Audrey Niffenegger: Her Fearful Symmetry

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 could. 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.