The Symmetry Teacher Read Online Free Page A

concern to me whatever.”
    “So was he the devil?” I said, growing angry at this sermon.
    “Must there always be horns?” Vanoski said, frowning impatiently. “And his eyes were as blue as blue can be—not burning coals. Even his baldness seemed intentional, as proof there were no horns to speak of. Fat. Corpulence disarms suspicion—that’s folk wisdom. Only later did I come to appreciate the extent of his good nature. He was not at all insistent. He didn’t try to deceive me in the least—temptation has nothing to do with deception. We are tempted solely through our own devices. Perhaps he really did sit down beside me just by chance—to take a breather, as it was so hot.
    “The English, as everyone knows, are garrulous. Perhaps this is why we spread the myth of our reserve and taciturnity: we try to cover up that particular vice of ours. In any event, I didn’t fail to take exception to the stranger’s audacity, saying I didn’t believe we had met, and so forth.
    “He seemed somehow unwelcome and out of place in every way—to me in particular. And, overall, that’s how he looked: unseemly and inappropriate. I was young, like you. I had strong notions about myself—the vaguer and more obscure they were, the more I fancied them. Especially when I didn’t have a farthing in my pocket. Notions of love … of fame and glory. I was quite carried away by my own thoughts. And it was all the more unpleasant to catch myself in the middle of them … At that particular moment some shadowy beautiful creature, for some reason dressed in an Indian sari, standing on the shore of a turquoise sea, was pressing my rose to her breast … And I took exception to him with the icy dignity of a true Brit.
    “‘What do you mean—you’re not Urbino?’ the fat man blurted out. Only then did the awkwardness of the situation that my diffidence had created dawn on me. He had, however, already opened his shapeless, beat-up briefcase and dropped his fleshy thief’s paw into the contents. It seemed to me that he was rummaging around and stealing from his own briefcase.
    “‘Perhaps this isn’t you, then?’ He plucked out a photograph like something from a flower bed, and thrust it under my nose in triumph.
    “But it was not me at all! That is to say, it could have been anyone. Half the face was obscured by some apparatus that looked partly like a camera, partly like a fantastical weapon whose muzzle resembled a rifle. In any case, the character in the photograph seemed to be aiming at something, and the half a face that wasn’t obscured by the apparatus in his hands was wincing and distorted. And he was dressed queerly, in a whimsical, foreign style. I said, mastering my recent confusion, that it was certainly not me.
    “‘Not you?’ the fat man said, finally taking a good look at the photograph. ‘Drat it, what an old fool I am!’ His disappointment was unfeigned. ‘I do beg your pardon.’ Here he began to cringe in annoyance, as if giving himself a slap in the face with the photograph.
    “‘Stop this improper clownery,’ I said coldly.
    “‘You cannot imagine what an unpardonable mistake I’ve made, and how I will have to pay for this!’ he wailed. ‘Never in my life has this happened to me before. Truly, this is not you. This is a photograph of one of your future acquaintances. But yours is here, too. Honestly … I swear it … None other than the devil has mixed everything up.’ Again he gestured toward himself, but more gently now. ‘Don’t be angry. Just give me a moment.’
    “He rummaged and rummaged through his briefcase, pulling out thick piles of photographs of various sizes and eras, as though they had been purloined from myriad amateur photographers and family albums—underexposed and overexposed, stained with developer, with jagged blobs of glue stuck to them and torn-off corners.
    “‘Where could it have gone?’ A rare sampling of artistic ineptitude passed before my eyes: here