The Symmetry Teacher (7 page)

“On my way down I came across a strange contraption that vaguely resembled a reflecting telescope. It was blocking my path. I clambered up its trusses, slid down a short flight of steps, and came to a stop when I hit the mirror. It reflected the very same bay, the same shore, the same sea, but my companions were already walking along, farther down the shore. I realized I really had to hurry to catch up, turned away from the mirror, looking for a passage leading out of the contraption, and stumbled across another mirror. I started to run, searching for an exit, but everywhere there were mirrors blocking my path. I kept rushing about and running into them, until I noticed with horror that I was circling around and around in one spot that was lined with mirrors. I was immured in a prism of mirrors.

“I woke up with a sense of panic, thinking that I had been left behind and would never catch up, and then I saw Dika. She kissed me, and congratulated me. Why? I had forgotten everything. She had read the novel. ‘It’s wonderful.’

“What a blockhead I was! I had forgotten about everything. I slapped myself on the forehead, saw that I was already dressed, and, without washing, ran down to the post office. There was a telegram for me from Helen. She wrote that she had waited for me the whole day, then left, and that I shouldn’t write her anymore. When I reread the first telegram, I realized I had mixed up the dates, that in my impatience had gone to meet her a day earlier than she was to arrive. Thus, she had been waiting for me all the next day, while I was finishing my novel … For some reason I resigned myself quite calmly to the loss, telling myself that she wasn’t the real one anyway, and hadn’t even resembled her very closely. I rubbed my chin—it was overgrown with three-day stubble. Have you ever noticed that when you write through the night your beard grows twice as fast? It was positively improper to appear in public like that—now I understood the perplexity on the face of the postmistress. I set off for the nearest barbershop.

“Not paying attention to anything around me, I simply plunked down in an empty chair, threw back my head, and closed my eyes. ‘Are you asleep?’ a gentle voice said. I opened my eyes—I had lost track of whichever dream I was now in. There in front of me was a mirror. Well, no wonder, it was a barbershop! But at the same instant I was so unnerved by it, it was so unexpected, that I couldn’t fathom it. In the mirror I saw a crumpled, unshaven face that seemed to belong to a stranger. And this strange face reminded me very urgently of someone. Everyone has experienced this exasperating tickle of incomplete recollection. All of this happened, mind you, in the first fraction of a second, which was pulverized by the second; for, to the right, above my head, hovered HER face. Not once more, not all over again—because this one matched the original completely. It was an exact replica. And since nothing can match something completely, it could only have been HER.

“Two things confirmed this beyond the shadow of a doubt. First, my own face. Talk about an expression! It was just like the one in the photograph. Second, when I shifted my gaze away from my own likeness, I saw that both of us were being reflected from the back, in the mirror behind us. The mirror that we were facing revealed a regressive series of reflections. This was my morning dream! A dream—come true. Prophetic. I looked at her. She was smiling brightly and tenderly, almost laughing. I only had to turn my head to the right to see her in the flesh! My neck grew stiff, my heart was pounding, I couldn’t take my eyes off her reflection for fear she would disappear.

“It didn’t disappear—it changed before my eyes: it smiled, looked amazed, perplexed … It came to life! I heard my neck crunch as I turned to her—she didn’t disappear. I can’t say what I felt at that moment. Relief? Devastation? Joy? Disappointment? Freedom?… That was it, I felt freedom. We were surrounded by mirrors, repeating hundreds of times, one inside the other, an endless chain into eternity. Our reflections laughed, because we laughed. At first I was moved to laugh by the very word ‘freedom’; and she, for some reason, laughed in response. Perhaps she really did find it amusing. I laughed at myself, she laughed at me, the mirrors laughed at both of us. Well, so what if she was wearing a white robe instead of a dress? She was a hairdresser! So it wasn’t a store, but a barbershop. So what? A barbershop is a kind of store. It wasn’t a shopwindow, but a mirror. So what? It’s still a reflection. Both these arguments led to a fresh bout of laughter. The photograph matched like a parody. But what was a parody of what? I doesn’t matter, I thought with relief. There’s a third corroboration here: she’s the third. The magic of the number three was self-evident. I burst out laughing one last time, and it seemed to me that she responded to me with laughter that was not only cheerful, but happy. That meant that it was not just me laughing at myself, but her laughing at me—WE were laughing! Together.

“No, her name was not Helen. That would have been too uncanny. Then she might as well have been called Calypso. What was her name? Have I forgetten it? Her boss gave her permission to leave, and we took off for the country. I don’t think we conversed about anything at all—we were as happy and playful as children. We swam and ran about naked, chasing after each other like we were in Eden, like Adam and Eve. That’s it! Her name was Eve. Definitely. Or was it…?

“I had never felt so comfortable with anyone before. And never would again (I know that now). We didn’t have a penny to our names. We didn’t have to live by the sweat of our brow, though: her numerous admirers supported us. No, of course not! I wasn’t her pimp. Perhaps it wasn’t very proper, but believe me, it was absolutely pure. In Italian jargon there is even a word for it:
dinamo
. And so we hoodwinked others. She would make plans with someone, saying that she wanted to drink and was absolutely famished. The admirer rolled up in a car packed with wines and delicacies. She set the table, lit candles—and then I made my presence known. She was terribly embarrassed, took me off to one side and whispered to me guiltily (the admirer didn’t know what she said). Then she took the admirer aside and whispered to him in secret. (I knew what she was saying: he’s just a boy, a greenhorn—Italian blood. And the most persuasive argument: I had promised to marry her; but the admirer hadn’t.) Then we sat down to dinner together.

“No one is as obliging as the man next in line to his predecessor, or the deceiver to the deceived. It was very amusing to watch. At first I would sulk and scowl, but I didn’t play the part to the end. I was too hungry. You should have seen how courteously I was served—you can’t find a better waiter than a happy rival! He also regaled me with conversation to dispel any awkwardness … The longer I remained silent (my mouth was full), the more he talked, trying indirectly to convince me I wasn’t a cuckold. Oh, it was the sweetest sort of vaudeville! Such delicate word choice, it was like dancing between knives. I would eat my fill, then fall into a sulk. The rival left at the first opportunity, usually without even tasting his own offerings—and we fell into one another’s embrace.

“I must admit, they were pleasant people, and I wasn’t at all jealous of her past. (Funny how I fell into the same logic as my rivals.) They seemed to acknowledge us as a couple. Only one of them saw through us—and we became friends with him, since we all liked each other so much. Fat, bald, lively, he perspired constantly. He had a strange profession: he was a master of ceremonies. He was always on the move. Prone to boasting, he never demanded that we believe him. A good man … There was only one thing he kept insisting on—he said he was a close friend of Charlie Chaplin’s, which he tried to prove by fishing around in an abyss of tattered receipts and documents. In the end, he never found the calling card. So we didn’t believe him; and he was genuinely upset.

“I don’t know how many days passed—probably as many days as there were admirers. We started on a Sunday, that much I know for sure. Either the admirers grew fewer, or the days grew longer. Suddenly I had a dream about the novel. A new ending. A new version. My hero, before he went to commit ‘the deed,’ after he had paid all his debts and destroyed his receipts, after he had carefully washed, shaved, and strapped on the grenades … Just then, right before the banquet, he goes to discharge one more duty. He goes to say goodbye to the only person on Earth who wasn’t indifferent to him: naturally, to the woman who is devoted to him. (You have already guessed that my solitary avenger, who considers himself very callous and unfeeling, is secretly very sentimental—but the one does not exclude the other.) He enacts a scene in which he takes leave of her forever, confesses to his own heartlessness, says that he has the right, etc., and then, won over by the honesty and persuasiveness of his arguments, she finally believes him—this is it, this is the end—and sets him free. And when he decides not to blow himself up, when he has flung his burned-out lightbulbs into the dark expanse of ocean, he ends up, finally and absolutely, alone. He has nowhere to go. He no longer even has a home. He has sold it. He doesn’t even have money: he gave it all away. What need would he have for money after blowing himself up? He has no one to turn to. He has no relatives, and he has just parted ways forever with the only woman who could put up with him. His soul is gone, but he still has a body. And so, having wandered the whole night through, shivering and hungry, he finds himself standing at the abandoned woman’s door, unable to decide whether or not to ring the bell. Suddenly the door opens of its own accord. She is not at all surprised that he has returned. She expected him. Dinner is still warm …

“I thought I had returned to pick up the manuscript. How much time had passed? Three days? Three years? I felt my face blazing with fire, I was covered in perspiration. It wasn’t shame, or pain, or fear, or pangs of conscience, or repentance … It was … There are no words for the sense of irreparable damage I felt, and felt I had caused. ‘Dika!’ I screamed, and started running.

“The lock didn’t fit the key, the door opened in the wrong direction … and there was no Dika. Everything was pristine and empty. It was more empty than when Dika simply wasn’t home. The parrot was gone, too. The cage was empty—that was it. Three days? Three years? I groped around on the table, searching for a note. The blinds were pulled, and there was no light to see by. My hand couldn’t find the switch … Finally, there was light. The note shook my hands, the lines veered past my gaze. I put it back on the table, on the exact spot where it had lain, and, gripping the edge to steady myself, I made out the words:
Jacko flew away. I went to look for him. The porridge is on the stove. Love, E
. This should have reassured me, but it didn’t. ‘Three days? Three years?’ I mumbled, circling the room. I brushed up against a pile of books and knocked them over. They spilled and spilled, and scattered about like oatmeal flakes. ‘Porridge!’ I exclaimed, and rushed over to the stove. The porridge was still warm! It couldn’t have stayed warm for three days, much less three years. Time contracted violently, like a living thing, like a heart. I should have felt reassured by all of this, but I didn’t. Time contracted to today, to this moment, to a point, and then stopped, like a heart. A needle, finer than the sliver of an instant, pierced my heart like time. I closed my eyes and imagined I saw the chair, the one from our first night, with a pile of folded clothes on it, like the clothes of one recently deceased. I opened my eyes in alarm—the chair was empty. And, still, my heart wasn’t beating.

“Then I rushed like a madman in the direction of the Zoological Gardens. Why the zoo? I don’t really know how to explain it. I was certain she was there, that’s all. It was only later that I was able to imagine how it must have been … How she waited and waited for me … How she forgot to lock the cage … How it grew stuffy in the room and she opened the window … How suddenly, with the ineluctability of insight, she understood that I was gone and wasn’t coming back, understood because Jacko had flown away … How she rushed after the parrot, as though rushing in pursuit of me … How she dashed through the streets, crying, ‘Jacko! Jacko! Have you seen my parrot?’

“What came next? An automobile? A streetcar? ‘No! No!’ I screamed as I ran. The conjecture gripped me so suddenly that I was absolutely certain, just as she had been when she realized in her despair: Of course, Jacko had flown away to find his OWN! Where else? So she ran, joyfully, almost flying, gasping with happiness that he was there, in the zoo. Where else could he have gone…?

“For the hundredth time she combed the Zoological Gardens—oh, that overpopulated desert where there was no Jacko! ‘My dear! My dear! Please come back!’ she called. But he wasn’t there. His absence seemed to grow. Little fool! What a little fool you are, Dika! You can’t find him; he can only return to you. He’s sure to return! He’s flying home already … Dika! It’s me! I’ve come after you … Where are you? Dika wasn’t there. Suddenly I saw a crowd, a small crowd, on the edge of the park where the chamois were, and after that the ape house … I made my way toward them. Most likely the little fool ran first of all to the parrots. Of course there was no Jacko there. Or, rather, there were hundreds, but none of them answered to her call, or else all of them would at once. But just at that moment, several zookeepers ran by in a panic with nets and boathooks, as though a fire had broken out. No doubt they’re after my Jacko, thought crazy Dika, and she dashed off after them.

“I tore off in pursuit of the invisible Dika. You can see into the future more quickly at a run. The crowd parted silently to let me pass. A doctor in a white coat stood there, smoking indifferently. Next to him stood one of the zookeepers—in a gray uniform, with an inconsolable monkey in her arms. On a stretcher lay … No! Never! What do you mean? You’re out of your mind … Dika! Wake up! It’s me, I’m here … I made it!

“She had raced right behind the people with nets and boathooks. No one tried to stop her, either because they were too distracted by other matters, or because they took her for a fellow zookeeper, a novice, in their panic. Straight toward Dika, with a shriek, hurtled a monkey—a little chimpanzee, just a babe in arms. Tame, and used to being lavished with caresses … Why did he choose her out of all the others? She so wanted a child. The little chimpanzee so wanted to be saved. Who else would save him? Everyone else scattered helter-skelter to avoid him, as though they were running from the plague or a leper. They knew what was happening. Dika didn’t know. Even if she had known, would she really have jumped aside, turned away from that little tyke hurtling toward her with its terrified shrieks and yowls, desperate for help, for salvation? At the last minute, the little chimpanzee leapt. He flew like a cannonball at breakneck speed straight toward Dika. She didn’t see that behind it, stretching out in a transparent gray thread, something else was flying through the air … Like a goalkeeper, Dika caught the warm, living ball of terror. The little monkey, sobbing and howling, threw its arms around her neck and pressed itself to her, trembling uncontrollably … And the gray unseen thing fell short of its goal and plopped down at her feet with a naked gray thud … and began twining itself around her. And the little monkey kept whimpering and clasping her neck, covering her with kisses. That was her last embrace on this Earth.”