The Symmetry Teacher: A Novel

by Andrei Bitov

  The womb that had once borne him devoured him now by force of will.

  It was something both similar and contrary to being born, the memory of which, it turned out, was hidden so deeply and irretrievably that this was the only way to reach it. “Mama, I want to be unborn!” How unchildish, in fact, this sentiment really was. You had to shrink, become a baby again, a newborn, completely diminish yourself … No, even more minute (which is larger—a microbe or a spermatozoid?) so that you could finally be swallowed up, dissolved in love!

  “And now, The Twilight of the Gods!” Marleen screamed in a frenzy. “All together now!”

  First the strings went quiet, then the woodwinds died away, and only the timpani remained.

  Urbino got lost. He wandered around backstage, he flung aside the backdrop and yanked the curtains apart—it was a theater in which a fire had just been extinguished.

  “What do the Gypsies in restaurants sing?” he murmured weakly. “‘Kiss me, then I’ll kiss you, then we’ll both kiss together’ … Is this what were they singing about?”

  “Didn’t you know? What else?” Marleen said in a low, husky, Gypsy voice.

  * * *

  She tried to attack, but instead she only flattered him.

  “Now I see the effect you have on dames. They can’t stay away from you. You make it seem as though you have nothing to do with it, that they’re the ones who started it. And so they fall prey to you, poor things.”

  Urbino was genuinely offended. No, she’s wrong! he thought. Things weren’t like that with Lili. He was the one in control, not her. He would never spurn Lili, his final choice.

  A bird was singing in a bush. Another one perched next to it, turning away in silence. It set off a faint echo in Urbino’s head, and he couldn’t keep it to himself.

  “What are they singing about?” he said.

  “Only one of them sings. The song is hers; his song is silence.”

  “Makes no sense. It’s always the male who sings.”

  “Sing, then.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “You see? She’s the one who’s singing.”

  “Why is she singing?”

  “She’s horny, that’s why,” Marleen said in a low growl. In the same throaty voice, she broke into a song that went like this:

  Milenkii ty moi,

  Vozmi menja s soboi

  Tam v kraju daljokom

  Nazovjosh menja zhenoi

  The song moved Urbino, though he didn’t understand a word of it. Thoughts of Lili and Dika, Dika and Lili, merged and flowed into the melody.

  “Did you learn that from the Gypsies?”

  “Did Lili tell you that?” Marleen bared her fangs to bite. “Lucky for you, I get all wound up by the soft and gentle…”

  “What about Lili?” (He missed the punch.)

  “What about her?” Marleen barked. “You should know. I think she has the hots for musclemen. She’s into force.”

  “Well, then Happenen is just the guy for her.”

  “She’s scared of him.”

  “Oh, and not me?”

  “You’re a girl to her, Urbino!”

  “What do you mean, a girl?” he said.

  “Because you wake up the man in women. You’re a vampire! You drain the energy out of their desires. That’s what broads do, not men.”

  * * *

  He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but things were both simpler and easier with Marleen. And even to himself he couldn’t say which one he liked better. His sense of guilt when he thought of Lili was intertwined with jealousy, and it grew so strong that he hoped that she would return soon, and that she would never return at all, both at the same time.

  “Does it not seem incestuous to you?”

  “You mean with Lili? With that Medusa?”

  He didn’t want to continue the conversation in that key.

  “No, with me, with a brother.”

  “Well, you’re quick today! No, I’ve never tried it with a brother. Get over here, on the double!”

  “You’re my Gorgon,” the brother gushed.

  “Little bro’,” Marleen said tenderly. “What, did you want to make it with your little sis’? With both of them? How about with both of them at the same time?”

  Urbino was gripped with horror at just the thought of Lili’s return.

  “Did you take fright? Let’s go out and get some fresh air.”

  Everything looked different to him now: the air tickled his nostrils and the sand touched the soles of his feet in a new way.

  “What’s wrong? Are you confused again about where you’ve ended up? Climb up to the top of the mast.”

  “Why on Earth would I want to mount it?”

  “You didn’t have second thoughts about mounting me, did you? Go up and take a look. You get a pretty good view from up there.”

  Climbing up the mast proved to be a long and arduous process: the rope ladder (what was the term from the crosswords? halyard? rigging?) swayed precariously and cut into the soles of his bare feet. Looking down, he was terrified, but it was already too late to turn back.

  Reaching the top was worth the effort, though. He really did see everything differently from up there. It was a different island—Marleen’s Island.

  It stretched out like an oyster. Two rows of dunes, like folds, like those very lips … The woods were like a pubis. All around, to the very horizon, stretched the loins of all life: the sea. And he, atop the mast, was like a stake plunged into the loins.

  Two or three liters of that same sea, but from back in the Mesozoic era, sloshed around in the brain. Into it swam the little fish of a single thought, and thrashed its little tail. Pubis, little fish … He was seized with yearning for Lili. That’s it. I’m lost … I’m lost in pussy … This is how the island landscape appeared to him now.

  At the same time he felt the urge to climb down and avenge himself on that bitch Marleen who had severed him from Lili, who had cunningly passed her (he was now convinced of this, after witnessing the unruffled calm of the sea all around) a spurious radiogram about an approaching typhoon. He wanted to wreak vengeance on her, to take her roughly, violently, from behind, like a bitch. But climbing down turned out to be even more difficult than climbing up.

  My God! What have I done!

  * * *

  “Well, did you take a good look?”

  Instead of carrying out his crude intentions, he pushed Marleen away so roughly that she fell in the sand and began to whimper and whine like a puppy.

  He locked himself into his cabin and refused to open the door.

  Never in his life had he found himself in such a bind. He had only to set foot on an uninhabited island for it to become overpopulated—overpopulated by him. That’s an idea: exporting your Bermudas to the farthest corners of the globe.

  He tried to express this in the best way he knew how …

  THE DEATH OF THE SEED

  To think something through to the end!—

  No wreath more hapless or more gratifying …

  Four operations of arithmetical passion,

  An integer of one—alone, alone!

  Irrational delirium is the experience of a multiple fraction:

  Twelve-eighteenths … zero point six …

  The row of sixes extending to infinity,

  Wagging the tail of the apocalypse …

  If only once to understand and divide the remainder

  By itself—what joy!

  Not to live with the carelessness of life and hope:

  Division by one is reality …

  Death is an integer.

  But madness does not threaten reason—

  And scientists dispose of the kernel of the irrational

  With terrible composure:

  “Well, it never tallies.”

  Thus, the freedom to think falsely is the right

  of a human being, to be beside his thought his right.

  Thus madness does not threaten reason
.

  As though, ostensibly! There are degrees of loneliness

  That no one knows besides oneself,

  If only because to taste and know them

  Is a riddle: the code conceals

  The possibility of continuing. No matter how paltry,

  The remainder is your day tomorrow.

  How otherwise would the Savior drive the Creator

  To continue the mistake of generations?

  What logic is there in Creation—

  It is equal only to itself!

  Luring us into ourselves is easier by far

  Than luring seeds into the earth … and we ourselves are the seed.

  Fatal is our rupture! It’s vulgar

  Not to understand that life is only in us!

  It is not for us to boast of poverty with you,

  Holding fast to a plan of universal fate!

  Not to unlock us with a slavish master key

  Of fear to be spurned …

  Relinquish and Take have a common meaning:

  NO ONE takes ALL. No one needs ALL.

  It fell to my lot already … And the measure of loneliness—

  Is the reserve of love, never revealed.

  I must die every second!

  Burying myself thus is as safe

  As a tree burying its seeds …

  Their immortality is genuine: without rupture

  From death to life. The existence of the soul

  Conceals rupture within itself. Through what

  Abysses one must fly to achieve

  What the tree is able to do effortlessly! To regret

  This, truly, is not futile for us:

  One day to stop trying to be understood—

  And to understand, at last, oneself.

  “Now that begins to resemble something,” Marleen said, finally expressing approval.

  “What does it resemble?”

  “A spermatozoid. ‘The row of sixes extends into infinity…’ How does it go?”

  “‘Wagging the tail of the apocalypse.’ Hey, you’re right!”

  “There, you see? You can, if you try hard enough. Come to me.”

  “We’ll see about that. You come to me, my bitch! Any news from Lili?”

  “Don’t be so uptight about her or I really will start getting jealous. Did she tell you how horrendous I can be? Anyway, I sent her another typhoon warning. Don’t think she’s going to miss you.”

  Marleen shouldn’t have said this.

  He pushed her away and stormed off. But how can you escape one another on such a tiny speck?

  * * *

  Lord, save us!

  The mast suddenly appeared to him as the only secluded spot.

  Already more deftly, and with greater confidence, he scrambled up. Rather, he flew.

  The crow’s nest felt very cozy to him, almost lived-in: a warm and trusted treehouse. There was plenty to look at—in all four directions.

  It was worth the effort. He saw what he had never seen before.

  On the left, an enormous full Moon (perhaps not quite full—but in a day or so it would be), pale turquoise. On the right, the sun, even larger than the Moon, was easing itself down into the sea. So the Moon was in the east, where it belonged, Urbino’s schoolboy imagination told him.

  He recalled a Muslim fairy tale from his childhood about a young man who dreamed about the sun and the Moon at the same time, and a Sufi had interpreted it for him: You will have two equally beautiful wives … and that dream came true. When the young man grew up, he remembered the dream, and was happy that his fate had been fulfilled.

  Urbino clung to his perch, between the slowly fading sun and the exultant Moon, measuring the distance between them: between Lili and Marleen, between love and passion.

  And, while admiring this marvelous equilibrium, he recalled that it was not only among Muslims but among followers of other religions, perhaps the Hebrews, that a widower had an obligation to marry the unmarried sister of his deceased wife. No! He was not wishing for another death. What if Heaven is a place where another life, as yet unrealized (but deeply desired), unfolds?… And it turns out to be the embodiment (in practice) of Hell! The West becomes the East, the slave a tyrant, the homely girl a beauty, the pauper a rich man, the sensualist an ascetic … and vice versa. Equality as retribution, he thought.

  Thus, turning his rapt gaze now to the east, now to the west, he almost missed the moment when the sun began to plummet into the sea. From up here, he could see it didn’t flatten out but remained perfectly round, and sank like a solid, dense orb. In no time at all, it was gone.

  The Moon hung motionless in the sky as if nothing at all had happened.

  What if they’re lesbians? Urbino wondered with a childish sense of sweet apprehension. Marleen the active one, and Lili the passive one?

  It would make it easier for me, he thought selfishly. The notion that he was the third party amused and distracted him for a while. He began imagining them together, as though he were observing them from his vantage point atop the mast, or from the side, as if through a window … They pass by, their fingers entwined … two blossoms. The lines of the poem “Two Blossoms” began to compose themselves …

  Two girlfriends, Heaven and Hell,

  a blonde and a brunette,

  choose a skirt to go with a blouse,

  and become cross-pollinated.

  They stand before a mirror

  and don’t see themselves—

  each gaze reflects the other girl

  in her best light.

  “Strange,” Urbino thought. “The lines are thinking themselves; I have nothing to do with it.”

  Yes, everything is simpler when you’re on the mast. You’re at the peak of loneliness in the most literal sense.

  A cool breeze blew up. It grew darker, and he had nothing to jot down the poem with.

  When he had managed to clamber down the mast, it was already twilight. He locked himself in his cabin, then wrote down the lines that had recently come to him. When Marleen gets here I’ll have her take a look at them to see if they’re any good, he thought. He waited for his Moon, as he had awaited, long ago, his sun. But Marleen didn’t come knocking, either.

  Time seemed to stretch out endlessly before him; it became unbearable, and he went off in search of her. The Moon cast a brilliant light over everything. Her hold was locked up, however. He knocked, and called out to her—there was no response.

  4. The Bermudas

  I water invention with my tears … —Alex Cannon

  In the morning she was nowhere to be found, either.

  He went out onto the shore to greet the sunrise and contemplate what to do.

  As the sun rose, he saw a boat approaching.

  He caught himself feeling glad—not because it was finally Lili, but because at least she wouldn’t be catching him with Marleen.

  He expected it to be Midshipman Happenen transporting Lili, and was confident in him.

  Though not in himself. He intended to show every possible restraint, no more, no less.

  And he was completely taken by surprise when he saw that Lili was alone in the boat, rowing powerfully toward shore.

  He was overcome by a mixture of delight and fear. It was his Lili, only she was wearing the midshipman’s pirate bandana.

  She could have at least taken it off, he thought. Still, she probably didn’t expect me to get up so early.

  “Oh, it’s you.” Her voice sounded both careless and guarded.

  Damn female intuition! he thought, amazed, but said:

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what I say. You didn’t miss me at all. Give me a hand, will you? This stuff is heavy.”

  “What about the midshipman?” he said, his voice cracking as he heaved canisters of kerosene onto shore.

  “Oh, you mean Happenen?” Her voice betrayed alarm. “He wanted to come, but I said no.”

  “Oh.” Urbino was equanimity itself.

  “T
hat kind of emotional strain is not good for Marleen.”

  “I see, you were worried about Marleen.”

  “If they renewed their relationship, blood would flow.”

  “Are you saying”—Urbino knew he was saying too much, but he couldn’t stop—“that Happenen is not your lover but hers?”

  “Well, well, well…” Now she sounded angry. “Did she tell you that? So you let her out.”

  “She broke out herself.”

  “How did she manage that?”

  “She said she gnawed through the chain. I thought it was a joke, that you had set her loose in case of a typhoon, or who knows what.” Urbino was struggling to keep afloat in a morass of half-concealed lies, some of human nature’s muddiest waters.

  He bobbed up for a gulp of air. “Do you know what the primary task of our intellect is?”

  “What?”

  “To hide our own natures from us.”

  “The truth, you mean? Quit beating around the bush. Are you talking about Marleen?”

  “She is quite a strange girl, I must say.”

  “Strange? Girl?” Lili snarled. “So you slept with that bitch! How could you?” She was crying.

  Her tears were her strongest argument. Urbino was defenseless against them. He tried to assuage his guilt by putting his arms around her. She tried to push him away halfheartedly, and refused to let him touch her head. Then she slapped him.

  “What was that for?” he said. It was the weakest possible argument. Then again, the slap she had given him wasn’t all that hard.

  The simplest solution now was to read her some of his new poetry.

  I dreamed the naked truth

  with a braid down to her naked rump,

  and suddenly she was someone else—

  with a wolf’s bared teeth, her braid a scythe.

  All night she stalked me

  with a curved blade of sleep,

  now tempting, now repelling,

  beauty and death in one.

  “The one about Birdy was better. Is that about Marleen? Did you write it for her?”

  “Marleen? With a braid? She’s bald! You’re the one with hair for braiding.”

  “So I’m your death, then?”

  The similarity in intonation startled him. Something pierced his brain like a stroke of lightning. He heard the sound of one hand clapping. Was a slap in the face the answer to the riddle of the Tao? Makes sense, he thought, their teachers are in the habit of striking their students for obtuseness.