What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours(19)
Aisha spoke through the stress ball she’d stuffed into her mouth, removed it, and started again: “Maybe this is a piece of conceptual art? Like something out of one of Matyas’s favorite films. Couldn’t YouTube woman be an artist who’s worked out a concept that uses the media to show us something about fame and its . . . its magic touch? So what if that touch is a punch? She’s famous now. Maybe she’s trying to get us thinking about the different ways people get famous. By excelling at something, or by suffering publicly. Maybe what that eyewitness saw was a performance? What if she already had an agreement with Matyas that he would beat her up for the concept? Doesn’t it seem like there’s no way to avoid getting punched by someone or other? Doesn’t matter who you are, it’s just a fact of life. So isn’t it a little better if you get to choose who punches you? You know, I think if I could pick I would have chosen him too.”
She was doing well until Noor, who’d stopped me from countering every single one of her speculations, said: “Ah, darling. Would you?” Then she buried her head in her dad’s jumper and howled. We couldn’t tell if it was heartbreak, rage, mirth, or simply the difficulty she was having unimagining Mr. Matyas Füst.
—
THE REHABILITATION of Matyas Füst was in full swing. His compulsory course of therapy was over, but he was continuing of his own accord. His fiancée quietly moved back into his house and he was doing a f*ckload of charity work. The charity work was the last straw for me. Before I explain the part I may or may not have played in another man’s complete mental and physical breakdown I just have to quickly praise myself here. Yes, I have to be the one to do it; nobody else even understood how patient I was with Aisha’s mourning process in the midst of every other grief-worthy event going on in the world. Aisha herself was in a hurry to attain indifference to “the Füst matter” but you can’t rush these things. The cackling with which Aisha greeted YouTube woman’s simple and dignified acceptance of Matyas Füst’s apology, that cackling was not ideal. Words were better, a little less opaque, so I was patient with her outbursts. More patient than Jesus himself!
The first I knew of my contribution to the charity of Matyas Füst’s choice was an e-mail that arrived while I was pursuing quotes from satisfied customers. The e-mail thanked me for my ten-thousand-pound auction bid—the winning bid!—and expressed hope that my daughter Aisha would enjoy the private concert that Matyas Füst would accordingly perform for her. Ten thousand of my strong and painstakingly saved pounds, Matyas Füst, that was all I was able to compute. Oh, and I saw red arrows between the two. Ten thousand pounds to Matyas Füst. I had some sort of interlude after that, running between my keyboard and the nearest wall, flapping my hands and choking. Tyche came into my office, glanced at my computer screen, threw a glass of water in my face, and left. That got me to sit back down, at least. Five minutes later Aisha Skyped me from her school computer lab. I accepted the call, put my face right up to the camera, and bellowed her name until she resorted to typing:
OMG PLS CALM DOWN
YOU’VE GOT TO CALM DOWN
I’M CASHING THE VOUCHER
I SAID I’M CASHING THE VOUCHER!
“What voucher?” I asked the camera.
Aisha held up a finger, rummaged in her schoolbag and held up a voucher I’d given her on her last birthday, the last of a booklet of six. There in my own handwriting were the words: This voucher entitles you to one completely fair and wrath-free hearing.
“Ahhhhhh,” I said, banging my chest, trying to open up some space in there. “OK, OK, I’m ready.”
“I used your emergency debit card,” Aisha said. “You know Dad always wants to know why I’m like this and all I can say is I’m sorry I am. But I think—no, I’m sure, I’m sure, that if I just look him in the eye . . . I know it’s a lot of money. I didn’t really think the bid would go through. I didn’t know you had that much on there! But please understand. I will pay you back. I’m going to get a job, and I’m going to make some stuff and sell a lot of it.”
“It’s OK,” I said. “It’s OK.” My heartbeat was returning to normal. Aisha had been operating on the principle that I wouldn’t want to be that guy who embarrasses himself by withdrawing a ten-thousand-pound donation he made to an enormously deserving cause. But I am that guy, so it’s fine for me to do that.
—
NOOR’S EX-WIFE came over for coffee and spoke of seeking psychiatric assistance for Aisha, particularly in the light of Day’s discovery that Aisha had made a purchase from her laptop: a liter of almost pure sulfuric acid—96 percent. The three of us sat silently with our coffee cups, picturing Aisha and Füst alone in some garland-bedecked bower, Füst singing his heart out, maybe even singing his latest hit, “Dress Made of Needles” . . . then as the last notes of the song died out, Aisha uncapped the bottle of acid hidden beneath her dress and let fly. For about a week Noor couldn’t look at Aisha without shouting: “What are you?”
All we’d hear from Aisha was the bitter laugh, and I tried to soothe her by saying, “He’s been forgiven, Aish. Everyone else has forgiven him,” but I stopped that because there was a look that replaced her laughter, and that look haunted me.
It was Ched’s opinion that it might have been all right if the apology had been something that Aisha could consider real, but now this thing wouldn’t end unless she was able to take or witness vengeance upon Matyas Füst. Tyche agreed, but with a slight modification: Aisha would be able to move on if Matyas Füst was able to deliver a sincere apology for what he’d done. “At least . . . that’s how it would be for me,” Tyche added, twirling her wedding ring around her finger. “I mean, the galling thing about ‘Dress Made of Needles’ is that as a piece of music it’s fine, but as an apology it takes the piss. But you know what, at least we got a meaningful song out of it, at least he wrote this good song because of her . . .”