Part Two: The Price of Peace
Karmali had survived a steel rod to the head, discovered that his accident was probably attempted murder, and acquired the extraordinary ability to hear what people were thinking. You would imagine this was enough excitement for one lifetime.
Apparently, life disagreed. His wife had betrayed him. His colleagues wanted him dead. His doctors were keeping secrets that could fill a police station. And now he had to rebuild his life. But here was the problem nobody had anticipated. When you can hear everyone’s thoughts, you eventually discover that some people are idiots. And quite a number of them are thinking about you. The question was no longer whether Karmali could survive knowing the truth. It was whether he could learn to live without needing to know everything.
Karmali left the hospital through the service entrance, between a delivery of vegetables and a man arguing about an invoice.
It was not the triumphant exit he had imagined. But the alternative involved the foreman’s transport arrangements, and Karmali had recently developed a strong preference for remaining alive.
He had told Adrian enough to get help: he feared the foreman, had concerns about the site stores, and wanted the incident investigated. He gave no supernatural explanation.
Adrian arranged a driver, a discreet security contact and somewhere safe to stay. Karmali chose Gerald.
“You’ve brought yourself here to die?” Gerald demanded when he opened the door.
“I have just left hospital.”
“Exactly. Those people have equipment. I have a kettle.”
Behind the scowl came another voice.
Thank God. He’s walking. I thought I would bury this idiot.
Karmali nearly cried. “Can I stay a few days?”
Gerald looked at the small bag. “In this house? Where? Inside the fridge?”
I’ll take the floor. He can have the bed.
There it was: the first honest welcome Karmali had received in weeks, delivered as a housing complaint.
“The sofa is fine,” he said.
“That sofa is decoration. Sit on the wrong side, and you will return to intensive care.”
Gerald took his bag.
That evening, Karmali ate a proper meal and discovered that friendship could contain both tenderness and a man shouting, “Don’t finish the stew. Recovery is not a license.” He laughed until his head hurt. Then he stopped, following medical advice.
Adrian’s security team took the threat seriously. The company preserved records and brought in outside investigators. Karmali’s concerns gave them a direction, but they still needed evidence that could stand on its own, without relying on what he had heard inside his injured head.
The store records helped. So did invoices for materials that had never arrived, a payment trail, and a camera on the neighboring property that nobody at the site had thought to check.
Karmali had been refusing to sign for missing materials before his injury. The foreman had called him difficult. Now investigators had a more detailed description of the difficulty.
When the foreman was suspended, he sent Karmali a message.
Brother, people are trying to divide us.
Karmali showed Gerald.
“They should try harder,” Gerald said. “You are still within messaging distance.”
Elsewhere, police searched beneath a mulberry tree. Barasa buried his son properly.
The hospital’s accounts, messages and recovered evidence connected Kato and Barasa’s wife to far more than a missing young man. Their confident smiles disappeared as they delved into an investigation that would take months.
Karmali visited Barasa after the funeral.
“You gave me my boy back,” the old man said.
“I wish I had given you better news.”
For a while, they sat without speaking. Barasa’s grief was so raw that Karmali lowered his eyes and concentrated on the ticking clock. He was beginning to discover that he could sometimes let a thought pass without following it.
“People think money protects you,” Barasa said eventually. “It buys a very comfortable house in which to be deceived.”
Karmali nodded. He had been deceived in a room where the roof leaked. There seemed to be accommodation for everybody in that particular business.
Several weeks later, cleared for light work and with follow-up appointments arranged, he reported to Adrian’s office.
The receptionist looked at his shoes. Surely deliveries go downstairs.
“I have an appointment with Adrian.”
“Your name?”
“Karmali.”
And I’m the Minister of Finance.
He waited while she called upstairs. Her posture changed.
“Mr Karmali! Please take a seat.”
Why didn’t he say he was important?
He almost asked her where importance should have been indicated. On the shoes, perhaps.
Upstairs, a woman smiled at him while thinking, If he’s been brought in to take my job, I’ll kill him.
He stepped aside so abruptly that he caught his sleeve on a door handle. She hurried to help.
Poor man. He’s shaking. Is he still unwell?
That unsettled him more than the first thought.
By lunchtime, she had threatened three printers and a spreadsheet with similar violence. All remained alive. Karmali began to revise his understanding of evidence.
Adrian took him to a workshop at his home. There were track saws, clamps, a dust extractor and several beautiful hand planes. Karmali touched one with the reverence Gerald reserved for discounted meat.
In the centre stood a large black walnut slab. Adrian had attempted to give it legs. The result looked as if the tree had died while trying to escape.
“Be honest,” Adrian said.
Please don’t be too honest.
Karmali walked around it. “The wood is excellent.”
“And the work?”
“The wood is carrying considerable responsibility.”
Adrian laughed.
They agreed on a paid trial project, with shorter days while Karmali recovered. His first professional act was to remove everything Adrian had added.
“We are beginning again?” Adrian asked.
“We are giving the timber a fair hearing.”
Over the following weeks, Karmali flattened, shaped and sanded. He built a form, sealed the edges and poured resin into the natural split. Between stages, he rested. The wood had its own timetable. For once, his body was allowed one too.
As a boy, he had loved his uncle’s workshop. University had persuaded him that success came with air conditioning and a swivel chair. Now, drawing a sharp plane across walnut, he wondered how many years he had spent apologising for something he was good at.
He also discovered the commercial advantages of mind reading.
A darker finish, Adrian would think.
The next morning, Karmali produced samples.
Rounded corners. My daughter runs everywhere.
Karmali softened the edges.
A drawer would be useful.
Karmali reached for a pencil.
One afternoon, Adrian stared at the drawings. “Have you been speaking to my wife?”
“No.”
“You seem to know what I want before I say it.”
“Observation.”
That evening, another thought slipped through. Maybe the whole thing should have been lighter. Or glass. No, ridiculous. I’m hungry.
Karmali looked at the walnut table he had spent weeks building.
The following morning, he brought a notebook. “Sir, from now on, please approve changes aloud.”
“Why?”
“People have many ideas before lunch.”
When the table was finished, Adrian ran his palm over its surface and said nothing for a long time.
My father will love this.
Karmali stood back. He knew the joinery was sound. He knew the finish was good. Nobody’s private opinion had held the plane for him.
Adrian commissioned another piece, then introduced him to two friends. Karmali registered a small furniture business and hired an assistant who was honest, punctual, and privately convinced that Karmali’s music was a crime.
They worked well together.
But there was still Penny.
They met in a quiet café. Karmali had arranged practical support for Timo while he recovered, and they had communicated through brief messages. Now there were decisions they could no longer postpone.
Penny arrived wearing the earrings he had bought her when they still believed affection could survive on intention alone.
“You abandoned us,” she said.
“I left the hospital frightened of the people offering to take me home.”
She looked away. What has the foreman told him?
“Was there something between you and him?” Karmali asked.
She rearranged a teaspoon. For several seconds, the tiny spoon held the future of their marriage.
“He helped sometimes.”
“Penny.”
Her eyes filled. “Yes.”
Hearing her say it hurt differently. The truth had finally entered the room, where both of them could answer it.
“I was tired,” she said. “Of the rent. Of worrying. Of you coming home and disappearing into yourself.”
“I was tired too.”
“You hardly spoke to me.”
“Sometimes you spoke to me as if being poor was something I was doing to annoy you.”
She flinched. They sat with that.
Karmali wanted to tell her every cruel thought he had heard. He wanted the satisfaction of watching her search for somewhere to hide. Then he remembered his own bed in hospital, and the moment he had imagined selling the contents of other people’s heads.
He kept his voice low. “I can accept that you were unhappy. I can accept my part in how lonely this marriage became. But you still chose what you did.”
She nodded, barely. “Can we start again?”
It was the question he had once wanted her to ask. He waited long enough to be sure that his answer was his own.
“I don’t want to return to the marriage.”
Penny cried. He did not reach across the table to promise something he could not give.
They discussed the separation, the belongings, the money and Timo. Later, they would get help putting the arrangements in order.
At the café door, she asked, “Will you ever forgive me?”
“I hope so,” he said. “I’m still angry.”
It was the most honest answer he had.
When Timo visited Gerald’s that Saturday, he inspected the room.
“Daddy, are you poor here also?”
Gerald put down his mug. “This one needs school immediately.”
Karmali laughed, then drew the boy beside him. “You’re safe here.”
“Even with Uncle Gerald?”
“Especially with Uncle Gerald.”
He looks cross, Timo thought. But he gives big pieces of meat.
An accurate character assessment.
Karmali eventually raised the question of paternity privately with Penny. An agreed test confirmed that Timo was his son. He read the result twice, then sat for a long time, ashamed of how easily his hurt had spread to the one person who had betrayed nobody.
That Saturday, he collected the boy early. Timo wanted to know why they were going for ice cream before lunch.
“Because today,” Karmali said, “I have decided to be irresponsible.”
Timo approved of this development in his parenting.
Months passed.
The business grew slowly, which Gerald described as “the only growth that doesn’t arrive with police.” Karmali rented a small place near his workshop. It had a balcony, two rooms and a tap that produced hot water without requiring prayer.
On his first evening there, he stood beneath the shower and laughed. It was a small luxury. He remained in it until the electricity bill occurred to him.
The voices did not disappear.
He learned that distance softened them, crowds exhausted him, and attention could make one louder than the others. With rest, practice and continued care, he became better at returning to the person speaking in front of him.
He still made mistakes.
A customer thought, Too expensive. Karmali nearly reduced the price before the man said, “Excellent. Can you make six?”
Another thought, I hate that colour, then chose it to match curtains she hated even more.
People, he discovered, could hold an entire committee meeting inside themselves and announce a decision none of the members had supported.
Gerald proved the most useful teacher.
One evening, helping carry a cabinet, Gerald thought, I wish this fellow would disappear. My back is finished.
Karmali stiffened.
Then Gerald put down his end and asked, “Have you eaten? I brought food.”
Karmali looked at the bag by the door. He had been ready to distrust a friendship because of a tired thought, while the man himself had come carrying supper.
“What?” Gerald demanded.
“Nothing.”
“Then lift. You can admire me later.”
Karmali began asking questions even when he thought he knew the answers. He stopped using people’s passing wants to secure their approval. When his assistant looked troubled, he offered tea instead of following the private worry home.
There was plenty he could have profited from. He heard enough at Adrian’s gatherings to make introductions, flatter investors and sell confidences to people with expensive watches.
Once, a businessman offered him a generous “consultancy” payment after Karmali warned Adrian about a deal that looked wrong.
“You have a gift for knowing things,” the man said.
Karmali looked at the proposed contract. He imagined a life spent entering rooms to harvest secrets, always listening, always bargaining, never able to put the work down.
“I make furniture,” he said.
The man doubled his offer.
Karmali went back to his workshop. It took him the whole afternoon to stop thinking about the money. Peace, he found, could be surprisingly expensive before it began saving you anything.
Nearly a year after the injury, Barasa visited and commissioned a bench for the hospital garden.
“For Daniel,” he said.
Karmali made it from a single broad slab, with comfortable arms and enough room for two people to sit without having to explain themselves. They placed it beneath a jacaranda.
Barasa sat, pressed his palm against the wood and cried quietly. Karmali stayed beside him. This time, he did not listen for anything more.
On a Sunday afternoon some weeks later, Timo worked at a little bench in Karmali’s workshop, sanding a wooden boat under close supervision. Gerald sat nearby, supervising a plate of food.
“That boat will sink,” he told the boy.
“It’s wood.”
“So was the Titanic.”
Karmali looked up. “Gerald.”
“The chairs were wood. People sat on them. Same tragedy.”
Timo giggled and returned to sanding.
Penny was due to collect him at five. They could speak civilly now. Some conversations still hurt, but they ended without either of them having to win.
The foreman’s case was proceeding. Karmali supplied what evidence he could and let the investigators do their work. He no longer checked every message, hoping to hear that somebody’s life had collapsed.
On the wall hung a small sign Timo had painted:
KARMALI FURNITURE — PLEASE KNOCK
Gerald had suggested adding WE ALREADY KNOW YOU ARE THERE, but Karmali refused.
Late sunlight fell across the walnut shavings. The kettle clicked off. Somewhere outside, a neighbour was losing an argument with a motorbike.
Karmali rested his hands on a finished table and grew quiet.
Gerald watched him. “A penny for your thoughts?”
Karmali turned.
For months, he had known what everybody else was thinking before remembering to ask himself. Now he looked around the workshop: at the boy, the food, the friend who had complained his way through every act of kindness.
“I think,” he said, “I like my life.”
Gerald nodded. “Good. Then you can afford lunch next Sunday.”
Karmali laughed.
He could hear something else forming behind Gerald’s words, but Timo was holding up the boat, asking whether it was ready.
Karmali went over to look.
Talk. Clarify. Grow. Transform.
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