She runs her hand across the newspaper, blinking the sleep from her eyes. The article she is reading tells how scientists in Austria have measured the shortest interval of time ever observed, one hundred attoseconds, or a quintillionth of a second. To imagine how long this is, the article says, if 100 attoseconds is stretched so long it lasts one second, one second would last 300 million years on the same scale. Time, Clara believes, is the great mystery. Since Einstein, physicists have argued that time is merely a convention, that only the speed of light is constant everywhere in the universe. If one travelled fast enough, time would bend, and one person’s past could theoretically become another person’s future.
In her workroom, a dozen costumes hang from a clothes rail. The show, a children’s production of The Nutcracker, is scheduled for September, completely out of season, but the children from the dance school don’t seem to mind. Over the last few weeks, they have trooped in for their fittings, girls in frothy tutus skipping down the hallway, the Snow Queen waiting, aloof, hands on her hips, in a sequined dress. Clara is putting the finishing touches on a giant head for King Rat. On her table is a stack of pipe cleaners which she plans to shape into whiskers.
From her window, she can see Matthew standing in the garden. He looks up at the August sky, the low sweep of clouds, then lowers his head, surveying the last of the summer flowers. Because of the arthritis in his knees, her husband walks slowly, with the aid of a cane. She is tempted to put down her coffee, to join him outside, but work cannot wait. The garden has always been Matthew’s domain. There, he loses track of himself and the hours. He can coax the most stubborn flowers into bloom.
In another hour or so, he will come back inside the house. Each morning is the same. They will put the kettle on for tea, prepare a light breakfast. Every act, every routine, helps, the way sitting in a car travelling along the highway can seem a comfort, a motion to fall back on, to keep their thoughts contained as they move into another place.
She had grown up in her father’s restaurant in Kowloon, and the Hong Kong that Clara remembers is cramped and vibrant, a city heated by the press of bodies. On Reclamation Street, where they lived, the buildings, crowded shoulder to shoulder, seemed to jostle for space. Laundry shook in the wind, people overflowed onto balconies, onto the sidewalks.
After school, during the dinner hour, she would work the floor of the restaurant, greeting customers as they stepped through the shuttered doors: elderly men, newspapers tucked under their arms, young women in shifts and trousers towing a line of children. In the kitchen, behind glass, cooks appeared and disappeared in the steamy air. “Ching Yun,” her father would say proudly, calling her by her Chinese name. “Hurry and bring this gentleman a glass of tea.” Always, she had felt at ease in the ebb and flow of the restaurant, chopsticks clicking against porcelain bowls, the clatter of her father’s abacus. She balanced a half-dozen plates in her arms, listening sympathetically when a customer complained about the state of the world, his children or simply the weather. Leftover food she carried to the back door, where the very old and the very young would congregate, carrying tin plates.
Behind the kitchen, faded linoleum stairs led up to their living space. She and her four younger sisters lived in one room, one on top of the other, sharing their clothes, their hairbrushes and slippers. Her sisters spent their days working in the restaurant, but Clara, as the eldest, had been enrolled at St. Mary’s School. In the evenings, while her sisters finished their chores, she sat at the dining table, writing essays or laboratory notes, or helping her mother with the sewing. She worked quickly, impatient to join her father in the sitting room, where each night he would open a novel and step away from the world. She gathered what lay discarded at his feet, reading, in English or Chinese, Father Goriot, A Tale of Two Cities, Journey to the West. Hours later, while the rest of the household slept, she remained awake, reading by candlelight. Her sisters sighed in their sleep, breathed in unison, while she, turning pages, shuddered or wept or shook with laughter.
In Journey to the West, the young monk Xuanzang is called by the Bodhisattva on a pilgrimage to India. He is joined on his travels by three disciples who have each been given the task of accompanying him in order to atone for past mistakes. To make amends. The stories that make up Journey to the West are enshrined in countless Chinese operas. On Sundays, she and her father would take the bus to the theatre, a converted temple, where they bought their tickets from an old whiskered man who slept in the booth with one eye open. Like a dolphin, her father said once, awake just enough to stay afloat. In the open auditorium that day, Clara made her way to the front, past the grandmothers seated on stools, drinking tea, littering the ground with sunflower seeds. She stood so close to the stage that the sound of the gongs exploded in her ears, tingling up her spine; she could see the stitching of the Monkey King’s yellow robes as he somersaulted across the stage. All the while, her father, beside her, followed the undercurrent of the story. The quest for enlightenment, the spiritual journey that remained at the core.
She was twelve years old the day, the moment, the city became altered for her. When she herself suddenly became clear.
The evening of the accident, her father had the radio on. From where she stood, sweeping the entrance to the restaurant, she heard the first chiming notes, a clang of cymbals. Inside the restaurant, an elderly man, his voice scratchy with age, began to sing. The diners clapped, calling encouragement, joining their voices with his.
It was twilight. She stood outside listening, the broom in her hand. A crowd of people had gathered on the sidewalk, looking up at the apartment building across the street. When she craned her neck back and lifted her eyes, she saw a boy pacing back and forth on the flat roof. A flash of colour slid across the sky, a kite high above him. The wind picked it up and twisted it round, a dragon with a long and flickering tail, spiralling.
She saw the edge of the roof, the boy walking without seeing it. Her throat caught.
It happened in the space of a second. The boy, head tilted up, watched the progress of his kite. He stepped backwards into air. Someone beside her screamed, and then she heard only silence. For a moment as he fell, his body unfurled, hands darting out, legs kicking away.
The crowd surged forward, and she began to run, reaching her arms out as if she could catch him. A few steps away, in front of her, the boy hit the sidewalk.
Voices cried out, a screaming that rose in volume, the sound travelling over her. The side of his head was badly crushed, his legs twisted grotesquely beneath him. The boy’s eyes were open, but she did not think he could see. People moved towards him, stopping when they saw blood staining the ground.
Seconds passed. Around her, nobody moved.
The air was thick. She had to push against it, fighting the sickness that rose in her chest. She forced herself to go and kneel beside him. Gently, she placed one hand on his forehead, and then carefully she took his hand.
Behind her, someone asked, “Is he still breathing?”
Clara nodded but she didn’t look up. “Call an ambulance.”
Footsteps hurried away. She heard a girl sobbing, calling for her parents, but nobody answered. The parents were not there, someone said, they had gone this morning to Hong Kong Island. At the sound of the girl’s voice, something changed in the boy’s expression, and Clara knew that he was looking at her, seeing her face. He was younger than she, perhaps ten years old. She held his hand tighter. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. His hair was matted and glistening, the blood still running out. She told him that this was only the beginning of a long walk, an important journey. He blinked up at her, seeming to understand, seeming to trust her. She said that she would stay with him for as long as she could.