Her Fearful Symmetry

by Audrey Niffenegger

  Robert stood looking down at her upturned face, her borrowed face. That's how you do it, he thought. I never realised it before. 'How long have you been plotting to move to Sussex?' he asked her.

  She said, 'Oh, since we were tiny. Our parents used to take us to Glyndebourne, and we'd get off the train at Lewes with all the other people in fancy dress. I always wanted to live out in the countryside, there. Actually, I wanted to live in the opera house, but I don't imagine that's practicable.'

  'Oh, I don't know,' said Robert, irritably. 'It seems to me if you can come back from the dead you could probably live anywhere you like.'

  'Well, we can't live in your flat,' said Elspeth.

  'No.'

  'Right, then,' said Elspeth. 'Can we at least go and look at East Sussex? With an estate agent?'

  'Fine,' said Robert. He scooped his keys off the table and grabbed his jacket.

  'Where are you going?'

  'Out.' He turned to look at her as he put his jacket on; she had a chastened expression he could not remember ever seeing before. 'To the library,' he said, softening. 'I ordered some books.'

  'See you later?' she said, as though she wasn't quite sure.

  'Yeah.'

  As Robert walked along Euston Road in the sunshine he thought, I have to talk to Jessica. As he entered the library he thought, I can't imagine leaving London. He put his things in a locker and went upstairs. What am I going to do? He was sitting and waiting for his desk light to activate when the answer came to him, and he laughed out loud at the obviousness of it.

  Robert and Jessica sat in her office with the door closed. It was after hours; all the cemetery staff had gone home. He had told her everything, as best he could. He had tried to place all the evidence before her; he had not spared himself. Jessica listened impassively. She sat in the waning light with her fingers steepled, leaning forward, regarding him with serious eyes. Finally he was silent. Jessica reached out and pulled the little chain of her desk lamp, creating a small pool of yellow light that did not reach either of them. He waited for her to speak.

  'Poor Robert,' she said. 'It's all very unfortunate. But I suppose you could say that you got what you wished for.'

  'That's the worst punishment,' Robert said. 'I would undo everything, if I could.'

  'Yes,' she said. 'But you can't.'

  'No, I can't.' He sighed. 'I'd better go. We're leaving tomorrow. There's still packing to do.'

  They stood up. She said, 'Will you come back?'

  'I hope so.' He turned on the overhead light and followed her slowly down the stairs. When they were standing at the cemetery gates she said, 'Goodbye, Robert.' He kissed her on both cheeks, slipped through the gates and walked away. There he goes, she thought. Jessica watched until Robert disappeared from her sight. Then she locked the gate and stood in the dark courtyard, listening to the wind and marvelling at human folly.

  THE END

  IT WAS THE first day of spring. Valentina sat in the window seat, looking out over Highgate Cemetery. Morning sun slanted in, pouring through her onto the worn blue rug without pause. Birds wheeled over the trees, which were bursting with new leaves; Valentina could hear a car crunching the gravel in St Michael's car park. The outside world was shiny and clean and loud today. Valentina let the sun warm her. The Kitten jumped up onto her lap, and she stroked its white head as she watched pigeons building a nest in the top of Julius Beer's mausoleum.

  Julia was asleep. She slept sprawled out now, as though trying to cover as much of the bed as possible. Her mouth was open. Valentina got up, still holding the Kitten, and walked over to the bed. She stood watching Julia. Then she put her finger in Julia's mouth. Julia didn't wake. Valentina went back to the window seat and sat down again.

  An hour later Julia woke up. Valentina was gone; Julia showered and dressed and drank her coffee alone. She found the silence of the building disturbing. Robert had moved away; the upstairs flat hadn't sold yet (perhaps because it was still half full of boxes). Maybe I should get a dog. How do you get a dog in London? English people were so fanatical about animals; maybe you couldn't just go to the pound and pick one out. Maybe they had to approve of you. She imagined what the dog-adoption people would think when they saw her living like an orphan in huge silent Vautravers. Maybe I should be one of those women who have one hundred cats. They could swarm all over. I could let them into Martin's flat and it would be a cat Disney World. They would go bonkers.

  Julia sat with her mug of coffee at the dining-room table. It was littered with sheets of paper and pens; the paper was covered with Valentina's writing. The dog-adoption people would see that she was insane. She began to gather up the papers. She strode into the kitchen and threw them in the bin. When Julia returned to the dining room, Valentina was standing by the French windows with the Kitten draped over her shoulder. Julia sighed.

  'I can't leave that stuff sitting around,' she said. 'It looks weird.'

  Valentina ignored this and made the gesture they'd always used to get waiters to bring the bill: she pretended to write on her upturned palm.

  'Fine,' said Julia. 'Okay.' She took a sip of her now-cold coffee, just to show the Mouse that she didn't have to jump when told. Valentina stood patiently by her chair, and Julia sat down and drew a piece of paper to her, picked up a pen and poised it over the paper. 'Go ahead,' she said.

  Valentina leaned over and the Kitten jumped onto the table and stood on the paper. Valentina brushed her aside and put her hand into Julia's.

  I FIGURED IT OUT.

  'Figured what out?'

  HOW TO LEAVE.

  'Oh.' Julia looked up at Valentina, resignedly. 'Well. Okay. How?'

  IT TAKES A BODY. OPEN YOUR MOUTH, GO OUTSIDE.

  'Go outside and open my mouth?'

  Valentina shook her head.

  OPEN MOUTH, CLOSE MOUTH, THEN GO OUTSIDE.

  Julia opened her mouth as though for the dentist, shut it and pressed her lips together, then pointed to the window. 'Right?' Valentina nodded. 'Now?' Valentina nodded again. 'Let me get my shoes.'

  Valentina gathered up the Little Kitten of Death and waited for Julia in their front hall. She thought she saw a hint of her reflection in the mirrors, but she wasn't quite sure.

  Julia reappeared wearing one of Elspeth's favourite cardigans, baby-blue cashmere with mother-of-pearl buttons. Valentina stood looking at her for a long moment, and then leaned to Julia and kissed her on the lips. To Julia it felt like the ghost of all the kisses the Mouse had ever given her. She smiled; her eyes welled.

  'Now?' Julia repeated, and Valentina nodded.

  Julia opened her mouth wide and closed her eyes. She felt her mouth fill with something like dense smoke; she opened her eyes and tried not to gag. How will I breathe? The thing in her mouth was becoming more solid. Julia felt it in her throat, and she coughed and gasped. It was like a mouthful of fur, a big hairball. She closed her mouth. Julia struggled to draw breath, and then felt the thing become smaller and heavier, leaving space around itself, fitting itself between her tongue and the roof on her mouth. It tasted metallic and moved slightly but constantly, like an excited child trying to hold still. Julia looked around the hall. Valentina and the Kitten had disappeared.

  Come on, you two, let's go. Julia stepped across the threshold onto the landing. Valentina and the Kitten were still in her mouth. Julia raced down the stairs and out the front door of Vautravers; the strange bulk still quivered on her tongue. She ran along the side of the building into the back garden, to the door in the wall, and fumbled with the key. She got the door open, stepped into the cemetery and opened her mouth.

  Valentina flew out into the air. She hung suspended for a moment, spread out in the morning breeze like a rainbow created by a garden hose. The Little Kitten of Death was intermingled with her, and as Julia stood watching they seemed to separate and resolve.

  Valentina felt the breeze carry her, extend her, divide her from the Kitten. At first she could not see or hear, and then she coul
d. Julia stood with her arms clutched against her chest and a desolate little smile on her face, looking up at Valentina.

  'Goodbye, Valentina,' Julia said. Tears ran down her face. 'Goodbye, Kitten.'

  Goodbye, goodbye, Julia. The Kitten squirmed out of Valentina's arms, jumped off the roof of the Catacombs and went racing into the cemetery. Valentina turned and followed.

  Her senses were flung open like doors and windows. Everything was speaking, singing to her, the grass, trees, stones, insects, rabbits, foxes: all stopped what they were doing to watch the ghost fly past; all cried out to her, as though she had been long away from home and they were the spectators at her victory parade. She flew through gravestones and bushes, revelling in their density and coolness. The Kitten was waiting for her under the Cedar of Lebanon, and Valentina caught up with her. Together they flew above the Egyptian Avenue and streamed down the main path. If there were other ghosts, Valentina did not see them; it was nature that greeted her; the angels on the tombs were simply stones. Valentina could see through things and into things. She saw the deep grave shafts with the coffins stacked in them; she saw the bodies in the coffins, with their postures of yearning and gestures of supplication, bodies long turned to bone and dust. Valentina felt a hunger, a desire to find her own body that was visceral, almost ecstatic. They were flying faster now; things streamed by in a blur of stone and green, and now, at last, here: the little stone shelter that said NOBLIN, the little iron door that was no obstacle to Valentina, the quiet space inside, Elspeth's coffin, Elspeth's body, Elspeth's parents' and grandparents' coffins and bodies. She saw her own coffin, and knew before she touched it that it was empty. So it's true, then. She saw the Little Kitten of Death rub her face eagerly against the white box. Valentina laid her hands on the varnished wood of Elspeth's coffin, just as Robert had once done. What now? She picked up the Kitten and went outside. She stood on the path, uncertain.

  A little girl came walking up the path. She hummed to herself and swung her bonnet by its strings in time to her own footsteps. She wore a lavender dress in a style from the late nineteenth century.

  'Hello,' she said to Valentina, politely. 'Are you coming?'

  'Coming where?' said Valentina.

  'They're mustering the crows,' said the girl. 'We're going flying.'

  'Why do you need crows?' Valentina asked. 'Can't you fly on your own?'

  'It's different. Haven't you done it before?'

  'I'm new,' said Valentina.

  'Oh.' The girl began walking and Valentina walked with her. 'I say - are you an American? Where did you get your cat? No one has a cat here - when I was alive I had a cat named Maisie, but she's not here ...' Valentina followed her to the Dissenters' section of the cemetery, where many ghosts stood around chatting in small groups. The trees in this section had recently been cut down; it was open to the sky, with stumps jutting between the graves. Ghosts glanced at Valentina, then looked away. She wondered if she should try to introduce herself. The little girl had wandered off. Now she returned, dragging an extraordinarily fat man who was dressed as though he were about to go fox-hunting.

  'This is my papa,' said the girl.

  'Quite welcome, I'm sure,' said the man to Valentina. 'Would you care to join us?'

  Valentina hesitated; heights made her nervous. But why not? she thought. I'm dead. Nothing can hurt me now. I can do whatever I want. 'Yes,' she said. 'I'd like that.'

  'Splendid,' said the man. He raised his arm and an enormous crow flew down and plopped in front of them, cawing and strutting. Valentina thought, It's just like hailing a taxi. Soon there were hundreds of crows milling about. Each ghost seemed to shrink until it was a suitable size, then hopped aboard a crow. Valentina imitated them. She clasped one ethereal arm around her crow's neck and held onto the Kitten with the other, hugging the crow's body with her knees.

  Now the vast throng of crows rose out of Highgate Cemetery in unison, and the ghosts with them, their dark dresses and winding sheets flapping wing-like in the sky. They flew over Waterlow Park, circled around to fly across the Heath, and on and on, until they came to the Thames and began to follow the river eastwards, past the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge, past the Embankment, London Bridge, the Tower, and on, and on. Valentina held tightly to her crow. The Kitten purred in her ear. I'm so happy, she thought with surprise. The sun passed through the ghosts undimmed, and the shadows of the crows darkened the river.

  After Valentina had vanished from her sight, Julia stood in the open doorway for a little while, listening to the birds. Then she shut the green door. She went back to her flat and made herself another cup of coffee. She sat in the window seat and watched trees swaying in the cemetery, with flashes of white gravestones peeking through the leaves. She listened to the quiet of the house, the hum of the refrigerator, the flick of the numbers on the old clock radio turning over. I am definitely going to get a dog, Julia thought. She spent the afternoon dusting and talked to Theo on the phone after dinner. Julia went to bed contented and alone, and slept without dreaming.

  It had been one of those vivid days: the fields around the cottage were radiantly green, and the Sussex sky was so blue it hurt her eyes. Elspeth had gone for a walk with the baby in the early evening. He was a colicky baby, and the walking sometimes soothed him when nothing else could. Now he was breathing quietly, asleep in his little pouch pressed against her breast. Elspeth came to the long drive that led to their tiny home. It was dark now, but the moon was nearly full and she could see her shadow moving before her up the drive. The summer insect songs pressed at her from all sides, a shimmering choir that lay like a blanket of sound over the fields.

  For weeks she had been watching Robert carefully. There had been a long bad patch after they'd moved here. Robert could not adjust to the spaciousness, the quiet; he missed the cemetery and would take the train into London on the least pretext to visit it. He seldom spoke to Elspeth; it was as though he had withdrawn into his own invisible London and was living in it without her. His manuscript sat vast and untouched on his desk. Then the baby was born, and Elspeth had found herself in a purely physical world: sleep was an elusive prize, breastfeeding more complicated than she remembered. The baby cried; she cried, but at last Robert seemed to wake up and notice her. He seemed almost surprised by the baby, as though he'd thought she was joking about being pregnant. And to Elspeth's surprise, the arrival of the baby did what she could not: it brought Robert back to writing his thesis.

  For months now he'd worked with perfect concentration in the midst of baby-wrought chaos. She tiptoed around him, afraid to break the charm, but he told her there was no need. He said he found the din oddly helpful. 'It's as though it wants to be finished,' he said, and the printer whirred each night, emitting increasingly pristine pages.

  Tonight she felt a pause, suspense: the world was adjusting itself into a new pattern. Something was going to happen; the manuscript was almost finished. Elspeth walked with the baby in the dark between sweet-smelling fields and rejoiced. I'm here. I'm alive. She placed her hands on the baby, felt his soft head against her cool palms. The ever-present regret lapped at her, and she thought of Valentina broken on the bedroom floor. Elspeth had no answer and no defence against this image. It flared in her mind vividly, then faded. She kept walking.

  The cottage reminded her of a jack-o'-lantern, its windows blazing orange. All the lights were on. Elspeth walked through the garden and came in the back door, into the kitchen. The insect sounds diminished. The house was very still.

  'Robert?' she called, careful to keep her voice low. She went into the front room. No one there. On Robert's desk was a neat pile of paper. A History of Highgate Cemetery. All the files and notes had been cleared away. There was a look of finality about the scene. Elspeth smiled. 'Robert?'

  He was not in the house. He did not come back that night. Days went by, and at last she understood that he would not return at all.

  THE LITTLE GREEN BOX

  AT THE END
of every tour at Highgate Cemetery, someone stands at the elaborate gate with a green plastic donations box, and visitors often put in their spare change as they leave. The money supports the upkeep and preservation of the Cemetery, which in 2009 cost approximately PS1000 per day. Sumptuous old cemeteries are expensive to maintain, alas.

  If you would like to help the Friends of Highgate Cemetery to carry on with their work, please consider making a donation. You can do this no matter where you live by logging on to PayPal.com. Click on Send Money, and enter the Cemetery's PayPal address, donations@highgate-cemetery.org.

  Thank you,

  Audrey Niffenegger

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I COULD NOT have written Her Fearful Symmetry without the extraordinary generosity of Jean Pateman, Chairman of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery. In addition to teaching me about the Cemetery and allowing me to become a guide there, she has been a great friend and an inspiration.

  I am very grateful to the staff of Highgate Cemetery: Hilary Deeble-Rogers, Richard Quirk, Simon Moore-Martin, Pawel Ksyta, Aneta Gomulnicka, Victor Herman and Neil Luxton, for help with funeral customs and practices and for answering my many questions with great humour and patience.

  I am especially indebted to Dr Tony Jelliffe and to John Pateman, whose research and scholarship have been particularly relevant to this project.

  Many thanks to Christina Nolan, Susan Norton, Alan Peters, Eddie Daley, Tracy Chevalier, Stewart Thorburn, Ian Kelly, Mary Openshaw, Justin Bickersteth, Greg and Becky Howard, Jean Ettinger, Judy Roberts, Rowan Davies, Ken Carter, Bob Trimmer, Christian Gilson, Steve Hanafin, Matthew Pridham, Samantha Perrin, Alex Mahler, Judith Yuille and all the Guides and Friends of Highgate Cemetery, past and present, who kindly let me tag along on their tours and badger them while they did the accounts. It has been a privilege to work with them.

  Love and thanks to Joseph Regal, for his derring-do, fortitude and unconventional thinking, as well as his immensely helpful editing. Thanks to Lauren Schott Pearson, Markus Hoffmann and Howard Sanders for their excellent advice and guidance in literature and life. Thank you to Barbara Marshall and Michael Strong. And thanks, Caspian Dennis of Abner Stein, for friendship and excellent agenting.