Audrey Niffenegger - Her Fearful Symmetry

The front hall was full of umbrellas and mirrors. The twins were reflected eighteen times in as many mirrors, and their reflections were reflected, and on and on. They were startled by this; both stood perfectly still and were each unsure which reflection belonged to which girl. Then Julia turned her head: half of the reflections also turned; the effect was diminished. “Spooky,” said Julia, to mar the silence. Valentina said, “Uh-huh.” She put a hand out in front of her like a blind person and moved through the passageway from the hall into a large dark room.

Elspeth was dozing in her drawer. Voices woke her.

As Julia stepped into the front room behind Valentina, she had a sensation of being underwater, as though the room were at the bottom of a pond. All the things in the room were bulky shadows; Valentina was a slim shadow moving in the gloom. Julia heard a noise (which was Valentina tripping over a pile of books), and then light entered the room as Valentina drew the curtains on the tall wide windows. The light was cold and grey and sort of particulate. The room was very dusty.

“Look, Julia-an owl!” It hung suspended from the high ceiling, in place of an absent light fixture that had left a small hole with wires coming out of it. The owl’s wings were spread and its talons were open to grasp some small prey. Julia reached up and carefully touched one of the feet, which set the owl spinning, slowly. “It’s an owlicopter,” she said, and Valentina laughed.

Elspeth stood in the doorway watching the twins. Oh, I missed you. I wanted to see you again, and now you’re here. She hugged herself, eager and apprehensive.

As Edie had predicted, all of the furniture was heavy, ornate and old. The sofas were pale pink velvet, beast-footed, many-buttoned. There was a baby grand piano (the twins were distinctly unmusical) and a vast Persian rug which was chrysanthemum-patterned, soft to the touch, and had at one time been deep red, now faded in most places to dull pink. Everything in the room seemed to have been drained of colour. Julia wondered if the colour had all collected somewhere else; perhaps it was in some closet, and when they opened that door it would all flood back into the objects it had deserted. She thought of Sleeping Beauty, and the palace, still for a hundred years, full of motionless courtiers. Edie and Jack preferred new things. Julia ran her finger across the piano, leaving a trail of shining black amid the dull dust. Valentina sneezed. Both girls looked at the doorway as though expecting to be caught intruding on the silence of the flat.

Elspeth stepped forward, about to speak, then realised they couldn’t see her.

There were books everywhere: entire walls of bookcases, piles of books on tables, on the floor. Valentina knelt to collect the pile she had tripped over, a little island of bestiaries and herbals. “Look, Julia, a manticore.” The twins wandered back into the hall. Elspeth followed them.

They crossed a rather bare dining room which contained only a formal table and chairs and a large sideboard; a little tufted ottoman stood orphaned in a corner. Bleak daylight seeped in through huge French windows that led to a diminutive balcony. The twins could see the church rising over a wall of ivy.

Next, a room that was meant to be a parlour but had been used by Elspeth as an office. There was an enormous, ornate desk with a clunky fifties office chair. On the desk sat a scruffy computer, heaps of papers, more books, a credit-card-processing machine, a delicate white and gold teacup with long-evaporated tea at the bottom and apricot lipstick staining the rim. Bookcases lined the walls, stuffed with reference books and a complete OED. An anomalous shelf was bare and dust-free. The room was bursting with flattened packing boxes, bubble wrap, file cabinets and a small stuffed ermine, which peered at them from its perch atop a set of library card catalogue drawers. The room seemed to have been neatened without actually becoming neat. Valentina sat down at the desk and pulled out the centre drawer. It contained invoice pads, Smints, paper clips, rubber bands and business cards:

Elspeth Noblin

Rare and Used Books

Bought and Sold

enoblin@bookish.uk.com

Valentina said, “Do you think all these books were for her, or to sell? I wonder if she had a shop?”

“I think this was the shop,” said Julia. “None of these receipts has an address on it. I bet she worked from here. Besides, the will didn’t mention anything besides this place.”

“I wish Mom knew more. It’s so lame that they didn’t talk to each other.” Valentina got up and examined the ermine. It stared back at her, insouciant. “What do you suppose his name was?” Valentina asked. She thought, It’s sad that we don’t know.

Margaret, Elspeth thought. Her name was Margaret.

“He looks like George Bush.” Julia headed back through the dining room as she spoke, and Valentina followed her.

A swinging door at the far end of the room led to the kitchen. It was old-fashioned, and the appliances were, by the twins’ American standards, dollhouse-sized. Everything was compact, serviceable, white. The only thing that seemed new was the dishwasher. Valentina opened a cupboard and found a washing machine inside. There was a contraption that sprung into a complicated configuration of clothesline and metal. “Guess that’s the dryer,” said Julia, refolding it. The electrical outlets were shaped differently here. All the kitchen implements were subtly weird, foreign. The twins exchanged uneasy looks. Valentina turned on the tap, and water spurted out with a grunt. She hesitated, then ran her hands under the rust-coloured stream. It took awhile to get warm.

Elspeth watched the twins puzzling over her very ordinary belongings. She listened to their American accents. They’re strangers; I didn’t expect that.

Behind the kitchen was a small bedroom. It was full to the brim with boxes and dusty furniture. There was a tiny, plain bathroom attached to it. The twins realised that it must have been intended for a servant. Here was the back door and the fire escape, here an almost-empty pantry. “Mmm,” said Julia. “Rice.”

Back to the hall (“We should collect two hundred dollars every time we go through here,” said Valentina) and into the bedrooms. There were two, connected by a splendid white marble-tiled bathroom. Each bedroom had a fireplace, elaborate built-in bookshelves, windows with window seats.

The other bedroom, which had obviously been Elspeth’s, overlooked the garden, and Highgate Cemetery.

“Look, Julia.” Valentina stood at the window, marvelling.

Vautravers’ back garden was small and austere. Though the front yard was a deranged tangle of bushes, trees and clumpy grass, this little back garden was almost Japanese in its arrangement of gravelled sloping walks, a stone bench and modest plants.

“I can’t believe it’s so green in January,” said Julia. Back home in Lake Forest the snow lay ten inches thick on the ground.

There was a green wooden door in the brick wall that separated the garden from the cemetery.

“I wonder if anyone goes in,” said Valentina. The ivy around the door was tidily clipped back.

“I will,” said Julia. “We’ll go on picnics.”

“Mmm.”

Beyond the wall, Highgate Cemetery spread before them, vast and chaotic. Because they were on a hill, they might have seen quite far down into the cemetery, but the density of the trees prevented this; the branches were bare, but they formed a latticework that confused the eye. They could see the top of a large mausoleum, and a number of smaller graves. As they watched, a group of people strolled towards them along a path and then stopped, evidently discussing one of the graves. Then the group continued towards them and disappeared behind the wall. Hundreds of crows rose into the air as one. Even through the closed window they could hear the rush of wings. The sun abruptly came out again and the cemetery changed from deep shade and grey to dappled yellow and pale green. The gravestones turned white and seemed to be edged with silver; they hovered, tooth-like amid the ivy.