The Symmetry Teacher

by Andrei Bitov

Genres: Literary Fiction; Ghost

Synopsis

From one of the greatest Russian writers of the past half century comes a metaphysical mystery novel that defies categorization and confounds expectation. Andrei Bitov's The Symmetry Teacher presents itself as the "echo" of an older British novel Bitov once read and had long forgotten. Unable even to recall the name of that novel's author, Bitov reconstructs its literary vision through the fog of memory, creating a group of stories nestled together like a matryoshka doll. In doing so, Bitov evokes the anxieties of the late and post-Soviet decades, confronting urgent questions of conscience and self-deception through an innovative style that revels in paradox and sleight of hand.

Unified by the delightfully maddening search for the identity of a writer toiling in obscurity, The Symmetry Teacher takes us through a curious series of episodes: A man meets the devil on a park bench and the devil shows him photographs of the fall of Troy, Shakespeare's legs, and a terrible event that will take place in his future. A young poet fleeing his past is stranded on a windswept island and tormented by a lover and her shape-shifting evil twin. Three friends, unable to become writers, start a literary society where books and manuscripts are neither read nor returned and new members are accepted only if their work is unwritten. A king who reigns over all possible worlds and uses his power to remove stars from the sky turns out to be the compiler of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Writing with impish daring, Bitov crafts an enchanting fiction from interwoven fables. The result challenges the boundaries between life and literature, author and reader, and memory and imagination, exploring the sacrifices that a writer may make out of ardor for his art. Mingling fantasy and satire with moral concern, Bitov is a deserving heir to the tradition of Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Bulgakov. The Symmetry Teacher showcases the work of a postmodern master at the height of his craft.

Release date: July 8, 2014

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Print pages: 288

Sample

VIEW OF THE SKY ABOVE TROY

(Future in the Past)



A flash of lightning,

A drop of dew,

An apparition—

A thought about oneself.

—Prince Ikkyu

I am the only person in the world who might have been able to shed light on the mysterious death of Urbino Vanoski. Alas, it is not within my power. What makes a legend a legend is its immutability.

This is the way he died, or, rather, was reborn in the minds of readers and critics—in complete obscurity, ignorant of his own fame, and poor as a church mouse (I would not resort to this idiom if it were not literally true: according to legend, he lived out his final days as a churchwarden, selling devotional candles). His grave is unmarked, and this is only fitting. Obscurity during one's lifetime fans the flames of posthumous glory, and the nonexistent gravestone gives off a scorching heat. For him, the literary prize for lifetime achievement remains forever posthumous. Having established a foundation in his honor, we—Vanoski scholars all—began to meet annually on the Adriatic Sea. After each session, we publish a volume of our proceedings that we ourselves read, leaving no trace of our efforts which might be of any benefit to potential geniuses languishing as churchwardens.

Vanoski, an obscure author from the 1930s, enjoyed a veritable boom at the end of the sixties. This was due solely to the efforts of the permanent chairman of the foundation, V. Van-Boek. I would be banished in disgrace from the close-knit ranks of my colleagues if I so much as raised an eyebrow about the veracity of the myth he has so carefully constructed. No one would believe me. I would be refuted categorically, and accused of fabrication. And then where would I take my annual vacation?

Incidentally, Urbino Vanoski was not a churchwarden. He was an elevator operator, and died (or perhaps he is not dead at all?) fully aware of his sudden fame and his Grand Prize. Fully aware. For it was I who found him before his death (or not before, whatever the case may be). I was the last one to see him, to pass on the happy news to him. And I was the last one to interview him. It was not even so much an interview as a confession. I do not know why he chose me for this task—perhaps because he disliked me the moment he laid eyes on me. One is well advised not to believe everything that was revealed in the course of this confession. I have grounds to suspect that his mind was no longer absolutely sound. When I asked him how he felt about receiving such a high prize, he answered that he expected a higher one. "Which might that be?" I asked him. "Death," he said. He became particularly irate when I asked about what he was working on just then. "Thank God I have never been a worker!" he spluttered. I tried to rectify matters by asking what he was writing. "I'm not. I'm painting! Landscapes. Why do you bother to ask me what I'm writing, anyway, if you haven't read what has already been written?" I took this to mean that there was an unpublished book in the works. "Don't get your hopes up," he broke in. "I know, of course, that every decent writer is supposed to leave a respectable posthumous work in his wake." I couldn't resist the temptation to swoop down on this morsel. "Well, yes, as a matter of fact there is," he said reluctantly. "There is an unfinished novel. It's called Life Without Us … or Buried Alive? I don't remember the name myself! Besides, it's unlikely I'll finish it … Life will."

"Is it about life in the beyond?" I said, pondering.

"About life here and now," he said, angered. "How can one possibly know which side is beyond, and which is here?"

It is likely that I looked somewhat deflated. He regarded me as though I were a child, and again his eyes blazed.

"There is one novel, perhaps nearly finished, but I can't find it. I'm not surprised, however, for it is called Disappearing Objects. It's about—well, no. I won't try to retell it. That would be ‘tasteless impropriety.'

"Have you ever clean forgotten a word? You know the word, but your tongue is incapable of catching hold of it … You say that happens to everyone? But then you remember the word eventually. What if you forget it for all time, and can never recover it? I was once in the possession of such a word—a key word. I recalled it on one occasion, but at that very moment I was caught in a storm and forgot it once and for all. To this very day. It is, of course, significant that it was that particular word, and that I was the one who forgot it. Have you ever observed how sunflowers remember the sun, so they won't forget it before morning?" The old man's eyes glittered. "Perhaps you would like me to paint you a landscape? Very well, then. I will. It will be a landscape that no one apart from the ancient Greeks has ever seen."

* * *

"Such sunflower fields must surely have existed in ancient Greece. Dika and I saw them when we were together in Italy. No, not the ancient one," he said, pointing to his calf. "Right there, in Umbria. There was an enormous sunflower field. We passed it on our way up into the mountains to watch the sunrise and sunset. Everyone knows that sunflowers always turn toward the sun. They drink in every little ray. They've even copied it onto their faces, like children. We walked past them, smiling, and they smiled back at us. At sunset, however, they looked more organized, more preoccupied, like a regiment of soldiers waiting for orders. It seemed they wanted to catch the very last drop of sunlight. Then, suddenly, the whole regiment would turn away from the sun, showing us the backs of their cleanly shaven heads. Uncanny. Did they feel insulted by the sun, as though it had done them some injury?

"I was only able to explain it to myself in this way: They were preparing to greet the first ray, and not to see off the last. They use the energy of the setting sun to turn and face the rising sun. They must derive more benefit from the light of the sun as it is coming up. Dika rejected my theory. Unlike me, she knew a thing or two about biology. But she was always more drawn to fauna, whereas I was attracted by flora. I spoke to her of sunflowers, she spoke to me of goats. ‘Why,' she said, ‘do they always go up a slope in a single direction? It must be awkward, always the same way. They never turn around.' I explained to her that she was referring to a special breed, a mountain goat. The right legs are shorter than the left ones. ‘But what happens when they come back down?' Dika fretted about them. ‘They'll topple over!' ‘They just go round in a circle their whole lives' was the solution I offered her. And she believed me. She was so very gullible."

The old man suddenly grew stern. He continued.

"You see, life is a piece of writing that the living never read to the end. But writing is alive, too! Every line contains the secret of the line that follows. So it is in life—the next moment is always To Be Announced, always in abeyance. We're not sunflowers, we're mountain goats. In America she wondered about how the Americans found enough turkey legs to go around on Thanksgiving Day. I told her that the Americans had bred a special four-legged turkey to prevent a shortfall, and this satisfied her." He blew his nose and mopped his teary eyes.

I have reason to suspect that he was no longer in his right mind. Could I later publish all this nonsense? I could. It would cause a sensation, at the very least. I was young, I dreamed of fame. Fortunately, one seasoned reporter dissuaded me, warning me that I would lose my job if I did. And, really, who was I? My sensational article was sure to founder on the cliff of the myth that had grown up around Vanoski. Sometimes it seems to me that the myth had shattered the poor elevator operator himself. As if his own elevator had snapped off its cables. It could so easily have crushed him. But, then again, who would have wanted to take his life?

Perhaps the other story would be better after all—in the church, selling votive candles, cherishing no thoughts of grandeur? An easy, light-filled death.

* * *

"So it's nothing out of the ordinary when some stranger—fat, bald, sweaty—sits down next to you in the Garden Park. In fact, he doesn't so much sit down as flop down beside you, with a ‘Phew! Made it, for once.' He composes himself, airing himself out, his sweat drying in the April sun, and says, still panting a bit, ‘Now then, Urbino. There isn't a whole lot I know how to do, but I can show you a photograph of yourself…' If something like that ever happens to you, as it did to me, don't register surprise, and don't give it a moment's thought. Simply send the gentleman packing. Sending someone packing is always a sound philosophy. It's the wisdom of dignity. This is something I came to understand only much later. Though despite understanding it, it's a kind of prowess I have never been able to muster to this day."

Here, old Urbino Vanoski heaved a deep sigh, raising his beautiful eyes to mine. Never had I seen a gaze of such directness and such meekness rolled into one. Still, he averted his eyes in consternation the very next moment, lest I think that his philosophy held true for me, as well. Though how could it not? As a correspondent for the Thursday Evening Post and Yesterday's News, I was interviewing him. We sat in his tiny lair, which was so clean and empty that it felt spacious. The only real piece of furniture was a dilapidated plywood wardrobe.

It would have been a bona fide prison cell, had it not been for the subservience of the surroundings: he was not the prisoner of the room, but rather the tiny room was the prisoner of his gaze. The room was the frame of its dweller's face, and his face framed his own eyes. Their relationship to one another was somehow reversed—a face in a gaze, a room in a face. His little shoebox of a room nestled right under the roof, and through the slanted window neither the courtyard nor the roofs beyond were visible, just a scrap of sky with a cloudlet floating in the frame. I sat on a solitary bentwood chair, quite rickety. Vanoski sat on a narrow folding cot. His long, perfectly clean-shaven face was as spare as his room. He had a youthful expression that for some reason accentuated his age, lending depth to it. Ah, how empty, how pristine, how well-considered it all was, so that he could part with every moment of existence, leaving no outstanding debts to the world at large. This room accommodated nothing else but me—but my body, despite its robust plumpness and the impropriety of my health and desire to exist, felt a sensation like heat from a kitchen hearth, or maybe it was the coolness of a crypt. Either I had arrived here from another dimension, or my body was itself another dimension …

Something in my perception had shifted. I kept confusing the external and internal planes of objects and phenomena—quite an unpleasant feeling. I stared with hostility at this maniac, who, nevertheless, had written The Last Case of Letters, a book so remarkable that only I could have written it, if I could have … With what enthusiasm I had thrown myself into this unenviable task—to seek out the grave of the mysterious Vanoski. And what do you know, I found it! Not the grave but the man himself. And alive, to boot. Or was he? I found him—only to freeze in the proximity of this minus-man, to marvel at the irony of the foresight that offered me the ability—or, rather, the opportunity—or even the hint of a possibility to create such a book … such power—in the dead loins of a moribund man … with hot, pulsing envy to stumble upon the futility of that envy, and to experience a painful awkwardness besides, because you are pestering someone who has consciously removed himself from life, as if this were your role—to cause him his last, living pain. Any movement of mine would rend his fragile, ashen-gray cocoon, like a child crushing an empty wasp's nest.

It now seemed to me that from the first glance, after I had stepped inside the elevator with him, the old man saw his executioner in me—his expression was so mournful, within the bounds of propriety and good breeding, yet nearly bursting these bounds. He couldn't possibly have looked at every passenger in that way. In other words, he was expecting me. At the same time (I was aware of this), he couldn't have been waiting for me, because he no longer expected anything to come from his books, no consequences thereof. He was anticipating someone who could have been me but turned out not to be—this much I understood by how quickly his fear left him when I explained to him why I had come. When it left him, however, I sensed that he felt not simply relief but disappointment, in the same breath. He seemed bored, agitated, and bereft, to a degree that I could only guess at but never quite grasp. I had no notion of that abyss of absence that swallows an author who has evoked things so intimate and familiar to us all.

Vanoski said that he couldn't spare any time for me until the end of his shift, so I decided to arrange for it to end immediately. Timid and frightened, he tried to stop me. I announced that it would not trouble me in the least. With the self-assurance of a young fool, I assumed that this impoverished, unsung genius of an old man would be pleased with the flurry of courtesy and servility his superiors would show upon learning of my mandate and credentials from Yesterday's News. And, indeed, everything was as I had predicted: the supervisor began rushing around—Certainly, by all means!—and let the old man take the whole day off, finding a replacement for him without further ado. But the pangs of torment in the old man's face from all this fuss and bother, from the fawning curiosity of others, from the cannibalistic lip-smacking at the gratuitousness of fame—the very anguish of his gaze—was something I didn't expect. It was the gaze that meets visitors to the zoo from inside the cages. I had destroyed the old man's balance of energy. The damage was done, and he knew it.

He was poised for a predetermined spectacle: the sensation of a new star—launched from the penury of nonexistence into the august ranks of great artists—overshadowed both the artist and his poverty. The hoopla was the content. Thus, the poor old man could not become himself in any sense of the word but had to remain that Vanoski whose legend had been born without him. The legend had to develop and grow while there was still time, but only according to the simplest rules of a fixed plot. The masterpiece created in poverty presupposes the poverty that creates a masterpiece—and positivism triumphs. I asked him how he had been able to write The Last Case, and he answered, "I don't know." I asked him what he would do with twenty thousand dollars and he answered, "I don't remember."

I might have called it quits then and there, because the old man couldn't be of any use to me. He had no needs himself, so he wouldn't appease me for our mutual advantage; and the newspaper wasn't interested in anything close to the truth. The truth might have intrigued me personally, but truth was far to seek, and time was short. There wasn't even anything to hold the gaze, not a thing for it to rest upon, in this clean-swept grave. There was only one object that ornamented the room, and a rather strange one at that, if one paid proper attention. It was a large-format photograph behind glass in a thin metal frame. For all intents and purposes, the photograph depicted nothing. It was empty, save for something that resembled a small cloud in one corner. The picture hung above the bed over the old man's head on the wall opposite the little window—like a second little window I could look out of, at the same time that the old man, sitting across from me, looked through the real one. This photograph could also have served as evidence of the oddity of genius: placing above the bed a view of one's own window, from which, in its turn, nothing is visible except a scrap of sky. Under the picture frame was a bronze nameplate with a florid engraved inscription. Would some vainglorious photographer really want to take credit for such a paltry work, I found myself wondering. Another object that would not have interested me in the least, had it not been for the behavior of the old man toward it, was something resembling a doorbell, also located above the bed, but slightly lower than the "picture." The doorbell was set flush into the wall so that only a button protruded from it—round, smooth, white, and fairly large for a doorbell. Apparently, the device had been installed just recently, because the patch of plaster encircling it was still slightly moist. Now and then the old man glanced at the button with something like trepidation, at the same time trying to conceal this from me by awkwardly pretending it was only by chance that his eyes had strayed to that place. I easily satisfied myself with the explanation that the doorbell was actually some sort of intercom, a means of summoning the old man to the elevator that required him to answer back. I interpreted his sidelong glances at it as the sign of a downtrodden wretch with a self-abasing nature.

"Your supervisor is not going to trouble you anymore today," I said to him as gently as I could, so that he would stop worrying and ignore the doorbell, though I already despaired of extracting anything useful from him.

"Thank you, I realize that," said the old man. Heavens, how that gaze inserted into his face astonished me! I couldn't help but think how sociologically predetermined perception is; for I had known very well whom I was seeking while my search was under way, but once I had found the object of my search, I lost track of the original. In this little shoebox I assigned to him a level of understanding characteristic of the lowliest rung on the social ladder. My God! If he had indeed written that, how clearly must things have appeared to him, how transparent must I have seemed to him all this time. I was suddenly so abashed about my own condescension that I leapt up out of my chair. To justify the abruptness of this action I pretended I had gotten up to read the inscription under the photograph. What I read was very peculiar. It said: VIEW OF THE SKY ABOVE TROY.

"Have you been to Troy?" I said.

"How could I have been there?" the old man said with a faint grin. "I wasn't around back then."

"Of course. I meant…" I muttered, stumbling over my foolishness. "I was referring to the spot where they recently discovered Troy had once been … I meant the modern-day Troy."

"No, that sky is the one in the other Troy, the other sky," the old man said in a monotone.

A chill ran down my spine. Like all young men, I had a horror of madness. What am I saying? I had never seen a single dead man in my entire life, not counting accident victims—and they aren't true corpses, not like one's own dead. And mad people? Only comical shadows amid the faceless crowd in the streets. But half-wittedness or dementia isn't the same as madness. Now I grew afraid of Vanoski. I averted my eyes and stared at his clothes cupboard.

In The Last Case of Letters (a novel about a poem) he has a passage … Oh, what a passage it is! I can't explain why it stirs me so every time; and I've reread it many times, playing it over and over like a favorite record, so … In it the protagonist is waiting for a letter to arrive from his beloved. It doesn't come, and, consumed with fear and passion, he walks through a wasteland by the shore of the sea. Suddenly, on a dune, he sees a dilapidated plywood cupboard, apparently washed up by the surf. In his agitation and haste he opens the door, and there's a letter. He frantically rips it open, fastens his eyes on it, sees that it begins: "Dear Urbino…" But it's impossible to read it through to the end. The page is covered with what look like words, letters of the alphabet, in her handwriting, and he drinks it all in, but—he can't seem to read it, and he tries to read the letter again and again, and can't. Then he rushes home, takes a seat, and dashes off a reply. And now—my God, what a description!—the words swirl around, the ink smokes, the text into which he pours all his passion flows—but at the end of every line the text disappears. His passion hangs poised in midair and disappears without a trace beyond the margins of the page. Instead of the phrases he has just uttered, something entirely different appears on the page, some nonsense about Aunt Clara and her parrot. Poor Urbino sobs with helplessness and drenches Aunt Clara in his tears; and when he is comforted he raises his transparent, flowing head, and recovers his strength and equanimity and writes a letter, now calmly and quickly, efficiently, but in fact he's just tracing out wavy lines—like a child painting the sea … Then his neighbor arrives, and they start conferring about a small mutual concern of long standing. They come to an agreement and go to the city of Taunus. And the passage that follows is so strong that I always make a singular effort to grasp the transition, but I just can't manage—I can no longer find the passage in the book, however much I leaf through it.

And now it seemed to me that I was standing on the brink of his madness, which whirled around in a vortex, so smoothly, so imperceptibly and seamlessly—a funnel that consciousness pours into like sand—that you don't even notice how you end up inside it, sliding along the breathtaking mathematical curvature, and peering out of a place from which there is no return …

"Yes, yes. I understand. That sky," I said, as though backing up warily within his gaze.

The old man grinned. "I have grounds to believe that this is the case. You are young … Also, does not the very same sky cover that Troy and this one, and us, and all those who come after us? There you have it, at least in a metaphorical sense."

"That's the truth!" I said, nodding, overjoyed at Vanoski's return to our mutually accepted stomping grounds of logic.

"I'm curious why figures of speech—an image, a metaphor—while distancing themselves from their object, seem to approach the truth, whereas the reality surrounding us seems to be senseless, littered with trivia, as though insufficiently generalized and abstract, and therefore untrue. It's quite the opposite! I don't think the time has come for you to understand this yet. I can only warn you—and, apparently, in vain. It is hardly likely that my personal experience will be of any use to you. Experience never is. And it's unlikely that you will meet with such an open-ended fate. In any case, my advice to you is, never agree to any tempting offers. You are a simple and selfless man"—the first epithet jarred me, and I was about to take offense, but at the second I nodded benignly—"and for that reason you accept everything offered to you as a gift, or as an adventure, or as fate. You grab hold of it like an unselfish person who is usually left empty-handed. Refuse any offer—it's always of the devil. That is why this is the real sky over Troy."

This was when he repeated the words of the fat bald man in the Garden Park—and, once again, I failed to understand him. It was also when he said that sending someone packing was always the best bet, and on his face was that look of anguish, a look of "Why did I fail to do it this time, too?"

"There is something you need from me, for I am certainly not what you need. Rather, you desperately need something you suspect to be here, in my place. Everyone is a tyrant over reality nowadays, a practitioner of progress. Assume, therefore, that I'm no longer here. But since you want something from me (even though I'm not what you need, and this is precisely why I keep the life around me at bay, because I always feel answerable to it), I am now obliged to respond, insofar as you are life, since you have come to me. But since you couldn't care less about me but are intent upon something you purport to need, I reserve the right to repay you in the only way I can. And this utter imbalance, albeit equal in weight, is the essence of the question and the answer.

"I will tell you about the picture. I have reason to want to draw closer to it now." Here again he pretended not to be looking at the button on the wall. "I think about it now unceasingly, so it will be fairly easy for me to relate it to you. Whether you need me to or not is up to you. You came to me yourself, of your own volition, so it's not at all surprising that I am the one here in front of you—though you are of no 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 was a client without a head, though wearing a coat of armor; then there was a single hand holding a glass; next there appeared a bush with one blurred branch, as if the picture depicted an attempt to photograph a bird as it flew away. ‘You are very observant,' he said, continuing his search, ‘which is why I sat down beside you. It is uncommon for someone to spy a bird on that branch right off the bat. One has to be a born poet for that. And that happens no more than three or four times a century. Well, like you, for example, or … But you're not an admirer of the Lake Poets, are you? By the way, it was precisely this bird that inspired … Well, never mind, it doesn't matter. What I mean to say is that these are all absolutely random shots. They mean nothing at all. This one, for example, is Shakespeare. And don't think it's the moment when he wrote his "To be or not to be" monologue. Nor is it a meeting with the Dark Lady, or with Francis Bacon. Here he is, looking tired after a performance.' In the photograph was a faience basin with a broken rim, certainly outmoded in shape; but from it protruded two ordinary naked feet, either crooked themselves, or placed crookedly in the vessel. One toe