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

know … why this avoidance of clear confirmation … did I see him or not? Unfortunately, having to report activities onboard this train once a week has made me overly cautious. My employer values specificity over certainty.

Both Ms. Yu and I learnt to drive trains on the East Coast Main Line, at roughly the same time, though her pace was different from mine. We didn’t cross paths back then—this is something we’ve discovered through conversation. I showed up with a Canadian high school diploma and a robust resistance to being examined, so I wasn’t able to take Ms. Yu’s university graduate fast track … I trained part time whilst completing four years of railroad and rail station shift work instead. What did I do on the station and around the track? What didn’t I do! But here’s the bit you want: during my final six months of training I landed a shift as a conductor. I was living in Durham at the time, and the segment of the route that I checked tickets for passed from Durham through to Edinburgh Waverley. I’d eat something at the other end—or sometimes stay the night, depending on any station shifts that came back again. This was where I saw you, Ava, and the portrait look-alike—on the Edinburgh Waverley to Durham route. You see a lot of things on trains, but when I look back over those six months of train conducting, I’d say you getting on the train along with the portrait look-alike and the sleeping mongoose was the seventh or eighth most memorable sight. It was about half past six in the morning. You had the mongoose all swaddled up like a baby (fooling the sum total of zero fellow passengers, by the way), and it looked as if you were trying to get away from him without attracting attention to your fear. You took a window seat and huddled up with Chela, checking your phone every few seconds. Your companion was wearing silk pajamas underneath a trench coat, and he took the window seat directly behind you and stared at you, steadily and angrily, he was all, GRRRRR, at the back of your head. And two or three times, very hesitantly, he’d raise a hand up over your shoulder. I think he intended to snatch the mongoose! But then you’d cuddle her and the man would look all gloomy. After I checked his ticket, he did ask me whether conductors could arrest passengers in lieu of the police. I told him I would check and asked if there was a problem.

The man in the silk pajamas pointed at you, Ms. Kapoor, and whispered to me that you’d just stolen his mongoose. And he asked me what he should do. He looked as if he was at his wit’s end; I pitied him and asked if he’d tried talking to you about it. He said yes, he’d tried and tried. I asked if I should mediate, and he said no, no, there was nothing left to say, that I should either detain you or leave you be. You may indeed have stolen that mongoose, but you did not seem in any way a threat to other passengers, so naturally, I let you be. It was a very short trip. I checked your tickets at Newcastle, and when I came back around at Chester-le-Street, all three of you had gone.

The second incident I will mention is not a sighting of Přemysl Stojaspal but a sort of postscript regarding my change of career. I have a history of violence that renews itself whenever I come into contact with the general public; this is the conclusion drawn from almost every prior form of employment I’ve tried my hand at. There were two altercations with passengers during my time on the East Coast Main Line—one sort of blew over without any consequences, but the other was serious enough to bring about my dismissal. After the train job I worked as a nightclub bouncer for a few months, against the advice of everybody who knew me—they said I would end up in prison. And I did. It was a four-year sentence, and I got into fights while I was inside as well. Partly because I’m someone who just gets into fights, Ms. Kapoor. People piss me off with their bullshit, and I give them a smack—or vice versa. There is no point asking me why I get so angry. You should go to the people who are disrespectful until they get hit and ask them why they’re like that. But partly the fighting was a little bit calculated as well. I didn’t have the tolerance a person needs to be part of society, so I thought it would be for the best if I never returned to it. But it was only society I’d given up on, not life, so if I had to go, I’d have to be killed.

I don’t think like that anymore. Not after these years spent unseeing the world with you and Ms. Yu. But back then, towards the end of my sentence, I’d only fought with other inmates, so the conflict instigators were hardly ever revealed. The guards couldn’t pin anything on me, so on paper I was good as gold … and a few months before my sentence was up, I was offered opportunities to apply for jobs and start looking for housing on the outside. I wasn’t interested. I got a letter congratulating me on securing a position at a loans company that would begin seven days after my release. The letter also invited me to stipulate my own monthly salary; my first month would be paid in advance to cover any expenses I’d incur getting to work. It had been sent by airmail and had a Hong Kong postmark. I hadn’t applied for that job. Or any job. I threw the letter away. A couple of days later, one of the guards approached me with pen and paper, saying,