The Symmetry Teacher: A Novel

by Andrei Bitov

  Therefore, there is not a single Russian book (poetry not included), with the exception of the Dictionary of the Great Living Russian Language, written by the Dane Vladimir Dahl, that I would deem true to life. Verisimilitude is to be found only in the language as a whole.

  I must conclude that Russian literary speech has not yet earned the degree of freedom achieved by our language. It is by nature as timid and chaste as a provincial young lady of the nineteenth century—which is why everything concerning our bodily functions is banished to a very specific and remarkable form of taboo speech or foul language known as mat. But it is censored. Thus, in our literature, too, you will not find anything about that which interests all of us most of all. A word like “stimulating,” in this context, already smacks of impropriety, like any literary substitution or euphemism. It bears repeating that mat is far more decorous and seemly than any substitute, that what is ugly is not its apt usage, but the pathological need to perceive a corresponding visual image behind every word. All these “intimate parts,” “laps,” “loins,” and “manhood”; all this “taking advantage of,” “penetrating,” and “knowing”—all this is far more unnatural than our mat, far more repugnant, and even bawdy (now there’s a word that stands as a sentinel between one and the other realm of language). In the case of Tired-Boffin, I derive comfort from the somewhat dated style of his descriptions. It remains for me, together with him and his hero, to peek under the skirt, and, together with the heroine, to offer myself (in the given instance, to whatever happens in the text).

  As a result of my own translation of all this foreignness, I arrive at the patriotic conclusion that Russian literature is unsurpassed, that no other literature offers itself with such sincerity of oft-mended chastity to its native tongue (like a houri in the Islamic paradise). Thus, the so-called untranslatability is dual-natured: it is untranslatable not because a language is incapable of conveying something in another language, but because one’s own language is not amenable to translation into any other.

  (Yours forever … You see what my computer has just done? It’s guilty of co-authorship, like a true kindred spirit. I wanted to write “yours, and yours alone,” but it began to swallow letters at every turn, and finally prompted me, unasked: “yours forever.” These words were the furthest imaginable from my mind! Well, maybe the computer is right. Maybe it will be forever. Either I’m tired, or it is. Tiredness is also contagious.)

  1. Ris

  I thought the heart

  forgot

  the easy art of suffering.

  I said of what had

  been—

  nevermore! nevermore!

  —Alex Cannon

  Urbino Vanoski, twenty-seven, an English poet who had received some acclaim but was not yet well known, of mixed Polish-Dutch-Japanese ancestry (second, third, and fourth generations, respectively), who didn’t know a single one of these languages and had never once traveled to any of these ancestral homelands for any significant length of time; author of an almost sensational collection of poems titled The Night Vase (an untranslatable phrase meaning something approximating “The Vase in the Night”), which, however, found only a scanty readership, except perhaps for the poem “Thursday,” which was subsequently included in one of the respectable anthologies—a sad poem that seemed to express the personal experience of the author, in these lines, for example:

  I’m a one-woman man

  as a matter of fact

  I’m on the lookout for a wife

  (husbandless, of course)

  to meet at the cinema,

  under the marquee

  in the rain

  the past reveals no guarantees

  we cannot say that what happened

  truly did (happen) …

  … and so on, and so forth, i.e., that same Vanoski who decided to end not simply life itself but his own life, rather than to endure infamy or drama, changing it at the very root, including his own name, in the manner of the Japanese poets, who, nearing forty, having achieved everything they wished to achieve, abandon everything, disappear, and, after assuming incognito and voluntary poverty, begin a poetic path from scratch as completely unknown, unsung, but indisputable geniuses. Enamored of Bashō and quoting him right and left, Vanoski twisted his own name this way and that, until he finally reached a combination of letters that was more or less tolerable to the human ear: Ris Vokonabi. (It reminded him of the Japanese culinary arts.*) The first collection of poetry he published under this pseudonym enjoyed great success with select readers, and favorable reviews from the critics. He became a “discovery.”

  And so Urbino became Ris.

  One fine day (fine days are the weather of choice in our age; stormy days are already outmoded)—one fine day, or even hour, Ris’s life, which had until now seemed to be his life in spite of everything, i.e., its belonging to him was never in question, seemed suddenly like non-life. That is, it was not life in its unbroken and unconditional meaning but only a means of living through (reliving) one more clearly defined segment of time. Thus, life broke off and seemed now to be a remnant, a fragment. It experienced the tragic sensation of continuing in a void, as though it were an ellipsis. And this nonexistent continuity of a broken-off fragment ached—a peculiar case of causalgia, or pain experienced in a lost extremity.

  * * *

  Struggling over Dika’s death, oppressed by an ever-increasing sense of guilt, Urbino devoted himself to spirits with typical Slavic extravagance. He stopped washing, shaving, and cutting his hair for the forty days of mourning, and then for a whole year, so that he truly forgot who he was. After that, his friends forgot him, too. Bashō became his sole drinking companion. He began to acquire notoriety under the nickname “Bashō.” People had already started turning around to stare at him in the street.

  At the same time, his publisher didn’t even remember that there was such a person as Vanoski.

  That was how he finally understood that fame is not achieved through hard work but through serendipity.

  He decided to leave his beard and his shoulder-length hair as they were. It was the easiest way to conquer his past.

  He began to flourish: an unanticipated but welcome surge in his creative powers, newfound success with women, a sudden passion for travel … After Vladivostok he made his way to New Zealand, where he stayed for a while, following the trail of Anton, his Russian drinking companion, who in his turn was trailing behind Robert Scott’s expedition to the South Pole. Actually, he refused point blank to follow Anton to the “island of penguins.” He needed some place that was warmer and more uninhabited.

  In a private sanitarium where he attempted to rid himself of the “scent of death” that continued to haunt him, a certain baroness, who was also a psychiatrist, wrote him a letter of referral for a “virtually uninhabited” island.

  “You’ll like it there,” she said. “Just don’t let anything surprise you.”

  That was when Ris consented to become Urbino again.

  * * *

  In Taunus, a coastal fishing town, he met (as his letter instructed him to do) Midshipman Happenen, a veritable Hollywood Scandinavian with long blond hair tied with a pirate’s bandana and a scar across his forehead and cheek, who was building a yacht not far from the pier. With his taciturnity and sternly handsome looks, the midshipman immediately appealed to Urbino. He sized up Urbino at a glance, as meticulously as a carpenter sizes up a plank of wood.

  “An inch shy of six feet,” he said.

  “Do you build coffins here, too?” Urbino said, making light of the comment, and estimating the midshipman’s height in his turn. He exceeded him in all dimensions (he was at least an inch taller than six feet), not to mention in pounds.

  “Well, it’s a straightforward craft.” The midshipman flexed his facial muscles so that his deeply etched cheekbones stood out and invited him into his boat. “And there was no one else around to do that kind of work here. They don’t die too often in these parts. Unless they dr
own.”

  And he rowed silently across the strait. He pulled up onto a sandbar. A dog bounded up to them in greeting, splashing them from head to toe. Its behavior contradicted its appearance: excessive in size and coloring, like a mixture of a wolf and a sheep—a Baskervilles hound that whimpered like a puppy.

  “Easy now, Marleen!” the midshipman commanded, and the dog obeyed, calming down immediately but still yelping now and then. “This man is our guest.”

  The Scandinavian’s at home here, Urbino had just managed to think, when the Scandinavian scooped him up along with his rucksack, carried him from the boat, and set him down on shore as if he were as light as a feather.

  “Show him around,” he commanded the dog. And without giving Urbino any chance to take offense or to settle the payment, he began rowing back. Thus, Urbino went ashore, to see what he could see.

  The beach rose up at a sheer angle, the height of about two men, and obstructed the view. Marleen led him along a path trampled in the sand, overgrown with pleasant, fleshy grasses (he seemed to recall that as children they had called it saxifrage). The island spread out above and in front of him, appearing to be a single enormous sandbar covered with crooked, stunted trees, on the apex of which stood a sailing frigate sunk in the sand up to its waterline. It’s not for nothing the camel is called the ship of the desert, Urbino thought, staring in wonder.

  This was in fact a hacienda. It resembled a camel, but it was called The Bermudas. Of which he was informed now not by Marleen but by the landlady.

  2. Lili

  “This is a present from the last tsunami.”

  “It’s the best memento of the elements imaginable,” Urbino said ingratiatingly. “A monument to the sea. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  She stuffed his letter of introduction carelessly into the pocket of her apron.

  “I know what it says. The Baroness has already told me everything about you.”

  “How did she manage to get here ahead of me?” Urbino said. “I’ve been trying to reach the island for three days, and from what I understand, you have no means of communication here.”

  “Are you so weary of communication?” the landlady said with a wry grin.

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Come with me into the stateroom. I’ll feed you, show you around, and tell you about everything. Marleen, go lie down!”

  Urbino was startled at the sudden change in tone, from polite and conversational to peremptory. The dog wasn’t surprised, but hurt: she obeyed, reluctantly but without hesitation.

  * * *

  The stateroom was very cozy. Everything had been preserved in the condition in which it was originally found. At the same time, there was evidence of a woman’s touch: pots and pans and skillets, scrubbed like the railings on deck, hanging bunches of local herbs … Suddenly he saw a stuffed beast: it looked like a beaver or a hare, with webbed goose’s feet and horns like a goat.

  “What the devil is that?”

  “An ordinary hare with horns.”

  “Are they really found in these parts?”

  “Not anymore. They died out. Foundered,” the landlady said, smiling.

  “Hmm. Amusing.”

  “Not me, it was my sister, Marleen. She’s the punster. Devil take her.”

  “They foundered. Just like your ship,” Urbino punned in his turn. “Still, it’s very cozy here.”

  “Thanks to Happenen. He was the one who restored everything.”

  There was a crash down below, as though something had fallen. What do I care about that fair-haired devil, Urbino thought, bristling. He said:

  “I’m confused. Where is this Marleen of yours? Who is Happenen?”

  “All right. Let me explain. Marleen is downstairs, where she belongs. She had to be isolated. Did the Baroness really not tell you? Marleen is under her care. We’re twins. No, not the Baroness! Identical, but different. Perhaps because we were raised differently.”

  “What do you mean, differently? You both have the same mother and the same father, don’t you?” he said.

  The landlady pondered. So did Urbino.

  “I didn’t want to go into all of this right away. Apparently the Baroness knows how to maintain professional secrecy … Father left us, and Mother died in childbirth. We were abandoned as babies. The Gypsies took her, and I was raised in a convent. When we reached the age of eighteen, an attorney located us. Our parents had left us a small inheritance. So we were reunited.”

  The landlady’s face looked dreamy, or perhaps sorrowful.

  “I don’t wish to talk about it anymore. Happenen … It was a training vessel.” Here she lapsed eagerly into an explanation. “He was a midshipman, but like a captain. After the wreck, the cadets who were saved all scattered, but he couldn’t abandon the ship … He’s a skilled carpenter, and managed to adapt it for conditions on dry land, while preserving its romantic marine ambience.”

  “It looks absolutely sailworthy. Fine windage,” Urbino quipped, at the same time parading some vestiges of one of his abandoned courses of study.

  “‘Windage.’ A pretty word. I’ve never heard it before. Not even in crossword puzzles.”

  “Windage is the air resistance of the vessel in full sail. Didn’t your midshipman explain something as simple as that to you? You’re waiting for a tsunami, but your fortress will keel over at the first squall.”

  “It’s possible,” the landlady said evenly. “This is a very dangerous spot.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s not really here at all.”

  “??”

  “It could disappear at any moment.”

  “???”

  “This is not really an island. There’s no land underneath us. It’s just the bottom of the sea that has emerged for a time, like the back of a whale. After the last big tsunami, I suppose.”

  “And how often does this whale sink back into the water again?”

  “Judging by the trees, it hasn’t gone under in at least half a century.”

  “And what is the forecast?”

  “The meteorologists try to scare us, year in and year out … But my sister and I have lived here a long time. We’re still here.”

  “Do you get bored?”

  “Not at all. Even when I find my way back to civilization to do errands, I want to return after just one day. And I can’t leave my sister alone for too long.”

  “Is your civilization very far away?”

  “No need to scoff, Ris. You just came from there! From Taunus.”

  Urbino grinned, recalling Taunus: a shop, a pub, the police station, and the post office, all in one building. Plus a moorage.

  “Ris? Is that what the Baroness called me in the letter?”

  “Isn’t that who you are?”

  “Well, yes, I am who I am; but Ris is my pseudonym. I’m Urbino.”

  “Interesting.” The landlady’s expression became secretive and romantic. “Then you may call me Lili.”

  “And the dog?”

  “The dog … Better not confuse her. Just call her Marleen.”

  Sounds of rumbling and growling, even the clanking of chains, came from downstairs.

  “An island that’s not an island. Is your sister not really a sister? She sounds like a bear.”

  “You just about guessed it.” Lili laughed out loud. “It’s the seasonal spring aggravation of her condition. Don’t be alarmed, though, she’s not dangerous. In a week she’ll calm down, and stay like that through summer. She’ll be sitting in front of her radio transmitter day and night.”

  “You mean to say she’s also a ham radio operator?”

  “Well, you can’t accuse her of not having a broad range of interests. Actually, she was the one who put me in touch with the Baroness about your arrival.”

  “So, a radio … But doesn’t anyone ever come here to visit you?”

  “They do. But they don’t hold out for too long. They get bored.”

  “I already f
eel like I’ll never want to leave.”

  “There was someone like that once. It ended badly, though.”

  “What happened?”

  “Marleen fell in love with him.”

  “What’s so bad about that? Did she eat him up or something?”

  “Precisely.”

  “What about the bones?”

  “She gave them to the dog.”

  “The beast!”

  “Are you referring to Marleen?”

  “No, your dog is quite imposing … What do you call it?”

  “That’s her name. Marleen.”

  “They have the same name? How do they know who is who?”

  “The dog doesn’t understand words, just intonation. Whether you call her ‘dog,’ ‘bitch,’ or ‘Marleen,’ it’s all the same to her. She always knows whether you’re talking to her or to a person.”

  “Still, it’s strange … And she doesn’t feel hurt?”

  “That we call her by a human name?”

  “No, that you call your sister by a dog’s name!”

  “Why should she feel offended? She is a dog.”

  “Huh?”

  “A bitch if there ever was one.”

  “But she’s your sister!”

  “Ris … I mean, Urbino, do you have a brother?”

  “Yes,” Urbino lied without skipping a beat.

  “Do you get along?”

  “Not much these days.”

  “Why is that?”

  “He drowned.”

  “Oh, dear! How did it happen?”

  “It just did.”

  My God, why on Earth was he making all this up? He was having fun.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. My sister didn’t drown.”