Recently life had improved for all the hostages, not just those who were in love. Once the front door had been opened, it opened regularly. Every day they went outside and stood in the hot sun. Lothar Falken encouraged other men to take up running. He led them through a series of exercises every day and then they went in a pack around and around the house. The soldiers played soccer with a ball they had found in the basement and some days there was an actual game, the terrorists against the hostages, though the terrorists were so much younger and trained into better shape that they almost always won.
When Messner came now he often found everyone in the yard. The priest got up from his digging and waved.
“How is the world?” Father Arguedas said to him.
“Impatient,” Messner said. His Spanish kept improving, but still he asked for Gen.
Father Arguedas pointed to the sprawled-out figure beneath a tree. “Sleeping. It is a terrible thing the way they work him so hard. And you. They work you too hard as well. If you don’t mind my saying, you look tired.”
It was true that recently Messner had lost the sangfroid that everyone had found so reassuring in the beginning. He had aged ten years in the four and a half months they had been living here, and while everyone else seemed to mind it less and less, Messner clearly minded it more. “All this sunlight is no good for me,” Messner said. “All Swiss citizens were meant to live in the shade.”
“It’s very warm,” the priest said. “But the plants do wonderfully, rain, sun, drought, there’s no holding them back.”
“I won’t keep you from your work.” Messner patted the priest on the shoulder, remembering how they had tried several times to let him go and how the priest would have none of it. He wondered if, in the end, Father Arguedas would be sorry to have stayed. Probably not. Regret didn’t seem to be in his nature the way it was in Messner’s.
Paco and Ranato ran up from the side lawn, which they now called the playing field, and made an extremely halfhearted effort to frisk him that consisted of nothing more than a few brisk slaps near his pockets. Then they ran back to join the game, which had been stopped for this purpose.
“Gen,” Messner said, and tapped the sleeping body on the shoulder with the toe of his shoe. “For God’s sake, get up.”
Gen was sleeping the sleep of the heavily drugged. His mouth was open and slack and his arms flung straight out to the side. A small, rippling snore came up from his throat.
“Hey, translator.” He leaned over and picked up one of Gen’s eyelids between his thumb and forefinger. Gen shook him off and opened his eyes slowly.
“You speak Spanish,” Gen said thickly. “You have from the beginning. Now leave me alone.” He rolled over on his side and pulled his knees up to his chest.
“I don’t speak Spanish. I don’t speak anything. Get up.” Messner thought he felt a shaking in the earth. Surely Gen must feel it, lying with his cheek pressed down to the grass. Was it his imagination that the earth might actually cave in beneath them? How much did these engineers know? Who’s to say that the ground wouldn’t swallow them up, opera diva and common criminal in the same fatal bite. Messner got down on his knees. He pressed his palms to the grass and when he had decided that he was only experiencing a temporary madness, he shook Gen again. “Listen to me,” he said in French. “We have to talk them into surrendering. Today. This can’t go on. Do you understand me?”
Gen rolled onto his back, stretched like a cat, and then folded his arms beneath his head. “And then we’ll talk the trees into growing blue feathers. Haven’t you paid attention at all, Messner? They aren’t going to be talked into anything. Especially not by the likes of us.”
The likes of us. Messner wondered if Gen was implying that he had not done his job well enough. Four and a half months living in a hotel room half the world away from Geneva when all he had come here for in the first place was a holiday. Both parties were intractable and what the party inside this wall didn’t understand was that the government was always intractable, no matter what the country, what the circumstances. The government did not give in, and when they said they were giving in they were lying, every time, you could count on it. As Messner saw it, it was his job not to hammer out a compromise but merely to steer them clear of a tragedy. There wasn’t much time left for this work. Despite the rhythmic thud of the runners and the boys playing soccer, he could definitely feel something happening in the ground.
The sign of the Red Cross, like the very sign of Switzerland, stood for peaceful neutrality. Messner had stopped wearing his armband a long time ago but he didn’t believe in it any less. Members of the Red Cross brought food and medicine, sometimes they would ferry papers for arbitration, but they were not moles. They did not spy. Joachim Messner would have no more told the terrorists what the military had planned than he would tell the military what was happening on the other side of the wall.
“Get up,” he said again.
Sluggishly, Gen sat up and raised an arm to Messner to be pulled to his feet. Was this a picnic? Had they been drinking so early? No one seemed to be suffering in the least. In fact they all looked pink-cheeked and energetic. “The Generals are probably still over at the playing field,” Gen said. “They might be in the game.”
“You have to help me,” Messner said.
Gen pushed his hair back into some semblance of order with his fingers and then, finally awake, threw his arm across his friend’s shoulder. “When have I not helped you?”
The Generals were not playing ball but they were sitting at the edge of the field in three wrought-iron chairs pulled over from the patio. General Alfredo was shouting instructions at the players, General Hector was watching with intent silence, and General Benjamin had his face tilted up to make an even plane for the sun. All three had their feet buried in the high grass.
Gilbert kicked a beautiful shot and Gen waited until the play was over to announce their guest. “Sir,” he said, meaning whoever looked up. “Messner is here.”
“Another day,” General Hector said. The second arm of his glasses had broken off that morning and now he held them up to his face like a pince-nez.
“I need to speak to you,” Messner said. If his voice had taken on some new urgency none of them heard it over the whooping and shouting of the boys in the game.
“Permission to speak,” General Hector said. General Alfredo hadn’t taken his eyes off the game and General Benjamin hadn’t opened his eyes at all.
“I need to speak to you inside. We need to talk about negotiations.”
Then General Alfredo turned his head in Messner’s direction. “They are ready to negotiate?”
“Your negotiations.”
General Hector waved his hand at Messner as if he had never been so bored in all his life. “You’re taking up our time.” He turned his attention back to the game and called out, “Francisco! The ball!”
“Listen to me with seriousness,” Messner said quietly in French. “One time. I have done a great deal for you. I have brought in your food, your cigarettes. I have carried your messages. I am asking that you sit down with me now and talk.” Even in the bright sun Messner’s face was drained of color. Gen looked at him and then he translated the message, trying to keep Messner’s tone of voice. The two of them stood there but the Generals did not look up again. Usually this was Messner’s sign to go but he stood there with his arms folded across his chest and waited.