The Symmetry Teacher (21 page)

The stateroom was very cozy. Everything had been preserved in the condition in which it was originally found. At the same time, there was evidence of a woman’s touch: pots and pans and skillets, scrubbed like the railings on deck, hanging bunches of local herbs … Suddenly he saw a stuffed beast: it looked like a beaver or a hare, with webbed goose’s feet and horns like a goat.

“What the devil is that?”

“An ordinary hare with horns.”

“Are they really found in these parts?”

“Not anymore. They died out. Foundered,” the landlady said, smiling.

“Hmm. Amusing.”

“Not me, it was my sister, Marleen. She’s the punster. Devil take her.”

“They foundered. Just like your ship,” Urbino punned in his turn. “Still, it’s very cozy here.”

“Thanks to Happenen. He was the one who restored everything.”

There was a crash down below, as though something had fallen. What do I care about that fair-haired devil, Urbino thought, bristling. He said:

“I’m confused. Where is this Marleen of yours? Who is Happenen?”

“All right. Let me explain. Marleen is downstairs, where she belongs. She had to be isolated. Did the Baroness really not tell you? Marleen is under her care. We’re twins. No, not the Baroness! Identical, but different. Perhaps because we were raised differently.”

“What do you mean, differently? You both have the same mother and the same father, don’t you?” he said.

The landlady pondered. So did Urbino.

“I didn’t want to go into all of this right away. Apparently the Baroness knows how to maintain professional secrecy … Father left us, and Mother died in childbirth. We were abandoned as babies. The Gypsies took her, and I was raised in a convent. When we reached the age of eighteen, an attorney located us. Our parents had left us a small inheritance. So we were reunited.”

The landlady’s face looked dreamy, or perhaps sorrowful.

“I don’t wish to talk about it anymore. Happenen … It was a training vessel.” Here she lapsed eagerly into an explanation. “He was a midshipman, but like a captain. After the wreck, the cadets who were saved all scattered, but he couldn’t abandon the ship … He’s a skilled carpenter, and managed to adapt it for conditions on dry land, while preserving its romantic marine ambience.”

“It looks absolutely sailworthy. Fine windage,” Urbino quipped, at the same time parading some vestiges of one of his abandoned courses of study.

“‘Windage.’ A pretty word. I’ve never heard it before. Not even in crossword puzzles.”

“Windage is the air resistance of the vessel in full sail. Didn’t your midshipman explain something as simple as that to you? You’re waiting for a tsunami, but your fortress will keel over at the first squall.”

“It’s possible,” the landlady said evenly. “This is a very dangerous spot.”

“How so?”

“It’s not really here at all.”

“??”

“It could disappear at any moment.”

“???”

“This is not really an island. There’s no land underneath us. It’s just the bottom of the sea that has emerged for a time, like the back of a whale. After the last big tsunami, I suppose.”

“And how often does this whale sink back into the water again?”

“Judging by the trees, it hasn’t gone under in at least half a century.”

“And what is the forecast?”

“The meteorologists try to scare us, year in and year out … But my sister and I have lived here a long time. We’re still here.”

“Do you get bored?”

“Not at all. Even when I find my way back to civilization to do errands, I want to return after just one day. And I can’t leave my sister alone for too long.”

“Is your civilization very far away?”

“No need to scoff, Ris. You just came from there! From Taunus.”

Urbino grinned, recalling Taunus: a shop, a pub, the police station, and the post office, all in one building. Plus a moorage.

“Ris? Is that what the Baroness called me in the letter?”

“Isn’t that who you are?”

“Well, yes, I am who I am; but Ris is my pseudonym. I’m Urbino.”

“Interesting.” The landlady’s expression became secretive and romantic. “Then you may call me Lili.”

“And the dog?”

“The dog … Better not confuse her. Just call her Marleen.”

Sounds of rumbling and growling, even the clanking of chains, came from downstairs.

“An island that’s not an island. Is your sister not really a sister? She sounds like a bear.”

“You just about guessed it.” Lili laughed out loud. “It’s the seasonal spring aggravation of her condition. Don’t be alarmed, though, she’s not dangerous. In a week she’ll calm down, and stay like that through summer. She’ll be sitting in front of her radio transmitter day and night.”

“You mean to say she’s also a ham radio operator?”

“Well, you can’t accuse her of not having a broad range of interests. Actually, she was the one who put me in touch with the Baroness about your arrival.”

“So, a radio … But doesn’t anyone ever come here to visit you?”

“They do. But they don’t hold out for too long. They get bored.”

“I already feel like I’ll never want to leave.”

“There was someone like that once. It ended badly, though.”

“What happened?”

“Marleen fell in love with him.”

“What’s so bad about that? Did she eat him up or something?”

“Precisely.”

“What about the bones?”

“She gave them to the dog.”

“The beast!”

“Are you referring to Marleen?”

“No, your dog is quite imposing … What do you call it?”

“That’s her name. Marleen.”

“They have the same name? How do they know who is who?”

“The dog doesn’t understand words, just intonation. Whether you call her ‘dog,’ ‘bitch,’ or ‘Marleen,’ it’s all the same to her. She always knows whether you’re talking to her or to a person.”

“Still, it’s strange … And she doesn’t feel hurt?”

“That we call her by a human name?”

“No, that you call your sister by a dog’s name!”

“Why should she feel offended? She is a dog.”

“Huh?”

“A bitch if there ever was one.”

“But she’s your sister!”

“Ris … I mean, Urbino, do you have a brother?”

“Yes,” Urbino lied without skipping a beat.

“Do you get along?”

“Not much these days.”

“Why is that?”

“He drowned.”

“Oh, dear! How did it happen?”

“It just did.”

My God, why on Earth was he making all this up? He was having fun.

“I’m sorry to hear that. My sister didn’t drown.”

“Is this why you…?”

“She didn’t drown. She tried to drown someone, though.”

“Who?”

“Well, I mean it figuratively. Although he still has a scar. But you saw him yourself.”

“Not Happenen?” Urbino recalled his scar. It couldn’t be anyone else.

Lili fingered her cup with a preoccupied look.

“Shall I tell your fortune?”

“How, by reading the coffee grounds?”

“No need to be snide. The past always works out.”

“Well, all right. Do tell.”

“I see a faraway land … See how the air shimmers in the heat? An animal, perhaps a two-humped one … Were you ever in Arabia? You don’t know Arabic, do you? I don’t know much of it, either. That’s where I learned tasseography, though. With those … what are they called? Oligophrenics? Oligarchs? No, no, not spongers, not pillagers … not dramaturgs … You know, the poorest of the poor, almost primordial … but very kind, very sweet people … and not dromedaries, those are their camels … and definitely not Druids. There aren’t any trees there at all, it’s the Sahara … Who were they again? Dreadnoughts? What, a battleship, you say? Heavens no! I came across it just recently in a crossword. Oh, drat! Now that’s an absentminded word! Oh, it isn’t? Forgetful? Did I say that right? Or just forgettable…”

“No, no! The first one was perfect! It was already poetry.”

He knew the word. It started with a
T.
But something (or someone?) prevented him from saying it out loud. He had been in the Sahara. And, truly, they were very sweet people … Dika had wanted to buy something from them, just out of the goodness of her heart, and the entire throng of them began talking her out of it: “Don’t buy that, don’t buy that! Look at this one, it’s much prettier, and far cheaper!” thrusting God knows what under her nose. Urbino pushed back the memory, and, strangely, the word vanished from his mind the moment he resolved not to say it to Lili. Trilobites? No, those are fossilized remains. The word. One moment it was on the tip of his tongue, and the next moment it was gone. That had never happened to him before—that a word simply evaporated. Like a drop of water in the Sahara.

“So you don’t think I’m such a dimwit? I don’t have much education, and I haven’t chatted with anyone in ever so long. Please excuse me if I misspeak sometimes.”

“Not at all. You are very sensitive to the word.”

“That’s nice to hear from a poet. But that’s Marleen’s domain. She pens verse herself. Take a look.”

“‘And the Angel slipped on his wing’ … Hmm, not bad. Not bad at all,” Urbino muttered.

“What can that she-devil possibly know about angels?”

“‘The branch sways inside the room … if I only knew why—what to ask, and of whom?’
*
Now that’s quite something.”

“I’ll be sure to pass on your favorable opinion to her,” said Lili, pursing her lips.

“I wrote something similar once. I can’t remember it now, though,” Urbino said, warming to the subject. “Something about how, in windless weather, the trees go to sleep at sundown. All their branches shiver before they go still. It happens of its own accord, not in sympathetic movement, the result of some outside force. I was especially struck by a sunflower field…”

“Like van Gogh?”

“He painted individual sunflowers, but this was a whole field, as wide as the horizon. I even made a discovery, only not a single biologist would believe me. On the sunny slope … Well, never mind.”

“Why not?”

“I said it better in a poem.”

“Read it.”

“I’m afraid I’ll mangle it. A decent poet knows all his poems by heart. If you can’t remember it, it means it wasn’t any good. I’m afraid to disgrace myself in front of you.”

“Is that what you really believe, or just what you think?” She blushed and cast her eyes down into his cup. “I see here a very beautiful young woman … She turned away from you, she’s averted her gaze … But how strangely she has turned away! She’s wearing a long, Eastern form of dress, like a sari. Is she Indian? By the way, a camel in the cup has a very specific meaning.”

“How could it fit into the cup? Never mind the camel, let me hear about the Indian woman.” Urbino had already begun to believe in the fortune.

“Were you so much in love?”

“I didn’t have time.”

“But she’s happy now. See? It’s like she’s on a cloud. Like a film set. There, next to her—a tall, respectable sort of fellow. A director, or her husband? And around them are little tykes, like putti. She’s wearing costly jewels. Where is she now?”

“She betrayed me.”

“How could she do that to you?”

“She drowned, along with my brother.”

“I’m sorry. Was she an actress?”

“No, but she looked like one.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

*   *   *

It’s all right … Urbino never imagined he could be so nonchalant.

Having arrived with a heart full of grief on an island of his own choosing, as close to being uninhabited as he could find so as not to disturb that grief, could it be that he had forgotten everything so quickly and easily, that he had slipped so sweetly into oblivion and temptation?

First, Lili had a genuine ear for poetry (for which his own provided the evidence). Second, she was such an adept at tasseography, and he was already eager to begin writing on the subjects that had been generated so arbitrarily and capriciously in the coffee grinds. And, third …

“Let’s make a game of this,” Urbino said, intrigued. “In the evening, you tell my fortune in the cup, and in the morning I’ll bring you a poem inspired by the previous evening’s coffee grinds. I won’t need to make anything up: life itself has given me my next book. Let it be called, accordingly:
Poems from a Coffee Cup
. First, your interpretation, with a picture … I wonder how I could draw it, though? Do you draw? Or perhaps you have a camera?” Urbino’s eyes glittered.

“I can’t draw, and I have no camera, either.” Lili pondered for a moment. “Marleen used to draw, though.”

First, second … Third: Lili was lovely.

Ash-blond hair, a bit over thirty, with dark-brown eyes and a face untouched by anything but a natural suntan, she resembled a slightly faded tea rose. Urbino would not deign to describe her in verse—it wasn’t to his taste, and he had no mind for it. A madrigal had already begun to ripen there, however …

“And can you tell fortunes with tea leaves?” he couldn’t help but ask.

“I probably could, but I don’t know how,” she said with a shrug of her tanned shoulders.

“I can,” Urbino said.

Naturally, they switched to tea.

Urbino swirled around the tea leaves in her empty cup and muttered under his breath. Then he blushed, and blurted out:

Though I don’t read, to my dismay,

like you, the script of coffee grinds,

the dregs of your teacup, I daresay,

(although a monk, I am not blind)

I cannot help but read this day.

And if, till now, I may have pined,

it’s you I dote on, when I pray,

and from my heart, make bold to say:

I’ll give you verses, if I may.

“Well, that was very sweet,” Lili said, nodding in approval. She blushed, too, looking even more like a tea rose. “But let’s put the cups aside. The sun is already setting, and I still have to show you to your berth.”

When they went up on deck, the sun was already disappearing behind the sand dunes.

“I still haven’t gotten a good look at your sea,” Urbino said.

“We must hurry, then, before the sun goes down.”

They disembarked from the beached ship just as the sun hid itself completely behind a dune.