Her Fearful Symmetry

Valentina and Julia Underground

VALENTINA DIDN’T like the underground. It was dark and fast and dirty; it was crowded. She didn’t like being pressed against people, feeling someone’s breath on her neck, hanging onto a pole and being pitched against sweaty men. Most of all, Valentina did not like being underground. Somehow, the fact that the whole thing was called the underground made it worse. She took the bus whenever she could.

She tried not to let Julia know that the tube frightened her, but somehow Julia guessed. Now, every time they went out, Julia would spread out the tube map on the dining-room table and plot out elaborate routes that necessitated at least three changes. Valentina never said anything. She trudged along beside Julia, rode endless escalators into bottomless underground stations. Tonight they were going to the Royal Albert Hall to see a circus. They began at Archway. At Warren Street the twins had to change from the Northern line to the Victoria line, and found themselves moving with a number of other people down a long white-tiled corridor. Valentina held Julia’s hand. She mentally checked the zipper of her purse, thinking of pickpockets. Valentina wondered if everyone could tell they were Americans. The crowd moved like syrup.

Valentina noticed a man walking in front of them.

He was quite tall and had ear-length, brown wavy hair. He wore a white button-down shirt tucked into brown corduroy trousers and carried a thick paperback book. He wore wingtip shoes without socks. The man walked with the long, loose-jointed stride of a Labrador retriever or a tree sloth. He was soft- bodied and pallid. Valentina wondered what he was reading. The twins followed him onto an elevator. He walked ahead of them through tunnels and then they stood behind him on the escalator, one of the long ones that made Valentina feel as though the world had tilted, as though she were subject to some new, weird gravity. Finally they found the platform for the Victoria line.

Valentina tried to catch a glimpse of the book’s title. It ended in sis. Kafka? Too thick. He wore small gold wire- rimmed glasses and had a kind face, a face with lots of jaw and a long narrow nose, which he proceeded to stick into his book. His eyes were brown and hooded, heavily lashed. The train was coming. It was packed, and the doors opened and shut without anyone getting off or on. The man glanced up and resumed reading.

Julia was talking about an accident she had seen that morning, in which a pedestrian, an older woman, had been hit by a moped. Valentina tried not to listen. Julia knew she was afraid of crossing the streets. Valentina always stubbornly waited for the green man, even when there were no cars in sight, even when Julia skipped across the street and stood waving at her from the other side. “Stop it,” she said to Julia. “If you don’t shut up I’m going to stay home forever, and you’ll have to carry all the groceries yourself.” Julia looked surprised, and to Valentina’s relief, she was silent.

The next train was in one minute. This one was less crowded, and the twins pushed their way into it. Julia delved her way towards the middle of the carriage, but Valentina stood clinging to the pole near the door. As the train pitched forward, Valentina looked up and saw that the man she had been watching was standing pressed against her. He caught her eye, and she looked away. He smelled like grass, as though he had been mowing a lawn, and sweat, and something Valentina couldn’t place. Paper? Dirt? It was a good smell, whatever it was, and she inhaled it as though it had vitamins in it. Someone’s shopping bag was chafing her leg. Valentina glanced up again. The man was still watching her. She blushed, but held his eyes. He said, “You don’t like the tube much, do you?”

“No,” said Valentina.

“Nor I,” he said. His voice was pleasant and low. “It’s too intimate.”

Valentina nodded. She was watching the man’s mouth as he spoke. His mouth was wide, the upper lip a bit rabbit-like, showing his slightly protuberant teeth, teeth that could have used orthodontia. She thought of the years she and Julia had spent at Dr. Weissman’s, having their teeth straightened. She wondered what their teeth would have looked like if they’d just been left alone.

“Are you Julia, or Valentina?” he asked.

“Valentina,” she replied, and was instantly appalled at her own boldness. But how did he know their names? The train slid into a station, throwing her off balance. The man caught her by the elbow, held her up until the train stopped. This is Victoria, said the disembodied female voice of the underground.

“Mouse! This is our stop, Mouse. We have to change here.” Julia’s voice rose above the wall of people between them as the doors opened. Valentina twisted her head to look at the man.

“I have to get off,” she told him. There was something reassuring about the way he regarded her, as though they were travelling together and had been riding this train for hours.

“Where are you going?” he asked her. Julia was pushing her way towards them. Valentina stepped off the train.

“The circus,” she said as Julia landed next to her. He smiled; the doors closed; the train moved forward. Valentina stood for a moment, watching. The man raised his hand, hesitated, waved.

“Who was that?” Julia asked. She took Valentina’s hand, and they began walking with the crowd to catch the District line.

“I don’t know,” Valentina replied.

“He was cute,” said Julia. Valentina nodded. He knew our names, Julia. We don’t know anyone here. How did he know our names?

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

IT 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,