The Symmetry Teacher: A Novel

by Andrei Bitov

  To what did he owe this honor? Was he under arrest? Suddenly it became clear that the captain was a doctor, and that they were taking him somewhere for treatment. The captain asked no questions, however, and Urbino, too, remained silently submissive. Now and then the captain and the lieutenant talked among themselves. The captain even took the lieutenant by the hand, and, mutely and tenderly, kept hold of it, as though they had agreed on something. Just then the motorboat docked at a pier, and the lieutenant hopped out.

  “He is so sweet.” The captain was speaking to Urbino for the first time.

  “Yes, indeed,” Urbino was quick to agree.

  “I’m always glad to see him.”

  Urbino grew indignant.

  “What about me?”

  “No need to worry. Everything you have is your own. The toothache will go away by itself.”

  The toothache? Meanwhile, the passengers were leaving, climbing the ladder one by one. Only the two of them were left.

  “But you didn’t even examine me!”

  “Yes I did. I have my own X-ray machine,” he explained.

  “How much do I owe you?”

  “Not a thing. You’re here on the recommendation of Galina L., aren’t you? You’re one of our own.”

  Your own, my own, our own … But what does Galina L. have to do with it?

  Urbino was baffled. How did they know? Although these days, more than any of the others, he thought of the woman who had moved in parallel to his life, his wives, his children, his passions … As though she had been waiting for him all along—but it turned out she had overtaken him and fled past. Who had fled past whom?

  The only thing left to do was to ascend the ladder.

  “Where do I go now?”

  “Take a cab. Or a rickshaw. It’s very close. I must go to a reception.”

  Urbino still hesitated.

  “Everything you have is your own and will go away by itself,” the captain said again as he climbed out.

  It was clear that the conversation was over.

  Urbino woke up in dismay, only to see the damned button again. Now it resembled a tooth. A healthy one, it appeared. How could there be something wrong with it? Why do we always want to press and probe a sore tooth? And Urbino tried to fall asleep again, only to dream another more noble but no less queer dream.

  His mother the Duchess, and his late wife, a beauty in an Indian sari, were baking a pie together.

  “Well, I agree. Let him have his own study there,” said the mother-wife in chorus, both smiling radiantly.

  He had always suspected there was a little door under the table. A toolshed in the attic, in the corner, under the eaves of the roof. A storage for stray pieces of lumber and castoff children’s toys—wasn’t that an apt description of prose?

  Then, suddenly, it grew bright. The space around him was clean and empty. The light seemed to come out of nowhere. In the middle of the space was a desk and a chair—not a chair, but a stool; and on the desk was the missing typewriter and a stack of paper. This contrived setup exasperated him, like inappropriate concern about an unfinished novel. Urbino glanced about angrily. The whole room was empty except for a large heap in one corner, as though the room’s contents had all been carefully swept into it like garbage. It was a veritable scree, the detritus in a rag-and-bone man’s attic. What a hodgepodge of items!

  Sweaters and jackets, umbrellas and canes, scarves and caps, berets and gloves, pens and notepads, watches and eyeglasses, wallets (empty) and change purses (with coins from various countries), bracelets and amulets, cigarette cases and lighters, knives and penknives, rosaries and chains, charms and signet rings, and several favorite books … everything he had ever lost or been robbed of was found here again. He had never realized he was such a hoarder. There was enough there to supply a flea market in a small town. Every object inspired a recollection of loss, and nothing really took him by surprise until he dug to the bottom of this sweet scrapheap and found his father’s razor. It was wrapped in a necktie. A necktie, of all things!

  He took it apart and blew on it—it made a sad sound like some Eastern musical instrument. Yes, he had heard it in Greece, in a little Armenian restaurant he had gone to with Dika. She was thrilled about some Eastern garb she had bought for a song (and her song was priceless—that was why he had dreamed of her in the sari today). The tie was Dika’s last gift to him. Handmade, covered with a design of round spectacles. The round earpieces looked especially dapper … He had forgotten it at Dika’s in the heat of their last quarrel, just before she perished at the zoo. He had missed it sorely.

  But he was unable to go back to pick it up. It was after the funeral, a soft pink spring morning. Children were playing kick the can in the drying, already dusty, vacant lot. They had thrown off their brightly colored jackets, and birds were wheeling above, making a din and racket as though they were rooting for them. The wind was blowing. Wind, and dust, and children, and birds … On a fence, someone had written BIRDY in sweeping, bold black letters. A misspelled golf term? In which case it should have been BIRDIE. A “little bird,” or “birdlike”? Or “full of birds” (by analogy with “windy”: “windy and birdy” …)? There was no such word, though. Perhaps it was the nickname of someone’s beloved? He had called his beloved Dika … But Dika didn’t exist anymore, either. All that was left were little rhymes and ditties …

  * * *

  Back then I had wanted to write dozens of stories in all possible tenses of the English language!

  He felt chilly, as though a draft had crept in. There was no place it could have come from, however—there were no windows in the room. The walls were as smooth as a bald head. He snuggled down into his favorite Icelandic sweater that he had forgotten at one time in a hotel, its windows looking out over a beautiful view of the Strasbourg Cathedral. He put on the signet ring that Dika had given him, and that had gone missing in a pub in some port city. Then he grabbed the necktie and a random book from the heap, and went over to the desk. He sat down.

  In the typewriter there was already a piece of paper with a title in capital letters:

  DISAPPEARING OBJECTS

  It became repugnant to him that for so long—his whole life—he hadn’t written it, this novel. Well, there it was over there, piled up in a heap in the corner—write all you want! Just jot down the history of every object, how it was acquired, how it was lost … Don’t try to arrange anything chronologically. On the contrary, that would be even better—memories out of sequence … What, the sun peeped out? Some snow fell? A horse went by? Little bells jangled? When did that happen?

  What was important was how one’s nostrils expanded from the smell of the horse! Why aren’t you writing, you old fool?… It’s too late now. Too late.

  Here Urbino tapped on the thick stack of clean paper, then yanked the page from the mute typewriter. The page grinned with a crease left from years of sitting idly in the typewriter.

  The page grinned in its search for words,

  With the mockery of an epigraph above.

  O youth, where are those hopes

  That the text was so simple you could step inside it?

  “In the beginning was the word.” Easy to say—

  But if it were first, where is it now?

  “Frost and sun”—they’re good for the health,

  But they teach hard lessons, lest one forget.

  Urbino dashed off the poem, then crossed it out. He had only to describe the history of each newly regained object. But which of them would be first? His father’s razor? No, too soon. It would be too potent, too intense if it was about his father … The sweater, then. He opened the book he had grabbed from the pile. As if to spite him, it was Robinson Crusoe, the copy from his childhood. A first edition. He knew only too well which passage he would want to reread: the part where he salvages all the needful items from the sinking ship. It happened that in his life there had been a shipwreck … Urbino had spent a good deal of time aboard the ship, if memory ser
ved … He didn’t even want to think about it, much less remember. The charm of Robinson striking it rich didn’t appeal to Urbino, as he stared at the pile of belongings that he had acquired so suddenly. From a distance it looked like a scale model of Gaudí’s unfinished cathedral.

  Urbino glanced at the other corner and saw a tiny mound there, too.

  He didn’t know why, but it aroused in him a sudden horror; but it was easier to overcome this horror than it was to strike the dusty keys. Urbino stood up resolutely and walked over to the murky corner …

  Two fountain pens were lying there, the kind with a piston, a curious design … He had taken them from his father’s study. Their inner workings were already outmoded, and they no longer functioned properly. A bottle with spirits … Something he had nicked from his aunt for his older brother, who was already taking an interest in alcohol. (His aunt hadn’t had much need for it—she used it once a year to light the Christmas cake.) His aunt searched for it high and low, and naughty little Urbino “found” it, the missing bottle, much to everyone’s delight. Several old banknotes, interesting now only to a collector: two of them he definitely remembered, because he had filched them from that same older brother. But these other two, later, issues? How loathe Urbino was to remember them! They were from some poor girl who had wanted to help him out when he had lost at gambling. She had given him all she had, all she earned. He promised to repay her, then went out of his way to avoid meeting her again. What a disgrace! Somehow he had managed to forget the incident all this time … How he wished he could compensate her now a hundredfold! But even a hundredfold was too paltry; for she had loved him … to the very end.

  As though on cue, in the same little pile under the banknotes he found a revolver belonging to his uncle, Count Varazi, who had arrived at his estate on furlough from some war or other. Little Urbino had rummaged through his suitcase when no one was home. The suitcase was almost empty: it contained only some suspenders, hairbrushes (his uncle was bald), an epaulette (only one, for some reason), and a rather heavy, rather compact parcel. Wrapped in a clean puttee was the revolver! Urbino had been especially intrigued by the small bronze circles with a little button in the middle. He aimed at his reflection in the mirror, closed his eyes, and pulled the trigger. The revolver didn’t fire. He released something, freed the barrel, and began to turn it, listening to the clicking with particular pleasure. The revolver was loaded. Only one chamber in the cylinder was empty. That was the first time in my life that I played Russian roulette, Urbino the old man thought. But back then, the naughty little Urbino couldn’t resist boasting about the weapon to his classmates. At that time, too, his guardian angel was present: he didn’t shoot anyone. What an ungrateful swine I am, the old Urbino thought. I came to fear buttons … He recalled how terrified Count Varazi was when he discovered the revolver was missing and thought he had mislaid it himself. It caused an even greater commotion than the spirits had. And again the resourceful Urbino left the revolver in a place where Uncle Varazi found it himself.

  Base acts. But that was all he had stolen himself throughout his long life. Or was it? Not much to boast about, if he were a thief. The tiny pile outbalanced the big one. Especially the two banknotes from the girl. Suddenly he remembered her eyes—small, shining eyes, dark and velvety, like two pansies looking out at him.

  Even now the revolver was in mint condition, as though no time at all had passed. Urbino put the end of it in his mouth and ran his tongue over it. A Russian kiss, he thought with a crooked smile. But pulling the trigger was no easier than pressing the damn button.

  Now it seemed easier to press the keys of the typewriter. Urbino strode over to the desk and grabbed a piece of paper from the stack, intending to write at least the title page, though he considered this to be symptomatic of true graphomania, if not impotence. He inserted the clean page into the typewriter; and while he was rotating the platen, the name of the author emerged, then the name of the novel, already furnished with epigraphs. Edgar Poe and the Chinese thinker were there. Both of them. The Poe—well, let it stay. But the Chinese epigraph was about a butterfly in a philosopher’s dream. What tripe! Urbino was indignant, and snatched the page out.

  He reached for another. Put it in. Twirled the platen.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Curiosity already outweighed fear. He spun the platen like the cylinder of a revolver.

  Object number one. REVOLVER.

  Object number two …

  After that, everything went according to the list, like an inventory of expenditures.

  When he came to the Icelandic sweater, he even pinched himself in it, just to make sure.

  Your average sweater. Very thick, unaccountably warm. Urbino shivered.

  He forgot about the table of contents. When had he found time to compile all of this?

  More of the page emerged, with the heading “Favorite Swedish Spectacles.”

  They were round, like the ones Joyce wore. He had left them on the little foldout table in a train, together with a book by Joyce, which he had fallen asleep trying to read. He had almost missed his station.

  The plot of the book was so vast that the table of contents didn’t fit onto one page. Urbino reached for the next page.

  An absurd page. It had only one line:

  Final Object. FATHER’S RAZOR.

  He glanced cautiously at the small stack of pages. The top one was already written and was called “Revolver.” Urbino’s thumb riffled through the stack of pages like a flip-book, then released it with a snap, like shuffling a deck of cards or running a finger over a piano keyboard. All the pages had been filled.

  He glanced at the last one, the one titled “Father’s Razor.”

  There was also just one line on it:

  “It’s in your room, lying in the same place you left it.”

  He looked up at the heap in the corner—it wasn’t there. He looked at the other corner, where he kept the things he was trying to forget—everything was in its place.

  He had long known that everything one describes disappears from life exactly as it does from time.

  Since that assemblage of lost things has vanished, it means the novel is written, he thought.

  Nothing surprised Urbino anymore. That’s how it was. Recently, he hadn’t been able to see what was right in front of him. “Where’s the salt?” He looked for it high and low, and it was there all along, under his very nose.

  Where he had looked for it to begin with.

  “I’m still not mad,” Urbino Vanoski said firmly to himself. “Since I found the razor, it follows that the novel is written. And if the novel is written, the razor is lying in its place at home. The journalist is waiting for me. I can tell him I finished my novel. But to be absolutely certain about this, I must first make sure the razor really is in the place where it belongs.”

  He tamped down the stack, evened up the edges, thrust it under his arm, and got up to leave.

  There was no exit. They were smooth and unbroken, all four walls.

  His frantic gaze darted every which way, then caught sight of another button. It was exactly like the one above his bed, but it was too high up for him to reach.

  He couldn’t reach it when he tried jumping up to it, either. He only fell down helplessly, twisting his ankle and scrabbling to keep hold of the scattering pages of the manuscript. He had always hated this, manuscripts that slipped out of his grasp and scattered their contents. Somehow, all the pages had managed to switch places. He crawled around on his hands and knees and gathered this unruly Medusa of a manuscript, eventually making his way to the desk. The desk was empty except for the typewriter, the necktie, and the revolver. What a still life it made, though!

  Urbino plunked the stack back down on the desk.

  He felt injured that he hadn’t written anything. “Formula of a Crevice” was one of the favorite last stories he hadn’t written. This was the moment. The time had come, Urbino thought, inspired. He pressed Shift Lock to type ou
t the title—but the lock didn’t work. He had to hold the key down while typing out with his free hand:

  FORMULA OF A CRE … ICE

  The letter V snapped off. Such an unassuming letter, but so necessary when the time came! From neglect … Metal fatigue … Metal gets weary, just like letters.

  Urbino struggled to remember the story. In it, two people had planned to meet, and they both arrived at the designated place but passed by one another in time. A crevice opened up in space, and the streetcar, in which the father of the main character and his lover were riding together, plunged into it.

  The streetcar fell into a canal and sank, with all its passengers. The two of them were the only ones who survived. They had found an air bubble in the end of the streetcar that jutted out above the water. The lover lost her mind; but the hero of the story was beholden to the father for his own birth. And the hero now asks himself: Who am I, after all? Oh, that was a story that begged to be written! But the V …

  The meaning of the letter was contained in its very outline. Urbino left the letter out to write it in later by hand. He heard a slight crack, and two lines began to crawl along the wall, as though tracing out the fugitive V, but lying on its side. Moreover, the crack started at the base of the letter, at the point where it seemed to end. Then the lines diverged slantwise, ever wider apart.

  Urbino was alarmed and tried aiming at the button with the revolver. No, I’ll never hit it, he thought soberly, leaning back in his chair. But there was no back! It was a stool. I can reach it on the stool!

  The revolver or the stool? Now that’s a choice. He grinned the merry grin of a gallows bird. He went to his corner of shame to put the revolver back where it belonged. After he had made his choice, however, he stood in the corner for a time, lost in reverie. He smiled. Then, as cautiously as a child, he wrapped the weapon in the necktie and laid it on the stolen banknotes. He sighed, and reached out for his aunt’s bottle. He took a gulp. The undiluted spirits ignited inside him, filling his chest with fire and his soul with an impalpable beatitude that seemed to draw ever nearer.