The Proof: Chapter 1

Angela was woken up by a banging noise from next door. The noise had already appeared in her dreams, in various disguises, none of which had explained the ecstatic moaning that occasionally surfaced as well. Waking suddenly left her disoriented, and for a moment she didn't recognise her surroundings. But this state of generous confusion only lasted for a moment: she was still in her tiny, stuffy, one-room flat, where at thirty seven, she lived and slept alone. She raised her head slightly, towards the curtains. From the strip of light falling between them she gauged the morning to be sunny. Maybe this was why she didn't grab the nearest shoe and start hammering it against the wall, as she usually did when woken by amorous neighbours.

Instead she stretched and got up, shuffled to the windows that filled most of the outer wall. She opened the curtains. She was right: it was sunny, so sunny she had to squint to look at the view. But her flat was on the eighteenth floor of an apartment block and the view was what she'd bought it for. She forced herself to watch the busy streets, the bristling roofs, through eyes scrunched into narrow slits. The city looked different, with the soundtrack of thumps and groans.

She could handle the brightness if she looked straight down, towards the noisy main road beneath her. She could even bear to look at the apartment blocks opposite, none of which were as high as her flat. The aching sensation came when she raised her eyes upwards, towards the crenellated horizon, to where the city stencilled the sky. The noises were reaching her in stereo: the squeaks and bangs coming through the wall and the moaning voice coming through the window. Moaning voices in fact: she could hear the bass part of the duet now, a sound like a mumbling bear. With some difficulty she returned her attention to the view, reflecting that it wasn't ideal to live in an east facing building: you were overpowered with light in the morning, when you don't need it, then you missed out on the air-pollution sunsets in the evening. She lifted her gaze a little higher, a little closer to the blinding sun. The banging accelerated and a picture began to shiver on the wall. She remembered that as a child she had been told never to look directly at the sun. If you wanted to see it, her teacher said, you had to focus the small end of a telescope on a piece of paper and even wear sunglasses to look at that. But how did she know this wasn't an old wives tale? A foolish superstition like not breaking mirrors or spilling salt — or not having sex out of marriage. ``Oh god!'' the voice shouted, ``oh my god!'' She didn't see how a quick peek could do any harm. Not if she glanced away quickly — it would only be like tapping a hotplate to check if it's on, or smiling at a handsome man to see if he smiles back. As the thumping ended on one last, convulsive knock, Angela looked straight at the sun.

At first the brightness was something she felt, rather than saw: a muscular contraction that seized her face and filled her with an irrational urge to cry. Then a shape began to emerge, getting sharper and more intense, a circle being born in the light. Suddenly the pain became intense and she panicked and looked away. But the circle remained in the centre of her vision, leaping nervously from wall to wall, flaring up when she covered her eyes. She drew the curtains and spun around. A few minutes later she was standing in the kitchenette, washing the dishes, trying to see them through a burning circle of light.