Helen Oyeyemi - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

—

THE MORNING brought no statement from Füst, and Noor sounded relieved (and ashamed of his relief) when he said: “Looks like she hasn’t got any proof and he’s going to ignore or deny it.” In the afternoon there were reports of an eyewitness to the beating coming forward, and about an hour after that Füst’s legal team announced that he’d voluntarily made himself available to the police for questioning.

—

AT THE CLINIC my concentration was poor and I mixed up checkout forms so that departing clients got to read details of each other’s low self-esteem and experience the outrage of not being unique. Tyche Shaw and I were on the same shift again, and got authorization to offer free secondary sleep sessions all round so we wouldn’t be sued. But like Aisha, Tyche was addicted to the YouTube clip. She spent her break time watching it over and over on her phone and ran the battery right down.

“I found that one tough to watch,” I told her.

“Really?” she said. “But it’s just someone talking about this time she got beaten up. No bullets or gore or bombs or anything. This is nothing compared to other things you can see on this site.”

“I don’t know what to say. I can’t explain it.”

“Well, I hope she sees the view count and accepts that as an answer to her question about whether people care. These numbers are up there with the numbers for footage of the world’s most brilliant strikers scoring the decade’s most brilliant goals. So it’s not that we’re indifferent… we care… just in a really really really fucked-up way…”

Matyas Füst’s fiancée released a statement as we were leaving work: She was shocked and upset to hear of “the events described in the video” and would be paying the victim a visit to see if there was anything she could do for her. She had never seen a violent side to Matyas’s character but it was now undeniable that he’d been struggling with some issues and they’d be spending some time apart while he completed a course of anger management therapy.

“No jail time for Füst… just a fine and some therapy,” Tyche predicted, even as she admired the photo of the prima ballerina, who was elfin and ethereal and all the rest of it.

“Yeah, well, I beg to differ,” I said.

Tyche stuck her hand out. “Bet you a hundred pounds.”

“I suppose this is all just a joke to you, but I know a girl who’s pretty badly shaken up by all this.”

Tyche sighed. “She was a fan?”

“She’s still trying to be one, I think. Clinging to every possible delusion.”

Tyche’s sigh deepened. “Let me know if intervention’s required.”

“OK, thanks…” I had it in my mind to ask Tyche what she thought she might be able to do for a girl she’d never met — in a spirit of curiosity, not hostility — but had to hurry over to the House of Locks. Terry, the man who maintained Boudicca’s fish tank, was waiting for me to let him in. After Terry left I stayed a few more hours, reading Matyas Füst updates aloud to Boudicca, who looked suitably incredulous. YouTube woman was glad she’d had the chance to meet the woman she’d found herself taking a beating for and wouldn’t be pressing charges. She’d hit Füst first — that was an excessive response to some words he’d said, and his response in turn had been excessive; all she asked was acknowledgment of that. A sincere apology. So Matyas Füst was preparing a sincere apology.

—

HAS SHE READ ANY OF THE COMMENTS? That’s what I wondered. Did the woman from the YouTube video understand that the public wasn’t on her side? She made her requests with such placid mirth, as if talking into a seashell or a shattered telephone, as if Matyas Füst fans weren’t actively looking for her, probably in order to finish her off. Even those who’d begun to condemn Füst believed his apologies should be directed elsewhere (“It’s his fiancée I feel sorry for in all this…”). Those who claimed they wanted to feel concern for YouTube woman didn’t like that she’d filmed her allegations while high. And yet she might not have been able to talk about it sober.

—

NOOR TEXTED that he was considering taking Aisha’s laptop away until the Füst case died down. She seemed to have spent the entire evening engaged in a long and rambling argument with her friends via six-way video call. She attacked Füst’s reputation, defended it, then attacked again, berated the friends who’d gone off him for their faithlessness, cursed the infinite stupidity of his unchanged fans and threatened to put on a Füst mask and beat them up to see how they liked it. She’d skipped dinner again and was running a temperature. When was I coming home?

Two firsts: being reluctant to leave Ched’s house and being reluctant to enter my own. I said I’d been at the gym. Ched does have a home gymnasium; he works out a lot, his body being his back-up plan in case he gets ugly again. But I don’t know why I lied.

—

AISHA WILL GET over this. But what of her tails and her plant-growing projects and the remarkably potent gin she was perfecting? “That gin was going to make us richer than an entire network of 1920s bootleggers,” I said, to see if that wouldn’t rouse her. She likes money. Now it seems she liked it because she could exchange it for Matyas Füst — related items. What worries Noor is that three of Aisha’s graven images fell off their pedestals at once: him, me, and Matyas Füst. The girls seemed to pity our weakness. Noor’s brusque talk of judicial process and media treatment. My awkward, awkward silence. Is it really bad that the girls have found us out, though? I never projected strength. Not on purpose, anyway.

“What are you really worrying about, Noor?”

He shuffled papers into his briefcase, rearranged his pens, straightened his tie. “It just… I think I’ve lost them. Just like that, overnight. Their mother says they’re fine with her…”

I loosened the knot of his tie a little, just a little. It still looked neat, so he couldn’t complain.

“Nah. I don’t even know them as well as you do and I can tell they’re just thinking.” A casual overview of all their main emotional attachments reveals that Noor and his ex have been better parents than they realize; while Day and Aisha appreciate strength, lack of it isn’t a deal breaker in the matter of whether they respect a person or not.

—

ALL WAS QUIET on the Matyas Füst front for a few months; I kept an eye on that situation (among others) and read that the reporters who managed to get a sound bite out of Füst all got the same one. He was completing his anger management therapy and was still preparing his apology. This sound bite was paired with another obtained from YouTube woman: Looking forward to it .

It was around that time Ched and I started talking again — not often, but enough. I’d be entering or leaving the House of Locks, the phone would ring, and it would be Ched. He described his current existence as a cycle of drills and chores, and was so tired he’d fall asleep mid-sentence. It was good to speak to him, not just because it was him but because he didn’t know the first thing about the incident that had rocked my household. When I gave him a brief outline he said: “Oh, you know the apology Füst’s preparing is going to be a song, right? And that song is going to become an anthem of repentance. It’s probably going to be called ‘Dress Made of Needles.’”

“Nice — I’ll go down to the betting shop tomorrow.”

There was something else I wanted to talk about while I had him on the line. When I answered his phone calls he needed half a second to adjust his greeting, and it sounded as if he was disappointed that I was the one who’d answered. Well, disappointed is too strong a word. It was more as if I wasn’t his first preference. Which was fine, except that I’m the only other person who has keys to his house. His mum’s been trying to get a set for years without success.