Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi (best manga ereader .TXT) 📗

they’re the kind of friends who … don’t happen to share a sense of humour? What did you think? Did it seem as if there might be something else between them?”

Xavier nodded, and after a couple of gulps of water I concurred. With great unease. Xavier might have thought I wanted to gaslight Ava, but I thought he was overestimating her ability to handle changes that might not be to her liking after an epoch of changes more or less handpicked to keep her happy.

Ava drizzled more maple syrup onto her toast; her hand trembled slightly, but all she said was: “It’s good to get an outside opinion.”

“Ava.” I fed her a bite of French toast too. “We’re only saying it’s not impossible. On the other hand, they seem fond of you. As far as we can tell, anyway.”

She scrunched up her face and dropped her fork onto her plate. “What is this superior feeding method that makes the French toast taste better? Do it again.”

I did, and Xavier asked her: “So did you really mean it when you told people you couldn’t see Přem, or what?”

Ava chewed, nervously and for a long time. She drank some water.

“The Přem question is the one that decides whether I inherit,” she said. “But I don’t know which answer is the one that confirms sanity. I’m not talking about the answer that satisfies Karel’s requirement, or Dr. Zachariah’s, but the one that satisfies mine.”

She accepted another bite of French toast, then stood, talking with her mouth full. “I’d better go. I’ve left a file in the bread bin … Laura and Allegra would never look in there. Read it and … add to it for me, OK?”

Her walkie-talkie buzzed in her apron pocket as she hurried away.

10.

What we found in the bread bin: a folder with the name Přemysl Stojaspal (in Ava’s handwriting). Inside, a sheaf of handwritten texts, each in a different hand, with a typed table of contents on top—names matched to page numbers.

Ava Kapoor

Allegra Yu

Laura De Souza

Zeinab Rashid

Beneath these names, Ava had written

Otto Shin

Xavier Shin

I flipped through the sheaf of handwritten texts looking for the entries pertaining to us, but Xavier said: “We’re meant to add to it ourselves. She wants it in writing … what we know about him.”

“What are you saying? You know about this guy?”

“I’m not sure yet,” he said. “But maybe, once we’ve looked at the rest …”

“People often don’t realise what they know,” I said, quoting one of my favourite books, “and only when it is explicitly stated does it become obvious to them. Something like that?”

He answered me with a kiss that counselled the wisdom of speaking to him in Ludvík Vaculík quotations, and we took the file back to Clock Carriage, where we read the accounts in order.

11.

AVA KAPOOR

I used to busk in what I think of as Newcastle’s town centre, Old Eldon Square. I’d get there early in the morning, set up my instrument, and start playing as the sun came up. I played facing the east, with St. George slaying his dragon behind me. Though really it is less of a killing happening atop that pedestal and more a depiction of some fascination—a courtship, possibly—between the saint and the serpent. George courteously offers the dragon a metal spike, the dragon just as gallantly ingests it, and both seem gratified that it’s going down so well. I played theremin-adapted reveilles until the shops opened, and when you do that, passersby really give you whatever they have to give. Sniggers and stares. Comments about noise pollution. Phone numbers. Doughnuts. Song requests. Applause. Impromptu dance routines. Spare change. A five-pound note “’cause I’m not sure exactly what you’re up to but it’s a ballsy move; girls like you remind me I wouldn’t want to live in any other city” …

I played for an hour and a half regardless. Then I’d go to work: online customer service for a few different companies, just me and my laptop logged into a few different company e-mail accounts, with a number of databases open so I could check the typical things customers enquire and complain about or contact somebody who could find out what was what. Phone calls were rare during the day, and I liked that because it meant I’d be able to answer immediately if there was anything about my dad.

In short: it was the standard life of a music scholar who’d love to play vocationally but can’t. Time, money, talent, and grit—I think I’d have been able to do more with my theremin if I’d been lacking only two of those four essentials. But I lacked all four. And what did I have instead? Realism. What a gift! Most of the time it’s as if my life is hiding from me, but as I play, note by note, I echolocate it.

One morning in Eldon Square, the most beautiful emergency I’d ever seen walked by, dressed in red from head to toe and chugging a can of Red Bull. She had her earphones in, but she pulled them out and listened to my playing. She didn’t stop walking, and I had to choose between looking at her and following the notation on the sheets in front of me, so I lost her. But she came by again the next day, and the next—each time dressed as if she was going somewhere special, or as if that day was a very important day. But when we spoke, she’d tell me she’d just come from picking up or dropping off packages and dry cleaning and things like that. And her name was Allegra Yu.

One morning she asked if I was OK with her recording my busking. I said I was, but that I didn’t want her to put it online or anything. She told me she needed the recording so that she could compose for me. Compose for me!

I didn’t see her for a couple of weeks; then she came