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

I guess I was supposed to tremble and go, “Oh my God, this Mr. Lin has eyes and ears everywhere!” But I was still in this state of apathy unless there was a chance of a proper fight. I didn’t ask any questions, just wrote down any old figure. The guard must have posted it. A few days later, Mr. Lin visited me himself, put the sheet with the numbers on it down in front of me, and said “That’s a bit high. Maybe after five years … but let’s talk about now.”

He wanted me to monitor the situation regarding a loan he’d paid out. We looked at Karel’s will together. The sums you’d been borrowing from Mr. Lin were getting larger and larger, but based on the size of the inheritance, he didn’t mind that. What if that equilibrium of yours didn’t pan out, though? Mr. Lin doesn’t think Karel made that a condition just for fun. And he does think Ms. Yu’s so soft that she’d just stand by going “Oh no!” while you lost your grip on reality. So it wouldn’t hurt to throw in a participating observer of his own—that’s what he told me.

I don’t remember my reply; something about it being nice of him to care about how you were doing. I do remember that after I said whatever I said, he asked me to look at him carefully. I did. His eyes strangled light. He said, “Laura, you can see it, right? That I’m not a good person. If you make me lose money, I will eradicate you from the earth. I’m a craftsman, and I never leave the work to an inferior practitioner. I do it all myself.”

Mr. Lin had a fancy smartwatch on—against visiting rules and regulations, of course. Holding his wrist beneath the table and inviting me to look down at the watch, he showed me some pictures that made it very hard for me not to throw up right there in the visiting room. He had them saved in a special photo album. He talked me through the processes depicted in a tone of humble absorption very similar to the ones you hear in art restoration video voiceovers. But he also told me he believed in consent. “I’ll tell you about the job, and if you don’t want to do it, you won’t hear from me again. I’m here because a friend recommended you. A close friend.”

I asked which friend, and he said: “Přem Stojaspal. Son of the guy whose will this is. Seems he’s anxious for this Ava to inherit. That or a detailed eyewitness account of whatever disaster befalls her. He’s a tricky one.” Tricky Přemysl Stojaspal may well be, but I’d never met him. Or so I thought. I didn’t exchange names with the man who boarded the train with you either … now you see why I told you I couldn’t help with your enquiries. Here they are anyway, Ms. Kapoor. The notes of a former hothead who took a job based on the conviction that she’d finally met an opponent who could overpower her will to live.

14.

ZEINAB RASHID

Dear Ava,

I hope you and Allegra are pulling off that old sanity trick, all right; I think about you both often. I think about Karel, too, and Přem. I considered not writing this letter to you, and then I considered not sending it—I have a feeling this is a common reaction among those you’ve asked to try to put Přem in writing. In my case, there’s an additional sense of impropriety. It’s not right for the executor of Karel’s will to gossip and speculate about his state of mind when he wrote it. Anyway, if you’re reading this, I found a way to dismiss those scruples.

Karel was one of the first students to take my History of Music for Strings course, you know. And Allegra was one of the last. My first impressions of both students were so wide of the mark I can only laugh them off. I thought Karel needed a bit more self-confidence and Allegra needed a bit less. They both took an interest in my lecture on an eighteenth-century priest and an instrument he devised—a hypothetical instrument that could not be brought into actuality despite many years of labour. I didn’t realise the extent to which that story took hold of Karel Stojaspal’s imagination until I read “The Ocular Harpsichord”—have you read it, Ava, the novella Karel wrote? It’s all in there, in the chilling immediacy of Karel’s “I,” as he tells of Louis Bertrand Castel’s proposal to make music visible to the naked eye, and then every grain of the quicksand that drew him into its embrace as he failed. The ruin of his health and finances. The blighting of his view of Creation.

Allegra didn’t get it. She kept looking all around her during that lecture, seeking the point she was missing in the expressions of the other students. But then A’s viable ideas come in clusters; if one doesn’t ripen after all, there’s still a good chance one of the others will, so why get into a tizzy over the one concept? Karel adores breezy prodigal talents. He married one after graduation. A former classmate of his, in fact. Poppy Dixon. I was at their wedding, and then they moved to Newcastle once Poppy started as a 2nd Violin for the Royal Northern Sinfonia. Poppy was a bit too nice for Karel. No, what I mean is that Karel was too cruel for Poppy, but never allowed her to realise it. Karel’s cruel streak, his tendency to taunt and prod, so perplexed Poppy that he feared she wouldn’t put up with it. He hid that cruel streak from his wife and only showed it to his friends. Which was perfectly lovely for us, of course. However: I will let those stories die.

We frequently double dated when they