Peaces, Helen Oyeyemi [best life changing books TXT] 📗

The mongoose was standing on his hind legs now, eyeing me with even more alertness than Ava was. I gave him a nod. “What’s his name?”

“That’s Chela. A female. Answer my question.”

“I thought there was someone in there. Well. I saw someone. They didn’t come out, so I thought … obviously the fire brigade was on its way, but …”

“You went in and there was no one there.”

“I’m told it was a kind of neural blip. The seeing-someone bit, not the acting on it.”

“Really? Wouldn’t you say that acting on the first blip constitutes a second blip? You know you should have waited for people who’d know what to do. So why didn’t you?”

As she asked this, her face took on a glassy, anticipatory look. Hungry for some sort of bleak confession, it seemed. I did what I always do when wary; I played the wag, telling her I’d asked myself what Árpád would do and had acted accordingly.

“Árpád? The mongoose you’re travelling with. You’re saying you’ve made him your moral compass?” Disappointed, she turned away, then turned back. “I’m sorry. I mean, he’s probably just as dependable as anybody else, if not more. It’s just that my own neural blip has been ongoing for years. I suppose I was looking for encouragement.”

“I can do encouragement,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“I’m a member of the Empty Room Club too,” she said. “That song I was playing … did you really like it? Funny—most don’t. Anyway, it was written by a friend of mine. He was a composer. Mostly film scores, but not this song. He …”

Ava opened the compartment door, took two quick steps towards me, eyes alight, then held up her hands. It looked as if she was making a note to herself, that she should stop. But she had come closer.

I offered her my arm and asked: “Did he write the song for you?”

She took my arm, and we went on a promenade the length of the carriage and back. The train coursed onto a triple track, then dawdled for a few seconds … long enough for two other trains to join us. One on either side. The blinds of the train carriage to the left were drawn closed, but through the windows on our right we could see into a carriage where a nurse in a spotless white uniform leaned over a table, fastidiously cooling a steaming bowl of soup with a folding fan. He stirred the bowl with a thermometer every few seconds, and his billy goat beard wagged with satisfaction each time he checked the temperature. We nodded at him when he looked in our direction, and he nodded back, then closed the window blinds of his carriage too.

“No, the song’s called ‘For Přemysl at Night,’” Ava said. “Five nights a week for four years, beginning when I was twenty-one … I’d go to this tall, thin house in Jesmond Vale, Newcastle—if you saw it, you’d think it was made of enormous marble toothpicks …”

“And all the rooms were empty?”

“Ha. Not a bad guess. Actually my friend lived there. Well, we started off as employer and employee. He paid me to visit. My friend Karel … he was this gangly fifty-something-year-old with a deeply sulky resting expression; no matter what you said to him, for the first second or two he’d look at you like he was getting told off for something he hadn’t even done. But when he smiled it made quite a difference. I’d be like, “Oh my god, you’re somewhat appealing, aren’t you?!” And he’d go, “I don’t know, Ava … am I?” I’d get to his house at about a quarter to midnight, and he’d take me to a huge, dark bedroom on the top floor. The floor above his own bedroom. We’d go there, and.”

There was no outer change—our arms remained lightly linked, she spoke evenly, her gaze didn’t waver—but her pulse had segued into a death-metal drum solo.

“Ava—it’s OK. Whatever it is, you can say it.”

“It’s just that we’re getting on and everything, you and me. And now you’re gonna think I’m off my head.”

“So what if I do? You already think I’m off mine, don’t you?”

“Yeah, a bit,” she admitted.

“Was he really your friend, this guy? I mean—he didn’t do anything unfriendly? Or did he?”

“Who, Karel? No. Allegra worked for him too, and she liked him, otherwise I wouldn’t even have gone there in the first place. You’re not gonna hate someone your girlfriend likes, right?”

“Well …”

“You’ve just thought of a trillion exceptions, but that assumption’s never failed us yet. Karel would take me to that bedroom, and he’d switch on a nightlight, and he’d give me music he’d composed. One of the songs was the one you heard, ‘For Přemysl at Night.’ Then he’d go off to sleep in his own room downstairs.”

“Leaving you to play to an empty room?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Though it did have this sort of lived-in feel to it. Ultra untidy, loads of expensive gear just tossed aside and left in bad condition. The bed looked like it had been properly slept in—the bed linen made all kinds of weird shapes—but it was only blankets and things. I’m afraid of the dark too, so …”

“This Karel guy must have been offering you more money than you could refuse.”

“He really was. Not that that’s saying much. I—we—really needed ready cash. My dad was sick. I really hated leaving him at night; always had it in the back of my mind that this might be our last one … Sorry, this isn’t what you signed up for. You came for your honeymoon, and here I am blabbing away at you.”

“Oh, but we’re the Empty Room Club. We have an understanding. I’m hoping your dad got better.”

She squeezed my arm. “Thanks for saying so, but he didn’t. And he had a lot to say about my night work before he went. He said I shouldn’t have taken the job …