“Enough?” Gen whispered in English, but Messner didn’t look at him. They waited for more than half an hour.
Finally, General Benjamin opened his eyes. “All right,” he said, his voice as tired as Messner’s. “We’ll go to my office.”
Cesar, who had been so fearless when he sang from Tosca in front of the full house, really did prefer to practice in the afternoons when everyone else was outside, especially since practicing so often meant scales, which he found degrading. And he and Roxane Coss were never alone, there was no such thing as alone. Kato was there to play the piano and Mr. Hosokawa was there because he was always there. Today, Ishmael, who was regularly humiliated in soccer, had set up the chess set on a low table near the piano and played with Mr. Hosokawa. He and Cesar both had guns because if they both chose to stay in the house then they were the default house guards. If Cesar complained about other people staying to listen and if there was someone there to translate from Spanish to English and back into Spanish again （and several people could do this）， Roxane Coss would tell him that singing was intended to be heard by other people and he might as well get used to it. He wanted to learn songs, arias, entire operas, but mostly she made him sing scales and nonsense lines. She made him roar and pucker his lips and hold his breath until he had to sit down quickly and put his head between his knees. He would have invited everyone in if she had let him sing a song with the piano, but that, she said, was something to be earned.
“There’s a boy who sings now?” Messner asked. “Is that Cesar?” He stopped in the living room to listen and General Benjamin and Gen stopped with him. Cesar’s jacket was too short in the sleeves and his wrists hung out like broomsticks with hands loosely attached.
General Benjamin was clearly proud of the boy. “He’s been singing for weeks now. You’ve simply come at the wrong time. Cesar is always singing. Se?orita Coss says he has the potential to be truly great, as she is great.”
“Remember your breath,” Roxane said, and inhaled deeply to show Cesar what she meant.
Cesar stumbled over a note, suddenly nervous to see the General there.
“Ask her how he’s doing,” Benjamin said to Gen.
Roxane put her hand on Kato’s shoulder and he lifted his fingers from the keys as if she had touched an off switch. Cesar sang three more notes and then stopped when he realized the music was gone. “We’ve only been at this a very short time, but I think he has enormous potential.”
“Have him sing his song for Messner,” General Benjamin said. “Messner is in need of a song today.”
Roxane Coss agreed. “Listen to this,” she said. “We’ve been working on this.”
She sang a few words under her breath so that Cesar knew what he was to sing. He could not read or write in Spanish and certainly he didn’t understand Italian, but his ability to memorize and repeat a sound, to repeat it with such pathos the listener could only imagine he understood what he was saying completely, was uncanny. Once she had prompted Cesar, Kato began to play the opening of Bellini’s “Malinconia, Ninfa Gentile,” the first, short song from Sei Ariette. Gen recognized the music. He had heard it floating through the windows in the afternoons. The boy closed his eyes and then looked towards the ceiling, Oh, Melancholy, you graceful nymph, I devote my life to you. When he forgot a line, Roxane Coss sang it in a surprising tenor voice: I asked the Gods for hills and springs; they listened to me at last. Then Cesar repeated the line. It was not unlike watching a calf rise up for the first time on spindly legs, at the same time awkward and beautiful. With every step he learned the business of walking, with every note he sang with more assurance. It was a very short song, finished almost as soon as it was started. General Benjamin clapped and Messner whistled.
“Don’t praise him too much,” Roxane said. “He’ll be ruined.”
Cesar, his face flushed from pride or lack of breath, bowed his head to them.
“Well, you can’t tell it from looking at him,” General Benjamin said as he walked down the back hallway to his office with Messner and Gen. It was true. The only thing more crooked than Cesar’s teeth was Cesar’s nose. “It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.”
“I know I will never sing,” Messner said.
“I know that much as well.” General Benjamin flipped the light on in the room and the three men sat down.
“I want to tell you that soon now they will not let me come here anymore,” Messner said.
Gen was startled. Life without Messner?
“You are losing your job,” the General said.
“The government feels that they’ve put enough effort into negotiations.”
“I have seen no effort at all. They have made us no reasonable offers.”
“I am telling you this as someone who likes you,” Messner said. “I will not pretend that we are friends, but I want what is best for everyone here. Give this up. Do it today. Walk outside where everyone can see you and surrender.” Messner knew this was not convincing and still he had no idea how to make it so. In his confusion he wandered back and forth between the languages he knew: German, which he had spoken as a boy at home; French, which he had spoken in school; English, which he had spoken for the four years he lived in Canada when he was a young man; and Spanish, which he knew better every day. Gen tried his best to keep up with the patchwork, but with every sentence he had to stop and think. It was Messner’s inability to stay with one country that frightened Gen more than what he was saying. There was no time to concentrate on what he was saying.
“What about our demands? Have you spoken to them in a similar way? Have you spoken to them as friends?”
“They will give up nothing,” Messner said. “There is no chance, no matter how long you wait. You have to trust me on this.”
“Then we will kill the hostages.”
“No, you won’t,” Messner said, rubbing his eyes with his fingers. “I said it the first time we met, you are reasonable men. Even if you did kill them it wouldn’t change the outcome. The government would be even less inclined to bargain with you then.”
From down the long hallway in the living room they could hear Roxane sing a phrase and then Cesar repeat the phrase. They went over it again and again and the repetition was beautiful.
Benjamin listened to the music for a while and then, as if he had heard a note that didn’t agree with him, he struck the table they used for chess with his fist. Not that it mattered, the game was in the other room. “Why is it our responsibility to make every concession? Are we expected to give up just because we have such a long history of giving things up? I am trying to free the men I know from prison. I am not trying to join them. It is not my intention to put my soldiers down in those caves. I would sooner see them dead and buried.”
You might see them dead, Messner thought, but you won’t have the chance to see them buried. He sighed. There was no such place as Switzerland. Truly, time had stopped. He had always been here and he would always be here. “I’m afraid those are your two choices,” he said.