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

flower beds a good trampling as she pursued me to the garden gate. I phoned Karel to ask if it was OK for the mongoose to come home with me, and Karel, sounding very surprised, said that was up to Přem. “She’s his mongoose. Her name is Chela.”

To me this was like saying, “That’s Tinkerbell’s mongoose … look out … Tink might get angry with you!” I took Chela home without further ado. Dad was at first inclined to treat her as a hallucination brought on by his pain medication but very soon warmed to her, and we’ve been the best of friends ever since.

The second thing: this is my ruminative wheel, like the one Allegra might have broken herself on if she’d spent many more nights playing for Přem. Is there anything I could have done that would have made it so that Karel Stojaspal could be alive and well today?

Karel had cysts on his kidneys. He knew something was wrong for quite a long time—we’ll never know how long—but he didn’t seek treatment until he collapsed at a meeting, was taken to hospital, and a scan revealed the extent of the damage. Karel had to have a transplant. He had to, and naturally, his son, Přemysl, was the donor.

Naturally. Tests had been run, compatibility was assured, Karel didn’t want to die, he still had a project he wanted—needed—to complete, and he would. Přem, he told me, was more than willing, was all but ready to rip the kidney out and hand it over himself. The date of the operation was arranged.

I was dazed, couldn’t believe he meant to go ahead with this thing. Karel wanted to try to live with Přem’s kidney in his body? Přem’s? A non-corporeal kidney? I wrote the date of the operation down, and I took it as many holy places as I could reach with my railcard over the course of five days. Temples, a synagogue, a church, a woodland glade, a shrine by the sea. I believe in some greater power, but not formally. I don’t know how to pray; maybe I’m as blind and deaf to the greater power as I was to Přem’s presence. In the holy places I asked what would happen on the date I’d written down; I asked if there was any way Karel was going to survive. I asked the power to move that ludicrously stubborn man, to make him seek another donor, try something, anything, else. Answers came, but that thing you read and hear about, that thing that happens to people when they try to access some exterior truth and sink so deep that they don’t recognize the voice they hear … it wasn’t like that for me. I always heard the answers in my own voice. Shallow consciousness problems.

I went back to Karel, and we had one more fight, one more terrible fight about Přem. And everything I said was wrong. I tried to force Karel to say he didn’t have a son; Karel tried to force me to admit that I am playing some minx-like game of influence, trying to drive his son to lunacy just because. Apparently Přem was there, shouting that I should be ashamed. But Allegra says she was with Přem that afternoon, so the bit about Přem shouting was probably Karel fighting me.

The operation went ahead the following week. Five months passed, and Karel was alive. I didn’t visit him, he didn’t want to see me, but I went back to all the holy places and kissed the earth, kissed the stones, kissed whatever I could kiss for the gladness of being wrong. In the sixth month, Karel got really sick. His body had rejected Přem’s kidney. The medication he was taking was supposed to safeguard against that, but I don’t think anyone can imagine what kind of charge Karel’s medication was trying to take on. It failed. Then there was the funeral, and then there was the reading of the will, and the wheel of thought as I turn words over. The words I said to Karel Stojaspal about his son. I said it all wrong. But the right words—what are they?

12.

ALLEGRA YU

Ava,

Přem asked me how I can trust you. He wasn’t talking about your behaviour towards him; he was really sad about Chela. He couldn’t get over her. “Ava Kapoor … Ava Kapoor … that girl stole my fucking mongoose!” Karel and I looked into getting him another mongoose, but he said no one could take Chela’s place, that one day Chela would realise she’d made a mistake and come back to him; he was basically a spoken-word country and western ballad. To Přem Stojaspal, you will always be the girl who stole his mongoose.

Well, not only that. According to Přem, a charismatic performer is, fundamentally, a manipulator. Nothing more, nothing less. You play and it brings Přem rest, you play and I lose my heart to you, you play and Chela realises it’s time for a companion upgrade. Přem informs me you’ll never stop because all you want is to find out what effect you can have. Don’t get bigheaded: He didn’t talk about you much. But when he did, it sounded like he’d given you a lot of thought. You and your ways.

I think Přem had a crush on you. Unclear what kind: he was celibate, as far as I knew. Admirers sent him bouquets, and he’d set the flowers upright in jugs full of pear brandy, saying that flowers need to have a good time too. I still hear from people who thought I was his girlfriend; possibly because he told them so. And I did act quite girlfriend-y. Picking out his signature scent and buying him silk ties and things like that. But I only bought the tie because it looked like it was made for him. And it was on sale … and I was interested in Přem’s look because he was like me—operating