Peaces

joy, like a person who was in a normal amount of love. I might even have managed to ask if he was sure this was what he wanted. Not at all like the real me, who’d been putting my first name and his surname together over and over and over on various pieces of scrap paper ever since I’d met him. Three years of practice signatures.
He frowned at the deed poll document when it came through. “Should we have done it the other way around, so I’d have been Francis Xavier Montague?” he asked. There was no point answering until he’d thought about it all over again, so I just waited. After a long moment he looked up from the paper and said my new name with a satisfied nod. “Otto Shin …”
He brushed the back of his hand against my cheek. Heady stuff, that overlapping of live patterns, the subtle chequering of his hand. Rough and smooth, flexible knuckles and leathered skin. His is the hand of a sea swimmer; in water it becomes a broad bladed oar. That same hand is a hardy aid to him as a once-a-week football goalie more enthusiastic than he is adept, and it’s the fine-fingered hand the needle glitters from as it sews all the buttons back onto our shirts. This is only the preface to the prologue of the dossier on Xavier Shin’s hands. For the rest, see Puccini’s “O dolci mani.”
Do Yeon-ssi cleared her throat. “Hi, lovebirds,” she said. “Yes, it’s me again. Your aunt. I’m here too, remember? Why not take these train tickets and call it a honeymoon? It would’ve made me very happy if you’d done things properly and actually got married instead of this deed poll business. But there’s no need to suddenly start caring about my happiness now when you never did before …”
Celebratory travel aside, there were also Árpád’s needs to consider. Do Yeon-ssi wanted to make a special point of reminding us that Árpád XXX was getting on for six years old, and that it was very important for mongooses to travel before they reach middle age: “Otherwise they get narrow-minded.”
This discussion took place in Do Yeon-ssi’s study, where Árpád’s favourite sandbox was located. We took a look at him and at the various bits of carefully polished treasure he was in the process of hiding. Back when it’d just been me and Árpád in my studio flat, he hadn’t had many high-value items to look after. A bronze-coloured bottle top here and there, perhaps. But ever since Árpád XXX had become part of the Shin household, there were solid gold bracelets, diamond stud earrings, and jade rings. Árpád was clearly delighted with his hoard. I also saw signs of self-consciousness, which were fairly understandable, given that we’d all stopped talking and were now staring at him.
Árpád Montague XXX: well worth staring at. Notable features include his coat of platinum fur and the exceptionally well-sculpted length of his paws and feet—the grace of those alone might convince you Nijinsky’s been reincarnated in mongoose form. Some snootiness of manner might be justified, and yet you could search the universe and fail to find a friendlier creature, or a fellow more willing to hear both sides of a story and disperse the benefit of the doubt in both directions if needed. During my more rational hours of the day—eleven in the morning, for instance, or three o’clock in the afternoon—I realise what I sound like when I talk about Árpád. I do realise it, and I know no one should listen to a word I say about him. The trouble is, I see all sorts of stories in that mongoose. He’s a friend of two hundred years and more. By which I mean that he is his very own self and also every fit of laughter his predecessors have induced in mine, every ounce of liability, bewilderment, solace, simple certainty … Árpád XXX, the pick of Árpád XXIX’s litter. And who was Árpád XXIX? Not only the most sardonic bosom friend of my teens and early twenties, but my mum’s favourite of Árpád XXVIII’s offspring. The twenty-eighth of our Árpáds would close his eyes and quiver ardently upon hearing certain lines of Ulysses. Tennyson’s biggest fan.
Or was he?
Lieselotte (my mum) pointed out that Árpád XXVIII may well have been trolling Martha (also my mum). Martha’s the Montague descendant, and she’s also one of those literature professors with a “postmodernism or goodbye” stance. She finds Victorian literature cloying at best, so all you have to do is recite a few lines of mid- to late-nineteenth-century poetry before her body language indicates she isn’t coping. It would’ve been the easiest thing in the world for Árpád XXVIII to pick up on that.
I could write a book about the Árpáds, but I’ll keep it to a couple of paragraphs. Árpád the First appeared one night in my great-grandfather’s nursery when he was a very small boy in Kuching, Borneo. I’m sure almost no one deludes themselves that all their ancestors were decent. Pick a vein, any vein: mud mixed with lightning flows through, an unruly fusion of bad blood and good. It’s not easy to imagine what would make someone hate a little boy—or, more probably, the parents of that little boy—enough to place not one but two vipers in his cot. There we were, harmless government administrators, on perfectly good terms with everybody, and all of a sudden some wrong’un came after our only son doesn’t quite ring true to me. Many surmises could be made, and have been made, but when it came right down to it, you had this switchback fanged couple bearing down on a youngster too stunned to even make a sound. Two against one isn’t fair. But really it was even simpler than that. The mongoose is the enemy of the serpent. Árpád the First wasn’t interested in saving anyone’s life. Leaping into that writhing mass and slashing away until it fell