Audrey Niffenegger - Her Fearful Symmetry

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

I T 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 nonstop 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.