Her Fearful Symmetry

by Audrey Niffenegger

  The call light at his desk lit up. Robert realised that he must be sitting in someone else's seat. He glanced around, then got up and left the reading room. He took the tube home. As he walked down the path to Vautravers he saw lights in the windows of the middle flat, and his heart contracted in joy. Then he remembered it was only the twins. Today was a one-off. Tomorrow I'll knock on their door and introduce myself properly.

  The next morning he followed them to Baker Street and paid twenty quid to wander around Madame Tussauds at a discreet distance from the twins as they made fun of wax versions of Justin Timberlake and the Royal Family. The day after that they all went to the Tower and then took in a puppet show on the Embankment. Robert began to despair. Don't you ever do anything interesting? Days passed in a blur of Neal's Yard, Harrods, Buckingham Palace, Portobello Road, Westminster Abbey and Leicester Square. Robert sensed the twins' determination: they seemed to be circling London's most public spheres, looking for a rabbit hole into the real city underneath. They were trying to construct a personal London for themselves out of the Rough Guide and Time Out.

  Robert had been born in Islington. He had never lived anywhere but London. His geography of London was a tangle of emotional associations. Street names evoked girlfriends, school mates, boring afternoons playing truant and doing nothing in particular; rare outings with his father to obscure restaurants and the zoo, raves in east-London warehouses. He began to pretend that the twins were taking him on school outings, that they were all three attending an exotic public school with odd uniforms and a curriculum of tourism. He stopped thinking about what he was doing, or worrying very much about being caught. Their obliviousness frightened him. They lacked the urban camouflage skills young women ought to have. People stared at them all the time, and they seemed to be aware of this without making very much of it, as though being the objects of constant attention was natural to them.

  They led and he followed. He went to the cemetery intermittently. When Jessica asked, he told her he was working at home on his thesis. She looked at him curiously; later he noticed the messages piled up on his answering machine and understood that she thought he was avoiding her.

  Then the twins stayed in several days running. One twin did little errands by herself. Robert worried. I should go up and check on them. By now he felt that he knew them well, but he had never spoken to them. He missed them. He berated himself for becoming immersed in their lives. Still, he hesitated to begin. He found himself spending whole days sitting quietly in his flat, listening, waiting, worrying.

  SICK DAY

  VALENTINA DIDN'T FEEL well that morning, so Julia went to the Tesco Express to buy chicken soup, Ritz crackers and Coke, which the twins considered to be the proper cuisine for invalids. As soon as Julia left, Valentina dragged herself out of bed, threw up in the toilet, went back to bed and lay on her side, knees pulled to her chest, burning with fever. She stared at the rug, tracing the gold-and-blue shapes with her eyes. She began to fall asleep.

  Someone leaned over and looked at her closely. The person did not touch her; she merely had the feeling that someone was there, that this person was concerned about her. Valentina opened her eyes. She thought she saw something dark, indistinct. It moved towards the foot of the bed. Valentina heard Julia come in the front door, and she woke up completely. There was nothing at the foot of the bed.

  In a little while, Julia came into the room with a tray. Valentina sat up. Julia put the tray down and gave her a glass of Coke. Valentina rattled the ice cubes against the glass, touched it to her cheek. She took a tiny sip of Coke, then a bigger sip. 'There was something weird in the room,' she said.

  'What do you mean?' asked Julia.

  Valentina tried to describe it. 'It was like a smudge in the air. It was worried about me.'

  'That's nice of it,' Julia said. 'I'm worried about you too. Want some soup?'

  'I think so. Can I just have the soup part and not all the noodles and stuff?'

  'Whatever.' Julia went back to the kitchen. Valentina looked around the bedroom. It was just its regular morning bedroom-self. The day was sunny, and the furniture seemed warm and innocent. I must have dreamed it. How bizarre, though.

  Julia came in and gave her the soup in a mug. She put her hand on Valentina's forehead exactly the way Edie did. 'You're burning up, Mouse.' Valentina drank some soup. Julia sat at the foot of the bed. 'We should find you a doctor.'

  'It's just the flu.'

  'Mouse ... you know you can't not have a doctor. Mom would freak. What if you have an asthma attack?'

  'Yeah ... Can we call Mom?' They had called home yesterday, but there was no rule that said they couldn't call twice in one week.

  'It's 4 a.m. at home,' Julia said. 'Later we can.'

  'Okay.' Valentina held out the mug. Julia put it on the tray. 'I think I want to sleep.'

  ''kay.' Julia drew the curtains, took the tray and left.

  Valentina curled up again, content. She closed her eyes. Someone sat next to her and smoothed her hair. She fell asleep smiling.

  VALENTINA AND JULIA UNDERGROUND

  VALENTINA DIDN'T LIKE the underground. It was dark and fast and dirty; it was crowded. She didn't like being pressed against people, feeling someone's breath on her neck, hanging onto a pole and being pitched against sweaty men. Most of all, Valentina did not like being underground. Somehow, the fact that the whole thing was called the underground made it worse. She took the bus whenever she could.

  She tried not to let Julia know that the tube frightened her, but somehow Julia guessed. Now, every time they went out, Julia would spread out the tube map on the dining-room table and plot out elaborate routes that necessitated at least three changes. Valentina never said anything. She trudged along beside Julia, rode endless escalators into bottomless underground stations. Tonight they were going to the Royal Albert Hall to see a circus. They began at Archway. At Warren Street the twins had to change from the Northern line to the Victoria line, and found themselves moving with a number of other people down a long white-tiled corridor. Valentina held Julia's hand. She mentally checked the zipper of her purse, thinking of pickpockets. Valentina wondered if everyone could tell they were Americans. The crowd moved like syrup.

  Valentina noticed a man walking in front of them.

  He was quite tall and had ear-length, brown wavy hair. He wore a white button-down shirt tucked into brown corduroy trousers and carried a thick paperback book. He wore wingtip shoes without socks. The man walked with the long, loose-jointed stride of a Labrador retriever or a tree sloth. He was soft-bodied and pallid. Valentina wondered what he was reading. The twins followed him onto an elevator. He walked ahead of them through tunnels and then they stood behind him on the escalator, one of the long ones that made Valentina feel as though the world had tilted, as though she were subject to some new, weird gravity. Finally they found the platform for the Victoria line.

  Valentina tried to catch a glimpse of the book's title. It ended in sis. Kafka? Too thick. He wore small gold wire-rimmed glasses and had a kind face, a face with lots of jaw and a long narrow nose, which he proceeded to stick into his book. His eyes were brown and hooded, heavily lashed. The train was coming. It was packed, and the doors opened and shut without anyone getting off or on. The man glanced up and resumed reading.

  Julia was talking about an accident she had seen that morning, in which a pedestrian, an older woman, had been hit by a moped. Valentina tried not to listen. Julia knew she was afraid of crossing the streets. Valentina always stubbornly waited for the green man, even when there were no cars in sight, even when Julia skipped across the street and stood waving at her from the other side. 'Stop it,' she said to Julia. 'If you don't shut up I'm going to stay home forever, and you'll have to carry all the groceries yourself.' Julia looked surprised, and to Valentina's relief, she was silent.

  The next train was in one minute. This one was less crowded, and the twins pushed their way into it. Julia delved her way towards the middle o
f the carriage, but Valentina stood clinging to the pole near the door. As the train pitched forward, Valentina looked up and saw that the man she had been watching was standing pressed against her. He caught her eye, and she looked away. He smelled like grass, as though he had been mowing a lawn, and sweat, and something Valentina couldn't place. Paper? Dirt? It was a good smell, whatever it was, and she inhaled it as though it had vitamins in it. Someone's shopping bag was chafing her leg. Valentina glanced up again. The man was still watching her. She blushed, but held his eyes. He said, 'You don't like the tube much, do you?'

  'No,' said Valentina.

  'Nor I,' he said. His voice was pleasant and low. 'It's too intimate.'

  Valentina nodded. She was watching the man's mouth as he spoke. His mouth was wide, the upper lip a bit rabbit-like, showing his slightly protuberant teeth, teeth that could have used orthodontia. She thought of the years she and Julia had spent at Dr Weissman's, having their teeth straightened. She wondered what their teeth would have looked like if they'd just been left alone.

  'Are you Julia, or Valentina?' he asked.

  'Valentina,' she replied, and was instantly appalled at her own boldness. But how did he know their names? The train slid into a station, throwing her off balance. The man caught her by the elbow, held her up until the train stopped. This is Victoria, said the disembodied female voice of the underground.

  'Mouse! This is our stop, Mouse, we have to change here.' Julia's voice rose above the wall of people between them as the doors opened. Valentina twisted her head to look at the man.

  'I have to get off,' she told him. There was something reassuring about the way he regarded her, as though they were travelling together and had been riding this train for hours.

  'Where are you going?' he asked her. Julia was pushing her way towards them. Valentina stepped off the train.

  'The circus,' she said as Julia landed next to her. He smiled; the doors closed; the train moved forward. Valentina stood for a moment, watching. The man raised his hand, hesitated, waved.

  'Who was that?' Julia asked. She took Valentina's hand, and they began walking with the crowd to catch the District line.

  'I don't know,' Valentina replied.

  'He was cute,' said Julia. Valentina nodded. He knew our names, Julia. We don't know anyone here. How did he know our names?

  Robert watched Valentina and Julia as they slid away. He got off at the next stop, Pimlico, walked to the Tate Gallery, and sat on its steep front steps staring at the Thames, deeply agitated. What are you so afraid of? he asked himself, but he could not answer.

  A DELUGE

  IT WAS VERY late at night, past 2 a.m., and the twins were asleep. It had been a chilly evening. The twins still hadn't figured out the heating system - tonight it didn't seem to want to come on, even though it was colder than it had been. They were used to their overheated American home; all through the evening they had each placed their hands on the radiators, wondering why they were lukewarm. Now they slept with several quilts covering them. They had found a hot-water bottle in a drawer, so they had that tucked under their feet. Valentina lay on her side in a foetal ball. Her thumb was not actually in her mouth; it hovered nearby, as though she had been sucking on it and it had become bored and wandered away. Julia spooned around Valentina, her body pressed into Valentina's and her arm resting along Valentina's thigh. This was a habitual sleeping position for the twins; it echoed the way they had slept in utero. Their faces were set in different expressions: Valentina slept lightly, her brow furrowed and her eyes squinched up. Julia twitched with a dream. Her eyes raced back and forth under her shell-thin eyelids. In her dream, Julia was on a beach, back home in Lake Forest. There were children on the beach. They shrieked with pleasure; they were knocked over by little waves. Julia felt the wet of the lake on her skin and twisted in her sleep. In her dream it began to rain. The children raced back to their parents, who packed up the toys and sunblock lotion. The rain was coming down in sheets. Julia tried to remember, Where is the car? - she was running now--

  Water splashed Julia's face. She put her hand to her cheek, still dreaming. Valentina woke up, sat up and looked at Julia. A thin trickle of water began to pour from the ceiling and onto the quilts, just where Julia's breasts were.

  'Ugh, Julia, wake up!'

  Julia woke with a snort. It took her a minute to understand the situation. Valentina had already run to the kitchen and returned with a gigantic soup pot by the time Julia crawled out of bed. Valentina stuck the pot under the leak, and the water rattled in it. The bed was soaked. The ceiling plaster above the bed was slick and crumbly. The twins stood watching as the water collected in the pot. Small pieces of plaster bobbed in the water like cottage-cheese curds.

  Valentina sat down in the armchair next to the bed. 'What do you think?' she asked. She was wearing boxer shorts and a spaghetti-strap T-shirt, and she had goosebumps all over her arms and her thighs. 'It's not raining.' She tilted her head back, stared at the ceiling. 'Maybe someone was going to take a bath and left the water running?'

  'But why doesn't it leak over here, then?' Julia walked into the bathroom and flipped on the light. She scrutinised the ceiling. 'It's totally dry,' she told Valentina.

  They looked at each other as more water trickled into the pot. 'Huh,' said Julia. 'I don't know.' She put on her bathrobe, an old pink silk thing she had found at Oxfam. 'I'd better go upstairs and see.'

  'I'll come too.'

  'No, stay down here in case the pot overflows' - which was a good idea because the water was indeed threatening to reach the top of the pot.

  Julia marched out of the apartment and up the stairs. Julia had never gone upstairs before. There were piles of newspapers, mostly the Guardian and the Telegraph, stacked on the landing. The door stood ajar. Julia knocked. No one responded.

  'Hello?' she called. All she could hear was a noise that sounded like something being sanded, a rhythmic, abrasive noise. Someone, a man, was speaking in a low voice.

  Julia stood in front of the door nervously. She didn't know anything about the neighbours. She wished she had brought Valentina with her. What if these people were satanists, or child-abusers, or people who cut up inquisitive young women with chainsaws? Did they have chainsaws in Britain, or was that only an American serial-killer thing? Julia stood with her hand on the doorknob, hesitating. She imagined water filling their whole flat, all of Aunt Elspeth's furniture floating around, Valentina swimming from room to room trying to save stuff from the deluge. She opened the door and walked in, calling 'Hello?' as she went.

  The flat was very dim, and Julia immediately ran into a pile of boxes that filled the hall. She had a sense of many objects oppressively close together. Somewhere there was a light, across the hall, in another room, but here there was only a dim reflection. The wooden floor felt sticky and gritty under her bare feet. There were pathways within the hall; on each side of the pathways were stacks of boxes. The boxes reached the ceiling, towered ten feet from the floor. Julia wondered if the boxes had ever fallen down and crushed anyone. Maybe there were people buried under the piles of stuff? She navigated by touching the boxes with her hands, like a blind woman. She could smell cooked meat and fried onions. The sweet smell of tobacco. The sharp, complicated smell of bleach-based cleaner. Rotting fruit; lemons? Soap. Julia tried to sort out the smells. They made her nose itch. Please, God, don't let me sneeze, she thought, and she sneezed.

  The muttering and the sanding stopped abruptly. Julia stood still. The noises resumed after what seemed to Julia to be an eternity. Her heart pounded, and she turned to see if she had left the front door open, but it had vanished. Breadcrumbs, Julia thought. String. I'll never find my way out of here.

  The boxes disappeared under her fingertips, and she stretched her hand out and felt a closed door. This would be the front bedroom, if this were their flat. The noise was louder now. Julia crept down the hall. Finally she stood in the doorway of the back bedroom, and she looked in.

 
; The man had his back to her. He crouched, knees bent, only his feet and the scrubbing brush touching the floor as he washed it. Julia was reminded of a man imitating an anteater. He wore jeans and nothing else. The overhead light was intense, much too bright for the small room, and the bed was huge. There was a lot of clothing and books and junk scattered around. There were maps and photographs pinned to the walls. The man was reciting something in a foreign language as he scrubbed. He had a beautiful voice, and Julia knew that whatever he was saying, it was sad and violent. She wondered if he were a religious fanatic.

  The floor was dark with water. The man reached into the pail and brought the scrubbing brush out full of suds and more water. Julia watched him. After a while, she realised that he was simply scrubbing one section over and over again. The rest of the floor remained dry.

  Julia began to feel desperate. She wanted to say something, but she didn't know how to begin. Then she told herself that she was behaving like the Mouse, and that gave her the impetus to speak.

  'Excuse me,' Julia said softly. The man had his hand in the pail, and he was so startled that he jerked it over, and water spilled across the floor. 'Oh!' Julia said. 'Oh, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! Here, let me ...' She dashed across the spreading water, into the bathroom, and came darting back with towels. The man crouched on the floor, watching her, with an expression of incredulity, almost stupefaction. Julia worked at containing the flood, using the towels as fabric dams, like sandbags. She dashed back into the bathroom, bringing another armful of towels, babbling apologies. Martin was so struck by Julia's energy and by her non-stop stream of contrition that he simply stared at her. Her pink robe had come undone, and her hair was messed up. She had the general appearance of a small girl who had been riding a waltzer in her nightclothes. She was showing a lot of leg, and Martin thought that it was charming of this girl to barge into his flat wearing an old dressing gown and knickers, and although he didn't understand what she was doing here, he felt relieved to see her. The overwhelming anxiety he had been feeling was gone. Martin dried his hands on his trousers. Julia finished drying the floor, wadded up all the towels and heaved them into the bathtub. She returned to the bedroom feeling pleased with herself, and saw Martin crouching with his arms folded across his chest, looking up at her.