The Symmetry Teacher (26 page)

“Marleen said you were into this kind of thing.”

“She’s a bitch, your Marleen.”

“Pot calling the kettle black.”

“
The Kreutzer Sonata
!” Lili-Marleen moaned.

A shadow fell across their bodies. Happenen loomed over them.

“Ready yet?”

*   *   *

The goodbye was cool and restrained. Urbino handed her a carefully sealed envelope, with no addressee, and no return address.

“I wrote this just for you, Lili. Not for Birdy, not for Marleen. For you.”

On the envelope was scrawled:

THE LAST CASE OF LETTERS

Happenen splashed the oars impatiently, like Marleen wagging her tail.

“Hurry! We’ll never make it before the storm!”

And it was true. Something unimaginable was brewing in the sky. It was still and quiet, but the waves were starting to surge. The edge of the sky was charred and turned upward, like a Chinese pagoda, inside of which a bright transparent ring took shape. In the middle of the ring, as though directly over the boat, a storm cloud appeared. It condensed and grew steadily blacker toward the center. Darkness was pouring into it, and it sagged like a bomb.

Everything anticipated his imminent departure.

*   *   *

Their boat had already crossed half the strait when the black bomb tore off like a droplet and began to fall. An orifice just big enough for a full Moon to fit in opened up in the morose skies. The Moon illumined the rearing waves that crashed over them.

“Lili! I remembered!” Urbino cried, choking and gasping for breath, paddling back to the island with all his might. “I remembered the word from the crossword puzzle! It’s TROGLODYTE!”

“Troglodyte?” an echo resounded.

But this was Happenen, bobbing up and down in his boat on the crest of a wave.

“Rape her!” Urbino burbled, taking in another gulp of seawater. “She likes it!”

“Can do,” said Happenen, trying to brain Urbino with the oar.

*   *   *

A military patrol boat picked him up. When they had pumped all the water out of him and he had started breathing again, the first word he uttered was “Happenen!”

“There was someone else with me! Where is he?”

They gave him some whiskey. He took a swig, and began undulating to the rhythm of other waves …

The more we live

The more we leave.

The more we choose

The more we lose.

The more we try

The more we cry.

The more we win

The greater the sin.

To reach the aim—

Obtain the same.

The only law—

Lose Waterloo.

The only way—

Just run away.

THE LAST CASE OF LETTERS

(Pigeon Post)

FROM
Lines from a Coffee Cup
,
A COLLECTION OF POEMS BY
Ris Vokonabi

I.

In my sleep I was forewarned

of your impending visit … What the devil?!

I woke up too early, and arrived

almost too late at the station,

cursing to high Heaven (though dark

as Hell it was) the sluggishness of servants:

couldn’t they have brought the news on time?

At the appointed hour a ladder was in place: I descended

into a flock of waiting Vietnamese. “Get lost!

Begone! I’m no gourmand!” The flock scattered.

The ship left, I was ungodly late, and thought

up a just punishment for the trusty servant

who managed to wake me up on time:

For Promptness
. What dismal failure

in the task at hand—to wake me up,

and by ticking, to measure out the time of life,

depriving life of—time … What do you mean “what for”!?

Because, you scoundrel, you didn’t pinch the maid,

did not drink an extra mug, and managed to

shun the realm of dreams—

behind the door, out shivering with the roosters!

II.

Thus, wrenched out of my delirium at last,

I sat upright and glanced around me groggily:

“What a night! Thank goodness it was all a dream.”

In the night, someone had reupholstered the divan

and moved the walls around. There, across from me,

where I fell asleep the night before was now a rectangle,

overgrown with a flora of dust … within this thicket—

another, geometrically similar shape: a letter,

the address facing downward, two diagonals crossing it …

Two threads from the corners came together in a knot—

a little kite!… a fragile thread

stretched over to the window. The window was grayish

and looked just like an envelope … amidst the dust a window gapes,

a letter shines bright in the window sash

and strains to fly off to the sky. Such wondrous

ties and connections are completely understandable.

I’m tired of guessing: defining the circle of loss is always helpful.

The window is torn open. Barefoot, shivery handwriting.

A scrap of fog is hanging from the windowsill …

“I arrived yesterday

too early at the station;

don’t wait and don’t be late

kisses, sleep, goodbye

—Marquise Méranville” …

Oh, drat it!

I tore it up. Untied the laces.

Who in our day and age writes letters, really?

The letter flew up in the air, nodding to the wind,

The sky above the former Prussian town grew rosy pink,

anticipating sunrise, signifying

that
today
had finally come!

I smiled and wiped it from my face:

“It’s all right now,” the nonsense went,

reminding me of dreams.

I rummaged in the upholstery—

flowers of a southern genus, perhaps Italian …

how had they grown here?—

on a small, neat, dusty glade

the letter lay.

III.

As always, a carelessness may be observed in space:

here is the chink in the floor where light squeezes through—

what’s down below? An ominous, raucous feast;

thank God they don’t have time for me.

Suddenly—a spat, a quarrel, untuned voices

rise, and doors are slammed!

               Then vulgar laughter:

“Don’t mind him!”—and they leave forever.

It’s fine this way, they say.

               My objects sleep,

they borrowed shadows from the places of the past …

Like light, extinguished, hurries into shade!

A cry trembles somewhere near the throat!

Your objects harbor so much inner horror,

changing unaccountably:

then return and take their seats again.

There on the nail hangs my overcoat,

there is no person in it, and yet,

hostile velvet lines the collar

and the shadow of the nail basks in the light …

I fathom not the world of my salvations!

Frightened so by various trifles that

betrayed me imperceptibly and subtly—

a mailbox, found all of a sudden

instead of a bedside table

               did not surprise me in the least

but rather touched me … I smiled

and in the chink I stuck a finger,

                    “That’s that,”

I thought calmly,

               and, not taking off my shoes,

flopped down on my back, arms folded:

“Is it possible to spit up to the ceiling?”

My head was filled with simple thoughts:

whether to put the kettle on, or steam the postage

stamps, a present for my daughter.

               “Yes, yes. Come in!”

But no one’s there.

               The letter’s missing. Gone. Whereto?

In the dust a flattened trace, a distinct letter-shape—

but it’s not there. The subject, quite amusingly,

lay down to sleep some more …

                    It’s time for dawn to break,

for me to yawn: how crumpled is the envelope of the bed!

The lamp hangs like a seal

from the envelope of the ceiling,

the stove is closed up like a letter,

the hardwood cracks form oblong letters …

and a crazed pigeon sits atop the windowsill,

where the return address of sleep is written.

IV.

A scientific fact: the epistolary genre

gave birth to the novel in days of yore …

Oh, there were ways in the Dark Ages

to know the gift of life and understand the game:

to perish or to die—

               and savor

freedom of choice,

                    while leaving it all up to chance …

As if they knew it all, as if

they read the book of life before their birth

and knew the novel written about them

during their lifetimes …

                    Fortune is unique!

The words FATE and PASSION are about them, them,

                         and them!

For us! For us!—the theater of their movements:

an alcove destiny, the airy handwriting of swords,

the fall—finality … the novel

Notes of a Homing Pigeon
—marvelous!

V.

A picture from my childhood: “The Unfaithful Wife

Slain by the Final Kiss.”

The shoulder is bared diligently,

a blossom falls from the corsage

and the waving of the captive’s handkerchief—

for the future medium of film—

here the “little bird flies” into a prison window,

a dove, its wings beating feathery clouds …

The convent wall, smothered with ivy,

a wafer drops into the wine,

and all grows dark before your eyes,

but jealous steel sweats underneath the cloak—

in the shadow of the wall, covered with ivy,

the jangle of spurs and clatter of feet on stairs …

The visuals here gain in strength

(so our cameraman would have the time)—

so long lasts the kiss of the parting lines …

And life is worth the death! The gaze is worth the risk

right now! right now! Then—obliging poison …

What in this ritual is the life span?

Oh, knowledge that life is happening right
now
!

The impossibility of division into parts,

happily called by the name of “passion,”

which until now still makes you ache with woe:

“You?” “Me.” “When? …” “Now!”—

This is the buried root of the word
happy
.

The time is nigh for me to leave for home, or from the same—

the road is “happily” all too familiar.

VI.

We will live in the past! And this is Heaven—

knowing in the future that the mistake of

our lives we commit just once—

and that is all.

Life is rude and death is courteous

if only in the sense that it does not

leave us, like pain.

Death is true to us, and our infidelity to it

does not deter it. It is patient. It waits for us.

How much longer before we meet? An eternal instant—

to grow younger, back to the initial smack

and become the nothing that looks at me …

with such profound love …

                    I will not be the worse for it.

POSTHUMOUS NOTES OF THE TRISTRAM CLUB

(The Inevitability of the Unwritten)

FROM
A Paper Sword
,
BY
U. Vanoski

Others rigged the sails …

—Alex Cannon

There were three of us. Together we didn’t row, together we didn’t finish Cambridge, together we didn’t make our careers, together we planned to become writers. Together we never became them. One of us received an inheritance that was too generous. Another received an education that was too fine (at Oxford) and then opened a shop in the tradition of a Dickensian curiosity shop, but the other way round—the same kinds of inconsequential odds and ends, only modern. However strange it might seem, this shop became fashionable, and business took off. Then the business expanded, he stopped going to the store himself, entrusting it to his managers and executives, and continued only to rummage through catalogues in search of his one-of-a-kind, sometimes outlandish wares: an umbrella
cum
chair, a nostril-hair trimmer, a bottle opener/cigarette lighter, and so on. Myself, I learned to live without everything except disorder—in other words, I didn’t do anything, either.

The moneybags was called William; the shopkeeper, though he had the most aristocratic roots of all of us, was called, simply, John; and I am myself. Ernest, that is.

Although we had not become writers, we did become—I am certain of this—very talented readers.

I think that this was what united us: the more stringent our tastes grew, the less frequently we differed in opinion. Oh, I forgot to mention (and this may prove to be important in the future) that we were inveterate, dare I say committed, bachelors. I won’t try to account for how this happened to the others—those are their private affairs. Instead, I will tell you how it happened to me.

Gerda Uvich-Barashkou (of Polish-Romanian extraction) was the epitome of beauty, and a highly intelligent epitome of beauty, I might add. I confessed my everlasting love to her, and she answered me in kind. Happiness and good fortune should not exceed their proper measure either, however. In her somewhat peculiar English she told me, “I will marry you”; yet I shied away from the suit, and hesitated to accept her hand right away. Moreover, John and William tried to talk me out of it. As a result, she later refused me thrice, even though we were living together all the while. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that John and William were not in love with her themselves, but by the time it had become awkward for me to bring up the subject of marriage a fourth time, she had already become my dearest friend—as she was John and William’s. She was the only one of us who had professional commitments: she translated all sorts of unlikely languages, including her native Romanian and Polish, wrote critical essays, and reviewed new books. So it was only natural for us to propose that she become the president of our Club.