The Symmetry Teacher: A Novel

by Andrei Bitov

Bartholomew and Maggie didn’t speak over the phone. He left the number of Forceps, just in case, and calmly (only bad news travels fast; and the Duchess was still on the way) proceeded from the telephone to the dining room, where Forceps had concocted a most improbable pick-me-up for the king—the Limb Resection of the Day.

  * * *

  The next morning, the ground was covered with frost, and the air was filled with light flurries of snow—Christmas weather. Forceps, upon whom the king had conferred the title of Admiral, pushed Bartholomew in a splendid state-of-the-art wheelchair, its spokes glittering expensively and its multitude of nickel-plated parts, the purposes of which were not immediately clear, gleaming. Across his lap the king clutched yesterday’s Christmas tree and the surgeon’s bag, with its heavy instruments, some of metal, some of glass, that clattered and clinked. Clean-shaven, with the order of the Legion of Honor in his buttonhole, Admiral Forceps followed on the footboard. Excited subjects the age of children chased after them, hooting and tossing confetti. The policeman on the corner gave a salute.

  And so, with a surgeon’s bag and a Christmas tree in his lap like his orb and scepter, and a groom with the rank of admiral on the footboard, King Bartholomew rolled into the narrow courtyard of his own residence. Leaving the king’s equipage by the elevator door, supporting each other and leaning now on the Christmas tree, now on the surgeon’s bag, they made their way upstairs. But the key wouldn’t fit into the keyhole. It was from a completely different lock—this was a French one, but the key was, of course, from an English one. It was possible the key was even from another door altogether—perhaps from Bartholomew’s study. He had no other key. And Forceps never brought any keys with him, as he had a steward for that. No one answered when they rang the bell. Nor did anyone respond to their knock.

  A wave of anxiety, accompanied by the aftertaste of yesterday’s “recipe,” gripped the king. He went downstairs again to call on the telephone, but no one picked up, and then he discovered that the wheelchair was no longer by the elevator. Bartholomew trudged back upstairs in despair. On the landing there was no Forceps, and there was no Christmas tree leaning against the door. Bartholomew clawed at the door piteously; from the other side he heard only the mewing of Basil the Dark.

  The king started banging on the door and shouting at the top of his lungs: “Hey, is anybody there?!” To his great relief he heard, muffled by distance but recognizable at an instant, the cry of the Queen Mother—either “Bartels, my little king!” or “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Why didn’t you answer the phone, Mother?” cried Bartholomew, pressing himself against the door.

  “Why didn’t you call?” his mother answered.

  “I left my keys at home!” Bartholomew shouted.

  “I don’t know where your son has gone,” his mother answered.

  “And where is your Maggie?”

  “Madeleine couldn’t come today, her grandsons are visiting her!”

  “Did a telegram arrive?”

  “Someone brought over some sort of bundle!”

  “With what? What’s inside?”

  “Let me look for your keys … I’m going to find your keys, I said!”

  “Just don’t go crawling around the apartment again!” Bartholomew yelled.

  “Your Asian brought it over!”

  “What did that scoundrel steal this time?”

  “What happened?” his mother yelled. “What did he hurt?”

  “In the name of God, don’t get out of bed!”

  “Is he alive?”

  “How will you give them to me? I’m on the other side!”

  * * *

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” Forceps grumbled at him, yanking him away from the door. “Stop shouting. Nothing’s the matter, I just commandeered a truck.”

  From the window on the landing, Bartholomew saw the long metal arm of a truck crane rising into the air. A worker was seated in the winch and aiming straight for the balcony of Bartholomew’s apartment.

  “You didn’t happen to see the wheelchair downstairs, did you?” Bartholomew asked on the off chance.

  “Nope. Someone swiped it. Never mind, I’ll get you another one. But where’s my Christmas tree?”

  “That’s gone, too,” Bartholomew said.

  “My, my, you’ve got your crown on backward, Your Majesty!” Forceps laughed out loud, unfastened his surgeon’s bag, and took a swig from it. “That’s why I never let this thing out of my hands.” With these words he spread a sterile surgeon’s napkin out on the floor in front of the door and took out some tweezers, a lancet, a surgeon’s handsaw, and a pair of tongs, all wrapped up in an improbable amount of cotton gauze. After he had arranged all of this on the napkin, he took his wallet out of his pocket and rummaged through it until he found what he needed. He tapped lightly all around the lock, bending his ear to it as if to a patient’s chest, and inserted a coin into the opening. Then, with a deft movement of the lancet, he removed a superfluous object from the lock like a tumor. Next, he turned the coin, and voilà!—the lock clicked obediently and the door flew open.

  A frosty draft rushed through the corridor of the apartment, and a triumphant man in a hard hat strode toward them. They were like two mining brigades who had been hollowing out a tunnel from opposite ends and had finally reached the middle. They met in the heart of the apartment, mutually satisfied with their respective efforts and their precision, like people who had been working at a single task but had never seen each other face-to-face.

  “It’s all right,” the Brigadier reported to Forceps. “I had to remove the window frame. Now I’ll open your door.”

  “Please do,” Forceps said.

  And the Brigadier made his way to the door, an expression of indignation slowly suffusing his face, with which he greeted the Duchess and little Bartie in her arms when he opened it.

  It was the foot, after all. Thank God. The little one’s leg had been wrapped in scarves and stuffed into a hat with earflaps, and the strings were tied up in a bow at the top, as though his leg were on upside down …

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?” Her penetrating, silvery voice rang out, instantly recognizable even after her long absence.

  “Where’s the ear?” Forceps said, getting right down to work.

  “Forceps, my dear!” the Duchess cooed, her tone shifting abruptly. “I’m so glad you’re here … Ear? What ear!” she squealed.

  “A plain old ear, the one in the bag.”

  We’ll break off here for a moment. Take a breath. Fast forward a few happy scenes …

  The arm of the Brigadier’s crane got jammed and remained there, sticking up outside the window of Bartholomew’s residence like an enormous Christmas tree ornament, delighting little Bartie, the Youngest of Them All, with its siren-red fire-engine color. After becoming acquainted with Forceps’s pharmacy, the Brigadier was refitting the window frame with ever-increasing ardor, but also taking his time about it.

  Forceps, having finally figured out which was his patient’s head and which was his foot, arranged his instruments (including the saw) again, just like he had in front of the door, and with great difficulty extricated the limb in question from its hat, scarves, gauze, and splint (“Who was the quack who made this mess?”). He took the sweet, slightly swollen, somewhat dirty and smudged little foot into his large, scalding-red paws and, tenderly, as though stroking and warming it, suddenly, with a sharp and terrifying movement, seemed to wrench it off and put it back on again. As a certain Yankee once said, nonetheless quite accurately, Bartie “outstripped his own yelp” and flew up to the ceiling, where he drifted around for a time, spinning about among the lights like a little angel. The Duchess fell into a dead faint, and when she came to, she saw that her little fellow had landed and was perfectly healthy again. Forceps, grunting and using some colorful language, was trying to bind the splint back onto the foot—to no avail.

  “The door is wide open,” said Bartholomew the
Younger, leading in a very pretty girl, whom Bartholomew had lost hopes of ever seeing again.

  “Maggie!” the Queen Mother cried out in rapture. “I am so glad to see you, my dear! Fix me up again, please. You see, it’s started to come undone.”

  And while the lovely Maggie whipped up her hair into something incredible, something akin to an eighteenth-century tower; while the older son gave an account of himself to his mother (to his father’s relief, he didn’t reek of anything today—there was only a faint whiff of beer); while Forceps was putting away his instruments in his bag, and taking out some vials, Bartholomew finally turned his attention to a large and dirty bundle, and it seemed to him that he had seen it somewhere before … But of course! Those tatters were his fur coat! The king started to undo the bundle with great curiosity. What was all this?

  When King Bartholomew entered the common hall in this fur, irrepressible good cheer settled over his entire residence, and it will not disappear for the rest of our narrative, at least not until the end of Christmas; and we don’t know what will come after it, because Christmas is TODAY.

  Believe it or not, the coat was whole and in one piece again! It was reconstructed like a chessboard, but in a much more intricate manner. The remaining scraps of wolf skin were placed side by side with the fiery-red fur of an as yet unidentified animal—perhaps it was a hare; or was it a cat? In any case, the coat was all in one piece, but it looked very agitated, like a frenzied ball of madly fighting cats and dogs had just rolled into the room—and this was King Bartholomew in his fur coat. Or was it the poor hare perishing in the jaws of a wolf?… But it was most likely a cat, for Basil the Dark arched his back and his fur stood on end. Then he sidled off to the radiator, where the Brigadier was warming himself, his hard hat askew. And perhaps it wasn’t the coat at all, but Bartholomew himself whom the staid cat had shunned, upon witnessing the loss of his royal dignity. Wearing the fur, having donned the Brigadier’s orange hard hat, and grabbing the Queen Mother’s bell for summoning the servants, Bartholomew pranced about the rooms like his own court jester, to the general delight and satisfaction of all present …

  “The door is wide open,” said the court Thief, who had long been standing in the doorway and watching Bartholomew’s dance, holding a luxuriant Christmas tree in his hand. “So you like the fur, do you?” he said with unconcealed pride.

  “Welcome! Come in, come in, dear Samwel!” the king said, inviting him to partake in the general merriment; but the Turk was more serious than he had ever seen him before.

  “May I speak to you for a moment, Your Highness?” he said, beckoning him out into the hallway. There, in the corridor, gleaming with all its newfangled parts and gadgets, stood the wheelchair that had gone missing in the morning. “It’s the latest model!” the Turk boasted. “It’s beyond your wildest dreams. American-made. It cost no less than several thousand dollars. Accept it from me as payment for what I owe you, and also as a sign of respect for your honored mother.”

  Bartholomew was dumbfounded and could only stare at the wheelchair, and then at Samwel holding the Christmas tree, and then at everything in reverse: the Christmas tree, Samwel, the wheelchair; the wheelchair, Samwel, the Christmas tree. “All right,” he said when he was finally able to speak again. “We’re not going to bargain anymore. We’re quits. Only tell me one thing—why didn’t you admit that you had robbed me?”

  A profound sadness, equal to Bartholomew’s injustice, filled the Turk’s gaze: it was starting all over again …

  “But how could I admit it to you, when you might not keep your word?”

  “So you still can’t say it?”

  “No, I still can’t.” The Thief sighed a doleful sigh.

  “But we’re here face-to-face, just the two of us. We’re already even!” It suddenly dawned on Bartholomew. “So it’s not proof of anything at all. Come on, what do you have to lose? Please … Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I beg you! For Christmas’ sake.”

  “Face-to-face, you’re right about that … Oh, you, whose name I dare not speak aloud, give me strength!” The Turk’s body was racked with convulsions—still he couldn’t.

  “Fine. God be with you. You’re free,” said Bartholomew.

  “Really?” the Thief said, brightening.

  “Really,” Bartholomew assured him.

  “For always?” He still couldn’t quite believe the one he had mistrusted for so long.

  “Of course.”

  The Thief dropped down on his knees and kissed Bartholomew’s hand. Bartholomew leaned down to raise him up, saying: come now, come now … And when he was leaning over him, the Thief whispered rapidly and hotly in his ear. “Yes, it was me, I stole from you, I stole from you that time I stole from you when I stole from you that time … But how could I not steal, when you yourself showed me where!” He suddenly grew furious and jumped up off his knees. “You did it! You!” And then they embraced and kissed and sobbed on one another’s shoulders, finally absolutely quits, so it could all be left behind.

  “Come in, let’s celebrate!” the happy Bartholomew urged his newly restored brother, and the Turk was about to refuse, but had already agreed, when suddenly—the Christmas tree … Samwel, the wheelchair, Samwel, the wheelchair, the Christmas tree … “I say,” Bartholomew ventured, taking a step back, “did you happen to … borrow … that Christmas tree and the wheelchair from me?”

  “Me? No way!” The Thief laughed. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. No way. My third cousin brought me the tree, he runs a Christmas tree stand. And the wheelchair … the wheelchair … Well, better not ask what that cost me! Someone on the street just offered me a hundred francs for it.” The Thief, or, rather, now no longer the Thief but the Turk, though not even the Turk but the Samwel who was dear to Bartholomew’s heart, was on the verge of crying from the insult of unjust suspicion, and might have turned around to leave again altogether in light of this injury done to him, and so Bartholomew found it necessary to apologize to him.

  And now the lights of the Christmas tree were burning—Forceps had managed with great dexterity to untie it and free it from its wrappings, and Bartie the Youngest of Them All was pushing Grandmother in her new wheelchair up and down the hallway, both of them squealing in delight. His foot was as good as new, and the Queen Mother’s hair was a sight to behold, and the Crown Prince, who did not reek of anything, sometimes left the room with Maggie, or she followed him out under the haughty gaze of the Duchess, or they both came in together. And from the kitchen wafted the scent of pies that Maggie was baking under the supervision of the Thief and the Brigadier, and the Turk, as usual, had used too many spices …

  Now they were all together, around the pies and around the Christmas tree, and Bartholomew was wondering how it was possible that there could be so much happiness at one time … it even frightened him.

  “For your information,” announced Bartholomew, famous for his encyclopedic knowledge, “according to the Vietnamese calendar, this is the Year of the Cat!”

  Everyone then tried to catch Basil the Dark to install him in the place of honor. The Duchess stroked the cat, and Forceps stroked the cat, and Bartie the Youngest of Them All stroked the cat, and Bartholomew the Younger stroked the cat, and Maggie stroked the cat, and the Queen Mother stroked the cat. Bartholomew the King had no place to stick his hand in, since everyone was stroking the cat. Forceps stroked the cat, thinking he was stroking the Duchess’s hand, not knowing that he was in fact stroking the hand of the Queen Mother, who thought that her dear son Bartholomew was stroking her hand, and Bartholomew the Younger stroked the cat, thinking that he was stroking Maggie’s hand, and in fact stroked Forceps’s large paw, and the cat had long before run off, and Maggie … Where was Maggie? Bartholomew suddenly felt that someone was gently ruffling his hair, but it wasn’t his mother, and certainly not the Duchess … Bartholomew smiled happily, and then a new wave of irrevocability and despair swept over him, and he quietly slipped out from under the caresses, as thoug
h he had forgotten something, as though he had to go to his study, and there to lock it from the inside.

  He sat in his study, sobbing softly: “Why, Lord?”

  The Youngest, the Younger, his mother, the Duchess, Forceps, the Thief, Maggie … You’re getting old, Bartholomew. Your shoulders are sagging under the burden of authority. You’re tired. You’re just tired, Bartholomew. It happens to everyone … Who will carry this weight after you? Whose right hand will bear this orb?

  Bartholomew threw a glance at it, and could not take it all in. It was infinite and eternal, from A to Z …

  When the world had already been created, and the firmament was in place, and the watery depths, and the sky, and the stars, and the grass had been sown, and the trees had been planted, and the fish had been let loose into the sea, and the beasts were in the woods, and the birds in the heavens, and the beetles and the spiders were in the leaves and grasses—not to mention the viper and the mosquito and the cockroach—when man was already walking upon the Earth, when he had lived through his golden childhood, and his bronze youth, and his iron maturity … when he had already carved and painted and sung and written everything he could … when he had plowed and battled, raised up heroes and thrown down tyrants … when this world, finally, was finished, up to today, and no other day … when, orderly as grenadiers, chest-to-chest, shoulder-to-shoulder, their leather creaking, glinting with fresh gold, all the volumes of the Encyclopedia arranged themselves on the shelves in the only possible order—from A to Z—no one but Bartholomew would be inspecting the parade.

  Like a generalissimo, like a peasant, like the Creator; and if not the Creator, then at least hand in hand with him. They would walk together, only the two of them able to understand each other. They walk solemnly, looking about them with a lordly gaze: what a House! Here they’re cleaning up the wood chips, there they’re fortifying a plank. Here they allow a forgotten fly to take flight, there they sow some neglected grass … Bartholomew is proud to be on such good terms with the Creator and with Creation: what elegance, what might! These were his feelings about the culmination of the volumes. The Creator chuckles to Himself: ah, humans. How did they manage to jumble it all up, to throw it all into one heap: a flower, a soldier, a pebble, a rare tropical disease, a ballerina, a jackal, a locknut? Persephone, Pheasant, Pi, Portugal … What a monument to vanity is the Encyclopedia! What practical man would not laugh, beholding this greedy, unruly pile that goes by the name of human knowledge? For the Creator is, besides everything else, a pragmatist.