Klara and the Sun

As soon as I heard him say this I recognized the opportunity it represented, and exclaimed perhaps too loudly: ‘Oh yes!’ Then controlling myself, I said more quietly: ‘If you don’t mind, I’d very much like that.’

‘She was saying it may not be there any more. That it might have moved on.’

‘I’m not certain. Even so, if Mr Paul could take us to the area, it would make me very happy.’

‘Fine. We’ve time to kill.’

At the next intersection, he turned to the right, saying as he did so: ‘I wonder how Chrissie’s getting on. What they’re talking about right now. Maybe she managed to change the topic.’

There was now more traffic and we moved slowly behind other vehicles. The Sun was sometimes visible, but he was already getting quite low and the tall buildings often blocked his view. The sidewalks were busy with office workers at the end of their work, and we passed a man on a ladder, doing something to a shiny red notice that said ‘Rotisserie Chicken’. The pedestrian crossings and Tow-Away Zone signs went by, and I could sense we were coming nearer to the store.

‘Can I ask you something?’ the Father said.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘I think Josie’s still largely in the dark. But I don’t know about you. How much you’d guessed before. How much you found out today. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me what you do know.’

‘Before I visited Mr Capaldi today,’ I said, ‘I’d suspected some things, but had been ignorant of many others. Now, after this visit, I can understand Mr Paul’s unease. And I can understand his initial coldness towards me.’

‘I apologize again for that. So. They explained it all to you. How you fit into the picture.’

‘Yes. I believe they told me everything.’

‘And what do you think? Do you suppose you can pull it off? Perform this role?’

‘It won’t be easy. But I believe if I continue to observe Josie carefully, it will be within my abilities.’

‘Then let me ask you something else. Let me ask you this. Do you believe in the human heart? I don’t mean simply the organ, obviously. I’m speaking in the poetic sense. The human heart. Do you think there is such a thing? Something that makes each of us special and individual? And if we just suppose that there is. Then don’t you think, in order to truly learn Josie, you’d have to learn not just her mannerisms but what’s deeply inside her? Wouldn’t you have to learn her heart?’

‘Yes, certainly.’

‘And that could be difficult, no? Something beyond even your wonderful capabilities. Because an impersonation wouldn’t do, however skillful. You’d have to learn her heart, and learn it fully, or you’ll never become Josie in any sense that matters.’

A public bus had stopped beside some abandoned fruit boxes. As the Father steered around it, the car behind us made angry horn noises. Then there were more angry horns, but these were further away and not aimed at us.

‘The heart you speak of,’ I said. ‘It might indeed be the hardest part of Josie to learn. It might be like a house with many rooms. Even so, a devoted AF, given time, could walk through each of those rooms, studying them carefully in turn, until they became like her own home.’

The Father sounded our own horn at a car trying to enter the traffic line from a side street.

‘But then suppose you stepped into one of those rooms,’ he said, ‘and discovered another room within it. And inside that room, another room still. Rooms within rooms within rooms. Isn’t that how it might be, trying to learn Josie’s heart? No matter how long you wandered through those rooms, wouldn’t there always be others you’d not yet entered?’

I considered this for a moment, then said: ‘Of course, a human heart is bound to be complex. But it must be limited. Even if Mr Paul is talking in the poetic sense, there’ll be an end to what there is to learn. Josie’s heart may well resemble a strange house with rooms inside rooms. But if this were the best way to save Josie, then I’d do my utmost. And I believe there’s a good chance I’d be able to succeed.’

‘Hmm.’

For the next few moments we drove without talking. Then as we passed a building saying ‘Nail Boutique’, and immediately after it, a row of peeling poster walls, he said: ‘According to Josie, your old store is in this district.’

This might have been so, but the surroundings weren’t yet familiar to me. I said to him: ‘Mr Paul has spoken very frankly. Perhaps now he’d allow me, in turn, to speak frankly to him.’

‘Feel free.’

‘My old store wasn’t the true reason I asked you to drive into this district.’

‘No?’

‘When we came this way earlier today, not far from the store, we passed a machine. It was being used by overhaul men and it was creating terrible Pollution.’

‘Okay. Go on.’

‘It’s not easy to explain. But it’s very important Mr Paul now believes what I’m about to say. This machine must be destroyed. That’s the real reason I asked to be driven here. It must be somewhere nearby. It’s easily identified because it has the name Cootings on its body. It has three funnels and each of them emits terrible Pollution.’