The Symmetry Teacher (6 page)

“But, no, it wasn’t her. I realized this only the next morning, waking up in a strange bed, staring at a strange ceiling. Dressed for travel, she was sitting in an armchair and examining me. I even had the impression that there was a packed suitcase standing in the corner. ‘
Dzie
ń
dobry
,’ she said with an accent.
‘Kawa
[coffee]
?’
Those were the only words she knew in Polish. I drank coffee, she rolled one cigarette after another and smoked them. She was from Holland, and besides her native Dutch knew only German and French. I only knew English and Italian. So we maintained an eloquent silence, as though we knew everything already. The Dutch woman was considerably more beautiful than my Helen, and it was difficult for me to recognize the resemblance that had seemed so obvious to me the day before. She was darker, stronger, with a richer color, I suppose. There was a certain heaviness, a seriousness in her pose and movements. This monumental being smoldered and percolated, smoking in silence. Her enormous eyes were in the habit of changing color, or, rather, light—they lived a stormy life of their own amidst her bulk; for, suddenly, I was able to see her. She was huge! She sat there like a cast-iron kettlebell. Her eyes grew dark in their depths; she kissed me awkwardly and said in broken English: ‘I want be your husband.’ I burst out laughing, and she was offended. I promised to come visit her in Amsterdam.

“But I was already in a hurry, rushing back home to my Dika. Begone, phantom!

“For this was the devil’s plan—to plunge me into incessant expectation, deprive me of real time … that is to say, real happiness. And Dika was the most real happiness to me. How delighted she was at my return! How glad I was … Here, under the blows and the dull thud of scholarship falling all around us, through the parrot’s shrieks of ‘The coffee’s boiling over! The coffee’s boiling over!’ amidst the frenzy of our kisses, it all happened. Suddenly, Dika grew somber, tore herself from my embrace, went into her diminutive bath-kitchen-hallway-toilet, brushed her teeth long and furiously, came back, marching like a soldier, pushed me into a corner behind a curtain, covered the parrot’s cage with a skirt, restored the books to their places, then folded out the bed with abrupt, angry motions I didn’t recognize, skillful and unattractive, like those of an elderly charwoman, made the bed, and began to undress with fierce and deliberate abandon.

“She removed everything from herself, then folded it up on a chair—timidly, as though she had hated the clothing that covered her, then regretted its loss. After folding everything and placing it on the chair with the utmost accuracy and care, as fastidious as a schoolchild in a German primer or a soldier in his barracks, she lay down. I remained standing in the spot to which she had banished me, merging with the curtain, evaporating into the darkness, almost unaware of myself. It was a strange sensation—I wasn’t there. Dika was lying motionless under the white sheet; next to her, the pile of her clothes, like someone else’s, like the clothing of a dead person that has been returned to the relatives. The light from a streetlamp pierced through a slit in the curtains, pouring over everything like moonlight. Such was the silence, the stillness, the absence, and the dearth of feeling, that I didn’t know how many ages, minutes, seconds had passed before I heard from over there, from the white blur, someone else’s lifeless voice: ‘Where are you?’

“The following morning we had coffee and hurried to the university as if we had done this every morning for many years. And never again did we kiss each other as we kissed then.

“How I tormented her! The ruse was that it was my creative quest, some grand conception, that gripped me—and
this
was tormenting
me
, not
I
tormenting
her
. I told her everything, but not as the truth—rather, as the plot of a novel that was born in me suddenly when I chanced to come across that photograph of the cloud (which was now hanging over our bed). I told her about the quest of my protagonist, about his experiences, everything just as it was, except for one detail: my protagonist did not have a Dika. He was solitary, alone with the image he pursued. There was no betrayal. It would be a new tale of chivalry, I told Dika, like the Knight of the Mournful Countenance. Through his fidelity and love, this knight triumphed over the devil who had tempted him with the image. The knight overcame temptation by believing in it as the truth, by not calling it into question. Dika was shattered each time I enriched the plot with some fresh detail, or unexpected but convincing twist. She disguised her jealousy with flights of rapture over my creative mastery, and found parallels in world literature through her philological erudition, thus refining and honing my mythology.

“I kept up my search, whether for another fleeting resemblance, or for another twist in the plot of my novel. I could no longer tell which took precedence—whether the literary concept modeled the events, or the events drove the novel. I only had to imagine something and it would happen, altering everything I had anticipated. When something happened, it would be mangled by my memory and assume fabulous shapes to suit the plot. I traveled a great deal. My travels were not so much long and unbroken as short and frequent. Flight and return. This was my narcotic. I thieved and collected days of departure and arrival: on these days I was happy, because I didn’t exist for anybody. Oh, the glorious last day—the first day that you are free!

“Dika and I traveled to Greece together. This was the first time she had been to her ancestral homeland. In contrast to me in mine, she felt immediately at home in that place she had never before visited. How proud she was in my presence of everything around us! As soon as she alighted from the train, even her gait changed. We bought each other sandals right there on the platform. We exchanged them like rings. She was happy, and I suddenly felt that in Greece we were as we had been in our first room, when we had done no more than kiss. No more than…! Maybe we should move here, I caught myself thinking. Maybe we should just stay here, and everything will be as it was before.

“We paid a visit to the local university. We thought Dika might be able to teach there someday, and I could have devised some special seminar. Dika posted a notice about me in a university publication, and on the eve of our departure for home I gave a poetry reading to a smattering of devotees. I don’t think anyone understood a word of it, but for some reason the reading was a success. And then I saw Her, coming down the aisle toward me, with a yellow flower in her hand. It was Helen again. The likeness was striking—the Dutch woman paled in comparison! This time, however, I realized it was only a likeness. Nevertheless, later that evening at a small restaurant, where Dika and I had gathered with friends to celebrate our imminent departure, the new Helen and I exchanged addresses and agreed to meet again. She had plans to travel to England. She promised to write me care of poste restante to let me know when. A soothsayer with a fortune-telling bird approached us. The bird picked out scraps of paper with fortunes that promised happiness to me; beauty to Helen—but Eurydice refused to tell us what her future had in store for her.

“The mussel soup we ordered was marvelous. Surrounded by admirers, I was witty and jovial, and somewhat drunker than usual from the red wine and the heady proximity of the French Helen. I felt I was standing on the prow of some ancient galley ship like Odysseus, fanned by the wind, sailing through the night toward the stars, the sirens, and the waves. I sailed and sang. Suddenly we seemed to founder on a reef, and the galley split in half. I fell into the hold, which turned out to be a pub that I entered—I remember this well—with a large group of people, though I ended up alone with Dika. She had a swollen nose again. She often had a swollen nose in those days—a sure sign of jealousy. This time I was not sure whether my actions had triggered it, so I grew especially angry and went on the offensive. ‘What did your fortune say?’ I demanded savagely. She remained, as always, resigned and uncomplaining. She pacified me and spoke conciliatory words. Still, she didn’t produce the fortune and told me she had thrown it away.

“How I made her suffer! I was in a foul temper because she prevented me from making definite plans with Helen. I would dash off to the post office in secret—there was nothing there, of course. I wrote impassioned letters to Paris, recounting them to Dika as rough sketches of scenes for the novel, and always returned from the post office empty-handed. I told Dika that my irritation was the result of writer’s block.

“The novel, meanwhile, continued to grow in my head. It was called
The Life of a Dead Man
, and told of a man who lost his soul and blamed life itself for his ruin. He vowed to take revenge on life, destroying his useless, soulless body not by an ordinary act of suicide, but in the manner of a Japanese kamikaze, blowing himself up like a bomb. This bomb-man prepared long and hard for his final act, and his life acquired at least some semblance of purpose. He now achieved quickly and easily everything he had strived to achieve so unsuccessfully while his soul was still alive, while happiness and glory was still something he wanted. Now that he no longer wanted it, his career took an instantaneous and vertiginous upturn, because the only thing that attracted him was the success of his future detonation. He intended to blow himself up at the apex of his career, thus taking by surprise the prevailing evil. He had been hapless and weak when his soul was alive, but suddenly he became mighty, exacting, and impeccable in his attempts to achieve his soulless aims. He was afraid of nothing, he wanted nothing—his automatism overcame every obstacle. He got what he wanted. Now, after laying to rest all his worldly affairs, leaving no outstanding debts, he set out for a grand international affair as an invited guest, with two grenades fastened by a special strap (I borrowed the strap from Dostoevsky) under his genitals.

Here I faltered before the further development of the plot. The dénouement was still unclear to me. I knew that his plan wouldn’t fall through for some external reason. No one would catch him, unmask him, disarm him; but he might well be afraid to carry out his plan. There wouldn’t be anything to prevent him from reaching his goal, but for some reason he wouldn’t enact it. I balked at continuing, as though some insurmountable obstacle interfered. It was like a black mirror that cast my creative efforts back to me like my own dark reflection.

“And then, when I no longer hoped, and had sat down before a blank sheet of paper as listlessly and mechanically as I asked for mail at the poste restante window, I received a telegram from Helen in Paris that named a rendezvous at the very same post office, at such-and-such an hour. As you might have expected, I arrived an hour early, with the emblematic yellow rose in my hand, the same kind she had once given me. She never appeared. I went to the information window at the station to inquire about the train—all the trains had already arrived, and there was no telegram from her that warned of a change in plans. Late in the evening, I returned home distraught, and only when I was face-to-face with Dika did I realize I still had the damn rose in my hand. I dissolved into rage. Another second and I would … ‘Did she come?’ Dika said, without a tremor of emotion. ‘No,’ I replied, suddenly just as calm as she was. ‘This is for you.’ I handed her the rose and embraced her, exulting. ‘I’ve got it! I’ve got it! Now I know how it all ends!’

“I rushed over to the table and scribbled away until sunrise, and all the next day. My hero didn’t blow himself up—and for a good reason. Because there wasn’t one. Every goal exists for the sake of continuity, to justify its own sequel; and there was no possible sequel here. He had accounted for everything—and there was nothing left. There was nowhere else to go. It wasn’t because he took fright, it wasn’t because someone interfered—it was because there was no more reason. So he doesn’t blow himself up, but quietly leaves the reception to wander through the night, finally on this side of life. I was especially pleased with the last scene. He goes down to the shore of the sea, the night is starless and moonless, thick with mist. Standing in front of the inky blackness, as though before an abyss, he unbuttons his fly, takes the grenades out one by one, and flings them into the sea. They burst out there in the mist like burned-out lightbulbs. This symbolism was very fine, I thought, because in fact he threw away his …

“I collapsed fully dressed on the bed and slept for sixteen hours straight. I had a strange and beautiful dream in which I was in Japan with a group of tourists. The wonderful thing about dreams is their incongruity. Although it was Japan, we stood in front of a bay I had seen in Greece. The bay was surrounded by imposing cliffs, and we descended them in single file, making our way down to the sea. The path was extremely intricate and unpredictable, which, it seemed, proved that I was in Japan; although the reason it was Japan was perhaps because my great-grandfather had married a Japanese woman. The path evolved in such a way that we gradually found ourselves jumping from stone to stone. It became clear that we were in a kind of Japanese garden, and that these artificial stones, placed illogically, in the Japanese manner, were tiles paving the pedestrian pathway. Leaping from tile to tile, now left, now right, sometimes even backward, one had to step very gingerly, because between the tiles there was not simply grass, or little bushes, but infinitesimally small Japanese gardens, living ikebana that it would have been a shame to destroy. Carried away by this task, I discovered that I had gotten lost. I was lost, to be exact, in one of the lilliputian gardens; because, suddenly, between two of the tiles, the one on which I was standing and the one onto which I was supposed to spring, I saw underneath me that very bay, that very sea we had been descending to … But ‘we’ was not the right word, because the whole group was down below already, scattered along the narrow strip of shore, getting ready, most likely, to take a dip in the sea, while I was still there above them on the cliff. I raced down after my companions at breakneck speed, in leaps and bounds—it was easy and pleasant, almost like flying. What was strange, however, was that I didn’t seem to get any nearer to them.