Glyn continues the story, telling how Sullivan had continued writing after Hong Kong fell, after he was taken prisoner by the Japanese, when the act of keeping a journal was punishable by summary execution. But by the 1960s, when Sullivan showed the diary to his family, he himself had forgotten the method of decryption. After his death, the diary had been carefully preserved by Kathleen. Eventually, she attempted to have it read, sending it to experts around the world. Gail had forwarded a copy of the book to Harry Jaarsma, a mathematician and a friend from her student days in the Netherlands, in the hope that he would be able to decipher it.
“I still remember telling Gail the story,” Scott says, turning to Ansel, “sitting on the front steps of your house.”
After the dishes are cleared away, they move out onto the back porch. Ed picks up his banjo and strums a few strings, then father and son do a duet: “Good Night” by the Beatles, but with the rhythm plucked up so they’re tapping their feet. The song goes from three minutes to about forty-five seconds. Ed waves off the applause and segues into “Never My Love.” Mrs. Cho creaks back and forth on the rocking chair, singing along, “Da da da da, da da. Never, my love.” She tells Ed, “I’m so glad you’re my age.” He puts his soul into the bass walk up.
“I never thought I’d enjoy this on the banjo.” Glyn is standing apart from the group, leaning her back against the house.
Scott turns to her. “You’d be surprised how many people say that. The weird thing is, Dad didn’t even pick it up until he was in his fifties. It’s not something from his childhood, or from his lost country roots. It’s a new thing for him.”
Ansel leans over the railing. From here, he can see his own house, where he has left the bedroom light on accidentally. In his red wine haze, it makes him think that someone is waiting up for him. That someone is reading in bed, and when he comes home, he will lift the open book off her chest and set it on the table. When he turns around, he sees that Matthew has already gone upstairs to rest. Clara and Mrs. Cho are having a conversation that moves from Cantonese into English and back again. Glyn, Ed and Scott have gone back to talking about the mind. Ed is saying, “At some point, when they’ve figured everything out, the new kind of human being may have to live without mystery. And I wonder where that will lead us.”
Glyn twirls the glass in her hand, then shakes out the last few drops of wine into the air. “That seems to be something that all the scientists can agree on. That the mind was never made to understand itself. Its first job was to collect information from the senses, find some way to unify that knowledge so that the body could escape danger.”
Ed shakes his head. “If I could live my life again, I’m not sure what I would do. The world is endlessly fascinating. When you get to my age, that’s the main reason for hanging on. Just to find out a little bit more.”
“You could join me in radio. The medium of the imagination.”
Ed looks at Ansel. “What about you, doctor? If you could start over again, what would you choose?”
He thinks for a short while but comes to no conclusions. There are too many doors and not enough time to open them. He shakes his head. “I’ve no idea. Some mysteries, I think, were never meant to be solved.”
The three of them laugh. Ed plays a decisive chord on the banjo, and the notes hang on the air for a long time before they are carried away down the block, slowly fading. There’s a moment when the sound will dissolve past the range of what Ansel is capable of hearing. One moment of separation. He closes his eyes and waits.
That night, after the dishes are done and the house is still, Clara goes into her sewing room. Above her, the skylight frames a handful of stars, a square of night.
On her cutting table, the newspaper is open to an article about the origins of empathy. She read the story this morning, and its contents have remained in her mind, a background to her thoughts. All acts of empathy, of compassion, the article says, arise out of needs of the individual, and, as such, no act is selfless. “Let us try to teach generosity and altruism,” says one scientist, “because we are born selfish.” Carefully, she clips this article and lays it on the table in front of her. So many things that we do, she thinks, so much in the name of those we love. In her own life, Clara has witnessed acts of selflessness, of empathy, whose motivations she does not doubt. She knows that a single act, a choice, can transform all that came before. Long ago, when she was young, she risked her future on this belief.
Clara stands at the cutting table, smoothing the paper pattern that she drew earlier in the day. She pins the pieces down, examining the weave of the cloth as she works. If she concentrates, she will be able to finish this gown before morning.
Across the hall, she can hear floorboards creaking, and she pictures her husband rising from bed, standing at the curtains, gazing out at this starlit night. When she first met him more than forty years ago, they had been drawn to one another because of their differences. On the surface, they had been north and south, light and dark. Back then, he had carried a hollow within himself, a grief that he could not share. To each other, they had seemed the way out, the path that leads along the river, finally opening on to the sea.
Nearby is the house where her daughter lived. Gail was a runner, and each day she would pass by Clara’s window. She would detour through the alley, into the garden, blowing a playful kiss to her mother as she passed. Clara would watch the easy movement of her daughter’s body until it disappeared around the corner.
She picks up the chalk, traces the pieces with a steady hand. The halogen lamp flickers and steadies itself again. In the alley, a stray cat walking between the houses sets the security lights off one by one. Lately, the strangest thought has settled in her mind. If she repeats her own actions on the morning that Gail died, she can pass between days, the way a pin passes through this piece of paper, leaving only the faintest trace. Time will bend backwards on itself and Clara will look out the window, see her daughter returning from her run. The way her dark hair sticks to her face, the same determined expression. Prince George, the hotel room, the suitcase of clothes all disintegrating. As clean as the opening of a seam.
She sits down at her sewing machine, replaces the bobbin and threads the needle. She has done this same work almost all her life. Her hands take over when her thoughts retreat.
In the bedroom, Matthew wakes hearing music, a song played on a phonograph, the rustle and scratch of air on the recording. When he opens his eyes, the dream and the music evaporate. The windows are open, and a cool breeze drifts through the room, holding the curtains aloft. Moonlight gleams off the roofs of the houses, and the leaves shift in the trees. He pushes the covers aside and sits up.
When he first arrived in Vancouver, Matthew felt free in this city. The buildings showed no wear, they seemed untouched by the passage of time. Indeed, it seemed as if once they reached a certain age, old buildings came down and new ones replaced them. The mountains, near and distant, the ocean, all these things changed from day to day, never quite the same. During the winters, it rained almost all the time, sheets of water like a brush coating everything, dimming the sounds to a quiet murmur.
When Matthew and his daughter walked together, along Keefer, then Pender, she used to whisper the street names under her breath. Matthew would tell her stories about his childhood before the war, about Sandakan, until he realized that she remembered so much. She wanted to hear everything, to know how the story continued. His words ran dry. She was half his height then; the crown of her head reached his waist. He remembers carrying his daughter, her hands clasped around his neck, feeling as if he held a treasure in his arms. He held her so tightly, careful of each step he made.