“General Benjamin,” she said, leaning over so that only he could hear her. “Sir, are things all right?” Her hair fell loose from behind one ear and it brushed against his shoulder. It smelled like lemons. Roxane had washed Carmen’s hair in some of the lemon shampoo Messner had had flown in for her all the way from Italy.
The smell of lemons. He is a boy in the city, a quarter lemon clenched between his teeth as he runs to school, the bright lemon yellow of the peel showing between his open lips, the impossible tartness, the utter clarity of taste that he was addicted to. His brother, Luis, is with him, running along beside him, a little boy. He is younger than Benjamin and so he is Benjamin’s responsibility. He, too, has a lemon in his mouth and they look at one another and begin to laugh so hard they have to raise their hands to their mouths to catch the now empty rinds. The smell of lemons snaps him back. Carmen wanted something else. He was still in the living room. Why was it only now that he understood that things would end badly? It didn’t seem strange that he knew it, but that he hadn’t known it from the very start, that he hadn’t turned his troops around and run them straight back into the air vents the second it was established that President Masuda was not at the party. That mistake was almost impossible to comprehend now. It was all the fault of hope. Hope was a murderer.
“She wants to go outside?” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Cesar is still out there?”
“I believe so, sir.”
General Benjamin nodded his head. “The weather is good now.” He looked out the window for a long time to make sure that what he was saying to her was true. “Take them all outside. Tell Hector and Alfredo. Put some soldiers along the wall.” He looked at Carmen. If he had known anything he would have paid more attention to her. “We need some air in here, don’t you think? Get some sun on them.”
“Everyone, sir? Do you mean Miss Coss and the translator?”
“I mean all of them.” He swept a hand across the room. “Get them out of here.”
That was how it happened that on the very day after Carmen had taken Gen outside, the rest of the party was allowed to go as well. She did not want to be the one to tell the Generals Hector and Alfredo, but she did so as a direct order. She stood at the door of the study still stunned by the news. Outside. The Generals were watching soccer. They sat on the edge of the sofa, their hands gripping their knees, yelling at the television set. There was an abandoned card game half played on the table in front of them, two automatic pistols sticking out from between the cushions. When she was able to get their attention, she did not tell them that she had asked that anyone be allowed to go outside, or that Roxane Coss wished to speak to Cesar in the tree, she only said that General Benjamin had made a decision and she was instructed to inform them of that decision. She used as few words as was possible.
“Outside!” General Alfredo said. “Insanity! How are we supposed to control them outside?” He gesticulated with the hand that was short two fingers, a sight that always filled Carmen with pity.
“What is there to control?” General Hector said, stretching his arms above his head. “As if they would go anywhere now.”
It was a surprise. Hector was usually against every idea. If he had disagreed strongly they could have probably made General Benjamin change his mind, but the sun was pouring through every window and there was a staleness that had grown up around them. Why not open the doors? Why not today if every day was exactly the same? They went into the living room and the three Generals called the troops together and told them to get their guns and load them. Even after so many months of lying on couches the boys, along with Beatriz and Carmen, could still move quickly. They didn’t know why they were loading their guns, they didn’t ask. They obeyed their orders, and in doing so their eyes took on a certain coldness. General Benjamin could not help but think, If I told them to kill everyone now, they would still do it. They would do what I told them to. The idea of taking everyone outside was a good one. It would put the soldiers to work. It would remind the hostages of both his authority and his benevolence. It was time to get out of the house.
Roxane Coss had Mr. Hosokawa’s arm to lean on, but Gen was left alone to watch his lover running across the room with the soldiers, her rifle held high against her chest.
“I do not understand this,” Mr. Hosokawa whispered. He could feel Roxane trembling beside him and he pressed her hand between his own. It was as if a switch had been thrown and the people they knew were suddenly people they had never seen before.
“Can you understand what they’re saying?” Roxane whispered to Gen. “What’s happened?”
Of course he could understand what they were saying. They were shouting it, after all. Load your weapons. Prepare formations. But there was no sense in telling Roxane that. The other hostages were standing with them now. They pushed together like sheep in an open field of hard rain. Thirty-nine men and one woman, the sudden nervousness rising off of them like steam.
Then General Benjamin stepped forward and said, “Traductor!”
Mr. Hosokawa touched the translator’s arm as he stepped forward. Gen wished he was a brave man. Even though Carmen wasn’t with them now, he wished she could see him as brave.
“I have decided that everyone should go outside,” General Benjamin said. “Tell the people they are to go outside now.”
But Gen didn’t translate. That was no longer his profession. Instead he asked, “For what purpose?” If there was to be an execution he would not be the one to lead these sheep out to be lined up against the wall. It wasn’t enough to translate what was said, you had to know the truth.
“What purpose?” General Benjamin said. He stepped towards Gen, so close that Gen could see red lines half the thickness of sewing threads webbing across his face. “I was told Roxane Coss requested to go outside.”
“And you’re letting everyone out?”
“You object to this?” General Benjamin was about to change his mind. What had he ever shown these people but decency and now they stared him down like a murderer? “You think I will take you outside and shoot the lot of you?”
“The guns—” Gen had made a mistake. He could see that.
“Protection,” the General said, his teeth clamped together.
Gen turned away from him and faced the people he thought of as his people. He watched their faces soften at the sound of his voice. “We are going outside,” Gen said in English, in Japanese, in Russian, Italian, French. “We are going outside,” he said in Spanish and Danish. Only four words but in every language he was able to convey that they would not be shot, this was not a trick. The group laughed and sighed and shook away from one another. The priest crossed himself quickly in gratitude for an answered prayer. Ishmael went and opened the door and hostages filed out into the light.
Glorious light.
Vice President Ruben Iglesias, who thought he would not live to feel once again the sensation of grass beneath his feet, stepped off the shale stone walkway and sank into the luxury of his own yard. He had stared at it every day from the living-room window but now that he was actually there it seemed like a new world. Had he ever walked around his own lawn in the evening? Had he made a mental note of the trees, the miraculous flowering bushes that grew up around the wall? What were they called? He dropped his face into the nest of deep purple blossoms and inhaled. Dear God, if he were to get out of this alive he would be attentive to his plants. Maybe he would work as a gardener. The new leaves were bright green and velvety to touch. He stroked them between his thumb and forefinger, careful not to bruise. Too many evenings he had come home after dark. He saw the life in his garden as a series of shadows and silhouettes. If there was ever such a thing as a second chance he would have his coffee outside in the morning. He would come home to have lunch with his wife in the afternoons on a blanket beneath the trees. His two girls would be in school, but he would hold his son on his knees and teach him the names of birds. How had he come to live in such a beautiful place? He walked through the grass towards the west side of the house and the grass was so heavy he knew it would be difficult to cut. He liked it that way. Maybe he would never have the grass mown again. If a man had a ten-foot wall then he could do whatever he wanted with his yard. He could make love to his wife late at night in the place where the wall made a pocket of lawn and three slender trees grew in a semicircle. They could come out after the children were in bed, after the servants were asleep, and who would see them? The earth they lie down on is as soft as their bed. He pictured her long dark hair undone and spread over the heavy grass. He would be a better husband in the future, a better father. He got on his knees and reached between the tall yellow lilies. He pulled up a weed that was as high as the flowers, its stem as thick as a finger, then another, and another. He filled his hands with green stems, roots and dirt. There was a great deal of work to be done.