Klara and the Sun(86)

‘Damn Sun!’ Melania Housekeeper called out. ‘Go away, damn Sun!’

‘No, no!’ I went quickly to Melania Housekeeper. ‘We must open them, open everything! We must let the Sun do his best!’

I tried to take the curtain material from her, and though she at first didn’t let go, she did so eventually with a look of surprise. By then, Rick had appeared at my side and, seemingly coming to some intuitive conclusion, also reached forward to raise the blind and pull back the curtains.

The Sun’s nourishment then came into the room so abundantly Rick and I reeled back, almost losing balance. Melania Housekeeper, her hands covering her face, said again: ‘Damn Sun!’ But she made no further attempt to block his nourishment.

I’d stepped back from the window, but not before noticing that outside the wind was as powerful as ever, and that not only were the trees still waving, there were many tiny funnels and pyramids – each looking as though drawn in sharp pencil lines – blowing swiftly across the sky. But the Sun had broken through the dark clouds, and all at once – as if each of us in the room had received a secret message – we turned to look at Josie.

The Sun was illuminating her, and the entire bed, in a ferocious half-disc of orange, and the Mother, standing closest to the bed, was having to raise her hands to her face. Rick seemed now somehow to have guessed what was occurring, but I was interested to observe how both the Mother and Melania Housekeeper seemed also to have grasped its essence. So, for the next few moments, we all remained in our fixed positions as the Sun focused ever more brightly on Josie. We watched and waited, and even when at one point the orange half-disc looked as if it might catch alight, none of us did anything. Then Josie stirred, and with squinting eyes, held a hand up in the air.



‘Hey. What’s with this light anyway?’ she said.

The Sun continued relentlessly to shine on her, and she shifted till she was on her back, propped up by the pillows and headboard.

‘What’s going on?’

‘How are you feeling, honey?’ the Mother asked in a whisper, staring at Josie as if in fear.

Josie slumped back against her pillows till she was almost looking up at the ceiling. But there was an obvious new strength to the way she’d maneuvered herself.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Is the blind stuck or something?’

The loose piece of house structure was still banging somewhere, and when I next glanced out of the window, the darkness was once more spreading across the sky. Then even as we watched, the Sun’s patterns faded over Josie, till she was lying there in the gray of an overcast morning.

‘Josie?’ the Mother said. ‘How do you feel?’

Josie looked at her with a tired expression, shifting herself to face us better. The Mother, seeing this, moved forward, perhaps with the intention of making Josie lie down again. But even as she reached Josie, she appeared to change her mind, and began to assist Josie in finding a more comfortable sitting posture.

‘You look better, honey,’ the Mother said.

‘Look, what’s going on?’ Josie asked. ‘Why’s everyone here? What are you all staring at?’



‘Hey, Josie,’ Rick said suddenly, his voice filled with excitement. ‘You look a complete mess.’

‘Thanks. You’re looking pretty good yourself.’ Then she said: ‘But you know, I do feel better. Kind of dizzy though.’

‘That’s enough,’ the Mother said. ‘Just take it easy. Do you want to drink something?’

‘Water maybe?’

‘Okay, let’s assume nothing,’ the Mother said. ‘We have to take this one step at a time.’





PART SIX





The Sun’s special nourishment proved as effective for Josie as it had for Beggar Man, and after the dark sky morning, she grew not only stronger, but from a child into an adult.

As the seasons – and the years – went by, Mr McBain’s vehicles cut down the tall grass in all three fields, leaving them a pale brown color. The barn now looked taller and more sharply outlined, but Mr McBain still didn’t build additional walls for it, and on cloudless evenings, as the Sun went towards his resting place, I was still able to see him sinking to the far side of the barn before fading into the ground.

Josie worked hard on her tutorials, and there were many arguments about which college she might go to. Josie and the Mother each held strong views on the matter, but Atlas Brookings – now Rick no longer wished to go there – was rarely mentioned. The Father seemed to agree with neither Josie’s nor the Mother’s ideas, and once turned up at the house to make his points more strongly. It was the only time I saw him come to the house, and although I was myself happy to see him again, we all understood he’d infringed a rule in doing so.



Josie herself went away from the house much more over this period, sometimes for several days at a time, to visit other young adults, or to attend retreats. These trips, I knew, were an important part of her preparations for college, but she preferred not to talk much about them to me, so they remained largely outside of my knowledge.

Rick had continued to come regularly in the early days after Josie’s recovery, but as the time passed, and certainly by when Mr McBain cut the grass, he was coming far less. This was partly because of Josie being away so often, but Rick too had become busy with his projects. He’d bought a car, which he’d named ‘the Wreck’, and would regularly drive to the city to meet his new friends. Rick preferred to leave the Wreck in the loose stones area because, he said, it was easier for him to start his journey from there than to negotiate the narrow and circuitous route out from his own house. So it was increasingly the presence of the Wreck, rather than Josie, that brought Rick to us, and it was there on the loose stones that I had my last conversation with him.