Klara and the Sun

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.

***