The Symmetry Teacher: A Novel

by Andrei Bitov

  Now he had the strength to pull the stool over, aligning it with the button. He clambered up on it. His hand stretched out toward the button—it was easily within reach. Still, he hesitated. He discovered that in his left hand he was still holding the bottle. Should I take a drink now or after? he wondered, surprised at the lucidity of his thoughts. But after might be too late. He smiled a wan smile, swaying on the stool. Or was the stool swaying under him?

  His legs went numb—the stool felt more like a part of his body than his own legs did. The lights began to dim, quite unexpectedly starting from the floor, from which something like smoke or mist was rising.

  First it covered the stool, and then his shoes disappeared. Urbino couldn’t figure out what there was under his feet, what height he had reached. Now he could only hold on to the button … But how do you hold a button? You can only press it: either that was the way out, or there was none at all.

  To drink or to press? I’ll do both at the same time. The decision dazzled him.

  Holding the bottle to his mouth like the muzzle of a revolver, he touched the button and licked the rim of the bottle. The burn was already more pleasant, like a kiss, and he pressed it.

  “It was just a light switch,” he managed to think, at the same instant that darkness swallowed him, before he became all-engulfing light.

  … and he heard music. The music enfolded him like silence, like light, and then like a din and a chiming … But his tongue wouldn’t obey him. He stirred the remnants of it, like a stump.

  “EUR … KA!” he seemed to scream, plunging into the embrace of silence and light.

  * * *

  “He’s one tenacious son of a gun!” the Guardian Angel said to the Angel of Names.

  “Not so much a son of a gun as a warrior, judging by his name. He won the last battle, after all.”

  “He didn’t win it so much as not lose it.”

  “You talk like it was a game of billiards.”

  “Perhaps. Is The Sky Above Troy still hanging over his bed?”

  “Where else … would it be?”

  “You know, I kind of got used to him,” the captain and the lieutenant said to each other without speaking.

  “He could have hung on…”

  “Yes, he wanted to write about all seven deadly sins…”

  “He didn’t get that far.”

  “What do you think he lacked?”

  “Some of them he didn’t know, others he didn’t understand.”

  “He got stuck on that novel The Diagnosis.”

  “What’s that one about?”

  “About how the author is hunting for a word, and the word is hunting for him. This word is the fatal diagnosis.”

  “And what is the diagnosis?”

  “Diencephalic syndrome.”

  “What nonsense! Where did he stumble upon that one? Those cretins just lump together everything they don’t understand into a diagnosis like that. Or do you think he died from autosuggestive disorder…?”

  “What would that be?”

  “He fell out of time. He abandoned it.”

  “Like in Dante? ‘Stripped of the ability to see the future’?”

  “On the contrary, he could see the future. It’s the present that he had trouble discerning, except in dreams.”

  “Indeed, he was weary of the present.”

  “But it is only by depicting the future that one can catch up with the present. For it is always slightly ahead, albeit right under one’s nose. The gaze itself, by definition, is directed forward.”

  “I see you have taken to reading him.”

  “I have only been following his Name. You follow his fate. So what’s the diagnosis?”

  “Pride. Mixed genesis.”

  “Yes … He was something of a Pole.”

  “What does being a Pole have to do with it?”

  “Poles say: There’s no worse devil than one who believes in God.”

  “Not bad. I always did believe that a witty saying freed one from the truth.”

  “Yes, woe to the one touched by temptation.”

  “Still, he doesn’t look like a devil.”

  “Are you sure that he was able to tell an angel from a devil?”

  “It’s hard for people: they’re trained to believe in halos and wings, horns and cloven hooves; but devils are hard to come by these days.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short! How many times did you save him?”

  “I haven’t counted. And then it’s not me but you. I only made sure his fate corresponded to his name.”

  “He had risen to the rank of sergeant…”

  “Yes, he was already prepared for anything.”

  “Do you think they’ll grant him a reunion?”

  “It’s against the rules for us to take his side. We have already exceeded our mandates.”

  “Who will fall to our lot now? An uneducated, run-of-the-mill scoundrel with the rank of private?”

  “I don’t think we’ll end up in the same unit.”

  “Too bad, we made a good team.”

  “Well, goodbye then…” The captain and the lieutenant shook hands firmly.

  “Do you think it’s a tie?”

  “You think he might reenlist?”

  “Fortune will sort it out.”

  “Well, then, maybe it’s still

  NOT THE END

  POSTSCRIPT

  “I am the only person in the world who might have been able to shed light on the mysterious death of Urbino Vanoski,” I announced at the very beginning. I was wrong.

  Darkness.

  Of course, I came to him at the appointed day and time, precisely as we had agreed. I rang, but he didn’t answer. After shuffling around in the lobby for about an hour, I took the risk of walking upstairs and knocking. There was no answer, so I pushed the door open. It was unlocked, but the room was empty and surprisingly neat. His bed had been made up, almost like a military cot. On the pillow lay a starched shirt with a very unusual necktie and a Gillette razor. This was, so to speak, the head. The body was a typed manuscript of a novel called Disappearing Objects. In the place where the button had been, there was now a gaping hole.

  I leaned over to peer inside: there was a palpable darkness that seemed to stretch out to infinity. Absolute darkness. Pitch black. A person couldn’t have crawled through it. Me, I didn’t dare put my finger inside, let alone a hand.

  Darkness. He left only books and a black hole behind. How had he put it somewhere, about literature being the most waste-free industry? “A handful of dust in the bonfire of the vanities…” I think that’s what it was. He had a son, too … Unverified, though. Was he from Dika or from Lili? Well, who else? Never mind. He’ll show up to claim his inheritance. He had a strange name, like a dog: Bibo.

  I scooped up the manuscript and grabbed the necktie without any hesitation; and, with a bit of hesitation, I grabbed the razor, too. My eyes sought the photograph of the Trojan cloud—it was gone.

  Where it had hung, only a dark, unfaded rectangle of wallpaper remained.

  The matter of the button was both simpler and more complicated. The proprietor of the little hotel turned out to be a sweet man, and even a reader of Vanoski. He had installed this button, together with a fan and an air vent, so that Urbino could at least have some cool, fresh air. Only he wasn’t responsible for that hole! Dismantling it hadn’t even crossed his mind.

  * * *

  “Every decent writer is supposed to leave a respectable posthumous work in his wake.” Vanoski spoke these words during our first (and, it turned out, our only) conversation.

  I became the discoverer and publisher of Disappearing Objects, the book which launched my successful career.

  A. T.-B.

  THE FLIGHT OF THE BUMBLEBEE

  APRIL 25, 2011, 12:00 P.M.

  VISBY, SWEDEN

  On Easter, the carillon in the church across the way not only rang out the hours but played great music, as well. My room was filled with the
buzzing of a large creature: a bumblebee flew in through my open window. It was my first bee of the year, and it was enormous. How had it managed to grow so large so quickly? Did it hibernate, I wondered? I knew little about bees, except that when they stung you, you wished they hadn’t. It thudded against the ceiling and walls, looking for a way out. It even flew into the WC. Not finding anything there, it flew back out into the light, where it again found walls and the ceiling. The only place it avoided was my desk, either because it was wary of me or of my ashtray. Which stood to reason: we didn’t smell like a meadow.

  Its efforts to escape reminded me of my struggles at the computer. I, too, was desperate for a way out of the predicament I found myself in. I was happy to find a distraction, watching its persistent and futile efforts. You’ll get no sympathy from me, mister. Its powerful buzzing pleased me. The moron was zigzagging in front of the open window. When it got right up to it, it would shy away from it like a frightened horse and continue beating itself against the ceiling and walls, looking for an escape. Apparently, the ceiling was a sky that had suddenly fallen on it.

  In desperation, it landed on a yellow square of the ceiling molding, exhausted. Perhaps it was reminded of a daisy. I took a long look at it—it seemed to have slipped into a coma. I went back to the computer, but the fate of the bumblebee already preoccupied me more than my stalled work. I sat for a good fifteen minutes staring at the screen, which had gone to sleep and was now displaying the lunar surface. I felt so lonely on it! Just like a bumblebee.

  I’ve got to rescue the poor creature, I thought, and began looking around for something I could capture it with. Now here’s another appropriate use for a manuscript. I grinned, grabbing a sheet of paper.

  As soon as I tiptoed up to the bee and reached out to it with the paper, the bee snapped out of its coma and started buzzing its way around the room with renewed vigor. Evidently it had rested and gathered strength, but also hit upon an idea. It had switched its computer on and was now making more frequent forays up to the window, albeit with caution.

  I don’t know how it arrived at the decision to struggle through to freedom. It seemed as if it didn’t want to use the same broad highway by which it had entered. Instead, it forced its way out through a narrow, much less convenient chink of the ventilating window.

  I was happy for it. Its struggles were so reminiscent of my own poor attempts at writing.

  It was a true master class.

  The bumblebee had a much harder time of it than I had, writing about it.

  It’s much harder for me to find freedom than it was for the bumblebee.

  Its buzzing still rang in my ears. I respected it; but it was indifferent to me. A bumblebee, a bee abumble … Bumbling free. Tipsy.

  ALSO BY ANDREI BITOV

  The Monkey Link

  A Captive of the Caucasus

  Pushkin House

  Life in Windy Weather

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

  Copyright © 2008, 2014 by Andrei Bitov

  Translation copyright © 2014 by Polly Gannon

  All rights reserved

  Originally published in 2008 in Russian, in slightly different form, by Fortuna El, Moscow, as Prepodavatel’ simmetrii

  English translation originally published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  First American edition, 2014

  eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bitov, Andrei, author.

  [Prepodavatel’ simmetrii. English]

  The symmetry teacher / Andrei Bitov; translated from the Russian by Polly Gannon.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-374-27351-4 (hardcover)—ISBN 978-0-374-71209-9 (ebook)

  I. Gannon, Mary Catherine, 1953– translator. II. Bitov, Andrei. Prepodavatel’ simmetrii. Translation of: III. Title.

  PG3479.4.I8 P7413 2014

  891.73'44—dc23

  2013048088

  www.fsgbooks.com

  www.twitter.com/fsgbooks • www.facebook.com/fsgbooks

  Published with the support of the Institute for Literary Translation, Russia

  * In Washington, D.C., Lord Billington, the director of the Library of Congress, asked me (purely out of politeness, I’m sure) what I was working on. He was tall and thin, and reminded me somewhat of the protagonist of The Teacher. So I blurted out that I was doing a remake of something by an obscure English writer, but that I couldn’t for the life of me find a copy of the original. “Oh,” Lord B. said, “if it was published even once, we are sure to have it in our collection.” When we met at a reception a few days later, he seemed rather abashed to have to tell me that the book didn’t exist. I felt even more awkward. (Andrei Bitov’s note [hereafter: A. B.])

  † Had Tired-Boffin’s contemporary, the future author of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, read him? (A. B.)

  * Herman Melville, in other words (1819–1891). (Translator’s note [hereafter: A. B.])

  † In the years 1904–1905. (A. B.)

  * This is how I am able to date our first meeting to February 14, 1913, after the memorial service for Robert Scott in St. Paul’s. We both attended it, then went to the pub afterwards to “memorize” him (Anton’s term). (Author’s note—A. T.-B.)

  * The Russian words for this, plotnost’, besplotnost’, contain, most appropriately, the English word “plot.” (A. B.)

  † So in Russian, a conclusion (zakliuchenie) is the end of a discourse, and imprisonment (zakliuchenie) is ending up in jail. (A. B.)

  * In Russian, of course, the word for sentence (predlozhenie) means both “proposal, offer” (of a hand; a heart; a drink; etc.) and “a grammatical arrangement of words in a phrase.” (A. B.)

  † In English, a “sentence” can mean both a punishment handed down by a court of law and a grammatical arrangement of words in a phrase. (A. B.)

  * Pososhok—a small stick, or “one for the road” (Russian). (Author’s note.)

  * Tyoo-tyoo—untranslatable, like dao (but recalling an exclamation, like “Poof!” or “Pfft!”). (A. T.-B.)

  * Apparently the author read this as “deep Pferd.” (A. B.)

  * Britannica—not a ship but an unparalleled English encyclopedia founded in 1768. (A. B.)

  † Ivan Ivanovich Polzunov (1728–1766)—Russian inventor of the locomotive, not mentioned in the Britannica. (A. B.)

  * George Stephenson (1781–1848)—Englishman who introduced the locomotive as a means of civilian transport in 1825. (Sir Isaac Newton first put forward this idea in 1680.) (A. B.)

  † Dubinushka—not a weapon (like the Kalashnikov) but a clever Russian folk song. (A. B.)

  * Because Anton writes all three words—“money,” “Manya,” and “mania”—the same way in English, even with the help of Slavists it was difficult to distinguish them in context. (A noteworthy note written by the author himself! A. B.)

  * Some clarification is called for here. This is a subject in the most Western sense of that term. Roald Amundsen (1872–1928), on board his ship the Fram, which was rigged to sail to the North Pole, suddenly, “by a dramatic surprise” (a strange turn of phrase for the Britannica, and containing too many nuances to convey in translation, including the suggestion of a military maneuver) redirected the expedition toward the South Pole (1910–1912) and managed to reach it first. Captain Robert Falcon Scott (1868–1912), with a crew of four, reached the South Pole on January 17, 1912, only to discover that Amundsen had preceded him there. The members of Scott’s team all perished on their return journey home. (A. B.)

  † According to the eyewitness account of Russian writer M. Zoshchenko (1895–1958), who was also a victim of the attack, it did take place. That is already a Russian subject. (A. B.)

  * “TChK”
turned out to mean not “Tobolsk Cheka” (Chrezvychainyj komitet) but “STOP,” or “period” (tochka), the issue which so preoccupied Anton: the end of the sentence must be marked by a period. Just like the draft of a telegram—addressed, very possibly, to the infamous Cheka … (Translator’s conjecture. A. B.)

  † Anton Lukich Omelchenko was born in the settlement of Fathers (Batki) in Poltavshchina in 1883. When he was training racehorses in Vladivostok, he accompanied Lieutenant Bruce to Harbin to select Manchurian horses for Captain Scott. He became part of the expedition crew, met and accompanied those who were setting out to the South Pole, and reached 84 degrees south latitude. After the expedition crew returned to England, he was awarded a medal and a gift by the Queen. He returned to Russia not long before the First World War, and was inducted into the army. During the civil war he fought on the side of the Red Army. Upon his return to his native settlement, he worked as a mailman. He was one of the first to join a collective farm. He died after being struck by lightning in the spring of 1932. (The Mountain Climber’s Handbook, 1972.) (A. B.)

  * Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, perhaps? (“Forehead” in Russian is lob.) In the Britannica he is assigned a fourth of a column, although he is the only Russian who is granted the status of “first.” I never suspected that he was born so early—in 1792! Stephenson had not yet traveled on his locomotive, and Nikolai Ivanovich’s rails already crossed somewhere in infinity! (Translator’s unchecked rejoinder. A. B.)