Part One - 06

‘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. 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.