Klara and the Sun

I wouldn’t have wanted anyone other than Rosa beside me in the window during those days, but our time there did bring out the differences in our attitudes. It wasn’t really that I was more eager to learn about the outside than Rosa: she was, in her own way, excited and observant, and as anxious as I was to prepare herself to be as kind and helpful an AF as possible. But the more I watched, the more I wanted to learn, and unlike Rosa, I became puzzled, then increasingly fascinated by the more mysterious emotions passers-by would display in front of us. I realized that if I didn’t understand at least some of these mysterious things, then when the time came, I’d never be able to help my child as well as I should. So I began to seek out — on the sidewalks, inside the passing taxis, amidst the crowds waiting at the crossing — the sort of behavior about which I needed to learn.

At first I wanted Rosa to do as I was, but soon saw this was pointless. Once, on our third window day, when the Sun had already gone behind the RPO Building, two taxis stopped on our side, the drivers got out and began to fight each other. This wasn’t the first time we’d witnessed a fight: when we were still quite new, we’d gathered at the window to see as best we could three policemen fighting with Beggar Man and his dog in front of the blank doorway. But that hadn’t been an angry fight, and Manager had later explained how the policemen had been worried about Beggar Man because he’d become drunk and they’d only been trying to help him. But the two taxi drivers weren’t like the policemen. They fought as though the most important thing was to damage each other as much as possible. Their faces were twisted into horrible shapes, so that someone new might not even have realized they were people at all, and all the time they were punching each other, they shouted out cruel words. The passers-by were at first so shocked they stood back, but then some office workers and a runner stopped them from fighting any more. And though one had blood on his face, they each got back into their taxis, and everything went back to the way it was before. I even noticed, a moment later, the two taxis — the ones whose drivers had just been fighting — waiting patiently, one in front of the other, in the same traffic lane for the lights to change.

But when I tried to talk with Rosa about what we’d seen, she looked puzzled and said: ‘A fight? I didn’t see it, Klara.’

‘Rosa, it’s not possible you didn’t notice. It happened in front of us just now. Those two drivers.’

‘Oh. You mean the taxi men! I didn’t realize you meant them, Klara. Oh, I did see them, of course I did. But I don’t think they were fighting.’

‘Rosa, of course they were fighting.’

‘Oh no, they were pretending. Just playing.’

‘Rosa, they were fighting.’

‘Don’t be silly, Klara! You think such strange thoughts. They were just playing. And they enjoyed themselves, and so did the passers-by.’

In the end I just said, ‘You may be right, Rosa,’ and I don’t think she gave the incident any more thought.

But I couldn’t forget the taxi drivers so easily. I’d follow a particular person down the sidewalk with my gaze, wondering if he too could grow as angry as they had done. Or I would try to imagine what a passer-by would look like with his or her face distorted in rage. Most of all — and this Rosa would never have understood — I tried to feel in my own mind the anger the drivers had experienced. I tried to imagine me and Rosa getting so angry with each other we would start to fight like that, actually trying to damage each other’s bodies. The idea seemed ridiculous, but I’d seen the taxi drivers, so I tried to find the beginnings of such a feeling in my mind. It was useless, though, and I’d always end up laughing at my own thoughts.

Still, there were other things we saw from the window — other kinds of emotions I didn’t at first understand — of which I did eventually find some versions in myself, even if they were perhaps like the shadows made across the floor by the ceiling lamps after the grid went down. There was, for instance, what happened with the Coffee Cup Lady.