The Symmetry Teacher (40 page)
Where it had hung, only a dark, unfaded rectangle of wallpaper remained.
The matter of the button was both simpler and more complicated. The proprietor of the little hotel turned out to be a sweet man, and even a reader of Vanoski. He had installed this button, together with a fan and an air vent, so that Urbino could at least have some cool, fresh air. Only he wasn’t responsible for that hole! Dismantling it hadn’t even crossed his mind.
* * *
“Every decent writer is supposed to leave a respectable posthumous work in his wake.” Vanoski spoke these words during our first (and, it turned out, our only) conversation.
I became the discoverer and publisher of
Disappearing Objects
, the book which launched my successful career.
A. T.-B.
THE FLIGHT OF THE BUMBLEBEE
APRIL 25, 2011, 12:00 P.M.
VISBY, SWEDEN
On Easter, the carillon in the church across the way not only rang out the hours but played
great
music, as well. My room was filled with the buzzing of a large creature: a bumblebee flew in through my open window. It was my first bee of the year, and it was enormous. How had it managed to grow so large so quickly? Did it hibernate, I wondered? I knew little about bees, except that when they stung you, you wished they hadn’t. It thudded against the ceiling and walls, looking for a way out. It even flew into the WC. Not finding anything there, it flew back out into the light, where it again found walls and the ceiling. The only place it avoided was my desk, either because it was wary of me or of my ashtray. Which stood to reason: we didn’t smell like a meadow.
Its efforts to escape reminded me of my struggles at the computer. I, too, was desperate for a way out of the predicament I found myself in. I was happy to find a distraction, watching its persistent and futile efforts. You’ll get no sympathy from me, mister. Its powerful buzzing pleased me. The moron was zigzagging in front of the open window. When it got right up to it, it would shy away from it like a frightened horse and continue beating itself against the ceiling and walls, looking for an escape. Apparently, the ceiling was a sky that had suddenly fallen on it.
In desperation, it landed on a yellow square of the ceiling molding, exhausted. Perhaps it was reminded of a daisy. I took a long look at it—it seemed to have slipped into a coma. I went back to the computer, but the fate of the bumblebee already preoccupied me more than my stalled work. I sat for a good fifteen minutes staring at the screen, which had gone to sleep and was now displaying the lunar surface. I felt so lonely on it! Just like a bumblebee.
I’ve got to rescue the poor creature, I thought, and began looking around for something I could capture it with. Now here’s another appropriate use for a manuscript. I grinned, grabbing a sheet of paper.
As soon as I tiptoed up to the bee and reached out to it with the paper, the bee snapped out of its coma and started buzzing its way around the room with renewed vigor. Evidently it had rested and gathered strength, but also hit upon an idea. It had switched its computer on and was now making more frequent forays up to the window, albeit with caution.
I don’t know how it arrived at the decision to struggle through to freedom. It seemed as if it didn’t want to use the same broad highway by which it had entered. Instead, it forced its way out through a narrow, much less convenient chink of the ventilating window.
I was happy for it. Its struggles were so reminiscent of my own poor attempts at writing.
It was a true master class.
The bumblebee had a much harder time of it than I had, writing about it.
It’s much harder for me to find freedom than it was for the bumblebee.
Its buzzing still rang in my ears. I respected it; but it was indifferent to me. A bumblebee, a bee abumble … Bumbling free. Tipsy.
ALSO BY ANDREI BITOV
The Monkey Link
A Captive of the Caucasus
Pushkin House
Life in Windy Weather
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2008, 2014 by Andrei Bitov
Translation copyright © 2014 by Polly Gannon
All rights reserved
Originally published in 2008 in Russian, in slightly different form, by Fortuna El, Moscow, as
Prepodavatel’ simmetrii
English translation originally published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First American edition, 2014
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bitov, Andrei, author.
[Prepodavatel’ simmetrii. English]
The symmetry teacher / Andrei Bitov; translated from the Russian by Polly Gannon.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-374-27351-4 (hardcover)—ISBN 978-0-374-71209-9 (ebook)
I. Gannon, Mary Catherine, 1953– translator. II. Bitov, Andrei. Prepodavatel’ simmetrii. Translation of: III. Title.
PG3479.4.I8 P7413 2014
891.73'44—dc23
2013048088
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Published with the support of the Institute for Literary Translation, Russia