Klara and the Sun

by Kazuo Ishiguro

‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘at special moments like that, people feel a pain alongside their happiness. I’m glad you watch everything so carefully, Klara.’

Happiness and pain

people often felt the need to prepare a side of themselves to display to passers-by – as they might in a store window – and that such a display needn’t be taken so seriously once the moment had passed.

Outward

‘It must be great. Not to miss things. Not to long to get back to something. Not to be looking back all the time. Everything must be so much more …’

She drank coffee, all the time looking at me, till I found the Mother’s face filled six boxes by itself, her narrowed eyes recurring in three of them, each time at a different angle. She said finally:

The way Klara sees things.

At the same time, what was becoming clear to me was the extent to which humans, in their wish to escape loneliness, made maneuvers that were very complex and hard to fathom, and I saw it was possible that the consequences of Morgan’s Falls had at no stage been within my control.

Lonely Human

‘I’m sorry. It’s my error. I don’t understand yet the rules about forgiveness.

Klara

But this part of the field had been divided into orderly boxes, so that as I passed from one box into the next, I was able to see clearly those lined up ahead of me.

Robot orientation

‘One never knows how to greet a guest like you. After all, are you a guest at all? Or do I treat you like a vacuum cleaner? I suppose I did as much just now. I’m sorry.’

Guest

The answer is yes. I do miss England. In particular I miss the hedges. In England, the part of it I’m from anyway, you can see green all around you, and always divided by hedges. Hedges, hedges everywhere. So ordered. Now look out there. It just goes on and on. I suppose there are fences somewhere in the midst of it all, but who can tell?’

Divisions

‘You can tear down a fence in a moment,’ she said. ‘Then put up another somewhere else. Change the entire configuration of the land in a day or two. A land of fences is so temporary. You can change things as easily as a stage set.

Fences - more divisions...

Until recently, I didn’t think that humans could choose loneliness. That there were sometimes forces more powerful than the wish to avoid loneliness.’

Loneliness

suddenly she’d become partitioned into many boxes,

When emotions are high there are many boxes...

A part of us refuses to let go. The part that wants to keep believing there’s something unreachable inside each of us. Something that’s unique and won’t transfer. But there’s nothing like that, we know that now. You know that.

Sentimental

The human heart. Do you think there is such a thing? Something that makes each of us special and individual? And if we just suppose that there is. Then don’t you think, in order to truly learn Josie, you’d have to learn not just her mannerisms but what’s deeply inside her? Wouldn’t you have to learn her heart?’

Heart

‘But then suppose you stepped into one of those rooms,’ he said, ‘and discovered another room within it. And inside that room, another room still. Rooms within rooms within rooms. Isn’t that how it might be, trying to learn Josie’s heart?

Rooms

That science has now proved beyond doubt there’s nothing so unique about my daughter, nothing there our modern tools can’t excavate, copy, transfer. That people have been living with one another all this time, centuries, loving and hating each other, and all on a mistaken premise. A kind of superstition we kept going while we didn’t know better.

Father

‘But who says I’m lonely? I’m not lonely.’ ‘Perhaps all humans are lonely. At least potentially.’

Lonely

Klara deserves better. She deserves her slow fade.’

Slow fade

But I don’t think it would have worked out so well. Not because I wouldn’t have achieved accuracy. But however hard I tried, I believe now there would have remained something beyond my reach. The Mother, Rick, Melania Housekeeper, the Father. I’d never have reached what they felt for Josie in their hearts. I’m now sure of this, Manager.’

But I like this spot. And I have my memories to go through and place in the right order.’

Fading.