Bel Canto

Time moves mysteriously within the confines of the Vice Presidential mansion. The hostages are accustomed to high-powered professional schedules, while the terrorists are used to military action. Here, however, in the midst of a stand-off, there is not much to do but wait: “Time could barely pull the second hand forward on the clock,” and it was “as if the world had become a giant train station in which everything was delayed until further notice. It was this absence of time that had everyone confused” (107). Their routines are disrupted, and this makes the men discombobulated and disconnected from the world outside the hostage crisis.

Mr. Hosokawa feels this slow crawl of time acutely, as a man who has spent his entire life diligently working and making little time for leisure: “All his life he had wanted more time to listen, and when finally there was time there was nothing to listen to, only the patter of voices he could not understand” (133). Of course, as more time passes, Roxanne will seek out an accompanist and request some sheet music, and Mr. Hosokawa will listen, enraptured, for as long as time will allow him. The terrorist Beatriz becomes so enamored with one of the soap operas on the television that the passage of time tortures her as well. Gen finally gives her his watch, and Mr. Hosokawa teaches her to tell time; she gets into the habit of checking it every three minutes. Her characteristic quality is impatience. When General Benjamin and Mr. Hosokawa play chess together, their moves are taken so slowly, it is “as if time had yet to be invented” (226). Inside the ad hoc and enclosed community that now resides in the mansion, time loses its meaning. Time is a construct, and as it disappears in this world, so, too, do other constructs disappear, such as class and cultural power constructs. Inside the mansion a genuine, construct-free and unified utopia is formed, a type of Eden.

Even Joachim Messner falls victim to this torpor; he is able to leave the mansion and return to the real world outside, but his efforts at negotiation have stalled. He knows that the situation will end as it always does, and he despairs of changing the outcome. Each day he arrives, knowing that everything “would all be the same” (235). It is akin to being stuck in a time loop; the characters in Bel Canto flounder their way through the endless days and repetitive activities only to find they are happy, they are in love. Mr. Hosokawa wishes, at one point, that “he could stop time” (291). For Messner, however, this feels like cruelty, because he knows what is coming: “Truly, time had stopped. He had always been here and he would always be here” (302). Alas, the terrorists’ time is up, and time lurches forward to make up for its absence: “Time, so long suspended, now came back with such a force that it overlapped and everything happened at once” (313). In a mere instant, it seems, all of the terrorists, along with Mr. Hosokawa, are gone. Once the government, the outside world, comes in, all of the constructs come in, too; the Indigenous terrorists are killed, and time seems to resume in an instant with all of them dead.

At the beginning of the takeover, the terrorists are barely distinguishable from one another, at least to the hostages; they are “little bandits” following three slightly older Generals (71). When they discuss their plans, “[t]heir voices [blur] together” (71), as do their identities. These young teenagers are interchangeable, with their skinny limbs and scary weapons. They are merely a terrifying mob. Still, on occasion, their actions begin to humanize them. When Father Arguedas goes over to the dying accompanist, the Generals do not stop him: “That was either the power of the Church or the power of the opera singer” (77). Though they wanted “to stop him, to slap him,” they resist the impulse, and the priest is able to administer last rites (77).

As time goes by, some of the younger terrorists take on individual identities, too, including Ishmael and Cesar: “They were just starting to become distinguishable, these boys” (95). As for the Generals, Benjamin becomes the most notable; his is marked by the inflamed shingles infection on his face, and the reader becomes privy to some of his back story: “Before his brother’s arrest, Benjamin had not been a general at all. He had taught grade school” (136). This surprising bit of information further humanizes the “terrorists;” Benjamin hopes to secure the release of his brother, who he believes is being held as a political prisoner. Tragically, after General Benjamin is killed in the government raid, his brother is executed in prison for being a co-conspirator.

Beatriz and Carmen are singled out among the terrorists, mostly for their gender but also for their specific roles. Carmen, of course, becomes Gen’s lover, so the reader follows some of her innermost thoughts about her love for the brilliant Japanese man. Her eagerness to become literate and her quickness in learning also serve to elicit the reader’s empathy. Beatriz, on the other hand, is sometimes impetuous and selfish. Still, as the other characters grow and change through the book, so does Beatriz. She retains Carmen’s confidence after discovering that Mr. Hosokawa was being escorted to Roxanne’s room. When Father Arguedas encourages her interest in confession, Beatriz admits to herself that she does not feel “very grown up” or “very wicked,” but she acquiesces anyway (246). The priest tries to nurture her nascent compassion.

Still, to the government soldiers who storm the mansion in the final chapter of the book, the terrorists appear to them as they appeared to the hostages at the beginning of the story: they are interchangeable, which unfortunately means that they are all, despite what the reader has learned about them as individuals, expendable. To the reader, they are their individual selves; to the government, however, they are a symbol or motif, simply “The Band of Terrorists.”