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

couldn’t think of a reason for her to test him like this. Then again, he couldn’t think of a reason for anything she’d done so far.

He’d wavered too long: the man’s daughter answered for him. “He wants to know why you’re doing this,” the girl said, and then came the uncanny quiet of the minute or two that followed, the little coughing sounds she made as the woman pistol-whipped her, the flailing of her hands. She sank down into the corner of her seat, her face turned to the wall, her breathing shallow but regular.

Having made her point, the woman turned to Xavier and asked again. “What did he say?”

Xavier was quick with his answer this time: “Right now he’s saying please, please.”

“And before?”

Xavier told her, hoping panic hadn’t altered his memory. The woman took a sip of Xavier’s drink as she listened, and then she said: “Well, yes. That can happen to the best of us: going blank at moments when it’s really important to get things right. Good thing you’re here.”

She told Xavier to pick up the Baduk stones and put the black stones on her side and the white stones on the man’s side. She talked as he did so, telling the man they were going to play until the last stop. The man nodded, his gaze flitting from his daughter to the window to the compartment door … How was he going to play Baduk with his pupils sliding in and out of focus like that …

The man was saying: “Why isn’t anybody coming? Oh God, what has this woman done … Why isn’t anybody even passing by?” The man’s daughter stirred, and the man kept his eyes on her from then on, his tone softening as he spoke to her; Xavier didn’t understand what he was saying, but it sounded as if he was trying to keep her as alert as possible, asking her to keep her eyes open, something like that. “Laura … Laurinha …” Whatever it was the man had said, it served to rouse the girl somewhat; she answered him in French, muttering that he should clear his mind and just play. She told him to make sure to win and that she was cheering him on. “Proud of you, Dad …” She seemed to have decided that they were at a tournament. She agreed to keep her eyes open a little while longer.

Xavier watched the woman with apprehension; she’d grown misty-eyed, and it couldn’t be the case that she was touched by her own handiwork. She sighed, leaned forward, and told Xavier he was sitting next to a brilliant man.

OK, he was sitting next to a brilliant man, and she was sitting beside a barely conscious girl who was leaking blood from her left ear. As for why nobody had come … Xavier very clearly pictured every passenger in the carriages on either side slumped in their seats—it wouldn’t have been free goodies offered from the refreshment cart that would’ve sent them to dreamland. People can be so picky and you can’t always rely on them to accept free food or drink, so she’d probably secreted some kind of canister above the back wheels of the cart and trundled through those carriages with a heady haze in her wake, not thick enough to cause wheezing but conspicuous enough to cause complaints about not being able to open the windows before everybody nodded off. Xavier didn’t know what he and this woman really had to do with each other, but he felt like he’d been cursed with an ability to read only one mind: the one he least wished to.

“A brilliant man,” the woman repeated. “Duarte De Souza.”

The man mumbled, “Call me Eddy …”

The woman paused to glare at him, then continued: “He was North American Go champion for seven years in a row. And, you know, eligibility is on a geographical basis, not a cultural one. So you’ve got the cream of America and Canada’s considerable crop, you’ve also got contestants from twenty-one other countries, and you’ve also got contenders from eleven independent territories and I can’t remember how many islands. But Monsieur De Souza sent them all packing for seven years! People started saying the things they’ve always said about virtuosity. They’d say he had a pact with the devil, or that he was a robot … Actually, some engineers started building a robot of their own, to see if it could learn enough about the game to beat him, but he retired before they could finish.”

“Ah,” said Xavier. North American Go champion. Could such a person actually exist? She might as well have said the man sat beside him was Fantômas—that seemed more likely. Xavier looked at Eddy, to see if he’d understood the woman. He had, and he said: “That’s a very selective view. She neglects to mention that once a North American Go champion tries to compete internationally, forget about it. I was never able to clear the preliminary round for the LG Cup. She should pick on someone else.”

The woman listened with knitted brow, then turned to Xavier with an enquiring expression.

“He says …” Xavier took a deep breath, today was lies-come-true day, plus he thought he could guess what she wanted to hear. “He says he remembers you. You play to an international standard, not just regional, that’s what he said. You’re LG Cup standard.” Surely a little flattery couldn’t hurt?

The woman reached for Xavier’s can of Ricqlès, then changed her mind mid-reach. There could be no toilet breaks, so she had to pace herself. She began to count the Baduk stones on her side of the board instead. Without looking up, she said: “Hmmm … he’s lying about remembering me. I don’t look like I did back then. The prison years show.”

The bit about prison seemed to ring a bell and earned her a piercing glance from Eddy, then a much longer second look. He nudged Xavier. “This person … this person already beat