In the decade that he has been with Gail, this house has not changed in any noticeable way. Even Matthew and Clara are standing at their usual places, the radio is on low, the room drifts in a comfortable quiet. Clara is making dumplings, and watching her, as Gail once said, is like watching a bird build a nest. Nothing much seems to be happening, and then suddenly structure appears.
He does what he can, constructing dumplings from the rounds of dough that dot the counter. Today is the six-month anniversary of Gail’s death.
As they work, Clara tells him about the restaurant that her father owned when she was a girl, and they talk about her four sisters, who are now scattered throughout the world. She brushes a strand of greying hair from her forehead, and her fingertips leave a faint trail of flour on her skin. On the fridge behind her, there’s a postcard, a snowflake photographed with a wide-angle lens, sent by her third sister, who is visiting St. Petersburg. He tells her that a snowflake is the perfect example of sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
“Sensitive what?” Matthew says, peering down at him through his bifocals.
Ansel says that the shape of a snowflake is the precise record of all the changing weather conditions it has experienced on its way towards the ground. Things like temperature, humidity, or impurities in the atmosphere. But mostly temperature.
“So,” he says, frowning. “People were right all along. No two are ever the same.”
Ansel nods, smiling. Each addition to the crystal is dependent on the exact second of its formation, and its place in the atmosphere. Even a difference as small as a breath, or a nudge, will give rise to another shape, another sequence of order and complexity. Matthew stops what he is doing, considering. Clara looks at Ansel now, nodding approval at the dumplings he has folded. “You have no idea how much food we’ve prepared,” she says, dusting flour from her hands. “Gail would have liked it, I think. Knowing we were here, together.”
The table is set for eight. Glyn Madden, an old friend and colleague of Gail’s at the radio station, sits beside Ansel. Since the funeral, he has seen her only a handful of times, to discuss the documentary that Gail was working on when she died. Opposite them is Ed Carney, whose son Scott is beside Mrs. Cho. Clara and Matthew sit side by side. The empty chair and place setting, intended for spirits departed, is to Ansel’s right. The food comes out all at once, a sweet-and-sour fish, spicy coconut soup, peanut noodles, and a half-dozen more dishes, and the table seems to buckle under the weight.
Ansel pours the wine, almost spilling it when Ed announces that he’s brought his banjo. “Is there anyone here who might accompany me?” he asks.
“You play the piano, don’t you, Glyn?”
“I do, but I’ve never played a duet with a banjo.”
The lenses of Matthew’s glasses begin to fog up from the warm food, and he takes them off and lays them, arms open, on the table. As the conversation drifts, Matthew remains silent, but to Ansel he looks relaxed, at ease in this gathering.
“So, Ed, what are you going to play for us?”
“No need to laugh. I have a very good repertoire. It passes the time.”
“It’s the banjo, Ed. What you need is a cello.”
“How about a hurdy gurdy? Not enough people are playing the hurdy gurdy these days.”
Arms reach across the table, passing plates, refilling glasses, and outside the sky is a pale and delicate amber. Ansel spoons some spiced beef into a lettuce leaf, drizzles sauce on it, and rolls the leaf into a small package. There are clams tossed in black bean sauce, a dish of prawns and snow peas. The food relaxes the nerves behind Ansel’s eyes.
Mrs. Cho is leaning forward with her glass. “So, Glyn, what are you working on now?”
Glyn puts down her chopsticks. “Something that Ed would be very interested in, I think.”
“Don’t get him started.”
“A feature documentary with an intriguing topic. To have a mind, to be a body,” she says. “That’s the gist of it anyway.”
“But,” Ed says, “gist is spirit.”
Glyn smiles. “Well the idea is to do a history of the mind, or at least what we know about it. Descartes thought there was a very small part of the brain through which the mind travelled into the body.” She turns to Ansel. “Ten points, doctor, if you can name it.”
“The glandula pinealis.”
She raises her glass to him in a toast. “Well done. Physics, quantum mechanics, those are often thought of as the frontier of science. But the other frontier might be study into the mind. How neurons and neurotransmitters make thought and feeling and imagination possible. Things that don’t seem like they could possibly come from a material thing, a physical entity.”
Ed smiles triumphantly. “Then maybe spirit was the right word.”
“In a sense.”
While the others talk, Gail is here beside him, laughing in delight at the spread of food. She hoists the wine bottle to make sure that every glass is full.
Ed leans back in his chair. “Now correct me if I’m wrong, but one of the reasons we have so much trouble studying the brain is because it’s sort of like a big crumpled piece of paper. Lots of surface area in a very small space, tucked away inside folds and such.”
“Like the lungs,” Ansel says, his attention returning to the table. “There’s more surface area there than on a tennis court.”
“Then,” Clara says, “I would imagine that the most important parts are in the centre. Less liable to damage?”
“Yes and no. Some parts, like the cerebral cortex, are on the surface. Others, like the thalamus or amygdala, are buried. So thought comes from these different regions working together, like a piece of music. Activity sweeps across the brain. Synapses are excited, connections are made. Up comes the lightbulb.”
Ed snaps his fingers and says, apropos of nothing, “Did you know, a catfish is basically a swimming tongue and nose?”
“Speaking of synapses,” Ansel says, “there’s a biologist who coined the phrase ‘I link therefore I am.’”
Glyn nods. “That sounds promising. I might have to use that.”
Their eyes meet briefly. Ansel says, the words coming before he has time to consider them, “And you’re finishing Gail’s documentary.”
Clara glances up from her plate, watching them.
“Yes, of course, but it was nearly finished. Gail had already written the script.” After a moment, she says, “This project meant something to her. She would have wanted it completed.”
There’s an awkward quiet at the table. Matthew picks up his glasses and gently folds the arms down. Mrs. Cho takes a sip of wine and says, “You’re very brave. That girl was such a perfectionist, I’d be afraid to mess it up. She’s the type who would come looking for you.”
“Spirits again!” says Ed. “Which reminds me, Ansel, I hope you’re minding your duties and keeping that plate full.” He points over at the place setting beside him.
Scott Carney stands, takes the wine bottle and begins refilling the glasses. “William Sullivan’s diary. That’s the documentary you mean?”
Glyn nods.
Clara picks up the serving spoon and begins to ladle more food onto Mrs. Cho’s plate. Ansel sees Matthew reach his hand out, rest it against Clara’s back, fingertips brushing her dress. Steadying her, or steadying himself, Ansel cannot tell.
Scott keeps pouring, concentrating on the task as he speaks. “The diary belonged to a friend of mine, a woman I had gone to school with, Kathleen Sullivan. All the pages were filled with numbers. She believed it was a diary because this is what her father had told her, decades ago. A diary he had begun in 1942, while serving with the Canadian army in Hong Kong.”
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.