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

hand held steady throughout, monitoring the girl beside her, whose inactivity she was probably wise to mistrust, before travelling around to Eddy and then back to the girl again. It seemed she thought of Xavier as a teammate now; no looking down the barrel of her pistol for him.

The train stopped at a station. A silent station, and no one boarded.

Eddy De Souza said (and Xavier translated): “Madame Hébert—that’s your name, isn’t it, Louise Hébert? I swear to you that I played to the best of my ability that day. And if we played now … fright aside, I would be at my worst. I don’t think about Go for thirty minutes out of every hour the way I used to. My moves are flabby; they’ve had no exercise in years. You’ve already won. You know that.”

“Yes, yes—in front of an audience that didn’t move or make a sound when my win was confirmed. I remember looking around as the lights beyond the stage came up, expecting to see all the seats empty, since it was so quiet. But they were all there, glaring. There was a little motion here and there as some people shook their heads …”

“I lost even though I had their support, Madame Hébert. And you won without it. What, then, do you need from those people? You say you came just to play me. Did you forget that I stood up and applauded you? With sincere respect …”

“And when nobody joined you, it started to look like sarcasm. It was so strange, a few minutes later, struggling to hold up the trophy so a photograph could be taken. I’d gained nothing. In fact, I’d been depleted. It felt like my arms would shatter or something. But I was careful to follow the instructions I’d been given beforehand. In the event of a win, I had to hold the trophy up high so the T-shirt was clearly visible and anyone looking for some small way to partake in the glory would know which brand of soap they should wash their hands with before they Go. The photographer took one quick snap and left …”

The woman was directing all her answers at Xavier, since all the replies she understood came from him. Light flared through the curtain, and the carriage clattered as it burst out into the sunshine again. The next stop was the last, and it felt as if the driver was picking up speed, intent on the final dash.

“Madame Hébert—”

“And then every account of the match added that you hadn’t been in top condition, do you remember that? Your hands had been trembling earlier on, or you had a cold, or something.”

“I don’t know why anybody would think that. It wasn’t anything I said. If anybody had asked me, I’d have assured them that I wasn’t at any disadvantage. Madame Hébert, I think people were just …”

Eddy thought for a moment, then asked Xavier for some paper and a pen. Upon receipt of both, he wrote a simple declaration to the effect that he, Duarte De Souza, had been defeated by Louise Hébert, superbly and in all fairness, on such and such a date in Mexico City, and that the title of North American Go Champion for that year was rightfully hers. He signed the note and handed it to her. But he had written it in English, and when Louise Hébert saw that, tears ran down her face. She said: “I don’t know what this says. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have scared you so badly.”

Xavier indicated that he would read it to her. But she, Louise, the woman with the dove grey pistol, the person whose mind Xavier couldn’t read after all, said: “Time to take my medicine.” She took a small bottle out of her handbag, sprayed some of its contents down her throat, gargled for a second, then tipped her head back and began swallowing Baduk stones exactly as if they were pills.

Things got hazy for Xavier after that. He understood a bit more when he visited the first arrondissement commissariat that evening. One or the other of the Paris parents had called Do Yeon-ssi—they’d had no plans to let him disappear without a trace, had in fact been panic struck when he hadn’t appeared at Gare de Lyon—and Xavier sat hand in hand with his aunt as they watched some footage from the train. He hadn’t been able to see any of the onboard cameras, but they were of course right there recording, though the footage could only be viewed remotely and with a time delay. The security guard who had been watching had been quite tentative about raising the alarm at first. The sleeping passengers in the carriages on either side of the Go carriage hadn’t fallen asleep instantaneously, or even en masse. It had happened a couple of stops after the police had disembarked, and it had all looked natural enough. One passenger settling down to sleep, the sight of which reminded another passenger that they too could do with a nap. It happens. Just like with yawning … someone yawns and then you have to as well, you just have to, even if you’re not tired. The woman-with-a-gun-swallowing-stones situation was much less ambiguous, though nobody was quite sure how to proceed regarding the girl Hébert had assaulted. Laura De Souza. Laura, who’d snatched up the pistol, pressed it against Louise Hébert’s forehead, and eventually managed to pull the trigger after a lot of fumbling. The woman’s patience while the girl worked out how to fire should’ve clued her in … It was a broken, empty-chambered weapon anyway. So far so good, the girl isn’t a murderer even if she wanted to be. And there were aggravating circumstances for her fear and animosity … but as the guard reviewed the footage, he still felt that maybe they should do something about the girl. He didn’t know what, but something. Especially at the point where one of the Baduk stones