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

But as I was leaving with my loot, a gallery representative approached me and took my phone number so as to arrange delivery of the other four photos the following day.

I offered to put the photo back, but the representative laughed at me and pointed Otto out. He’d bought the batch for me. He says he got a substantial friendship discount, but … just in case he was lying, I’ve been buying him drinks ever since.

I took that photograph around to Tolay’s in the morning, but his nearest neighbour told me he’d moved out. I e-mailed and called, but he never got back to me.

Every few months or so I send a message to the e-mail addresses I have for Raúl and for Tolay. I say hello. I tell them I still think of them, and that I’m sorry. About everything, really. I tried hard to keep things on a platonic basis with Otto, frequently reminded myself that he was out of bounds, had been placed there by a person I’d already disappointed more than enough. Otto helped for a while by projecting the impression that he’s a good friend but a callous love interest or sexual partner. That showboat cynicism of his, the part of him that in some way disturbs me as much as a suppurating boil would—I can see how Tolay Gul would find that stimulating. Otto Shin is so much on the run—from conscience, from reflection, from admitting there’s any future he hopes for or anything he dreams of becoming—that when I realised what I felt for him, I tried my best to send him packing. It’s frustrating enough having ideals without somebody at your side routinely making a mockery of them.

But, just as Tolay Gul says he did before me, I found myself watching what Otto Shin actually does. Otto does kindnesses whilst attempting meanness. He empathises whilst affecting apathy. He’s unable to extricate himself from hopeful undertakings. Deeds that probably won’t change anybody’s world for the better but just might. Otto Shin does all he can at the same time as firmly denying that he’s doing anything, or that there’s anything he can do.

About the eye in the photograph Tolay asked me to steal: it turned out to be Otto’s. The photo is part of a series Spera Kendeffy captured while Otto was recovering from something that happened to him. He was in a house fire. Spera stayed with him and looked after him, but was also his sickbed paparazzo …

And now he’s right here opposite me, scribbling, frowning, biting the end of his pen, and exuding kissability. I think it’s time to stop writing about him. Time to interact!

Just a few more thoughts:

Ava, all may yet be well if we can find out what your Přem wants, or wanted. The subject of this file may (or may not) “bring leeches,” inculcate wholescale plagiarism, and get up to all sorts of other things that make him hard to handle at night, but … I think we can see these outbursts as being linked to excessive enthusiasm. It’s easy to overdo things in the sincere pursuit of tranquility.

Your entry continually links him to Karel, but try to recall what it was like when it was just the two of you, you and Přem … isn’t he seeking something exactly like that?

X

17.

It was late afternoon by the time we’d finished our contributions to Ava’s file on Přemysl Stojaspal. Xavier lay down on one side of the carriage, and I sat cross-legged on the other, both of us covering sentences with our wrists and casting sidelong glances at each other as we composed our thoughts, both of us looking out the window during extended periods of deliberation, working out what to tell and what to shut up about.

We passed pages from previous file entries back and forth. Allegra Yu’s and Zeinab Rashid’s were Xavier’s most requested. He didn’t believe their accounts, or didn’t agree with their over-and-under interpretations of the information they had, or something. At some point during his fourth or fifth rereading, he pointed out A and Z really seemed not to like that their lonely widower had a descendant. Had one, or had wanted one. This cryptic son made his father’s home peculiar and his behaviour even more so.

“I did pick up a bit of a tone there,” I concurred. “An ugh, if you will. A suggestion that they would have preferred it if Karel’s second attempt at family life hadn’t taken this particular form. They didn’t know what to make of the sudden son. And neither Přem nor Karel really gave them anything to go on.”

“Right,” Xavier said. “That tone we both picked up on isn’t aimed at the fresh start but at the form these two”—he tapped Allegra’s and Zeinab’s entries—“saw it taking. Between them they make sure that form—Přem’s form—is thoroughly hidden. What’s left is a vaguely unsavoury lump held captive by their distaste for his supposed function. Bam, A and Z remove Přem’s prefect badge and pin it to Ava’s blazer. Their message to Ava: You’re the appropriate protector and beneficiary of this man’s worldly goods, and we hereby appoint you to this position. You’re the one who fits into the tale of the artist who leaves nothing of artistic merit behind. You, Ava, saw that nothingness. Now take this money and this power. Vision is thicker than blood! With an extra dose of chagrin on Allegra’s part for initially trying to follow Karel’s formula.”

I blinked. “Are you making this about men and women? Are you saying that childless females are enraged by males who only have male children because they can’t stand witnessing the patriarchal power handoff right before their eyes? Or are you saying that females get upset with males who behave as if they’re able to reproduce asexually? Bow down before the womb? Or what?”

Xavier drank some water, then made a face at me. “I said