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

it was an insult not just to my talent but to any musician’s. ‘Why doesn’t this Karel just put a CD on if music helps him sleep,’ he’d say. He scoffed when I tried to tell him it was about having another person there. But I’m glad Karel didn’t go down the CD route. A good while later, once we’d become friends, I found out that he’d lost his wife to the same type of cancer my dad was dying of. He had been through some similar things with her. The remissions, the beautiful remissions, then that fucking awful final march. We met a decade after Karel’s wife had died … He was teetotal, ate healthily, went running every morning, had this schedule that mixed glitzy galas, commercial work, and pet projects, and every now and then he’d suddenly flinch just a tiny bit, for no external reason, and you’d realise he was completely wrecked.”

“Flinch?” I said.

“Yeah. He caught himself very, very quickly, but not before I’d seen him huddle up like an arm had been raised against him. Not just any arm—an arm as heavy as a thirty-foot canon, so all he could do was try to come to terms with getting squashed like a raisin. For the first year I didn’t think to ask Karel anything about himself, though. All I cared about was funding various end-of-life things for Dad. There were trips we needed to take, and people he needed to see. I had to make it all as painless as possible for him. Dad never asked me for anything; it’s just that I had to do that for him. He kept making new friends as we went along … said I couldn’t expect him to stop enjoying people. He was the greatest exasperation—whew, sorry, one second, please.”

She turned her head away, raised her sleeve to her face, looked at me again. “Sorrows of a daddy’s girl. He died … and I went on playing to the empty room for another three years. Five nights a week, mostly weeknights, overall.”

“Jumping at shadows the whole time?”

“It was hard to do at first, let me tell you. Karel would only let me have the nightlight while I was playing, but as soon as he left I’d switch all the lights on and search the room before I started. He’d thump on his bedroom ceiling with a broom handle so I’d get a move on. Anyway … after that first night, I was still scared of the dark everywhere except in that empty room, where I played my theremin from midnight to five a.m. And I don’t know why.”

I scratched my head.

“There’s more,” she said. “Even though, as I told you, it was an empty room, some of the compositions I played got a better reception than others.”

“How could you tell?”

I’d kept my tone neutral, but she raised her chin; her pulse was going again. “I don’t know, Otto. That’s just how it was. I played some Martinu˚, some Schillinger, a bit of Fuleihan, some Zappa, and two of Allegra’s compositions. He seemed to quite like Allegra’s offerings, but it was the song Karel wrote for him that really helped him get some rest.”

“Him?”

“Přem. Remember, the song’s called ‘For Přemysl at Night.’ Karel told me I should only ever play it for his son.”

“But …” Suddenly I thought better of asking.

“Are they dead now, Karel and Přem? Is that what you wanted to ask? Karel is, but I don’t know about Přem.”

She stopped walking and asked: “Do you?”

“Do I what? Know about Přem?!” I genuinely didn’t see how she’d arrived at this question (how and what could I know about this Přemysl of hers?), yet somehow I ended up sounding like a bad liar.

Her eyebrows shot up. I must have smiled first; hers seemed like a reply.

“It’s been a peculiar few years. For me, at least, Otto. But it’s almost over … well, depending on what the doctor says. Oh, hello, Laura.”

Cubicle Lady had materialised to my right, fully dressed and exasperated.

“What did I ask you not to do, Mr. Shin?”

“Talk to Ms. Kapoor.”

“And what are you doing right at this moment?”

Ava shrugged and gave me a tiny wave, so I said: “Leaving, Laura … I’m leaving.”

I invited Chela the mongoose along, telling her there was someone she might like to meet. Staring, Laura said: “Sorry, but there’s a rule about talking to Chela as well.”

Bloody hell. Fine. I went back the way I came without another word.

5.

Xárpád was waiting in our compartment. Xárpád and the continued absence of light.

“You found her?” Xavier asked. He sounded just a little fuzzy; he seemed to have been sitting in there for a while, just staring straight ahead of him.

I took his hand and threaded his fingers through mine. “Yup. It was HELLO, not HELP.”

“That’s a relief. I’ll have to tell her so myself.”

“Ah, about that. She does like having us on board and everything, but … just in case you see her around … we’re not actually allowed to talk to her.”

“What? Why?”

“Er …”

“You didn’t find out why.”

“It’s for health reasons, I reckon. She mentioned a doctor. And seems a bit transfixed by loss. People she knew and loved who are gone.”

“Mourning?”

“I don’t know if I’d describe it that way. She seems more … expectant? Anyway, it’s the sort of the thing that takes time, and four days from now we’ll be gone. Shouldn’t be too difficult to respect her wishes. Just wait ’til you see the library, and taste train-grown tomatoes,” I told him. “We can pick violets for our salad too. Maybe even marry Árpád off while we’re at it …”

“Marry him off to who? Ava Kapoor?!”

“No … you’ll see. Well, I hope you will.”

He slapped his knee. “I’ll prepare my share of the bride price accordingly. Also, I see your library and tomatoes and raise you a portrait gallery and a postal-sorting carriage …”

Something had disconcerted him as he mentioned those two carriages. Or maybe it