The Symmetry Teacher (39 page)

Even now the revolver was in mint condition, as though no time at all had passed. Urbino put the end of it in his mouth and ran his tongue over it. A Russian kiss, he thought with a crooked smile. But pulling the trigger was no easier than pressing the damn button.

Now it seemed easier to press the keys of the typewriter. Urbino strode over to the desk and grabbed a piece of paper from the stack, intending to write at least the title page, though he considered this to be symptomatic of true graphomania, if not impotence. He inserted the clean page into the typewriter; and while he was rotating the platen, the name of the author emerged, then the name of the novel, already furnished with epigraphs. Edgar Poe and the Chinese thinker were there. Both of them. The Poe—well, let it stay. But the Chinese epigraph was about a butterfly in a philosopher’s dream. What tripe! Urbino was indignant, and snatched the page out.

He reached for another. Put it in. Twirled the platen.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Curiosity already outweighed fear. He spun the platen like the cylinder of a revolver.

Object number one. REVOLVER.

Object number two …

After that, everything went according to the list, like an inventory of expenditures.

When he came to the Icelandic sweater, he even pinched himself in it, just to make sure.

Your average sweater. Very thick, unaccountably warm. Urbino shivered.

He forgot about the table of contents. When had he found time to compile all of this?

More of the page emerged, with the heading “Favorite Swedish Spectacles.”

They were round, like the ones Joyce wore. He had left them on the little foldout table in a train, together with a book by Joyce, which he had fallen asleep trying to read. He had almost missed his station.

The plot of the book was so vast that the table of contents didn’t fit onto one page. Urbino reached for the next page.

An absurd page. It had only one line:

Final Object. FATHER’S RAZOR.

He glanced cautiously at the small stack of pages. The top one was already written and was called “Revolver.” Urbino’s thumb riffled through the stack of pages like a flip-book, then released it with a snap, like shuffling a deck of cards or running a finger over a piano keyboard. All the pages had been filled.

He glanced at the last one, the one titled “Father’s Razor.”

There was also just one line on it:

“It’s in your room, lying in the same place you left it.”

He looked up at the heap in the corner—it wasn’t there. He looked at the other corner, where he kept the things he was trying to forget—everything was in its place.

He had long known that everything one describes disappears from life exactly as it does from time.

Since that assemblage of lost things has vanished, it means the novel is written, he thought.

Nothing surprised Urbino anymore. That’s how it was. Recently, he hadn’t been able to see what was right in front of him. “Where’s the salt?” He looked for it high and low, and it was there all along, under his very nose.

Where he had looked for it to begin with.

“I’m still not mad,” Urbino Vanoski said firmly to himself. “Since I found the razor, it follows that the novel is written. And if the novel is written, the razor is lying in its place at home. The journalist is waiting for me. I can tell him I finished my novel. But to be absolutely certain about this, I must first make sure the razor really is in the place where it belongs.”

He tamped down the stack, evened up the edges, thrust it under his arm, and got up to leave.

There was no exit. They were smooth and unbroken, all four walls.

His frantic gaze darted every which way, then caught sight of another button. It was exactly like the one above his bed, but it was too high up for him to reach.

He couldn’t reach it when he tried jumping up to it, either. He only fell down helplessly, twisting his ankle and scrabbling to keep hold of the scattering pages of the manuscript. He had always hated this, manuscripts that slipped out of his grasp and scattered their contents. Somehow, all the pages had managed to switch places. He crawled around on his hands and knees and gathered this unruly Medusa of a manuscript, eventually making his way to the desk. The desk was empty except for the typewriter, the necktie, and the revolver. What a still life it made, though!

Urbino plunked the stack back down on the desk.

He felt injured that he hadn’t written anything. “Formula of a Crevice” was one of the favorite last stories he hadn’t written. This was the moment. The time had come, Urbino thought, inspired. He pressed Shift Lock to type out the title—but the lock didn’t work. He had to hold the key down while typing out with his free hand:

FORMULA OF A CRE … ICE

The letter
V
snapped off. Such an unassuming letter, but so necessary when the time came! From neglect … Metal fatigue … Metal gets weary, just like letters.

Urbino struggled to remember the story. In it, two people had planned to meet, and they both arrived at the designated place but passed by one another in time. A crevice opened up in space, and the streetcar, in which the father of the main character and his lover were riding together, plunged into it.

The streetcar fell into a canal and sank, with all its passengers. The two of them were the only ones who survived. They had found an air bubble in the end of the streetcar that jutted out above the water. The lover lost her mind; but the hero of the story was beholden to the father for his own birth. And the hero now asks himself: Who am I, after all? Oh, that was a story that begged to be written! But the
V
 …

The meaning of the letter was contained in its very outline. Urbino left the letter out to write it in later by hand. He heard a slight crack, and two lines began to crawl along the wall, as though tracing out the fugitive
V
, but lying on its side. Moreover, the crack started at the base of the letter, at the point where it seemed to end. Then the lines diverged slantwise, ever wider apart.

Urbino was alarmed and tried aiming at the button with the revolver. No, I’ll never hit it, he thought soberly, leaning back in his chair. But there was no back! It was a stool. I can reach it on the stool!

The revolver or the stool? Now that’s a choice. He grinned the merry grin of a gallows bird. He went to his corner of shame to put the revolver back where it belonged. After he had made his choice, however, he stood in the corner for a time, lost in reverie. He smiled. Then, as cautiously as a child, he wrapped the weapon in the necktie and laid it on the stolen banknotes. He sighed, and reached out for his aunt’s bottle. He took a gulp. The undiluted spirits ignited inside him, filling his chest with fire and his soul with an impalpable beatitude that seemed to draw ever nearer.

Now he had the strength to pull the stool over, aligning it with the button. He clambered up on it. His hand stretched out toward the button—it was easily within reach. Still, he hesitated. He discovered that in his left hand he was still holding the bottle. Should I take a drink now or after? he wondered, surprised at the lucidity of his thoughts. But
after
might be too late. He smiled a wan smile, swaying on the stool. Or was the stool swaying under him?

His legs went numb—the stool felt more like a part of his body than his own legs did. The lights began to dim, quite unexpectedly starting from the floor, from which something like smoke or mist was rising.

First it covered the stool, and then his shoes disappeared. Urbino couldn’t figure out what there was under his feet, what height he had reached. Now he could only hold on to the button … But how do you hold a
button
? You can only press it: either that was the way out, or there was none at all.

To drink or to press? I’ll do both at the same time. The decision dazzled him.

Holding the bottle to his mouth like the muzzle of a revolver, he touched the button and licked the rim of the bottle. The burn was already more pleasant, like a kiss,
and he pressed it.

“It was just a light switch,” he managed to think, at the same instant that darkness swallowed him, before he became all-engulfing light.

… and he heard music. The music enfolded him like silence, like light, and then like a din and a chiming … But his tongue wouldn’t obey him. He stirred the remnants of it, like a stump.

“EUR … KA!” he seemed to scream, plunging into the embrace of silence and light.

*   *   *

“
He’s one tenacious son of a gun!” the Guardian Angel said to the Angel of Names.

“Not so much a son of a gun as a warrior, judging by his name. He won the last battle, after all.”

“He didn’t win it so much as not lose it.”

“You talk like it was a game of billiards.”

“Perhaps. Is
The Sky Above Troy
still hanging over his bed?”

“
Where else … would it be?”

“You know, I kind of got used to him,” the captain and the lieutenant said to each other without speaking.

“He could have hung on…”

“Yes, he wanted to write about all seven deadly sins…”

“He didn’t get that far.”

“What do you think he lacked?”

“Some of them he didn’t know, others he didn’t understand.”

“He got stuck on that novel
The Diagnosis.”

“What’s that one about?”

“About how the author is hunting for a word, and the word is hunting for him. This word is the fatal diagnosis.”

“And what is the diagnosis?”

“Diencephalic syndrome.”

“What nonsense! Where did he stumble upon that one? Those cretins just lump together everything they don’t understand into a diagnosis like that. Or do you think he died from autosuggestive disorder…?”

“What would that be?”

“He fell out of time. He abandoned it.”

“Like in Dante? ‘Stripped of the ability to see the future’?”

“On the contrary, he
could
see the future. It’s the present that he had trouble discerning, except in dreams.”

“Indeed, he was weary of the present.”

“But it is only by depicting the future that one can catch up with the present. For it is always slightly ahead, albeit right under one’s nose. The gaze itself, by definition, is directed forward.”

“I see you have taken to reading him.”

“I have only been following his Name. You follow his fate. So what’s the diagnosis?”

“Pride. Mixed genesis.”

“Yes … He was something of a Pole.”

“What does being a Pole have to do with it?”

“Poles say: There’s no worse devil than one who believes in God.”

“Not bad. I always did believe that a witty saying freed one from the truth.”

“Yes, woe to the one touched by temptation.”

“Still, he doesn’t look like a devil.”

“Are you sure that he was able to tell an angel from a devil?”

“It’s hard for people: they’re trained to believe in halos and wings, horns and cloven hooves; but devils are hard to come by these days.”

“Don’t sell yourself short! How many times did you save him?”

“I haven’t counted. And then it’s not me but you. I only made sure his fate corresponded to his name.”

“He had risen to the rank of sergeant…”

“Yes, he was already prepared for anything.”

“Do you think they’ll grant him a reunion?”

“It’s against the rules for us to take his side. We have already exceeded our mandates.”

“Who will fall to our lot now? An uneducated, run-of-the-mill scoundrel with the rank of private?”

“I don’t think we’ll end up in the same unit.”

“Too bad, we made a good team.”

“Well, goodbye then…” The captain and the lieutenant shook hands firmly.

“Do you think it’s a tie?”

“You think he might reenlist?”

“Fortune will sort it out.”

“Well, then, maybe it’s still

NOT THE END

POSTSCRIPT

“
I am the only person in the world who might have been able to shed light on the mysterious death of Urbino Vanoski
,” I announced at the very beginning. I was wrong.

Darkness.

Of course, I came to him at the appointed day and time, precisely as we had agreed. I rang, but he didn’t answer. After shuffling around in the lobby for about an hour, I took the risk of walking upstairs and knocking. There was no answer, so I pushed the door open. It was unlocked, but the room was empty and surprisingly neat. His bed had been made up, almost like a military cot. On the pillow lay a starched shirt with a very unusual necktie and a Gillette razor. This was, so to speak, the head. The body was a typed manuscript of a novel called
Disappearing Objects
. In the place where the button had been, there was now a gaping hole.

I leaned over to peer inside: there was a palpable darkness that seemed to stretch out to infinity. Absolute darkness. Pitch black. A person couldn’t have crawled through it. Me, I didn’t dare put my finger inside, let alone a hand.

Darkness. He left only books and a black hole behind. How had he put it somewhere, about literature being the most waste-free industry? “A handful of dust in the bonfire of the vanities…” I think that’s what it was. He had a son, too … Unverified, though. Was he from Dika or from Lili? Well, who else? Never mind. He’ll show up to claim his inheritance. He had a strange name, like a dog: Bibo.

I scooped up the manuscript and grabbed the necktie without any hesitation; and, with a bit of hesitation, I grabbed the razor, too. My eyes sought the photograph of the Trojan cloud—it was gone.