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

which still comes and goes. I almost had a panic attack when Karel gave me the paintings, quite publicly, at a restaurant lunch he held for my twenty-second birthday, with an empty seat at the table beside me. A seat our friends addressed as Přem, though from time to time they’d joke and laugh with different fissures in the space all around me, and those fissures were also Přem Stojaspal. How they all admired the self-portrait … though he’d lost all that weight, so it wasn’t quite as accurate now, hahaha! I honestly couldn’t breathe at all. I couldn’t really look at the paintings for a few days, and when I did, I studied that face that our friends apparently recognized, and I considered moving to a different city, breaking up with Allegra, and getting new friends who’d never heard of the Stojaspals. But … abandoning Allegra and our people, the loveliest loves of both our lives, just because of some guy? As if.

It was OK when I was with Karel or the others and Přem didn’t join us—increasingly he didn’t bother, I’m told. “He loves you but has received your message of hate,” is how one friend put it. Of course I didn’t hate Přem (how could I?), but I made things worse when I tried to play along. One of the only times I’ve seen Karel look as sick as I felt at that birthday lunch was when I tried greeting him and Přemysl simultaneously one evening. Přemysl hadn’t yet arrived. Karel laughed, though he could tell I hadn’t been joking. Then he threw me out of his house and told me never to come back. He repented after what I’m guessing was one of the “bad” nights with Přem; Allegra played go between …

It was fine when I played at night, and it was, supposedly, just the two of us. Me and Přem. Don’t think I didn’t try to catch sight of him in mirrors and in glass—I was ready to believe he was a spirit, anything. But it was an empty room.

However, some things I remember Karel telling me before Přem became a taboo topic between us: When Přem had been younger there’d been games that used to amuse him through the night. But once he reached the age of putting away childish things, the nights were the worst ever. But he’d have good nights if Karel played for him all night. That worked for a while, but between theremin playing all night and sleeping all day, Karel was in a bad way and not really able to take part in his own existence. Concerned friends volunteered to play for Přem at night, and even drew up a roster, but Karel only wanted them to know the personable, multitalented daytime Přem who did his father so much credit. He also didn’t think they’d take the task seriously enough; they’d fall asleep, and then doom would befall. Or something.

Allegra played for Přem herself—for seven nights, by her count. She stayed wide awake, but so did he. Bitching about her playing until dawn, she told me. Přem kept saying she should stick to composing, even though he could hardly say her compositions had more substance. Allegra asked me if I agreed with him … if I thought Karel agreed with him, etc…. Přemysl being mean to her throughout the night got a ruminative wheel turning, and I hoped and hoped Karel would get someone else to play for this Přemysl before Allegra broke herself on that groundless wheel. I remember she was on antidepressants at the time, but I’ve noticed that the cushion those pills can provide isn’t that thick.

Then I needed money even more than ever, and Allegra handed her nighttime theremin playing position over to me. The first night I went, I meant to have it out with this Přemysl, but Karel showed me into an empty bedroom. He didn’t speak to the room … Sometimes I hold on to that as evidence of something, I don’t know what, but that first night Karel didn’t speak to the room … just told me to play as discussed, and left me to it. If the setup was exactly the same with me as it was with Allegra, that would mean Přem Stojaspal would’ve been there in the bed the whole night, talking shit about my theremin playing while I played my heart out without letting a word pass my lips. If … if that’s what happened, did that … make him happy somehow? Help him sleep? Karel seemed amazed when he looked in at us just before dawn. He said I was a miracle worker. I thought he was just an effusive man.

Two more things:

One night, the very first night I didn’t bother to check the room before I began playing, there was someone in Přem Stojaspal’s bed. She sat up among the pillows, all “hand me a glow stick and let’s rave!” as soon as I started playing one of Allegra’s songs—the giddy duckling dance, as it happens. It was Chela. Chela Kapoor, a mongoose who deserves all the finer things in life, and often gets them, I’m sure. I played Allegra’s song twice more for her, and then she gave what must be the mongoose equivalent of a sigh and left the room. I actually stopped playing for about half an hour when she left. I thought about going to look for her, I thought maybe the mongoose was Přem, that what Karel hadn’t wanted to mention was that Přem turned into a mongoose at night … I thought all sorts of things, but I was unable to reconcile any of it with the previous nights. She was a very friendly manifestation I mustn’t allow to distract me from what I was there to do. So I resumed the usual program. Hoping all the while that she’d come back. She didn’t return to the bedroom, but when I was leaving the house, she gave Karel’s