‘Those people seem so pleased to see each other,’ Manager said. And I realized she’d been watching them as closely as I had.
‘Yes, they seem so happy,’ I said. ‘But it’s strange because they also seem upset.’
‘Oh, Klara,’ Manager said quietly. ‘You never miss a thing, do you?’
Then Manager was silent for a long time, holding her sign in her hand and staring across the street, even after the pair had gone out of sight. Finally she said:
‘Perhaps they hadn’t met for a long time. A long, long time. Perhaps when they last held each other like that, they were still young.’
‘Do you mean, Manager, that they lost each other?’
She was quiet for another moment. ‘Yes,’ she said, eventually. ‘That must be it. They lost each other. And perhaps just now, just by chance, they found each other again.’
Manager’s voice wasn’t like her usual one, and though her eyes were on the outside, I thought she was now looking at nothing in particular. I even started to wonder what passers-by would think to see Manager herself in the window with us for so long.
Then she turned from the window and came past us, and as she did so she touched my shoulder.
‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘at special moments like that, people feel a pain alongside their happiness. I’m glad you watch everything so carefully, Klara.’
Then Manager was gone, and Rosa said, ‘How strange. What could she have meant?’
‘Never mind, Rosa,’ I said to her. ‘She was just talking about the outside.’
Rosa began to discuss something else then, but I went on thinking about the Coffee Cup Lady and her Raincoat Man, and about what Manager had said. And I tried to imagine how I would feel if Rosa and I, a long time from now, long after we’d found our different homes, saw each other again by chance on a street. Would I then feel, as Manager had put it, pain alongside my happiness?
* * *
—
One morning at the start of our second week in the window, I was talking to Rosa about something on the RPO Building side, then broke off when I realized Josie was standing on the sidewalk in front of us. Her mother was beside her. There was no taxi behind them this time, though it was possible they’d got out of one and it had driven off, all without my noticing, because there’d been a crowd of tourists between our window and the spot where they were standing. But now the passers-by were moving smoothly again, and Josie was beaming happily at me. Her face – I thought this again – seemed to overflow with kindness when she smiled. But she couldn’t yet come to the window because the Mother was leaning down talking to her, a hand on her shoulder. The Mother was wearing a coat – a thin, dark, high-ranking one – which moved with the wind around her body, so that for a moment she reminded me of the dark birds that perched on the high traffic signals even as the winds blew fiercely. Both Josie and the Mother went on looking straight at me while they talked, and I could see Josie was impatient to come to me, but still the Mother wouldn’t release her and went on talking. I knew I should keep looking at the RPO Building, in just the way Rosa was doing, but I couldn’t help stealing glances at them, I was so concerned they’d vanish into the crowd.
At last the Mother straightened, and though she went on staring at me, altering the tilt of her head whenever a passer-by blocked her view, she took her hand away and Josie came forward with her careful walk. I thought it encouraging the Mother should allow Josie to come by herself, yet the Mother’s gaze, which never softened or wavered, and the very way she was standing there, arms crossed over her front, fingers clutching at the material of her coat, made me realize there were many signals I hadn’t yet learned to understand. Then Josie was there before me on the other side of the glass.
‘Hey! How you been?’
I smiled, nodded and held up a raised thumb – a gesture I’d often observed inside the interesting magazines.
‘Sorry I couldn’t come back sooner,’ she said. ‘I guess it’s been…how long?’
I held up three fingers, then added a half finger from the other hand.
‘Too long,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. Miss me?’
I nodded, putting on a sad face, though I was careful to show I wasn’t serious, and that I hadn’t been upset.
‘I missed you too. I really thought I’d get back before this. You probably thought I’d cleared right out. Really sorry.’ Then her smile weakened as she said: ‘I suppose a lot of other kids have been here to see you.’
I shook my head, but Josie looked unconvinced. She glanced back to the Mother, not for reassurance, but rather to check she hadn’t come any closer. Then, lowering her voice, Josie said:
‘Mom looks weird, I know, watching like that. It’s because I told her you’re the one I wanted. I said it had to be you, so now she’s sizing you up. Sorry.’ I thought I saw, as I’d done the time before, a flash of sadness. ‘You will come, right? If Mom says it’s okay and everything?’
I nodded encouragingly. But the uncertainty remained on her face.
‘Because I don’t want you coming against your will. That wouldn’t be fair. I really want you to come, but if you said, Josie, I don’t want to, then I’d say to Mom, okay, we can’t have her, no way. But you do want to come, right?’
Again I nodded, and this time Josie appeared to be reassured.
‘That’s so good.’ The smile returned to her face. ‘You’ll love it, I’ll make sure you do.’ She looked back, this time in triumph, calling: ‘Mom? See, she says she wants to come!’
The Mother gave a small nod, but otherwise didn’t respond. She was still staring at me, her fingers pinching at the coat material. When Josie turned back to me, her face had clouded again.
‘Listen,’ she said, but for the next few seconds remained silent. Then she said, ‘It’s so great you want to come. But I want things straight between us from the start, so I’m going to say this. Don’t worry, Mom can’t hear. Look, I think you’ll like our house. I think you’ll like my room, and that’s where you’ll be, not in some cupboard or anything. And we’ll do all these great things together all the time I’m growing up. Only thing is, sometimes, well…’ She glanced back quickly again, then lowering her voice further, said: ‘Maybe it’s because some days I’m not so well. I don’t know. But there might be something going on. I’m not sure what it is. I don’t even know if it’s something bad. But things sometimes get, well, unusual. Don’t get me wrong, most times you wouldn’t feel it. But I wanted to be straight with you. Because you know how lousy it feels, people telling you how perfect things will be and they’re not being straight. That’s why I’m telling you now. Please say you still want to come. You’ll love my room, I know you will. And you’ll see where the Sun goes down, like I told you the last time. You still want to come, right?’
I nodded to her through the glass, as seriously as I knew how. I wanted also to tell her that if there was anything difficult, anything frightening, to be faced in her house, we would do so together. But I didn’t know how to convey such a complex message through the glass without words, and so I clasped my hands together and held them up, shaking them slightly, in a gesture I’d seen a taxi driver give from inside his moving taxi to someone who’d waved from the sidewalk, even though he’d had to take both hands off his steering wheel. Whatever Josie understood from it, it seemed to make her happy.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Don’t get me wrong. It may not be anything bad. It may only be me thinking things…’
Just then the Mother called and started to move towards us, but there were tourists in her way, and Josie had time to say quickly: ‘I’ll be back really soon. Promise. Tomorrow if I can. Bye just for now.’
* * *
—
Josie didn’t return the following day, or the day after that. Then in the middle of our second week, our turn in the window came to an end.
&
nbsp; Throughout our time, Manager had been warm and encouraging. Each morning, as we’d prepared ourselves on the Striped Sofa and waited for the grid to rise, she’d said something like, ‘You were both wonderful yesterday. See if you can do just as well today.’ And at the end of each day, she’d smiled and told us, ‘Well done, both of you. I’m so proud.’ So it never occurred to me we were doing anything wrong, and when the grid came down on our last day, I was expecting Manager to praise us again. I was surprised, then, when after locking the grid, she simply walked away, not waiting for us. Rosa gave me a puzzled look, and for a moment we remained on the Striped Sofa. But with the grid down, we were in near-darkness, and so after a while we rose and came down off the platform.
We were then facing the store, and I could see all the way to the Glass Table at the back, but the space had become partitioned into ten boxes, so that I no longer had a single unified picture of the view before me. The front alcove was in the box furthest to my right, as might be expected; and yet the magazines table, which was nearest the front alcove, had become divided between various boxes, so that one section of the table could even be seen in the box furthest to my left. By now the lights had been dimmed, and I spotted the other AFs in the backgrounds of several boxes, lining the walls mid-store, preparing for their sleep. But my attention was drawn to the three center boxes, at that moment containing aspects of Manager in the act of turning towards us. In one box she was visible only from her waist to the upper part of her neck, while the box immediately beside it was almost entirely taken up by her eyes. The eye closest to us was much larger than the other, but both were filled with kindness and sadness. And yet a third box showed a part of her jaw and most of her mouth, and I detected there anger and frustration. Then she had turned fully and was coming towards us, and the store became once more a single picture.
‘Thank you, both of you,’ she said, and reaching out, touched us gently in turn. ‘Thank you so much.’
Even so, I sensed something had changed – that we had somehow disappointed her.
* * *
—
We began after that our second period mid-store. Rosa and I were still often together, but Manager would now change our positions around, and I might spend a day standing beside Boy AF Rex or Girl AF Kiku. Most days, though, I’d still be able to see a section of the window, and so go on learning about the outside. When the Cootings Machine appeared, for instance, I was on the magazines table side, just in front of the middle alcove, and had almost as good a view as if I’d still been in the window.
It had been obvious for days that the Cootings Machine was going to be something out of the ordinary. First, the overhaul men arrived to prepare for it, marking out a special section of the street with wooden barriers. The taxi drivers didn’t like this at all, and made a lot of noise with their horns. Then the overhaul men began to drill and break up the ground, even parts of the sidewalk, which frightened the two AFs in the window. Once, when the noise became really awful, Rosa put her hands to her ears and kept them there, even though there were customers in the store. Manager apologized to every customer who came in, even though the noise had nothing to do with us. Once, a customer began talking about Pollution, and pointing to the overhaul men outside, said how dangerous Pollution was for everyone. So when the Cootings Machine first arrived, I thought it might be a machine to fight Pollution, but Boy AF Rex said no, it was something specially designed to make more of it. I told him I didn’t believe him, and he said, ‘All right, Klara, you just wait and see.’
It turned out of course that he was right. The Cootings Machine – I named it that in my mind because it had ‘Cootings’ in big letters across its side – began with a high-pitched whine, not nearly as bad as the drills had been, and no worse than Manager’s vacuum cleaner. But there were three short funnels protruding from its roof, and smoke began to come up out of them. At first the smoke came in little white puffs, then grew darker, till it no longer rose as separate clouds but as one thick continuous one.
When I next looked, the street outside had become partitioned into several vertical panels – from my position I could see three of them quite clearly without leaning forward. The amount of dark smoke appeared to vary from panel to panel, so that it was almost as if contrasting shades of gray were being displayed for selection. But even where the smoke was at its most dense, I could still pick out many details. In one panel, for instance, there was a section of the overhaul men’s wooden barrier, and seemingly now attached to it, the front part of a taxi. In the neighboring panel, diagonally cutting off its top corner, was a metal bar which I recognized as belonging to one of the high traffic signals. Indeed, looking more closely, I could decipher the dark edge of a bird’s outline perched upon it. At one point I saw a runner pass from one panel into the next, and as he crossed, his figure altered both in terms of size and trajectory. Then the Pollution became so bad that, even from the magazines table side, I could no longer see the gap of sky, and the window itself, which the glass men cleaned so proudly for Manager, became covered with dirty dots.
I felt so sorry for the two boy AFs who’d waited so long for their turn in the window. They went on sitting there with good postures, but at one stage I saw one of them raise an arm across his face as though the Pollution might come in through the glass. Manager then stepped up onto the platform to whisper reassuring things to him, and when she eventually came back down, and started rearranging the bracelets inside the Glass Display Trolley, I could see she too was upset. I thought she might even go outside and talk to the overhaul men, but then she noticed us, and she smiled and said:
‘Everyone, please listen. This is unfortunate, but nothing to worry about. We’ll bear it for a few days, then it will be over.’
But the next day, and the day after, the Cootings Machine carried on and on, and daytime became almost like night. At one point I looked for the Sun’s patterns on our floor, alcoves and walls, but they were no longer there. The Sun, I knew, was trying his utmost, and towards the end of the second bad afternoon, even though the smoke was worse than ever, his patterns appeared again, though only faintly. I became worried and asked Manager if we’d still get all our nourishment, and she laughed and said, ‘That horrible thing has come here several times before and no one in the store ever suffered from it. So just put it out of your mind, Klara.’
Even so, after four continuous days of Pollution, I could feel myself weakening. I tried not to show it, especially when customers were in the store. But perhaps because of the Cootings Machine, there were now long stretches with no customers at all, and I sometimes allowed my posture to sag so that Boy AF Rex had to touch my arm to make me stand straight again.
Then one morning the grid went up and not only the Cootings Machine but its whole special section had vanished. The Pollution too was gone, the gap of sky had returned and was a brilliant blue, and the Sun poured his nourishment into the store. The taxis were once more moving smoothly, their drivers happy. Even the runners went by with smiles. All the time the Cootings Machine had been there, I’d worried that Josie might have been trying to come back to the store, and had been prevented by the Pollution. But now it was over, and there was such a rise in spirits both inside and outside the store, I felt if there was any day for Josie to come back, it would have to be this one. By mid-afternoon, though, I came to realize how unreasonable an idea this was. I stopped looking for Josie out in the street, and concentrated instead on learning more about the outside.
* * *
—
Two days after the Cootings Machine went away, the girl with the short spiky hair came into the store. I estimated twelve and a half years old. She was dressed that morning like a runner, in a bright green tank top, and her too-thin arms were showing all the way up to the shoulders. She came in with her father, who was in a casual office suit, quite high-ranking, and neither said much at first as they browsed. I could tell immediate
ly the girl was interested in me, even though she only glanced my way quickly before returning front-store. After a minute, though, she came back and pretended to be absorbed by the bracelets in the Glass Display Trolley just in front of where I was standing. Then, glancing around to check that neither her father nor Manager was watching, she put her weight experimentally against the trolley, making it move forward an inch or two on its castors. As she did this, she looked at me with a small smile, as if the moving of the trolley was a special secret between us. She pulled the trolley back to its original position, grinned at me again, and called out, ‘Daddy?’ When the father didn’t reply – he was absorbed by the two AFs sitting on the Glass Table at the back – the girl gave me a last look, then went over to join him. They began a conversation in low whispers, continually glancing my way, so there could be no doubt they were discussing me. Manager, noticing, rose from her desk and came to stand near me, her hands clasped in front of her.
Eventually, after a lot more whispering, the girl came back, striding past Manager, till she was directly facing me. She touched each of my elbows in turn, then took my left hand within her right one, and held me like that, her eyes looking into my face. Her expression was quite stern, but the hand holding mine squeezed gently, and I understood this was intended as another little secret between us. But I didn’t smile at her. I kept my expression blank, throwing my gaze over the girl’s spiky head to the Red Shelves on the wall opposite, and in particular, at the row of ceramic coffee cups displayed upside down along the third tier. The girl squeezed my hand twice more, the second time less gently, but I didn’t lower my gaze to her or smile.
Klara and the Sun Page 3