The Symmetry Teacher: A Novel Read online

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Epigraph

  A Note from Andrei Bitov

  Part I

  View of the Sky Above Troy

  O: Number or Letter?

  The End of the Sentence

  Part II

  The Absentminded Word

  The Last Case of Letters

  Posthumous Notes of the Tristram Club

  The Battle of Alphabetica

  Part III

  Emergency Call

  Postscript

  The Flight of the Bumblebee

  Frontispiece

  Also by Andrei Bitov

  Copyright

  THE

  SYMMETRY

  TEACHER

  A Novel-Echo

  Translated from a foreign tongue by Andrei Bitov

  Retranslated into English by Polly Gannon

  HOLY TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 2011, 2:14 P.M.

  VISBY, SWEDEN

  Close your unholy lips,

  And attend the priest’s words as he reads from the Book:

  What did He say on the Tuesday?

  He told them all to get lost,

  And render unto Caesar what was his, and to the Pharisees what was theirs.

  Clean the vial from within

  Instead of polishing the sides—thus He spake.

  Then will I believe you.

  —Lauren, 2006

  We believe that the translation of Tristram Shandy, like that of Shakespeare, will remain unfinished. We live in a time when the most unusual works are attempted but do not succeed.

  —Voltaire on Laurence Sterne

  “I believe, señor,” said Rebecca, “that you have studied the workings of the human heart inside out, and that geometry is the truest path to happiness.”

  —Jan Potocki, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa

  It was by dint of hearing a great many such sneers at faith that Brother Juniper became convinced that the world’s time had come for proof, tabulated proof …

  —Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

  A NOTE FROM ANDREI BITOV

  I suppose I ought to forestall the reader’s surprise at what follows by providing an explanation. Long ago, in my pre-literary youth, during my remote “geological” past, I came across a book entitled The Teacher of Symmetry by an obscure English author. I took it along with me on a lengthy geological expedition, with the salutary goal of self-education. Whether due to laziness, overexertion, or the withering glances of my companions, however, I never opened a page the entire summer.

  Suddenly, it was autumn. The weather had turned foul, our helicopter was delayed, and we were waiting for the skies to clear. All our reading matter had been read and reread, all our games had been played and replayed. To my misfortune, someone recalled having seen me with a book in a foreign language, and even though I did not fully understand either the language or the subject, it nevertheless fell to my lot to recount its contents amid the unremitting rain.

  Without a dictionary, hazarding guesses to the point of fabrication, I jotted it all down in a notebook—one story a day. Like Scheherazade. My ordeal was over when our helicopter was finally able to land. I was glad to surrender both the book and my torment to the oblivion of that sodden taiga.

  About ten years later, something extraordinary, something that beggared belief, happened to me. I found that only a certain story from that forgotten book could offer the solace and support I needed. The story rose to the surface of my consciousness with such clarity and force it seemed I had read it just the day before. Today I can no longer recall the extraordinary event in my own life that prompted my memory of the story.

  I rummaged in my attic through a flotsam of stray oars and skis for the manuscript of my desultory “translation.” As I began remembering some of the other stories in the book, the book thus recounted took firm hold of my imagination. I then vowed that I would find the original text—but I had forgotten the name of the author. There was something non-English about it. Perhaps Dutch, or even Japanese? No, I just couldn’t remember. I tried asking the experts, dredging up the contents for them, but to no avail. No one had ever heard of it.* Years have passed since that sudden mental “reread” of the book, and still I cannot put it out of my head. Alas, I never found it again.

  To cope with the importunity of the phantom book (I hadn’t thought it all up myself, after all!), I began little by little to “translate” it, not as one translates texts but as one applies waterslide decals. There was, to be sure, conjecture involved. (Let the passages that falter somewhat be mine alone.) After I had recovered a few of them, I forgot the original once and for all (as I had forgotten that unspeakable event in my own life). There was no making heads or tails of it anymore. Now, instead of recollections about a lost book, I was burdened with the responsibility for the manuscripts it had spawned. And so I decided to rid myself of them, too, and thus to forget about the whole business.

  I knew nothing of the author’s biography. Perhaps he had endowed his protagonist (Urbino Vanoski), also a writer, with some features of his own life? Born in the early 1900s. Random, mixed origins (Polish, Italian, and a dash of Japanese). Belated entry into the language of his future literary oeuvre†—hence, certain linguistic quirks and a style that is somewhat recherché. For example, the author perceived the complex system of tenses in English in a very literal manner, and ascribed each fragment of text to a corresponding temporal category, organizing his titles according to a table he had devised.

  I managed to pen it down:

  Altering the names of works is the first liberty a translator is permitted. And this was the first thing I did:

  That was just a diversion. Russian grammar resists such peculiarities—which are, by definition, untranslatable.

  Now the only thing that remained for me to do was to translate the elusive book into Russian. I offer my efforts to the sophisticated reader with trepidation, taking recourse in a passage from my favorite author:

  However this may be, in anticipation of my celebrated quarto I intend to share several excerpts from my notebook with you. I should like to warn you in advance that it is rife with theft: for every page of my own it happens that there are sometimes ten pages of pure translation, and then as many pages again of extracts. It would be pointless to grace the pages with references to the sources from which I have purloined. Some of the works you would never be able to find; others you would not wish to read. The books are manifold—some sensible, some senseless: medical, mathematical, philosophical, and some falling into none of the aforementioned categories. I make a deep bow in advance to all those victims of my plunder; few in our time are capable of such candor. [from V. F. Odoevsky, Letters to Countess E.P.R. on Apparitions, Superstitious Fears, Deceived Emotions, Magic, Cabbalism, Alchemy, and Other Mysteries]

  Each chapter of The Teacher may be read as a stand-alone piece. The reader is free to take the chapters on their own merits as individual stories; but if one manages to read all of them in sequence and hears an echo carrying over from each story to the next, from any one story to any other, one will have discovered the echo’s source—and will be reading instead a novel, not merely a collection of stories.

  1971, Rybachy settlement (formerly Rossitten), Russia

  P.S. 2008

  The 1970s were upon us. In Russia, no on
e heard anything, saw anything, or traveled anywhere outside the country. Myself included. This was why my companions were eager to sit through my oral account of the book, however inexactly I quoted from it, thinking: Well, how about that? The world is full of peculiar things. I would ask the modern reader to respect the translator’s labors to the same degree and in the same manner that the translator respects the efforts of the reader: from the first word to the last.

  The author of this translation would like to express his gratitude to the places where it came into being:

  The Rybachy Biological Station, Russian Academy of Sciences (formerly Rossitten), Kaliningrad Oblast, 1969–1975;

  Peredelkino House of the Arts, 1967–1977;

  The village of Goluzino in the Antropovsky region of the Kostroma Oblast, 1978–1985;

  Petropavlovskaya Street and Dostoevsky Street in Leningrad, 1986;

  New York and Princeton, U.S.A., 1995–1997;

  The Baltic Centre, the island of Gotland, Sweden, 2007;

  Hotel Alpengut, Elmau, Bavaria, 2008.

  I would also like to thank Zuger Kulturstiftung Landis & Gyr, Zug, Switzerland, who offered me material support for completing my translation.

  Andrei Bitov

  PART I

  VIEW OF THE SKY ABOVE TROY

  (Future in the Past)

  A flash of lightning,

  A drop of dew,

  An apparition—

  A thought about oneself.

  —Prince Ikkyū

  I am the only person in the world who might have been able to shed light on the mysterious death of Urbino Vanoski. Alas, it is not within my power. What makes a legend a legend is its immutability.

  This is the way he died, or, rather, was reborn in the minds of readers and critics—in complete obscurity, ignorant of his own fame, and poor as a church mouse (I would not resort to this idiom if it were not literally true: according to legend, he lived out his final days as a churchwarden, selling devotional candles). His grave is unmarked, and this is only fitting. Obscurity during one’s lifetime fans the flames of posthumous glory, and the nonexistent gravestone gives off a scorching heat. For him, the literary prize for lifetime achievement remains forever posthumous. Having established a foundation in his honor, we—Vanoski scholars all—began to meet annually on the Adriatic Sea. After each session, we publish a volume of our proceedings that we ourselves read, leaving no trace of our efforts which might be of any benefit to potential geniuses languishing as churchwardens.

  Vanoski, an obscure author from the 1930s, enjoyed a veritable boom at the end of the sixties. This was due solely to the efforts of the permanent chairman of the foundation, V. Van-Boek. I would be banished in disgrace from the close-knit ranks of my colleagues if I so much as raised an eyebrow about the veracity of the myth he has so carefully constructed. No one would believe me. I would be refuted categorically, and accused of fabrication. And then where would I take my annual vacation?

  Incidentally, Urbino Vanoski was not a churchwarden. He was an elevator operator, and died (or perhaps he is not dead at all?) fully aware of his sudden fame and his Grand Prize. Fully aware. For it was I who found him before his death (or not before, whatever the case may be). I was the last one to see him, to pass on the happy news to him. And I was the last one to interview him. It was not even so much an interview as a confession. I do not know why he chose me for this task—perhaps because he disliked me the moment he laid eyes on me. One is well advised not to believe everything that was revealed in the course of this confession. I have grounds to suspect that his mind was no longer absolutely sound. When I asked him how he felt about receiving such a high prize, he answered that he expected a higher one. “Which might that be?” I asked him. “Death,” he said. He became particularly irate when I asked about what he was working on just then. “Thank God I have never been a worker!” he spluttered. I tried to rectify matters by asking what he was writing. “I’m not. I’m painting! Landscapes. Why do you bother to ask me what I’m writing, anyway, if you haven’t read what has already been written?” I took this to mean that there was an unpublished book in the works. “Don’t get your hopes up,” he broke in. “I know, of course, that every decent writer is supposed to leave a respectable posthumous work in his wake.” I couldn’t resist the temptation to swoop down on this morsel. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact there is,” he said reluctantly. “There is an unfinished novel. It’s called Life Without Us … or Buried Alive? I don’t remember the name myself! Besides, it’s unlikely I’ll finish it … Life will.”

  “Is it about life in the beyond?” I said, pondering.

  “About life here and now,” he said, angered. “How can one possibly know which side is beyond, and which is here?”

  It is likely that I looked somewhat deflated. He regarded me as though I were a child, and again his eyes blazed.

  “There is one novel, perhaps nearly finished, but I can’t find it. I’m not surprised, however, for it is called Disappearing Objects. It’s about—well, no. I won’t try to retell it. That would be ‘tasteless impropriety.’

  “Have you ever clean forgotten a word? You know the word, but your tongue is incapable of catching hold of it … You say that happens to everyone? But then you remember the word eventually. What if you forget it for all time, and can never recover it? I was once in the possession of such a word—a key word. I recalled it on one occasion, but at that very moment I was caught in a storm and forgot it once and for all. To this very day. It is, of course, significant that it was that particular word, and that I was the one who forgot it. Have you ever observed how sunflowers remember the sun, so they won’t forget it before morning?” The old man’s eyes glittered. “Perhaps you would like me to paint you a landscape? Very well, then. I will. It will be a landscape that no one apart from the ancient Greeks has ever seen.”

  * * *

  “Such sunflower fields must surely have existed in ancient Greece. Dika and I saw them when we were together in Italy. No, not the ancient one,” he said, pointing to his calf. “Right there, in Umbria. There was an enormous sunflower field. We passed it on our way up into the mountains to watch the sunrise and sunset. Everyone knows that sunflowers always turn toward the sun. They drink in every little ray. They’ve even copied it onto their faces, like children. We walked past them, smiling, and they smiled back at us. At sunset, however, they looked more organized, more preoccupied, like a regiment of soldiers waiting for orders. It seemed they wanted to catch the very last drop of sunlight. Then, suddenly, the whole regiment would turn away from the sun, showing us the backs of their cleanly shaven heads. Uncanny. Did they feel insulted by the sun, as though it had done them some injury?

  “I was only able to explain it to myself in this way: They were preparing to greet the first ray, and not to see off the last. They use the energy of the setting sun to turn and face the rising sun. They must derive more benefit from the light of the sun as it is coming up. Dika rejected my theory. Unlike me, she knew a thing or two about biology. But she was always more drawn to fauna, whereas I was attracted by flora. I spoke to her of sunflowers, she spoke to me of goats. ‘Why,’ she said, ‘do they always go up a slope in a single direction? It must be awkward, always the same way. They never turn around.’ I explained to her that she was referring to a special breed, a mountain goat. The right legs are shorter than the left ones. ‘But what happens when they come back down?’ Dika fretted about them. ‘They’ll topple over!’ ‘They just go round in a circle their whole lives’ was the solution I offered her. And she believed me. She was so very gullible.”

  The old man suddenly grew stern. He continued.

  “You see, life is a piece of writing that the living never read to the end. But writing is alive, too! Every line contains the secret of the line that follows. So it is in life—the next moment is always To Be Announced, always in abeyance. We’re not sunflowers, we’re mountain goats. In America she wondered about how the Americans found enoug
h turkey legs to go around on Thanksgiving Day. I told her that the Americans had bred a special four-legged turkey to prevent a shortfall, and this satisfied her.” He blew his nose and mopped his teary eyes.

  I have reason to suspect that he was no longer in his right mind. Could I later publish all this nonsense? I could. It would cause a sensation, at the very least. I was young, I dreamed of fame. Fortunately, one seasoned reporter dissuaded me, warning me that I would lose my job if I did. And, really, who was I? My sensational article was sure to founder on the cliff of the myth that had grown up around Vanoski. Sometimes it seems to me that the myth had shattered the poor elevator operator himself. As if his own elevator had snapped off its cables. It could so easily have crushed him. But, then again, who would have wanted to take his life?

  Perhaps the other story would be better after all—in the church, selling votive candles, cherishing no thoughts of grandeur? An easy, light-filled death.

  * * *

  “So it’s nothing out of the ordinary when some stranger—fat, bald, sweaty—sits down next to you in the Garden Park. In fact, he doesn’t so much sit down as flop down beside you, with a ‘Phew! Made it, for once.’ He composes himself, airing himself out, his sweat drying in the April sun, and says, still panting a bit, ‘Now then, Urbino. There isn’t a whole lot I know how to do, but I can show you a photograph of yourself…’ If something like that ever happens to you, as it did to me, don’t register surprise, and don’t give it a moment’s thought. Simply send the gentleman packing. Sending someone packing is always a sound philosophy. It’s the wisdom of dignity. This is something I came to understand only much later. Though despite understanding it, it’s a kind of prowess I have never been able to muster to this day.”

  Here, old Urbino Vanoski heaved a deep sigh, raising his beautiful eyes to mine. Never had I seen a gaze of such directness and such meekness rolled into one. Still, he averted his eyes in consternation the very next moment, lest I think that his philosophy held true for me, as well. Though how could it not? As a correspondent for the Thursday Evening Post and Yesterday’s News, I was interviewing him. We sat in his tiny lair, which was so clean and empty that it felt spacious. The only real piece of furniture was a dilapidated plywood wardrobe.