Audrey Niffenegger - Her Fearful Symmetry

Every morning Julia pleaded with Valentina to come out with her. Valentina would almost let herself be persuaded, but then find an excuse to stay in. “You go ahead,” Valentina would say. “I’m not really sick. I’m just tired.” And she did look tired. Each day a little vitality seemed to leave her. “You need some sunlight, Mouse,” Julia told her more than once. “Tomorrow,” Valentina always replied.

Martin stood at his front door. He reached out and put his gloved hand on the doorknob. His heart was pounding and he stood immobile, trying to calm himself. You’ve been in the hall countless times. It’s safe there. Nothing painful has ever happened in the hallway. No one is there, nothing at all except some old newspapers. He breathed deeply, exhaled slowly and pulled the door open.

It was late afternoon and sunlight filled the stairway. Radiant dust motes floated in the still air. Martin squinted. See, it’s quite benign. He considered the door sill, the newspapers, the floor. He imagined himself stepping forward, planting his feet on the carpet, standing outside his flat for the first time in more than a year.

Go ahead. It’s only a landing. Robert and Julia stand here all the time. Marijke was here. Marijke wants you to leave the flat. You’re a rational being; you know it’s safe. If you can leave the flat you can see Marijke. Martin thought of himself as a boy, standing for the first time on the high diving board, terrified. The other boys in the class had jeered when he turned and climbed down the ladder. No one is here. No one will know if you can’t do it. But if you do it you can tell Julia. He tried to picture Julia’s face, but instead remembered her lips, counting as his tooth was extracted.

He was sweating, and he took out his handkerchief and blotted his forehead. Just step over the sill. It was becoming difficult to breathe. Martin closed his eyes. This is simply idiotic. He began to tremble. He stepped backwards and closed the door, gasping.

Tomorrow. I’ll try again tomorrow.

V ALENTINA AND ELSPETH were playing a game with the Little Kitten of Death. It went like this: Valentina sat on the floor in the hall, near the front door of the flat. She had a bucket full of Ping-Pong balls she’d found in the pantry. (“Why, Elspeth?” she’d asked. Elspeth just shrugged.) Elspeth stood at the other end of the hall. The Kitten, as usual, had no clue that Elspeth was there, so when Valentina rolled a Ping-Pong ball across the floor the Kitten ran confidently after it, only to have Elspeth divert it at the last moment in an unexpected direction. Soon the Kitten was overexcited, pouncing madly at the little white balls that seemed to have their own ideas about where they might go, balls that might suddenly fly straight up in the air or simply reverse direction. Elspeth let the Kitten run right through her, enjoying the sensation of fur whisking through her phantom skin and bone. She lay down on the floor and let the balls roll through her, with the Kitten veering after them. Valentina saw her reach out with both hands as the Kitten approached, as though to grab her. Elspeth forgot that she was insubstantial. The Kitten ran through her hands; she felt something smooth and slippery hook around her little finger; she felt her hands fill up with something solid and she struggled with it as though she had caught a fish. The thing wriggled and tried to bite. Elspeth was holding the Kitten.

But at the same instant Valentina saw the Kitten drop to the floor and lie still. She came running. The Kitten was dead.

“Elspeth!” Valentina flung herself to the floor, seized the Kitten’s body. “What did you do? Put her back!”

Elspeth was still clutching the Kitten, who threw herself back and forth and clawed at Elspeth. Valentina couldn’t see the Kitten’s ghost, but she could see Elspeth grappling with something.

“Put her back! Now!”

Elspeth took the struggling Kitten and shoved her back into her limp body as best she could. It was like trying to put a live trout into a silk stocking: the Kitten Elspeth was holding was thrashing and terrified, and the Kitten Valentina was holding was inert and delicate. Elspeth was afraid she would injure the Kitten by trying to insert her back into her body. Then she realised that the Kitten was dead, and would continue to be dead if she was not firm about this. She decided to work on the head and let the rest follow. She felt as though she were using an old camera with a rangefinder, trying to align two images to make them one.

Elspeth motioned to Valentina to put the Kitten’s body on the floor. Elspeth found that the Kitten’s ghost was real in her hands; whatever the Kitten was made of, it was like Elspeth’s own ghostly self, it made sense to her in a physical way. The Kitten was the first thing Elspeth had touched since she’d died that seemed to exist with her, not in another realm. I’m so lonely, she thought as she tried to push the Kitten into her lifeless body. I wish I could keep her.

The Kitten stopped fighting and seemed to comprehend what Elspeth was trying to do. Elspeth made small pleating motions with her fingers, trying to seal the Kitten in; it reminded her of the way her mother pinched a piecrust all around the edges. Suddenly the Kitten’s ghost vanished. It absorbed itself into the body. The little white cat-body convulsed-the Kitten sat up, lurched sideways and then recovered herself. She looked around, like a child caught stealing a boiled sweet, and then began to lick herself all over.

Elspeth and Valentina sat on the floor, staring at the Kitten, and then at each other. Valentina left the room. She returned with the Ouija board and the planchette.

“What happened?” she asked Elspeth.

IT CAUGHT SHE CAME OUT

“What caught?”

HER SOUL

“Caught on what?”

Elspeth crooked her little finger like a lady drinking tea.

Valentina sat thinking. “Could you do it again?”

I WOULD RATHER NOT

“Yes, but if you wanted to, do you think you could do it on purpose?”

I HOPE NOT

“Yes, but Elspeth-”

Elspeth got up-or rather, she was suddenly walking out of the room without any intermediate motions of getting up. When Valentina followed her into the kitchen she vanished. The Kitten mewed loudly and bumped against Valentina’s leg.

“You don’t seem any the worse for wear. Do you want your dinner?” Valentina set out the dish, opened the can, plopped the food onto the dish and placed it in the usual spot on the floor. The Kitten waited for it as though she were a member of a cargo cult and began gobbling down the food with her usual enthusiasm. Valentina sat on the floor and watched her eat.

Elspeth stood in the middle of the kitchen, invisible, watching Valentina watch the Kitten. What are you thinking about, Valentina?

Valentina was thinking about miracles. The Kitten looked absolutely ordinary, eating her dinner: that was the miracle. You’d never know that ten minutes ago you were dead. You don’t seem like you even noticed. Did it hurt, Kitten? Was it hard to get back in your body? Were you scared?

She heard the front door open; Julia was home. “Mouse? Where are you?” Don’t tell Julia, thought Elspeth. She was ashamed of having killed the Kitten, even though it had been only temporary.

“Kitchen,” Valentina called out.

Julia came in bearing Sainsbury’s bags, which she slung onto the counter and began to unpack. “Wassup?” she asked.

“Not much. You?”

Julia launched into a long boring story about a woman in the checkout queue at the supermarket, a tiny old person who apparently subsisted entirely on fairy cakes and Lipton tea.