The Symmetry Teacher: A Novel

by Andrei Bitov

“Is this why you…?”

  “She didn’t drown. She tried to drown someone, though.”

  “Who?”

  “Well, I mean it figuratively. Although he still has a scar. But you saw him yourself.”

  “Not Happenen?” Urbino recalled his scar. It couldn’t be anyone else.

  Lili fingered her cup with a preoccupied look.

  “Shall I tell your fortune?”

  “How, by reading the coffee grounds?”

  “No need to be snide. The past always works out.”

  “Well, all right. Do tell.”

  “I see a faraway land … See how the air shimmers in the heat? An animal, perhaps a two-humped one … Were you ever in Arabia? You don’t know Arabic, do you? I don’t know much of it, either. That’s where I learned tasseography, though. With those … what are they called? Oligophrenics? Oligarchs? No, no, not spongers, not pillagers … not dramaturgs … You know, the poorest of the poor, almost primordial … but very kind, very sweet people … and not dromedaries, those are their camels … and definitely not Druids. There aren’t any trees there at all, it’s the Sahara … Who were they again? Dreadnoughts? What, a battleship, you say? Heavens no! I came across it just recently in a crossword. Oh, drat! Now that’s an absentminded word! Oh, it isn’t? Forgetful? Did I say that right? Or just forgettable…”

  “No, no! The first one was perfect! It was already poetry.”

  He knew the word. It started with a T. But something (or someone?) prevented him from saying it out loud. He had been in the Sahara. And, truly, they were very sweet people … Dika had wanted to buy something from them, just out of the goodness of her heart, and the entire throng of them began talking her out of it: “Don’t buy that, don’t buy that! Look at this one, it’s much prettier, and far cheaper!” thrusting God knows what under her nose. Urbino pushed back the memory, and, strangely, the word vanished from his mind the moment he resolved not to say it to Lili. Trilobites? No, those are fossilized remains. The word. One moment it was on the tip of his tongue, and the next moment it was gone. That had never happened to him before—that a word simply evaporated. Like a drop of water in the Sahara.

  “So you don’t think I’m such a dimwit? I don’t have much education, and I haven’t chatted with anyone in ever so long. Please excuse me if I misspeak sometimes.”

  “Not at all. You are very sensitive to the word.”

  “That’s nice to hear from a poet. But that’s Marleen’s domain. She pens verse herself. Take a look.”

  “‘And the Angel slipped on his wing’ … Hmm, not bad. Not bad at all,” Urbino muttered.

  “What can that she-devil possibly know about angels?”

  “‘The branch sways inside the room … if I only knew why—what to ask, and of whom?’* Now that’s quite something.”

  “I’ll be sure to pass on your favorable opinion to her,” said Lili, pursing her lips.

  “I wrote something similar once. I can’t remember it now, though,” Urbino said, warming to the subject. “Something about how, in windless weather, the trees go to sleep at sundown. All their branches shiver before they go still. It happens of its own accord, not in sympathetic movement, the result of some outside force. I was especially struck by a sunflower field…”

  “Like van Gogh?”

  “He painted individual sunflowers, but this was a whole field, as wide as the horizon. I even made a discovery, only not a single biologist would believe me. On the sunny slope … Well, never mind.”

  “Why not?”

  “I said it better in a poem.”

  “Read it.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll mangle it. A decent poet knows all his poems by heart. If you can’t remember it, it means it wasn’t any good. I’m afraid to disgrace myself in front of you.”

  “Is that what you really believe, or just what you think?” She blushed and cast her eyes down into his cup. “I see here a very beautiful young woman … She turned away from you, she’s averted her gaze … But how strangely she has turned away! She’s wearing a long, Eastern form of dress, like a sari. Is she Indian? By the way, a camel in the cup has a very specific meaning.”

  “How could it fit into the cup? Never mind the camel, let me hear about the Indian woman.” Urbino had already begun to believe in the fortune.

  “Were you so much in love?”

  “I didn’t have time.”

  “But she’s happy now. See? It’s like she’s on a cloud. Like a film set. There, next to her—a tall, respectable sort of fellow. A director, or her husband? And around them are little tykes, like putti. She’s wearing costly jewels. Where is she now?”

  “She betrayed me.”

  “How could she do that to you?”

  “She drowned, along with my brother.”

  “I’m sorry. Was she an actress?”

  “No, but she looked like one.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s all right.”

  * * *

  It’s all right … Urbino never imagined he could be so nonchalant.

  Having arrived with a heart full of grief on an island of his own choosing, as close to being uninhabited as he could find so as not to disturb that grief, could it be that he had forgotten everything so quickly and easily, that he had slipped so sweetly into oblivion and temptation?

  First, Lili had a genuine ear for poetry (for which his own provided the evidence). Second, she was such an adept at tasseography, and he was already eager to begin writing on the subjects that had been generated so arbitrarily and capriciously in the coffee grinds. And, third …

  “Let’s make a game of this,” Urbino said, intrigued. “In the evening, you tell my fortune in the cup, and in the morning I’ll bring you a poem inspired by the previous evening’s coffee grinds. I won’t need to make anything up: life itself has given me my next book. Let it be called, accordingly: Poems from a Coffee Cup. First, your interpretation, with a picture … I wonder how I could draw it, though? Do you draw? Or perhaps you have a camera?” Urbino’s eyes glittered.

  “I can’t draw, and I have no camera, either.” Lili pondered for a moment. “Marleen used to draw, though.”

  First, second … Third: Lili was lovely.

  Ash-blond hair, a bit over thirty, with dark-brown eyes and a face untouched by anything but a natural suntan, she resembled a slightly faded tea rose. Urbino would not deign to describe her in verse—it wasn’t to his taste, and he had no mind for it. A madrigal had already begun to ripen there, however …

  “And can you tell fortunes with tea leaves?” he couldn’t help but ask.

  “I probably could, but I don’t know how,” she said with a shrug of her tanned shoulders.

  “I can,” Urbino said.

  Naturally, they switched to tea.

  Urbino swirled around the tea leaves in her empty cup and muttered under his breath. Then he blushed, and blurted out:

  Though I don’t read, to my dismay,

  like you, the script of coffee grinds,

  the dregs of your teacup, I daresay,

  (although a monk, I am not blind)

  I cannot help but read this day.

  And if, till now, I may have pined,

  it’s you I dote on, when I pray,

  and from my heart, make bold to say:

  I’ll give you verses, if I may.

  “Well, that was very sweet,” Lili said, nodding in approval. She blushed, too, looking even more like a tea rose. “But let’s put the cups aside. The sun is already setting, and I still have to show you to your berth.”

  When they went up on deck, the sun was already disappearing behind the sand dunes.

  “I still haven’t gotten a good look at your sea,” Urbino said.

  “We must hurry, then, before the sun goes down.”

  They disembarked from the beached ship just as the sun hid itself completely behind a dune.

  Lili kicked off her sandals like it was her living room floor and started scramb
ling up the dune. Urbino followed right behind her.

  The sand rained down on his head, kneaded into motion by the fine soles of her feet. He found it rather pleasant, truth be told. The landscape that opened up to him from his vantage point underneath was worth any number of sunsets … Extraordinarily slender legs, and nothing more (under her skirt, that is).

  Lili was used to the trek, and she made her way to the top with ease and grace. The heavier Urbino was falling behind. He kept getting stuck in the sand and dropping down on all fours (possibly not so much from the difficult climb as from the desire to see more of the “landscape” from below). In any case, he had hardly reached the pinnacle, puffing and perspiring, when he realized that this, too, was worth the effort.

  The sun was sinking down to the horizon. It seemed to elongate, and the red deepened to crimson as it approached the nadir. All of a sudden it seemed to flatten out and then drop into the sea.

  “Strange that the sea doesn’t sizzle,” Urbino said, mouthing his own tried-and-true phrase.

  “That surprises me every time, too,” Lili agreed.

  The sun sank ever deeper. The upper part of it stuck out, looking more and more like a ship floating on the horizon, its searchlights ablaze.

  “There’s another ship that will founder.” Urbino, don’t be so eloquent, he berated himself silently.

  “Tomorrow it will come back on the other side, over the bay.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I’m here to greet the sunrise every day.”

  “Strange,” he said. “I suddenly realized that I have watched far more sunsets than sunrises in my life. But surely they are equal in number?”

  “Don’t be so pessimistic. It’s just that you are a social being and a poet.”

  “Should I be offended by that?” Urbino said coquettishly.

  “Why? You are most likely a night owl.”

  “Most likely. And you?”

  “I’m a lark.”

  “That means we’re birds of a different feather.” Urbino sighed.

  “But the sun belongs to both of us,” Lili said, proprietarily. “Look there, above and to the left. The Moon! That’s truly a thing of beauty, isn’t it?”

  “Never a truer word. Would you like something apropos?”

  “Certainly.”

  Urbino sighed more deeply and focused his gaze on the last crimson ribbon, no longer blinding. Then he began to recite:

  The sunset was not aware of its own beauty.

  The mirroring sea did not dim for its own sake.

  The wind did not see itself ruffle the calm surface.

  The tree did not watch at all.

  They stood, imprisoned in the night,

  invisible to themselves, ablaze, at play.

  Neither wave of sound, nor wave of light,

  did they discern, though they possessed them both.

  The sky did not know that the Moon had risen,

  that the sun had hidden. The darkness thickened.

  All around, ignorance abounded—

  no one knew. And that was the point.

  What is there on this shore for myself?

  A bird in the sky shows crimson—what is it to me?

  Where have I fled to? I tripped on the run,

  I stand here alone, remembering nothing.

  The dogs yelped. Lying prostrate before the

  pitch-dark sea, a shadow trembled,

  and mutely merging with the songs of birds

  my soul reflected immortality.

  The shadow of clouds, the hum of pines, the rustling grass

  and harnessed wind—the evening sensed them with its skin.

  And died away. And “conquering death through death,”

  arose again. And again did not revive.

  Who rejoices in one’s own creation?

  Whoever does believe, he holds the keys to Heaven.

  And the wind just ruffles the hair of the fool

  playing with a tiny mirror.

  Whoever builds a house is not the one who lives there.

  Whoever created life does not look for meaning there.

  Thought from above does not understand itself.

  Take to the road, and on it, overtake yourself.

  “Beautiful!” Lili gushed, grabbing his hand. “Did you compose that just now?”

  “I can’t lie,” Urbino demurred. “But I happen to like it more than the others.”

  Bashful and flattered at the same time, he kept hold of her hand.

  * * *

  As carefree as children, as though on swings or taking giant steps, they tumbled down the dunes toward the sea.

  “Let’s go for a swim,” Urbino suggested without any guile.

  “Not after sunset,” Lili said.

  “Why not?”

  “You might catch fever.”

  “As you wish. I’m the imperialist of water. I have to dunk myself whenever I arrive at a place for the first time.”

  He stripped down, then, working his broad shoulders, his small, pale buttocks gleaming from behind (he knew what he looked like from the back), he dove into the water like a torpedo and swam toward the horizon, doing a furious crawl. When he was completely spent, he heard a gentle splash behind him: Lili was swimming silently in his wake, like a little fish, easily keeping up with him.

  “Why are you so afraid of the water?” Lili said, grinning at him.

  “Me? Afraid?”

  “Yes, it’s like you’re afraid you’ll swallow some.”

  Urbino was unmasked as the boy he no doubt still was.

  Just as silently, she yielded to him in the strip of surf. Her meekness confused and aroused him.

  “My sweet little fish,” he murmured, licking salty droplets from her shoulders and nipples. But something held him back from any bolder caresses; he didn’t want to risk it (though she seemed so compliant and willing). He hesitated at the stage of stroking her silken (bah! —trans.) pubis.

  “What do you think she’s singing about, this little bird?” Lili said, countering his “little fish” with her “little bird.”

  “It’s a he. And he’s calling his mate.”

  Oh, that timidity, that chagrin, that discomfiture, the seeming inaccessibility, like the very first time … and for you, you alone … it is a pause, an intermission … Yes, that’s what it is, a pause—what people later call love, when they’re searching for what has been lost—Urbino thought, relaxing in the intermission, smoking and looking up, now at the sky, now at the ceiling of the attic berth that had been assigned to him for his creative isolation.

  “So you claim that I have a fear of water. Perhaps I am afraid, but not like you think I am. Yes, I’m afraid of drinking it: it’s alive! I might not be able to swallow it all of a sudden. I’m less afraid of the sea. I haven’t had much luck with ships. True, I forced myself to cross the equator, but so what? A convention, but not a goal in itself.”

  He embraced Lili to prove to her that she was not the equator, that she was a goal, not a convention. Lili responded in her own unique way:

  “To each his own … Have you ever wondered about that? Why different people get different things? You know, poor and rich, beautiful and ugly—that’s understandable. Talented and ungifted, that’s more complicated. Intelligent or dull-witted—that’s just altogether unclear. Or, say, a man and a woman—why? Why are you a man, and I am a woman, and not the other way around?”

  “Well, do you want to swap?”

  “I didn’t ask which of us is which, did I?”

  “What about cats and dogs?”

  Pondering the sequence of his subsequent actions, and the ones after that, reentering the realm of his previous experience and discovering in it a certain unity of principle, Urbino became aroused again merely by the thought that a wonder was lying next to him, just as insensate and immobile as he, but already warm … The wonder of another human being!

  Honestly, you’re just like a child, he thought, surprise
d at himself, as if for the first time discovering that another person could be another body, too: other breasts, another stomach and hips, another … Precisely! Not this awkward little tail of his, Urbino mused complacently. His “little tail” took offense and pouted, swelling until it resembled an old cannon on wheels. And Urbino took possession of the submissive Lili again and again. He even wanted her to conceive … Just then she peeped feebly, like a little mouse.

  “Did you finally come?”

  “How could you say such a thing! You—a poet! Never use that terrible expression with me again.”

  And she turned to the wall, sobbing softly.

  “It was an unfortunate word choice, I’m sorry. Please forgive me. It won’t happen again.”

  And this pleased him. And he made use of it: licking the tears off her cheeks touched him, and he reiterated (and she, it seems, did, too).

  In the morning, now on the other shore, he greeted the dawn, which was rare for him. The sun peeked out, by now no longer crimson, then rolled out above the horizon on its golden rim, for some reason far more slowly than it had set. Urbino was overcome with feeling …

  Lovely sun, so round and yellow,

  are you shining for this fellow?

  Yesterday she called me dear.

  Did she think I wouldn’t hear?

  Water’s blue, the sky is, too,

  The sun shines bright, and I love you.

  Sunlight, moonlight, sand and sea,

  Life’s a mystery to me.*

  “When did you write that?”

  “Never.”

  “Whom was it meant for?”

  “You.”

  “When did you manage?”

  “Just now.”

  “Then let’s go swimming!” Lili cried.

  “So it’s all right to swim at dawn?”

  “Everything’s all right at dawn.” She threw her arms around his neck.

  And they were as naked as the first day in Paradise.

  * * *

  Then they did crosswords together. It turned out that Lili was a crossword puzzle buff. She dragged out a huge pile of them, most of them already completed.

  “They’re often rather dull, but on occasion the words and phrases are exceedingly curious. Look … what are maps in a binding? Five letters.”

  Urbino thought hard.

  “Atlas!”† Lili called out gaily, before he had time to venture a guess.