Bel Canto

“Two facts: none of the guests was armed; none of the guests was President Masuda. Groups of boys with guns were dispatched to different corners of the house, down to the basement, up to the attic, out around the edges of the high stucco wall, to see if he had hidden himself in the confusion. But word came back again and again that no one was there.”

From the very beginning, the futility of the terrorists’ mission is clear. Their target, the President, is not present at the party, and he cannot be found. They have no secondary plan, which reveals a lack of overall strategy, as well as a lack of clarity and commitment to any specific cause. Their youth is again revealed.

“All the time Ruben Iglesias stood beside Gen, passively listening to the conversation as if he had no real interest in its outcome. He was the highest-ranking political official in the room and yet no one was looking to him to be either the leader or the valuable, near-presidential hostage replacement.”

When the terrorists call for a translator, Gen immediately replaces the Vice President as the most valuable person in the room. Ruben’s bitterness over his position, subservient to a shallow and incompetent President, becomes clear. While Ruben comes from a working-class background, the President comes from a world of privilege. This explains, at least in part, why Ruben ultimately identifies with the terrorists, specifically Ishmael.

“Nothing in the world was absolutely certain, not even Catholicism in these poverty-stricken jungles. Just look at the encroaching tide of Mormons, with their money and their missionaries. The gall of sending missionaries into a Catholic country! As if they were savages ready for conversion.”

Unlike Father Arguedas, Monsignor Rolland does not elect to stay behind with the hostages. His concern resides with the image of the Church, and he appears to fault the Indigenous peoples (along with the Mormons) for the erosion of Catholic belief. He further imagines himself a “holy martyr” (51) for briefly being a hostage. His thoughts are all for himself.

“There should have been a sinking ship behind them, a burning building. The farther they got from the house the harder they cried. The few men, the servants, the infirm, came out behind them, looking helpless in the face of so much sadness for which they were not responsible.”

When the women and children are sent out of the mansion, leaving the men behind, the tragedy appears to be as significant as the sinking Titanic or the conflagration of a crowded office building. The helplessness of the “few men” who are released only confirms their worst fears: they already believe the hostages cannot be saved.

“Any person can be a kind of trading chip when you find a way to hold her. So to hold someone for song, because the thing they longed for was the sound of her voice, wasn’t it all the same? The terrorists, having no chance to get what they came for, decided to take something else instead, something that they never in their lives knew that they wanted until they crouched in the low, dark shaft of the air-conditioning vents: opera. They decided to take the very thing for which Mr. Hosokawa lived.”

Roxanne Coss is likened to a bargaining chip here, as opera becomes a metaphor for the terrorists’ desires and Mr. Hosokawa’s sense of self. Coss herself will also become symbolic of their hopes and dreams, and through the instrument of her voice, she will capture these men far more than she will ever be their captive.

“No one considered slipping out the bathroom window when they took themselves to the lavatory unattended, maybe out of some unspoken gentleman’s agreement. A certain forced respect had been shown to the body of the accompanist, their accompanist, and now they had to try to live up to the standards he had set.”

This is one of the first indications that the hostages have formed unusually strong bonds among themselves and the terrorists in the stress of the moment. Roxanne’s original accompanist has died, and she has fought to keep the terrorists from desecrating his body. Thus, the men connect around an unspoken pact; they will remain a united front in the face of the situation.

“The Generals had a peculiar fondness for Joachim Messner (even if they did not demonstrate this fondness to him) and insisted that not only was he in charge of negotiations but that he must be the one to bring all supplies to the house, to lug every box alone through the gate and up the endless walkways. So it was Messner, his vacation long since over, who brought their bread and butter to the door.”

Messner, as the only character who is allowed in and out of the mansion, occupies a liminal space between the outside world of government negotiations and the inside world of terrorist demands. Messner’s journey is as much psychological—he will grow fond of the terrorists, as well as of the hostages—as it is physical. The “bread and butter,” a synecdoche for the food that Messner brings them, eventually turns into raw chickens and vegetables, signaling that a long stand-off awaits.

“Most days the hostages longed for this whole thing to be over. They longed for their countries, their wives, their privacy. Other days, honestly, they just wanted to be away from all these children, from their sullenness and sleepiness, from their chasing games and appetites.”

Again, the hostages and terrorists—no matter how much the attachments between them grow—come from very different worlds. The hostages are important politicians and diplomats, wealthy businessmen and financiers, while the terrorists are mostly young teenagers with less perspective. The fact that the terrorists are, in fact, children is in part what fosters empathy in the hostages.

“Near him, it felt like she was stepping out of a harsh light and into someplace quiet and dark, like she was wrapping herself up in the heavy velvet of the stage curtains where no one could see her. ‘You should help me find an accompanist,’ she told him, ‘and both of our problems will be solved.’”

Roxanne derives comfort and security from the calm and reassuring presence of Mr. Hosokawa; the simile suggests that she can hide from the “harsh light” of the hostage situation. She has discovered his deep-seated love of opera, matched only by her own desperation to sing it. Thus, they are bonded by their passion for opera and their need for music.

“For a brief, disquieting moment Messner felt something that was not unlike jealousy. The hostages were there all the time, so if she decided to sing first thing in the morning or in the middle of the night, they would be able to hear her.”

Messner is as captivated with Roxanne’s voice as the hostages and the terrorists are. He is unable to invest himself fully in the utopian world of music that is slowly being formed within the mansion; he still must work in the outside world. The power of music and, specifically, of Roxanne’s voice is such that a man might relinquish his freedom for access to her singing.

“Sitting alone in his apartment with books and tapes, he would pick up languages the way other men picked up women, with smooth talk and then later, passion.”

For Gen, learning languages is his first love. Metaphorically, his attention and passion for such learning is akin to falling in love. It is unsurprising both that Gen has mastered so many languages—this is where his energy is devoted—and that Gen finally falls in love with an actual woman, Carmen, who wishes to learn language from him.

“He was beginning to feel more at ease with all he had lost, all he didn’t know. Instead, he was astonished by what he had: the chance to sit beside this woman in the late afternoon light while she read. Her hand brushed his as she set the pages down on the couch between them, and then her hand rested on top of his hand while she continued to read.”

Ironically, Mr. Hosokawa finds true love and a meaningful life in the constraints of captivity. His former life was defined by work and distance, while here he can indulge in the one thing he unabashedly loves—opera—and the woman who makes the music sound beautiful. Roxanne is reading the sheet music she has received; music, rather than words, is the common language between them.

“‘If we put a gun to her head she would sing all day.’

‘Try it first with a bird,’ General Benjamin said gently to Alfredo. ‘Like our soprano, they have no capacity to understand authority. The bird doesn’t know enough to be afraid and the person holding the gun will only end up looking like a lunatic.’”

Roxanne is rendered as a songbird here, metaphorically. The bird will sing regardless of the circumstances; it is in their nature to do so. Just like the wild songbird, Roxanne recognizes no authority higher than the power of music. She is not beholden to the terrorists—or anyone else—for her art.

“Thibault dried his hands and looped a careless arm around Gen’s neck. ‘I would never let them shoot you, no more than I’d let them shoot my own brother. I’ll tell you what, Gen, when this is over, you’ll come and visit us in Paris.’”

The attachment between the hostages grows stronger by the day, as do the connections formed between some of the hostages and the terrorists. Simon Thibault thinks of Gen as family, by this point. It foreshadows Gen’s wedding to Roxanne at the end of the book. Although they are not in Paris, they are accompanied by Simon and his wife, Edith.

“Her voice was so pure, so light, that it opened up the ceiling and carried their petitions directly to God.”

Roxanne breaks out into a rendition of “Ave Maria” as Father Arguedas’s makeshift congregation listens. Her singing and the music is not only beautiful but also spiritual. It transcends their worldly concerns, their respective predicaments. The priest reflects that, if they can pray, then they are actually free.

“There was no time for kissing but she wanted him to know that in the future there would be. A kiss in so much loneliness was like a hand pulling you up out of the water, scooping you up from a place of drowning and intro the reckless abundance of air.”

Carmen lets Gen know that his feelings for her are reciprocated. The sentiment employs a simile that invokes a kind of salvation. A kiss, itself symbolic of love, can rescue a person drowning in despair. The entire statement is a metaphor for the salvific power of love; just as Mr. Hosokawa is saved by music, Gen is saved by the language of love.

“Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. Don’t you think? It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are a spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the world’s greatest soprano.”

When the Russian hostage, Fyodorov, declares his love for Roxanne, he uses this point of connection to link them. It is also a meta-fictive moment, as one might add that the talent of being an audience also applies to reading a book. Generally speaking, the appreciation of art fosters love and attachment to the artist.

“Either she told Gen she couldn’t get Mr. Hosokawa upstairs, in which case she disappointed Gen and Mr. Hosokawa and Miss Coss, who had all been so kind to her, or she told him she could, in which case she broke every oath she had sworn to her party and put herself at risk of a punishment she would not imagine. If Gen had understood any of this he never would have asked her.”

Carmen is perhaps the most conflicted terrorist of all. Unlike Ishmael and Cesar, Carmen has crossed the dividing line between terrorist and hostage in a much more final way; while the boys have future promises of family and mentor, Carmen has secured love in the present. She is as much a part of Gen’s circle as she is of the terrorist’s group, by this point. She has the most to lose—and she chooses Gen over her fears.

“It did not occur to him to leave, as if does not occur to a dog to leave once he has been trained to stay in the yard. He only feels blessed for the little freedom he is given.”

In response, Gen also commits his loyalty to Carmen and to the hostage situation. When she leads him out into the yard, where they make love for the first time, he behaves, as the simile suggests, like a well-trained canine. Again, the captives lose themselves in the utopian aspects of the captivity.

“She was letting Carmen think she had forgotten when no such thing was true. She didn’t know how she would use this information, but she savored it like unspent money. There were so many possibilities for such knowledge.”

Beatriz knows, as expressed in her simile, that information is as valuable as hard currency. She has witnessed Carmen escorting Mr. Hosokawa to Roxanne’s room, and this violates every rule of the terrorist Generals. However, Beatriz does not ever employ this information to her advantage, possibly because of her confessions to Father Arguedas.

“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.”

When the terrorists finally allow the hostages outside, their fear is palpable; they become dumb animals in the moment. This reveals that, even with all of the bonds formed between the two groups, there still exists the residual fear that the terrorists could strike without warning. However, it also exposes the fear of living outside of the enclosed community, wherein love and music have flourished.

“It was learning humility, to no longer assume that anyone would notice who you were or where you were going. It wasn’t until she began to teach him that Mr. Hosokawa saw Carmen’s genius, because her genius was not to be seen.”

Mr. Hosokawa has completely shed his corporate persona. He is no longer someone to be attended to or genuflected to, but he makes his way to Roxanne each night as her silent lover. This foreshadows Mr. Hosokawa’s ultimate gesture of humility, to sacrifice himself in an attempt to save Carmen. His life is no more, no less important than hers.

“What do you think, that they’ll just keep the wall up and pretend this is a zoo, bring in your food, charge money for tickets? ‘See defenseless hostages and vicious terrorists live together in peaceful coexistence.’ It doesn’t just go on. Someone puts a stop to it and there needs to be a decision as to who will be in charge of the stopping.”

Messner has been trying to negotiate between the government and the terrorists for months now; he has always known what the ultimate outcome would be: the government always maintains the upper hand. He is exasperated that Gen, in his haze of love, cannot see what is coming. For the hostages, the community inside the mansion looks like a utopia; for outsiders, it holds the fascination of a zoo. This not only reinforces stereotypes that nobody within the mansion holds any longer but also emphasizes the inevitability of the stand-off’s end.