The Symmetry Teacher (23 page)

“I don’t believe it,” Lili said, wearily. “We already tried Venus, but it didn’t fit.”

“Not Venus; it’s Nevus—a birthmark. You see, Russians are very superstitious. They believe in all manner of signs and portents.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I have a Slavist friend who’s helping me.”

“Fine. We’ll put two of them on hold. There’s just one left.”

“Which one?”

“That planet.”

“What a cretin your crossword author is!”

At this point they began discussing the character of the author of the crossword. It became a kind of game for them to conjure up his personality. He was so ambitious and enthusiastic that he signed with a highly unusual name: Goreslav Kitsey.

Urbino suspected he was a Pole.

They fashioned a portrait something like this: he was rotund, bald, wore a sort of Tyrolean hat and checkered knee breeches, with a ski pole instead of a proper cane—some kind of half-Scotsman, half-Bavarian from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A widower. He kept canaries. He was a great beer lover, that was certain. They even started to like him.

“I could write some poems about him and his crosswords.”

“By all means, write! Don’t you think he must write poetry, too?”

“It’s possible.” Urbino scowled.

He went up to his berth to work. In fact, he collapsed onto yesterday’s mattress, still lightly scented with Lili, and fell asleep on the first line: “Move your mind, stir your heart, lift your pen…”

*   *   *

He was awoken by Lili.

“I discovered a new planet for you.”

“All the same, it’s food I want. I’m starved.”

“Dinner is ready. Here’s your planet with spaghetti.”

“Hey, you’re already rhyming!” Urbino said with his mouth full. “So, what’s the planet?”

“Earth!” Lili said.

“Earth!” Urbino laughed. “The word came up so many times in our conversation and we couldn’t see it. He’s simply a king, this crossword man. He pulls words out of thin air. Now you see them, now you don’t. The world is his playground … Or should I say Earth. Maybe that’s why we didn’t guess it right away. There’s no earth under our feet here—you said so yourself. We’re on the bottom of the sea. Still, we do have another letter—
a
.”

“So what do we get?”

“In what sense?”

“The time-pusher. Think.”

“I’m stuffed. I have no more appetite for words. Fine, fine, just give me some coffee. Let’s see…”

Urbino gulped down his coffee and examined the bottom of the cup.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“The word!”

“The past. A time-pusher: what propels time forward is—the past. Your crossword man is a genius!”

And Urbino fell into a brown study.

“Don’t look so dejected. You can’t be the only genius, you know.”

“A genius, eh? Well, how about this one: ‘Earth and the past crossed paths’—that’s already a line, isn’t it?”

“Then write it down.”

“I already have.”

“Then read it.”

“Not yet … Later.”

“I see here some sort of rain cloud … and lightning … Like a change in the weather,” Lili muttered over the evening’s cup.

“And I already began writing about yesterday’s ‘cup’ …”

“Recite it.”

“Well, it’s just a rough draft.”

“Recite it anyway.”

“It’s called ‘The Death of the Bride.’”

“The bride? Let me hear it!”

1. ROUGH DRAFT

but death, as death, is easy,

and life cannot be mended …

river … hand … soft …

a piano without strings or keys.

(the river is dubious)

a hand without strings or keys …

lifeless hand …

but quicksilver is alive … (it can’t be alloyed)

and death, like quicksilver, lives—

the piano has no keys

and life is dead, like you—

you steer a rudder without a boat.

here’s a broken thermometer

and a small mirror in the hand—

blind quicksilver trembles,

like a sunspot on the ceiling …

(not “at” but “on” the ceiling)

the piano leads to a scale,

like a beam, the string vibrates,

and there is quicksilver in the amalgam.

one line is alive—

in an unclear drama:

“but death, as death, is easy” …

bright. round. and—amen.

2. WORD-FOR-WORD TRANSLATION

so, did he die?

(no one could think this—yet everyone did.)

a small plain daughter-mirror

she raised to her lips,

so that no one would begin first.

     she looked into it

     and

     was reflected

     in a dispersing cloud

     and saw

     herself—

     but she did not recognize

     herself.

no, it wasn’t a mirror she raised to her lips …

it was his life that looked in the mirror for an instant

and was reflected in it simply

as a girl,

sure that no one, not ever, would pass by,

and that it was not possible

to be younger and more charming,

so …

     she only glances, almost unwillingly, to see

     that everything is so

     (and could not be otherwise).—

     her shoulder flashes in it

     like a beam

     (or the chance flight of a butterfly),

     and so flies past,

     hardly touching its own reflection

     leaving the shadow of its transparent movement

     in the air,

     like a falling veil,

     that she weaves with her every moment

     (each—a wreath,

     together—a shroud) …

even now,

when no one was in the room

and there was no one to reflect off,

even for her,

     because she was gone already—

     there was only mist where she had just been,

     because she had only just left,

     and she can be found now in the garden

     (a note made by the breeze of the curtain

     was left in the room saying this,

     an unread book

     and a nibbled apple)—

     she was there already

     among the trees, under the stars

     outlined

     like cuneiform

     on birch bark—

          thus

          she was not reflected

          but

          abandoned

               the mirror …

no, the mirror was not touched by his breath

(or the breeze of her motion…)

          it’s the mirror

          they brought to the lips

          it’s his life

          for an instant

          reflected in the mirror

          and,

          recognizing himself

          recognizing

          that it was she

          who left him

          with the same ease

          as

          breath on a mirror.

My God!

how brief!

This time Lili’s fortune-telling was very accurate and came true immediately: at first she grew gloomy as a storm cloud, then her gentle eyes flashed lightning. And there was a peal of thunder.

“You still love her!”

Wearied by the thought of trying to reproduce the contents of the rambling and lengthy dialogue that follows (it spans two or three pages), I will get right down to the gist of it. In fact, there wasn’t much substance to it, anyway.

“I can’t drink any more coffee,” Lili said. “These cups…” She was about to fling one to the floor but thought better of it and stayed her hand. “They are driving me mad! Do you want a drink?”

Urbino did.

To his delight, it turned out that she had half a bottle of whiskey. She preferred a glass of white wine.

Urbino was so relieved at the possibility of a truce that he quickly became tipsy, and at her sympathetic prompting, he told her without holding anything back how things had been between himself and Dika. He didn’t notice how carried away he was by his confession.

“Is that all?” Lili said evenly.

“That’s all. It was a sunny spring day, there were many birds, like there are here.”

“Like here?”

“Yes. Children were playing on the vacant lot in brightly colored jackets. I read a strange word on a fence:
BIRDY
. I made up a poem.”

“Read it!”

Urbino sobered up a bit and pondered, like he was trying to remember. Should he?

“I’m very drunk.”

Lili pursed her lips.

It was windy and birdy

Children blossomed in dust

Morning shining and dirty

Building Future from Past

We were left in the Present

With yesterday’s ties

To forget the last lesson:

How to die.
*

“Birdy? Is that what you called her? The way you call me Little Fish!”

“No, of course not! Her name was Eurydika, and I called her Dika.”

*   *   *

That night was a sleepless one. She didn’t come up to his attic, and he tossed and turned in expectation.

At dawn he didn’t find her on the shore they’d visited the day before.

There was no one on the whole island—as if the island wasn’t there anymore, either.

Although he felt he might lose his mind over these matters of the heart, hunger got the better of him and he decided to visit the stateroom on his own.

3. Marleen’s Island

A very different person, the complete antithesis, met him at breakfast.

“Ah, the guest! You’re late.”

There could be no doubt that they were twins, although she looked significantly younger. With an almost clean-shaven head, excessively made-up, she was a blowsy brunette in a canvas robe, with a neckpiece like a dog collar. An unkempt little girl.

This was Marleen.

“Are you looking for Lili? You won’t find her. She weighed anchor this morning.”

“Why all of a sudden?”

“There was a storm warning on the radio. She was in a hurry to make it before the typhoon.”

“Make it for what?”

“First, to stock up. And second, to see a friend.”

“What kind of friend?” Urbino couldn’t help asking.

“Just a friend. Like most people have. Did you think you were the only one in her life?”

Urbino started hating the sister immediately. His love for Lili flared up in him with all the power of jealousy.

“So, did she let you out?”

“Of course not. I gnawed through the chain.” And with a monstrous smile, Marleen bared a row of blackened teeth.

The day was uncommonly still, as if a storm really was in the offing.

*   *   *

“Just don’t read me any poems,” Marleen said categorically. “They’re terrible. Especially those off-the-cuff numbers.”

“And I quite liked yours…”

“What, she showed you mine? The traitor!”

“What surprises me is that she showed you mine. When did she find time?”

“I was eavesdropping.” Marleen laughed raucously.

“How was that even possible, when you were locked up in the hold?”

“I have a special pipe, like a ninja.”

“What do you mean, a ninja?”

“You really don’t know?”

Marleen launched into an ecstatic account of this remarkable sect, to which she herself seemed to belong—according to Urbino, at least.

“And you already know that I can breathe underwater and escape from any chains. Hey, don’t be offended. Your poems aren’t all that bad. Only the impromptu one was atrocious.”

“Which impromptu one?”

“The one you dedicated to her.”

“Which of the two?”

“You dedicated two of them to her?”

“Well, yes. Although you wouldn’t have been able to overhear one of them.”

“I’m sure it was terrible, too.”

*   *   *

Strangely enough, the more he missed Lili, the more he enjoyed Marleen’s company. Being with her was simpler, more natural, as though she were not Lili’s sister but his own. That’s because I’m not trying to make her like me, he realized.

“I wish I had a sister, instead of the brother,” he said. “Life would be much easier.”

“If I only had a brother…” Marleen sighed. “One like you, in fact.”

“What would you do with him?”

“We could drink together, for instance.”

“Would that make me the girlfriend?” Urbino said.

“One more shot, and then—off to bed!” Marleen resolved.

He didn’t understand what happened next. Didn’t understand, or couldn’t remember?

“That’s just my variation. An overture. A variation on a theme from the overture to
The Magic Flute
. No, Mozart was just the beginning. Now this is going to be my flute. I am merely the performer, I just blow it.”

“You’re a true virtuoso!” Urbino cried. “I bow down before your rendition!”

And he fell to his knees at the slightest touch of her finger.

“And now, Wagner!” she said. “Which overture will you perform? I want
The Golden Rhine
 … No, even better, the whole
Ring of the Nibelung
 … Yes, just like that!”

“Listen, why do you shave it?”

“So you can see my tattoo … My turn:
The Flight of the Valkyries
!”

And she thrust her tattoo in front of his eyes.

But he saw nothing—he drowned.

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.