“This is your man,” Gen said.
Together the three of them walked to the kitchen, making their way through the maze of men and boys who loitered in the great hall of the living room. Thibault immediately went to the vegetables. He took an eggplant out of the box and rolled it in his hands. He could almost make out his own reflection in its shiny skin. He put his nose to the deep purple patent leather. It didn’t smell like much and yet there was something vaguely dark and loamy, something alive that made him want to bite down. “This is a good kitchen,” he said. “Let me see your pans.”
So Ruben opened up the drawers and cabinets and Simon Thibault began his systematic inventory, wire whisks and mixing bowls, lemon squeezers, parchment paper, double boilers. Every imaginable pot in every imaginable size, all the way up to something that weighed thirty pounds empty and could have concealed a small-boned two-year-old child. It was a kitchen that was accustomed to cocktail suppers for five hundred. A kitchen braced to feed the masses. “Where are the knives?” Thibault said.
“The knifes are in the belts of the hoodlums,” the Vice President said. “They plan to either hack us up with the meat cleaver or saw us to death with the bread knife.”
Thibault drummed his fingers on the steel countertops. It was a nice look, but in their home in Paris he and Edith had marble. What a beautiful pastry crust one could make on marble! “It’s not a bad idea,” he said, “not bad. I’d just as soon they keep the knives. Gen, go and tell the Generals we will have to cook our food or eat our chickens raw, not that they would balk at a raw chicken. Tell them we understand we are morally unqualified to handle the cutlery and we need some guards, two or three, to slice and dice. Ask them to send the girls and maybe that very small boy.”
“Ishmael,” Ruben said.
“That’s a boy who can take responsibility,” Thibault said.
The guards had changed their shifts, or at least he saw two more young soldiers pull on their caps and head outside, but Gen didn’t see Carmen. If she had come in she was off somewhere in a part of the house that was off-limits to hostages. Discreetly, he looked for her everyplace he was allowed to go, but he had no luck. “General Benjamin,” he said, finding the General going over the newspaper with a pair of scissors in the dining room. He was cutting out the articles that concerned them, as if he could keep them in the dark by editing the paper. The television stayed on all hours but the guests were always driven out of the room when the news came on. Still, they heard bits and pieces from the hall. “There has been a change in the food, sir.” Even though Thibault was the diplomat, Gen believed that he probably had a better chance of getting what they wanted. It was the difference in their natures. The French had very little experience in being deferential.
“And that change?” The General did not look up.
“It isn’t cooked, sir. They’ve sent in boxes of vegetables, some chickens.” At least the chickens were plucked. At least they were dead. It was probably only a matter of time before dinner walked through the door on its own, that their milk showed up still tucked warmly inside its goat.
“So cook it.” He snipped a straight line up the middle of the third page.
“The Vice President and Ambassador Thibault are planning to do that but they need to request some knives.”
“No knives,” the General said absently.
Gen waited for a moment. General Benjamin crumpled up the articles he had removed and set them in a pile of tight little balls of paper. “Unfortunately, that’s a problem. I know very little about cooking myself but I understand that knifes are imperative for the preparation of food.”
“No knives.”
“Perhaps then if the knives came with people. If you could requisition a few soldiers to do the chopping, then there would be control over the knives. It’s a great deal of food. There are fifty-eight people after all.”
General Benjamin sighed. “I know how many people are here. I would appreciate not having to hear it from you.” He smoothed out what was left of the paper and folded it up again. “Tell me something, Gen. Do you play chess?”
“Chess, sir? I know how to play. I wouldn’t say I was very good.”
The General tented his fingers and pressed them to his lips. “I’ll send you the girls to help in the kitchen,” he said. The shingles had just begun to close in on his eye. It was clear, even at this early stage, that the results would be disastrous.
“If we could have one more.Maybe Ishmael. He’s a very good boy.”
“Two is enough.”
“Mr. Hosokawa plays chess,” Gen said. He should not be offering his employer up for any services in exchange for an extra boy to chop but the fact was that Mr. Hosokawa was quite brilliant where chess was concerned. He was always asking Gen to play with him on long flights and was always disappointed that Gen could not last more than twenty moves. He thought that Mr. Hosokawa might enjoy the game as much as General Benjamin.
Benjamin looked up, his swollen red face seemed to show pleasure. “I found a set in the little boy’s room. It’s good to think that they would teach the game of chess to so young a boy. I think it is a remarkable tool for character. I taught all of my children to play chess.”
That was something Gen had never considered, that General Benjamin had children, that he had a home or a wife or any kind of existence outside of the group that was here. Gen had never stopped to think about where they lived, but wouldn’t it be in a tent somewhere, hammocks strung between the muscular limbs of jungle trees? Or was it a regular job to be a revolutionary? Did he kiss his wife good-bye in the morning, leave her sitting at the table in her bathrobe drinking coca tea? Did he come home in the evening and set up the chessboard while he stretched his legs and smoked a cigarette? “I wish I were better at the game.”
“Well, possibly I could teach you something. I can’t imagine what I would have to teach you.” General Benjamin, all of the soldiers, had an enormous respect for Gen’s abilities with languages. They imagined that if he could speak in Russian and English and French, he could probably do anything.
“I would appreciate that,” Gen said.
Benjamin nodded his head. “Please ask your Mr. Hosokawa if he would come at his convenience. There would be no need for translation. Here, write down the words for check and checkmate in Japanese. I could trouble myself to learn that much if he would come for a game.” General Benjamin took one of the crumpled sheets of newspaper and straightened it out again. He handed Gen a pencil and above the headlines Gen wrote the two words. The headline he saw said Poco Esperanza. Little Hope.
“I’ll send in some help for dinner,” the General said. “They will come directly.”
Gen bowed his head. Perhaps it was more respect than was deserved but there was no one there to see him do it.
It would appear that all their choices had been taken away, locked in a house with an armed teenaged boy pressed sullenly against every door. No freedom, no trust, not even enough freedom or trust to deserve a knife with which to cut up a chicken. The simplest things they believed, that they had the right to open a door, that they were free to step outside, were no longer true. But this was true instead: Gen did not go first to Mr. Hosokawa. Gen did not go and tell him about the chess. If he waited instead until tonight what difference could it make? Mr. Hosokawa would never know he had delayed. There certainly was no one else who spoke both Spanish and Japanese to tell him. On the far side of the room, Mr. Hosokawa sat with Roxane Coss on the rosewood piano bench. Leave him there. He was glad to be with her. She was teaching him something on the piano, her hands and then his hands tracing over the keys. The stark, repetitive notes made background music for the room. It was too soon to say anything for sure but he seemed to show more promise for music than he did for learning Spanish. Leave him there for now. Even from this distance Gen could see the way she leaned against him when she reached the lower keys. Mr. Hosokawa was happy, Gen did not need to see his face to know that. He had known his employer to be intelligent, driven, reasonable, and while Gen had never thought him an unhappy man he had never thought he took any particular pleasure in his life. So why not leave this pleasure undisturbed? Gen could simply make the decision himself and then Mr. Hosokawa could practice uninterrupted and Gen could go back to the kitchen where Vice President Iglesias and Ambassador Thibault were discussing sauces.