Audrey Niffenegger - Her Fearful Symmetry

Very quietly, so the driver would not hear, Valentina began to tell him about Elspeth’s resurrection of the Kitten. Robert listened with increasing impatience. “I don’t understand,” he said. “The Kitten is dead.”

“That was another day-Elspeth was practising. The Kitten didn’t like it and ran away, and Elspeth couldn’t put her back in her body.”

“Why on earth was Elspeth practising? Practising for what?” “That’s what I wanted to tell you. We had a plan…” As she explained the plan, in her soft American voice, almost whispering in the back of the minicab, Robert had a sensation of horror. He drew away from Valentina. “You’re mad,” he said.

She laid her small hand on his knee. “That’s what Elspeth said, at first. But then she thought about it, and she worked out how we could do it. You should talk to Elspeth.”

“Yes, I certainly am going to have a chat with her.” He removed her hand from his leg, then relented and held it. “Erm, Valentina. You shouldn’t-it might not be good to let Elspeth call the shots.”

“Why not?”

“She’s-clever. Her ideas have other ideas hiding inside them.”

“She’s been really nice to me.”

Robert shook his head. “Elspeth isn’t nice. Even when she was alive she wasn’t very-she was witty and beautiful and fantastically original in-certain ways, but now that she’s dead she seems to have lost some essential quality-compassion, or empathy, some human thing-I don’t think you should trust her, Valentina.”

“But you trust her.”

“Only because I’m a fool.”

They rode the rest of the way home in silence.

Robert offered Valentina his own bed to sleep in, because she wouldn’t go upstairs. He waited for her to fall asleep, then went up and knocked on the twins’ door. Julia opened it immediately.

“Come in,” she said. He stood in the front hall; he didn’t want to sit down and risk a long conversation.

“She’s in my flat, sleeping,” he said.

“Okay.”

“Julia,” he said, “has Valentina ever seemed-suicidal-to you?”

Julia said quickly, “She doesn’t mean it.”

Robert turned to go. “I think she might. Just-be careful.” He went downstairs. As he reached his own door he heard Julia closing hers.

He let himself in and went to the phone. It would be almost seven o’clock in Lake Forest. He imagined the Pooles eating dinner together, pleasantly unaware that their daughter was plotting her own death and resurrection. He had picked up the receiver and was about to dial when he realised he didn’t have the phone number. Could he ask Julia? Better not; he would get the number from Roche in the morning.

Robert sat up most of the night, watching football highlights and a programme on American folk music with the sound turned off. At some point he fell asleep in his chair. When he woke Valentina was gone. He went upstairs and found the twins eating breakfast together, seemingly at peace. Valentina made him a cup of coffee.

“What are you doing today?” he asked them.

“Not much,” said Valentina.

“Perhaps you could go to the supermarket.”

“We’ve got plenty of food,” said Julia.

“Or sightseeing.”

“You want to talk to Elspeth?” Valentina said.

“How did you guess?” he said sweetly.

Valentina looked abashed but said nothing. After breakfast Julia went upstairs to see Martin, and Valentina took her tea to the back garden. Robert stood in the dining room and said, “Elspeth. Come here.”

He felt her cold touch against his cheek. He sat at the table with the pencil poised over the paper and said, “Elspeth, what are you up to?”

ME?

“You and Valentina. She was telling me about this plan of yours.”

IT’S ACTUALLY HER PLAN.

“Valentina couldn’t plan her way out of a wet paper bag. Elspeth, you know quite well that it won’t work. For one thing, dead bodies are full of chemicals.”

ASK SEBASTIAN NOT TO EMBALM HER.

“No, I mean natural chemicals. There’s all sorts of nasty stuff released by various glands to break down the body. There’s gases, and bacteria-”

KEEP THE BODY COLD. ALMOST FREEZING.

“Elspeth, all of that is beside the point . There’s no need for any of this. In six months Valentina can take her half of the estate and walk away. If she doesn’t want to see Julia, she won’t have to.”

WHAT IF SHE KILLS HERSELF BEFORE THEN?

“She’s not going to kill herself.” He said this with more conviction than he felt.

HAVE YOU REALLY LOOKED AT HER LATELY? SHE’S FANATICAL.

“I’m going to call her parents. They can take her home.”

I SUGGESTED THAT TO V. SHE WON’T GO.

“Why not? Anyway, should she be making these decisions for herself? Edie and Jack can take her to hospital if need be; I don’t have that authority.”

NEITHER DO THEY.

“Elspeth, I’m not going to help you do this, and you can’t make it work without me.”

IF WE DO IT YOU’D HAVE TO HELP, OR SHE WOULD STAY DEAD.

Robert was struck silent by that. He put down the pencil, got up and began pacing around the dining-room table. Elspeth sat on the table and watched him orbit. You never change, she thought fondly. At last he sat down again. “What’s in it for you?” he asked her. “Are you jealous of her?”

No.

“Are you going to really kill her?”

I COULD DO THAT NOW WITHOUT ANY FUSS AND NO ONE WOULD KNOW.

“True.” Robert knew there was a question he should ask, the question that would lay bare the underlying contradiction inherent in the whole ridiculous plan, but he couldn’t think of it. “It’s just-wrong, Elspeth.”

PERHAPS. BUT SHE IS VERY DETERMINED.

“She’s not going to kill herself.”

BUT WHAT IF SHE DOES?

He shook his head. Her logic was circular. Surely he could stand outside the circle and see another solution? “Let’s not do this,” he begged Elspeth. “Let’s both agree we won’t, and she’ll have to think again.”

AND IF SHE KILLS HERSELF?

He said nothing.

AT LEAST LET ME EXPLAIN HOW IT MIGHT WORK.

As Robert sat filling sheet after sheet with Elspeth’s careful handwriting, he was engulfed by despair. I won’t do it, he thought. But it was beginning to look as though he would.

O N SUNDAY afternoon, after they had closed the cemetery, Jessica and Robert sat with James on the terrace overlooking the Bateses’ back garden. It had been a frantic day-the magnificent June weather had brought the tourists in droves, and most of the guides were on holiday; Robert and Phil had been obliged to eject two extremely large and hostile filmmakers and their actors from the Eastern Cemetery; some grave owners had arrived from Manchester without the faintest idea of the location of their grandmother’s grave. Now the Bateses and Robert sat drinking whisky and decompressing.

“Perhaps we ought to make another sign to post at the gate,” said James. “All uncertain grave owners please present yourselves during office hours when the staff can attend to your very time-consuming requests.”

“We want to help them,” said Jessica. “But they must call ahead. These people who pitch up on the cemetery’s doorstep wanting us to do a grave search whilst they wait-it’s beyond anything.”

“They think the records are digitised,” Robert said.

Jessica laughed. “Ten years from now, perhaps. Evelyn and Paul are typing in the burial records as fast as their fingers can fly, but with one hundred and sixty-nine thousand entries-”

“I know.”

“Robert and Phil were quite valiant today,” Jessica told James. “In addition to vanquishing the unwanted movie people they each gave four tours.”