casseroles of pulled chicken and rice. Then it came in needing some assembly, bread and meat and cheese wrapped on separate trays. But this, this was something else entirely. Fifteen raw chickens, pink and cold, their stomachs greasing the counter, boxes of vegetables, bags of dried beans, tins of shortening. Certainly it was enough food, the chickens appeared to have been robust, but the question was how did one effect the transformation? How did what was here become dinner? Ruben believed the question was his responsibility to answer but he knew nothing of his own kitchen. He did not know where the colander was. He did not know marjoram from thyme. He wondered if his wife would have known. Truthfully, they had been taken care of for too long. He had realized that in these past weeks as he swept the floors and folded up the bedding. Perhaps he had been useful in society, but as far as household matters were concerned he had become some kind of fancy lapdog. As a boy he had received no domestic training. He had never once been asked to set a table or peel a carrot. His sisters made his bed and folded his clothes. It had taken a state of captivity to force him to figure out the operation of his own washer and dryer. Every day there was a never-ending list of things that needed to be attended to. If he worked without stop from the moment he woke up in the morning until he fell into an exhausted heap on his pile of blankets, he could not keep the house in the manner to which he had been accustomed to seeing it. How this house had sung just a short while ago! There was no telling how many girls came and went, dusting and buffing, ironing shirts and handkerchiefs, mopping the most imperceptible cobwebs from the corners of his ceiling. They polished the brass strips at the base of the front door. They kept the pantry filled with sweet cakes and pickled beets. They left the vaguest scent of their own bath powder （which his wife bought each of them for their birthdays every year, a generous round container with a fat down puff on top） behind them in the rooms and so everything smelled like a fistful of hyacinth sprinkled with talc. Not one thing in the house demanded his attention, not one object asked for his intercession. Even his own children were bathed and brushed and put to bed by lovely hired hands. It was perfect, always and completely perfect.