The Symmetry Teacher: A Novel

by Andrei Bitov

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Don’t be sad, Gummi.”

  “I realized that you can’t do it on purpose … You can’t find something on purpose, because finding happens by chance … You can’t find what you want—”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Finding something—you can’t set out to do it … it’s—” Here Gummi’s voice began to tremble, then broke off. Davin’s fountain pen came to a standstill. What was going on? “I would give my life.”

  “What? What are you talking about?” Davin said, perplexed. Gummi blinked as if he were staring directly into a bright light somewhere above the doctor’s head. Davin turned around and saw Joy. It was Joy he saw, and not her portrait. She was there, in the garden, in the bright sunlight, as though he had a window there above his head and she was smiling because her Robert didn’t know this yet. Davin rotated his head back around and was again confronted with Gummi’s prayerful gaze—he illuminated Joy. The portrait dimmed.

  “What would you give your life for?” The doctor’s voice was dry.

  “For such beauty I would give my life,” Gummi repeated in an unsteady voice, his words turning to mush again in his mouth.

  Davin remembered the postcards at the station and smiled disagreeably.

  “All right, Gummi. That’s enough. You’re keeping me from my work.”

  Dear Joy, he wrote. You can’t imagine what an impression you’ve made, or, rather, your portrait has made, on my Gummi …

  * * *

  “Look, there goes the doctor with his idiot!” the Taunusians said the first time they saw them together. “Look, there goes the doctor with his idiot!” they said the second time.

  And if they had overheard (and they did overhear) what this small, bald Don Quixote and his tall, passionate Sancho Panza were saying—what they would discuss with one another, this arrogant bookworm and a bona fide idiot—their assumption that the doctor himself could have used some treatment would have been borne out so unequivocally that no other confirmation was needed.

  “So you suppose”—for every two and half steps made by the doctor, Gummi made four blunt-nosed steps—“that it isn’t the outer surface, but the inner?”

  “Always the inner,” Gummi said with conviction. “It’s just that people only look at the outside.”

  “But if we turn everything inside out?”

  “Exactly,” Gummi said, beaming. “That’s what you’ll get.”

  “I see,” the doctor said, deliberating the matter. “In other words, people’s vision is inverted—they perceive the outer as the inner, and vice versa? Just as newborns see the world the other way round?”

  “Almost, yes. Only nothing is really outside at all.”

  “I can agree with your argument, but not with your certainty about it, Gummi. So, there’s an interior, and that is all?”

  “That’s the way I see things.”

  “But when you look at a steam engine, for example, isn’t it outside you? Do you really see the boiler and the firebox?”

  Gummi groaned, voicing an inexpressible chagrin.

  “You wish to say that I have again muddled the argument? That you were talking about another spatial dimension?”

  Gummi nodded vigorously, visibly relieved. “You said that on purpose. But I see the firebox, and I see steam—it doesn’t have enough room.”

  “You simply have a rich imagination, Gummi.”

  “I don’t have any imagination. I can’t make up things that don’t exist.”

  “Fine, I withdraw my example. You’re right, it was a primitive one. Let’s move on to a more complex machine. Let’s talk about ourselves. You and me.”

  “I think the machine is less primitive than you think,” Gummi said sadly.

  “Well, I’ll be darned!” the doctor exclaimed. “You were just arguing the contrary, I thought. That there is nothing complicated about human inventions, that they are lower than living things by several orders of magnitude.” Gummi couldn’t get any words out, and chewed his lip. “Did you not understand? Orders, Gummi … That is to say, levels…”

  Gummi nodded. “I understand order. Order is when things are right. And right is when things are in their proper places. Machines, human beings, and the sky … I said that a machine was more complicated because it isn’t on the outside. It isn’t itself. It’s more complicated than it seems to us on the outside, because … part of our complexity is inside it. We are not more complicated than it is; it is simpler than we are.” Gummi was puffing like a steam engine from the effort of speech. “I can’t express it in words.”

  “You can’t deny that a human being became human because he evolved—learned, invented, gained knowledge? A person is the most complex of all things on Earth, precisely because he began from what was simple. Without the wheel, the lever, the sail, he would have remained at a very primitive level.”

  Gummi was straining. They seemed to be digging a tunnel from two ends, unable to see each other. The doctor sought words that were simpler from his side, and Gummi was unable to find words for what was already clear to him.

  “They’re even more complicated,” he murmured.

  “In what sense? I don’t understand you, Gummi.”

  “The wheel, the lever—they’re more complicated.”

  “More complicated than a steam engine?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’ll try to understand … This is interesting … Doesn’t your idea suggest that the brick is more complex than the house, the atom is more complex than the molecule, the cell is more complex than the organism, that any single element is more complex than a combination?” Gummi nodded enthusiastically. “But how are they more complex?” the doctor blurted out.

  “There is more mystery in them.”

  “Ah!” Davin was struck by this. He even seemed to understand, but couldn’t quite trust himself. Gummi couldn’t possibly be expressing ideas of such complexity, could he? Surely that strange idea—wherever it had come from—had simply flitted into his mind and then flitted out again.

  “But a steam engine, a camera, a telephone … you don’t understand how they work, do you? It’s a mystery to you, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not a mystery, it’s a secret. Because someone knows. A mystery is something no one knows.”

  “Just now they don’t know; but eventually they will. They’ll discover what an atom is made of. They’ll discover the mechanism of a cell. They’ll discover everything, and it won’t be a mystery anymore.”

  “The mystery will remain.”

  “I think,” the doctor said, “we have just arrived at the question of the existence of God again.” The doctor grew angry, and was all the more angry because he didn’t understand the reason for his ire, as if it were as elementary as an atom, and no system of words could capture it. “You don’t go to church, you don’t believe in God, you have already agreed that God doesn’t exist.”

  “I didn’t say there is no God. I don’t believe in your God.” Gummi’s eyes grew glassy, and foam began bubbling in the corners of his mouth again. “He’s your machine. He’s part of you. A person can’t believe in God because God isn’t on the outside. Because we are inside belief. We are a particle of belief in God.” He began to mutter unintelligibly. The doctor checked himself, ashamed of his cruelty.

  Just at that moment Carmen caught up with them. She was dragging a goat behind her.

  “Gummi, let’s go home,” she said sternly. She led the submissive Gummi, and Gummi led the goat. Gummi followed behind her like a blind child. “It’s a sin, doctor,” Carmen scolded Dr. Davin. “You should be ashamed, doctor,” she said, turning to fix her eyes on him one last time.

  The doctor stood watching them for a long time after they had left.

  * * *

  Davin was ashamed. To be more precise, he was angry at a certain alien feeling that was either truly uncharacteristic of him, or that he considered to be uncharacteristic, as every forward-t
hinking individual does who rejects everything innate as atavism. Strange, but it was just this self-assured man, with the courage of his convictions, who was at loose ends in the company of Gummi, a man who didn’t know the meaning of intellectual competitiveness. It would have seemed more fitting for Gummi to experience this feeling in his life and in the world: the perpetual inability to participate in the general course of events or common life—whether it be games or dance—in any collective activity at all. (We are all familiar with the sense of failure, when in childhood we were not picked during a game, with that feeling of abandonment and envy, watching from the sidelines all that elation—and that was nothing compared with the feelings of apprehension, even panic, or tormenting awkwardness, we endured if they invited us to play the game, and at that very second our dream was realized as violence against ourselves.) So it was not Gummi but Robert who felt this inadequacy, possibly for the first time since childhood, and there, in Gummi’s presence.

  He almost envied him, which was unusual in the extreme for him, for he envied no one, sharing his sense of superiority with no one but himself. Yet here he was, feeling envious of the most superfluous specimen of all humanity: a simpleton. Envy knows an endless array of shades and colors. Let’s say, in a brief moment of particular sensitivity, when one feels an urgent tugging in the region of the heart, he could even imagine that his sympathy for Gummi was the result of a certain kind of kinship: “He reminds me of myself as a child”; or, “I was like him in my childhood”—something of that nature. Recognition. Or, regret: “Now I am no longer like that”; or “Most likely, I used to be better than I am now”—not going so far as to say in what way he was now worse. “I killed the idiot in me,” he even whispered to himself once. But he checked himself. He was in fact constantly checking himself, drawing himself up short. “You mustn’t, you mustn’t,” he exhorted himself. “That could lead to…” What? “Foolishness is indeed contagious,” he posited. He was embarrassed for himself, as if he had said something compromising in public. But no one caught him thinking this thought, and he would never allow his words to give him away.

  Of course, if we peer back into those distant days, we discover far more decency in practices and habits among people than we are likely to see nowadays. That the doctor, with his advanced worldview, was still incapable, not only of cursing, but of striking, offending, or insulting, cannot be attributed to an excess of tact and delicacy. The time for that had still not arrived. Thus, despite his lack of delicacy, he could not help but feel some discomfort at what felt like voyeurism in his contact with Gummi. Gummi was there, and Davin was not. He tested Gummi, and experienced discomfort, something akin to shame for himself, for his cold gaze of objective observation. Gummi didn’t play games. When Robert encountered his unique unambiguousness, his self-sufficiency, or, more simply, his sincerity, Robert felt a sharp pang of guilt. His thoughts acquired a tinge of moral feeling alien to science, and became sharper. The doctor, of course, generalized, broadened the terms (thinking in broad terms is a tried-and-true exit out of a moral dilemma: I thought, therefore I did something); he thought about the nature of human interaction, about the inequalities of nature, about the psychology of interaction among unequal individuals, about the amorality of unequal interaction.

  There was no way that people could come together in an appropriate way, it seemed. Accommodation didn’t work. But how, then? What about love? Only love rendered different natures equal and made contact possible, because all communication, all contact, was unequal. Not one thing was equal to another. Love! Only that. How else? Love … Joy … a son (who didn’t exist, but might someday). As a result, he caught himself each time afresh doubting what wasn’t subject to any doubt: Did he love Joy, and did she love him? The latter possibility was absurd. Joy was love itself, she could not help but answer his, for he … His interactions with Gummi led him yet again to this suspicion of his own indifference. Yes, unequal interaction was a crime. With this thought (which was almost a feeling) he sat down to write his usual letter to Joy. Underlying the inequality, besides the feeling of pity that it elicits, he wrote, there is also Nature itself. What will the victory of the democratic ideal look like if the Nature over which it triumphs rises in rebellion? We don’t know … After talking to Gummi he found the emotional strength to write his fiancée about it, supposing that the explication of his innermost thoughts was sufficient proof of his passion.

  We have already touched briefly on another aspect of the relationship between the doctor and Gummi. The doctor came away from every “idiotic” conversation with a fresh idea that called him to work with renewed energy. Gummi was now superfluous, and, as such, irritated him. The doctor needed to remove Gummi from his field of consciousness. Davin sent him away under some pretext, then planted himself in his chair and hastened to come to grips with these fresh ideas. He did not assume, naturally, that the glinting nugget of an idea had been transmitted to him by Gummi. He couldn’t deny, however, his role as a catalyst.

  Gummi used every opportunity to gaze at Joy. He dropped in and forgot the reason, standing in the doorway and staring spellbound at the portrait.

  “Ah, Gummi,” Davin muttered with waning tenderness in his voice. “What’s that in your hand?” Gummi held out a stone with a hole in it, or a bird’s banded claw, or a faded butterfly. “Well, well, well. Very interesting,” the doctor said through clenched teeth. “Keep it.”

  If only the doctor had known that neither that stone, so far from the sea, nor the claw, banded in another hemisphere, nor the butterfly, native only to South Africa, could ever have been found in this state …

  “But I’m not an ornithologist or an entomologist,” he objected, reining in his agitation. “Get going, now, I’ve got to concentrate.” But Gummi kept gazing at the portrait. “If only you’d bring me something from the Moon,” Davin said then, laughing. And Gummi felt wounded each time afresh that the doctor didn’t believe in his Moon. Exchanging a final sympathetic glance with Joy, he went away, downcast. But after a time his enthusiasm rebounded.

  “Well, what have you found?”

  “Nothing. I just wanted to ask you something.”

  “Yes?” But Gummi, lost in reverie, continued to gaze at Joy. “Go ahead and ask.”

  “Ask what?”

  “What you came here to ask me.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Who else?” Gummi turned around to look. There was no one else there. “Either go away and let me work in peace, or ask your question and then leave.”

  Gummi threw a beseeching glance at Joy. Then something dawned on him. He joined the tip of his thumb and his index finger together, showed the resulting circle to the doctor, and blurted out triumphantly:

  “Is ——— a number or a letter?”

  It must be said that he was right about this. The full phrase cannot be uttered without stumbling. Because, of course, 0, when it is a zero, and O, when it is a letter, are two different things. And the question “Is O a number or a letter?” is easy to read silently to oneself but cannot be read aloud without some hesitation. The phrase contains a picture, like a primer or an ABC book.

  The doctor was taken aback and didn’t understand right away. Then Gummi drew an O in the air with his finger and repeated:

  “Is ——— a number or a letter?”

  Now it dawned on Davin, too. He laughed until he grew weak, and for a long time couldn’t suppress the lingering mirthful hiccups. “You mean to say…” He was already shaping his lips into an O, when he faltered, realizing the trap for what it was. He was overcome by another bout of laughter; and, unable to pronounce O in either one of its meanings, and already succumbing again to another attack of mirth, he choked it down, sighed roundly, and repeated: “Is ——— a number or a letter?”

  And while he spluttered and again exploded into guffaws, Gummi felt flattered, abashed, and distressed. He clarified, again joining his thumb and his forefinger together to form a little circle:

>   “This here”—he held it up to view—“a circle or a hole?”

  The doctor gasped for breath, and his eyes bulged. He was unable to laugh, nor could he breathe. His face grew brown with blood and then turned a dangerous blue. Finally, he managed to breathe out in relief, and then, weak with exhaustion, grew gloomy. He looked at Gummi in a new way. A thought that he didn’t understand, didn’t recognize, flitted across his face, and in his expression there appeared something of a decision that he didn’t make. A wordless, unconscious finality took shape. And his expression evinced that final pain of parting—the farewell—that is forever. Perhaps this is the way one looks at a leg once it is already severed. Or maybe not a leg but an arm. Isn’t it all the same, once it’s gone?

  The doctor sensed all this without being aware of it. Gummi, however, was aware of it; and he was frightened. He loved the doctor, and every love lives for something. Where can it go once it already exists, but when the last crumb of this something is gone?

  Parting is always mutual. Only one takes leave with the body—and the other, with life itself.

  Gummi watched the doctor fearfully. He lifted his eyes to Joy. The pain and grief of his final surmise almost broke his heart, and he looked at the doctor in horror. “You don’t love Joy…” he said in a whisper.

  “Get out of here,” the doctor said in an icy voice. “I can’t answer your stupid question.”

  Gummi slinked away. He ran his gaze over the yard, the woodpile—everything had lost its meaning. Alone, alone again; but now he could no longer bear it.

  Gummi’s clear mind dimmed (we did not misspeak). His expression contracted and flattened out, his features grew lax, a weak smile trembled on his lips. Gummi’s thoughts jostled one another and took on forms that were uncharacteristic of him. In some sense he became more normal, quicker on the uptake. The customary mode of a human being—sensing danger and trying to avoid it, or to flee from it—filled him with panic-stricken bewilderment due to the bifurcated simplicity of its impulses. “I have to do something, I have to undertake something immediately. It’s not that bad, everything will turn out all right,” he tried to persuade himself, but his doomed smile gave him away. “The doctor is just angry that I didn’t bring him anything from the Moon. I’ll bring him weighty evidence, I’ll find something heavier. He’ll forgive me, and his love will return to Joy. He’s really very kind … Yes, it’s decided!” And Gummi quickened his pace and his spirits rose. He cheered up, with a paltry human cheerfulness.