The Symmetry Teacher: A Novel Page 8

  In addition to these two pleasures, not entirely comprehensible to us, he also had an attachment to the commerce of Crotchety Joe, who lived up to his name. The fact was that everyone settled their debts for Gummi’s labor through Carmen. Only Crotchety Joe paid Gummi “in kind.” Gummi chopped enough firewood for him to last him till the twentieth century. Crotchety Joe paid Gummi back with pictures and postcards from the newspaper and magazine kiosk he ran at the station.

  Gummi, who had no work to do on this particular day, had been loafing around the station since morning. Crotchety Joe, whose firewood was already piled up to the sky, but who had a soft spot for Gummi, notwithstanding his own nickname, couldn’t refuse him a stack of pictures—stars of the Broadway stage. But presenting them to him for nothing didn’t seem right, either. For this reason he found it necessary to repeat the joke about the Moon three times, enjoying Gummi’s discomfiture, and to reward him just one more time with a harmless cuff on the noggin (which Gummi did not resent). After this, he could satisfy his unspent kindness and present Gummi with the stack of postcards as something well earned.

  Gummi resisted the urge to examine the pictures straightaway. Hiding them in his pocket, he deferred the main pleasure for later and went to see off the train to Cincinnati. He laughed at the steam engine. All the non-local people had already left, and the ones who remained on the platform didn’t interest him. He sidled off, then gingerly removed the photographs from his pocket. After he had looked at the first two, however, he realized that this place was not quiet and deserted enough for beholding something so beautiful, standing there casually as he was. So, demonstrating admirable restraint, he stuffed the whole packet back into his pocket, without shuffling through them or peeking at the others.

  When he had made sure that they were all safely tucked away, he raised his eyes and met those of Dr. Davin, who was staring at him intently. He didn’t yet know this was Dr. Davin. The doctor led a secluded existence and seldom ventured out of his yellow castle into Taunus. It was clearly the first time Gummi had seen this person, but strangely enough there was something vaguely familiar about him. Gummi was surprised that all the new people had not gone away on the train, that one still remained. This person looked at him attentively, intelligently, and kindly. Gummi easily distinguished this gaze from the others, because everyone else, with the exception, perhaps, of Carmen, looked at him in the same way, which was very different. He was struck by the way this person looked at him, and it turned something inside him upside down. He felt like drawing close to him and nuzzling his chest. This person was not laughing at him, nor had he any inclination to laugh. Gummi understood this instinctively. This man looked at him with an attentiveness that was dearer to him than caresses. Never before in Taunus had Gummi seen such a handsome and noble gentleman. As is often the case with idiots, Gummi had a very refined aesthetic sensibility, and the appearance of this gentleman, especially the corner of his handkerchief peeping neatly out of his breast pocket, made a deep impression on him. He was filled with absolute trust.

  “Good day,” Gummi said politely. When he said this, his face did not crumple up into the usual accordion. Neither did he wince or wink.

  Davin looked at the placid face, in which only an expression of unparalleled trust betrayed simplemindedness. The doctor did not consider himself to be a sentimental man (that was perhaps the reason he was) but caught himself watching this face with pleasure. His own face seemed to grow more mellow upon seeing Gummi; it shook off the solid, stern beauty it wore like a mask, and found itself again, after a long absence. Gummi appeared to him to be an elderly boy.

  Gummi greeted him, and regarded him steadily.

  “Good day,” said the doctor. “Allow me to introduce myself. Dr. Robert Davin.” And he extended his hand.

  “Gummi,” said Gummi, and touched the doctor’s hand in confusion, unable to take his eyes off the snow-white cuffs and the cufflinks in the shape of little golden birds.

  “Please excuse me for taking the liberty to approach you like this,” the doctor said. “But you were just examining something extremely interesting.”

  “You like them, too?” Gummi said happily. “Want me to show them to you? I haven’t looked at them yet myself,” he said in a mumble, rummaging around in his pocket. The postcards, as though to spite him, kept getting stuck. He was unable to remove them, but he was no longer afraid of crushing them, for the doctor said, “I’d very much like that.” He moved closer, bending over Gummi’s shoulder from his own greater height. Gummi finally managed to extricate the packet.

  The doctor, a man who moved in the best circles, had probably never had the opportunity to see such brazen vulgarity before. The tawdry chromolithographs showed faces that were coarse and depraved, tired, and equine. Lifted legs, in black stockings, cascades, flounces; smiles as seductive as dried sweat … The doctor looked politely at Gummi. Such a heated, holy ecstasy lit up his face that the doctor felt somewhat unwell, a slight dizziness. Again he turned his gaze to the pictures, and saw something completely different. In each of the faces Davin read an unfulfilled dream, a primordial purity. Not a drop of smut clung to them; only weariness, the fatigue of hope. The doctor saw them through Gummi’s eyes and was taken by surprise by a notion that seemed absurd to his lofty and irreproachable mind—that he himself was the one who saw the vulgarity, that the capacity to perceive it lay in him. He looked at Gummi with the delight of a scientist after a successful laboratory experiment: such a capacity for love he had never witnessed before in anyone.

  “Heavens!” the doctor said to himself. “What kind of sin could a person like this possibly have on his soul? None, except, perhaps…” But even that sin, of such an innocent variety, was out of the question, he realized at once.

  He stood there in rapt admiration of Gummi’s purity and beauty. The elderly boy grew younger by the minute, illumined by the beauty his eyes feasted on. Gummi lingered for a long time over one portrait. It was by far the least provocative image of all those he had examined: a homely face, plain and not too bright, seemingly unsuited for the stage—mediocrity not cut out for theatrical wickedness. Gummi sighed rapturously. “Do you like it?” he asked. “Very much,” said the doctor in all sincerity. His heart sang. He loved Joy again. He was seized with a feeling of exhilaration. He noticed that the air around him had become more transparent, revealing cleaner lines and more vibrant colors. Of course, it’s autumn again, Davin realized. The world rushed along, rapid and precise, like an image, and again ended up in the same place. The world returned again and again, without ceasing, and escaped the notice of awareness for only a fraction of a second, so that it could be itself, unburdened by cognition and drab egotistical reflections. Davin drank it in like the rarest, most ineffable, water—like water that was more than water.

  Most likely Paradise, too, is blessed with no special marvels other than streams, groves, and skies, he thought. But what streams, groves, and skies! My God! And the town—the town! For the first time he became aware of the town’s layout and situation, and realized, too, that they were very pleasing.

  They walked out together from under the overhang. Standing on the little promontory of the railroad platform, they saw the town wreathed and whorled in mist, still chilly and not quite awake yet; they saw how it curled itself up into a ball in the bend of Cool Palm River. There were clouds floating in the water, as though they were running away from a laundress who had dropped them into the river. Way over there, on that little bridge … She really is rinsing laundry … My God, how clear it all is! Even the train that had just left, way off in the distance. And, closer, the throng of red brick, becalmed by green crowns of trees just starting to turn pale, dust at the end of the road, cowbells modestly ringing out the good news. With what equanimity, what elegant simplicity, everything has settled down and arranged itself; it has no need to conceal, to hide, to muffle itself up. Suddenly it seemed to Davin that he had to hurry to love, because … such love … soon … woul
d never again … be.

  He took out a cigarette case, his fingers trembling. Gummi was reflected in the polished lid, and Davin, recollecting himself, offered him a cigarette.

  While Gummi, touched and flattered, kneaded the cigarette with an unpracticed hand, strewing tobacco around, Davin came to his senses abruptly. The town had lost its radiance and was overlaid with a dull gray film. It was a different train, because it was going in the other direction; a garbage can, tipped over on its side, disgorged its abundance … Damnation, I forgot!… Davin tried to recall that cardinal thought that had dawned on him when he was seeing off his departing betrothed. It seemed the idea had followed Joy into the distance, leaving no trace. What was it again? Feeling, thought … no, no connection … Drat! It was imperative that he remember it—without it, he couldn’t continue his work.

  Mental activity is nothing other, and cannot be anything other, than the distribution of movement, originating in external impressions, between the cells of the cerebral cortex. The words “soul,” “spirit,” “sensation,” “will,” and “life” do not refer to essences, nor to actual things, but only to a quality, an ability, or an activity of a living substance or result of the activity of substances that are based on material forms of existence.

  Dr. Davin reread and then crossed out what he had written, skewering the page with his pen. He didn’t tear it up or throw it in the wastebasket, however. He leaned back in his chair, rubbed his face wearily, thus wiping something off his face—something weak and angry—and stared out the window. Mountains of firewood were growing up around Gummi, and new logs were flying merrily through the air like little birds. At this hour, the sun illuminated the yellow gaiety of the freshly cut wood as though it were shining from within, as though it were burning with the anticipation of its eventual combustion. How neat and precise its death is, Davin thought. For it is already dead … Evolution is connected with permission to oneself, with the dissolution of the aesthetic principle. How foolish it is to say, “What an ugly tree has taken root there.” The tree’s nobility is obvious: it is devoted to its place of birth, it leaves no excrement … No, no! To the capital! To Europe! Davin howled to himself in alarm. I’ll lose my mind here! The provinces … Who would have thought that it’s not the absence of theater premieres, not the stagnation, but this … This hypnosis, or whatever one might want to call it. Happiness—of all the nonsense! What a meaningless category! And I, a scientist, whose sound reason … How can such a word come out of my mouth—“happiness”! The provinces are … happiness is the provinces. The provinces are anti-science. They’re blurry features, the inane smile playing on Gummi’s face … Gummi—now that’s the embodiment of the provinces.

  Why am I suddenly so tired? It seemed that today my soul had finally found some repose. For the first time, perhaps, I allowed it to rest, but it is so fatigued. Why? Perhaps for the first time I let it be? And it became overtired, like babies from the fresh air, like convalescents when the sunlight streams through the window. My untrained, frail, infantile soul. What, am I still saying the word “soul”? Davin laughed out loud. I have water on the brain! Sentimentality has displaced sanity. Could it be that sentimentality is actually an absence of education, a lack of exercise of the soul?… Damnation, damnation!

  He went over to the window and flung it open. He was greeted by the smell of freshly chopped wood and the cool evening, a scent slightly redolent of wine—autumn again … Behind the heaps of wood, only Gummi’s foolish head was visible. It appeared and disappeared in concert with the ax. Gummi was singing, and by attending closely, Dr. Davin was able to make out the words.

  Viewing the land

  from a wooden Moon

  I see a maiden

  like the Moon from the back.

  One of them can’t see

  another one who sees

  them both. But she sees only

  half the Moon.

  Oo, Oo, Oo …

  He sang this sad little ditty with lively gusto, refuting whatever idea one might, with great effort, extract from it. The doctor grinned, and his envy faded. I can’t truly envy Gummi for how easily his firewood flies when my words are so constrained, he thought. These are certainly two different spheres of activity.

  Dear Joy, he wrote.

  I am consumed by new thoughts that will overturn the state of contemporary psychiatry. Does this not mean that the new foundations of psychiatry are now being laid? I think that if we submit our practice to the sacred individual analysis of each separate case, science would fall apart into the sum of all these individual cases, one to every life. It is only a crudeness of approach, monetary rewards, practical mediocrity, and the practitioner’s negligence that lead to the generalization and grouping of psyches according to the most approximate and rough-hewn symptoms and signs. Besides the exercise of criminal justice or a guardianship function in the case of obvious pathologies (which we carry out in a far from Christian manner), one must admit that our science has no right to treat people so. No one has the right to try to cure a soul except for those who love and have souls themselves,

  he continued, submitting the delicacy and purity of these ideas to the benevolent judgment of Joy.

  We are capable of destroying a primitive ideal, but are not capable of erecting in its stead a more capacious one that would include what we have ruined. If a person were paid money for what is characteristic of him, and not for those distortions and aberrations by which he accommodates himself to success, the prime minister and great scholar would experience the comfort of their places, and so their happiness, like Gummi out there chopping wood. If everyone, having discovered his inmost secret wish, could be allowed to engage in the simple pastime that made him happy, the world would descend into idiocy and a golden age would reign on Earth. It is only due to the fear of loneliness that people are not all mad—and they are all mad because they accept the conventionality of social existence while failing to examine it in their minds. The therapy of real work is possible only in Paradise. The only explanation for what I as a person have done is that it is “peculiar-to-me”; but this peculiarity can be ascribed to me by myself alone. Otherwise, why is it so difficult for me, why does it take such effort, to do all those things I consider it not only my duty but also my vocation to do? Only because other people are doing things just as uncharacteristic of them in a worse manner than I? But doesn’t this mean that they are simply more normal than I am in their inability to act uncharacteristically with enthusiasm, that they, the loafers and hangers-on, are closer to Gummi in this sense, truer to their own natures, even though they refrain from coercing those natures? The inertia of the philistine is natural. And the clarification of the world, that higher “naturalness” that I justify through my purported genius, is vain poppycock, depraved nothingness.

  He reread what he had written, and was surprised by it. “What a poetaster I’ve become!” he said, and frowned in chagrin. “What drivel! I’ve become an A-1 bumpkin. How shameful … No, Joy is right. We’re leaving. To someplace in Europe, if only to St. Petersburg. How, in my wildest dreams, could I ever have supposed I’d experience a creative breakthrough here, that isolation and solitude, the removal of all distractions, would be conducive to my work? Balderdash! Outside the small circle of those who take an interest in my work, all my efforts are senseless and truly futile … Back! Albeit to Monsieur Charcot, and his harebrained douche…”

  * * *

  Finally, Gummi’s good-natured character had delivered him happiness. Life wasn’t all about caressing logs, after all. Now he had a why, a whom, and a for-whose-sake—not to mention a where and a wherefore. His life had acquired a purpose, as they say. He was able to share his loneliness, thereby halving it. He was happy.

  He didn’t notice himself how, from the first time he accompanied Dr. Davin from the station to the doctor’s yellow house, he managed to tell him everything: his whole life, everything he knew, and even everything he thought about. This surprised him, too. E
ven more surprising was how quickly he recounted it all, how small his own life was—like a newborn’s. He felt stunned, and his jaw dropped when, halfway down the road, he caught up with the present moment in his story, and the two synced up: here he was, walking with the doctor down this very road … And that was where his story ended. It was crowned with success. He shook his head, laughing at himself, and closed his mouth.

  The doctor took an interest in all that Gummi had to say. He believed him implicitly. Why, otherwise, would he have begun asking him so many questions?

  Truly, the case fascinated Davin. He explained the ease of interaction, the novelty and unexpectedness of his own thoughts and insights in Gummi’s presence, in purely professional terms. He didn’t know how to explain it otherwise, and the sense that it was simply and inexplicably pleasant to be in his company mounted, until the cumulative vagueness of it all suddenly irritated him, and he was surprised at himself. What was wrong with him? On what was he wasting his precious genius? But here his thought turned back on itself, drawn by the good nature and ingenuousness of his interlocutor, and was reborn before he was able to understand it—a feeling of exuberance and joy. And the conversation flowed on.

  He had never been able to discover anything about Gummi’s past. Gummi himself seemed sincerely baffled about it. He didn’t even know his exact age. He was not much older, but certainly no younger, than Dr. Davin. Of this span of years, he could remember only the part of it he had spent in this small city of Taunus. But how to account for the rest of the time?… Gummi’s eyes grew wide from strain, as though he saw something in front of him, but this something was so unutterable that words had yet to be found for it. His own words, at times smooth and mellifluous, at times even eloquent, tangled into a ball, crumpled, melted, and turned into a characteristic idiotic mush. All that Davin was able to gather from Gummi’s strained mumbling was that he had spent his whole previous life lying down, rolled up like an embryo in some sort of large membrane, through which the sky was always visible and was never obscured by anything. Sometimes Gummi said he was swaddled; sometimes he said that he had lain on something like a bed, a sofa, with his eyes open, under a transparent bell jar without a roof.