The rest went outside to play soccer or sit in the grass and watch the soccer game. Ruben had been able to petition a spade and a small hand rake from the gardener’s shed, which was locked, and he turned over the soil in the flower beds, which he had meticulously cleared of weeds and grass. Ishmael skipped the game in order to help him. He didn’t mind. He never liked to play. Ruben gave him a silver serving spoon with which to dig. “My father had a wonderful way with plants,” Ruben told him. “All he had to do was say a few kind words to the ground and here they would come. He had meant to be a farmer, like his father, but the drought caught them all.” Ruben shrugged and slipped his spade into the hard soil, turned it over.
“He would be proud of us now,” Ishmael said.
The boys who were on guard climbed into the ivy banks at the edge of the yard, leaned their guns against the stucco wall, and joined the game. The runners gave up their running to play. “Una Voce Poco Fa” still bounced around in their heads, and even though they could not hum it, they chased the ball to the rhythm of the song. Beatriz had gotten the ball away from Simon Thibault and kicked it over to Jesus, who had a clear shot to take it past two chairs that were set up as the goal, and the Generals yelled to him, “Now! Now!” The light was cut to lace by the trees that had grown so thick with leaves in the last few months but still the light was everywhere. It was early, hours before lunch. Kato left the piano and came outside to sit on the grass in the sun beside Gen, so the only sound was the kick of the ball, the calling of names, Gilbert, Francisco, Paco, as they ran.
When Roxane Coss screamed it was because she saw a man she didn’t recognize walking quickly into the room. She wasn’t startled by his uniform or by his gun, she was used to those, but the way he came towards them was terrifying. He walked like no wall could stop him. Whatever he meant to do, his mind was made up, and nothing she could say or sing would ever make a difference. Cesar jumped up from the piano bench where he had been sitting and before he had gotten anywhere close to the door he was shot. He fell straight forward, not putting out his hands to save himself, not calling for anyone to help. Roxane crouched beneath the piano, her voice sounding out the alarm. She crawled towards the boy who she was sure was meant to be the greatest singer of his time, and covered his body with her own, lest something else should happen to him. She could feel his warm blood soaking her shirt, wetting her skin. She took his head in her hands and kissed his cheeks.
At the sound of the shot it seemed the man with the gun divided, first into two and then four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four. With every loud pop more came and they spread through the house and jumped through the windows, poured through the doors into the garden. No one could see where they had come from, only that they were everywhere. Their boots seemed to kick the house apart, to open up every entrance. They covered the playing field while the ball was still rolling away from the game. The guns fired over and over and it was impossible to say if the ones who were dropping were trying to protect themselves or if they had been hit. It was an instant and in that instant everything that had been known about the world was forgotten and relearned. The men were shouting something, but with the rushing of blood in his ears, the sickening spin of adrenaline, the deafness left over from the gunfire, not even Gen could understand them. He saw General Benjamin look back towards the wall, possibly gauging its height, and then with a shot Benjamin was down, the bullet catching him squarely in the side of his head. In one shot he lost both his life and the life of his brother, Luis, who would soon be taken from prison and executed for conspiracy. General Alfredo had already fallen. Humberto, Ignacio, Guadalupe, dead. Then Lothar Falken put his hands up and Father Arguedas put his hands up, Bernardo and Sergio and Beatriz put their hands up. “Ort und Stelle bleiben!” Lothar said, stay put, but where was the translator? German was useless to him now. General Hector started to put up his hands but he was shot before they had passed his chest.
The strangers cut the group apart as if they knew every member intimately. There was not a second’s hesitation as to who was to be pulled away, handed down the line of men towards the back of the house where the sounds of guns being fired reported back to them without any pause. There were not that many people in the house. Even if they meant to shoot every one of them a hundred times, they would not have fired so many shots. Ranato was off his feet, twisting and screaming like a wild animal as he was pulled away by two men, each holding one of his arms. Father Arguedas rushed forward to help the boy and then just as quickly he was hit. He thought he had been shot, a bullet bearing in to the back of his neck, and in that moment he remembered his God. But when he was on the grass he knew he was wrong. He was very much alive. He opened his eyes and found himself looking at Ishmael, his friend, not two minutes dead. The Vice President was crying into the boy’s neck, his eyes pressed closed, his mouth stretched open wide. He was holding his child’s lovely head in his hands. In Ishmael’s hands was the spoon with which he had been digging.
Beatriz held her hands up straight above her head and the sun hit the crystal of Gen’s watch and threw a perfect circle of light against the wall. All around her were the people she knew. There was General Hector lying on his side, his glasses gone, his shirt a soggy mess. There was Gilbert, who once she had kissed out of boredom. He was flat on his back, his arms stretched out to the sides as if he meant to fly. Then there was someone else, but that was awful. She couldn’t tell who it was. She felt afraid of them now, the people she knew. She had more in common with the strangers who were shooting because she and they were all alive. She would keep her arms the straightest of them all. That was the difference. She would do exactly what she was told and she would be spared. She closed her eyes and looked for her dark pile of sins, hoping she could release a few more on her own without the help of the priest, thinking that fewer sins would give her a lightness that these new men would recognize. But the sins were gone. She looked and looked behind the darkness of her eyelids but there was not a single sin left and she was amazed. She heard Oscar Mendoza calling her name, “Beatriz! Beatriz!” and she opened her eyes. He was coming towards her, his arms stretched out. He was running towards her like a lover and she smiled at him. Then she heard another gunshot but this time it knocked her off her feet. A pain exploded up high in her chest and spit her out of this terrible world.
Gen saw Beatriz fall and called for Carmen. Where was Carmen? He did not know if she was outside. He could not see her anywhere. No one was more clever than Carmen. No one was more likely to escape, unless she did something stupid. What if she had some idea of saving him? “She is my wife! She is my wife!” he cried into the bedlam, because that was the only plan he had ever devised, even though he had never asked her to marry him, or asked the priest to bless them. She was his wife in every way that mattered and that would save her.
But nothing could save her. Carmen was already dead, killed right at the start. She had been in the kitchen putting the dishes back into the china closet when Mr. Hosokawa came in to make the tea. He bowed to her, which always made her smile shyly. He had not reached the kettle when they heard Roxane Coss. Not a song but a scream and then a long, wolflike howl. Together they turned towards the door, Mr. Hosokawa and Carmen. They ran together down the hallway, Carmen, younger, faster, in front of him. They were through the dining room when they heard the shot that brought down Cesar. They stepped into the living room just as a man with a gun turned to face them, just as Roxane took the body of her student in her arms. Time, so long suspended, now came back with such force that it overlapped and everything happened at once. Roxane saw them as the man with the gun saw them, Carmen saw Cesar, and Mr. Hosokawa saw Carmen and he scooped her from the space in front of him, the force of his arm hitting the side of her waist like a blow. He was in front of her the instant she was being thrown behind him, the instant the man who saw her standing in front, separate from Mr. Hosokawa, fired his gun. From six feet away there would have been no missing her except for the confusion, the firing of guns, the frenzy of voices, the man who was on the list to save stepping in front of her. One shot fixed them together in a pairing no one had considered before: Carmen and Mr. Hosokawa, her head just to the left of his as if she was looking over his shoulder.