Klara and the Sun

Once in a while – and I soon got better at watching those at the window while appearing to gaze at the RPO Building – a child would come to stare at us, and there would be a sadness there, or sometimes an anger, as though we’d done something wrong. A child like this could easily change the next moment and begin laughing or waving like the rest of them, but after our second day in the window, I learned quickly to tell the difference.

I tried to talk to Rosa about this, the third or fourth time a child like that had come, but she smiled and said: ‘Klara, you worry too much. I’m sure that child was perfectly happy. How could she not be on a day like this? The whole city’s so happy today.’

But I brought it up with Manager, at the end of our third day. She had been praising us, saying we’d been ‘beautiful and dignified’ in the window. The lights in the store had been dimmed by then, and we were rear-store, leaning against the wall, some of us browsing through the interesting magazines before our sleep. Rosa was next to me, and I could see from her shoulders that she was already half asleep. So when Manager asked if I’d enjoyed the day, I took the chance to tell her about the sad children who’d come to the window.

‘Klara, you’re quite remarkable,’ Manager said, keeping her voice soft so as not to disturb Rosa and the others. ‘You notice and absorb so much.’ She shook her head as though in wonder. Then she said: ‘What you must understand is that we’re a very special store. There are many children out there who would love to be able to choose you, choose Rosa, any one of you here. But it’s not possible for them. You’re beyond their reach. That’s why they come to the window, to dream about having you. But then they get sad.’

‘Manager, a child like that. Would a child like that have an AF at home?’

‘Perhaps not. Certainly not one like you. So if sometimes a child looks at you in an odd way, with bitterness or sadness, says something unpleasant through the glass, don’t think anything of it. Just remember. A child like that is most likely frustrated.’

‘A child like that, with no AF, would surely be lonely.’

‘Yes, that too,’ Manager said quietly. ‘Lonely. Yes.’

She lowered her eyes and was quiet, so I waited. Then suddenly she smiled and, reaching out, removed gently from my grasp the interesting magazine I’d been observing.

‘Goodnight, Klara. Be as wonderful tomorrow as you were today. And don’t forget. You and Rosa are representing us to the whole street.’

—

It was almost midway through our fourth morning in the window when I saw the taxi slowing down, its driver leaning right out so the other taxis would let him come across the traffic lanes to the curb in front of our store. Josie’s eyes were on me as she got out onto the sidewalk. She was pale and thin, and as she came towards us, I could see her walk wasn’t like that of other passers-by. She wasn’t slow exactly, but she seemed to take stock after each step to make sure she was still safe and wouldn’t fall. I estimated her age as fourteen and a half.

Once she was close enough so all the pedestrians were passing behind her, she stopped and smiled at me.

‘Hi,’ she said through the glass. ‘Hey, can you hear me?’

Rosa kept staring ahead at the RPO Building as she was supposed to do. But now I’d been addressed, I was able to look directly at the child, return her smile and nod encouragingly.

‘Really?’ Josie said – though of course I didn’t yet know that was her name. ‘I can hardly hear me myself. You can really hear me?’

I nodded again, and she shook her head as if very impressed.

‘Wow.’ She glanced over her shoulder – even this movement she made with caution – to the taxi from which she’d just emerged. Its door was as she’d left it, hanging open across the sidewalk, and there were two figures still in the back seat, talking and pointing to something beyond the pedestrian crossing. Josie seemed pleased her adults weren’t about to get out, and took one more step forward till her face was almost touching the window.

‘I saw you yesterday,’ she said.

I recalled our previous day, but finding no memory of Josie, looked at her with surprise.

‘Oh, don’t feel bad or anything, there’s no way you’d have seen me. I was like in a taxi, going by, not even that slow. But I saw you in your window, and that’s why I got Mom to stop today right here.’ She glanced back, again with that carefulness. ‘Wow. She’s still talking with Mrs Jeffries. Expensive way to talk, right? That taxi meter just keeps turning over.’

I could then see how, when she laughed, her face filled with kindness. But strangely, it was at that same moment I first wondered if Josie might be one of those lonely children Manager and I had talked about.