“I asked Toria to select something relatively straightforward for the beginning. Fortunately, you do know how to read. When you have got through this one, turn to the other. And don’t be shy about speaking up if something is too difficult for you. Perhaps Toria might take a shot at tutoring you … though perhaps not. Sometimes it seems to me that she has no patience at all.”
The dean nodded, bade him farewell, and when he was already in the corridor, suddenly said in a dreamy tone, “You know who had a native gift for teaching? Dinar. He had a distinctive gift: he never imposed ideas; rather, he compelled his students to think. Beyond that, for him it was a game, a passion, a pleasure.… No, Soll, there is no need to go pale: I am not saying this to rebuke you. But I have, you understand, neither the time nor the inclination to teach you myself, and so I was just thinking aloud: it would have done you good to study with Dinar.… However, there’s nothing to be done about that: you’ll have to venture it alone.”
With that the dean left. Only then did Egert fully realize that all around him there was a darkness so deep that it should have been impossible to distinguish a human face or clothing or books. Covered in goose bumps, Egert thrust his arm out toward the table. The books were there, but the leather binding felt cold, and the pasteboard felt as rough as sackcloth.
The books were titled The Structure of Creation and Conversations with Young People. The author of the first book was a boring, stern old man who set forth his thoughts concisely and clearly, but required constant effort on the part of the reader. The writer of the second book adored long digressions, which continued on in the notes. He addressed the reader as “my dear child,” and Egert envisioned him as an amiable, somewhat sentimental, rosy-cheeked, and corpulent fellow.
The pages of the pasteboard-bound book bored Egert, and he scrambled through the chapters of the leather-bound tome as if they were prickly thickets. His eyes finally became accustomed to daily reading and no longer teared up. In order to stretch his tired back Egert got into the habit of walking into the city every morning. He issued forth leisurely, with ambling steps and the look of a man who had not yet decided where he should direct his feet; nevertheless, every day his feet brought him by diverse paths to the bazaar that was situated not far from the university. There he wandered among the stalls, successively tasting bacon and cream, fruit and smoked fish, while amongst the flickering hats and headscarves he searched for the black-haired head of Toria.
She noticed Egert immediately, but she pretended that she was fully engrossed in her shopping and that she had no wish to turn her eyes to the side, not for any reason. Passing from stall to stall, pointing and bargaining, she gradually filled her basket with food, while Egert strolled nearby, never losing sight of Toria, but also never appearing directly in her line of sight.
Having finished her shopping, Toria would set out on the return trip. Every time, Egert had to overcome his awkwardness when, having run in an arc to get ahead of her, he happened upon her path home as if by chance.
Toria always received him coolly and without surprise; taking the curved handle of the basket from her arm, Egert was always covered in goose bumps.
They always returned to the university in silence. Casually glancing to the side, Toria would see next to her a round shoulder and an arm with a rolled-up sleeve. On this arm the basket seemed as light as a feather, and the muscles under the white skin, untouched by sunburn, played only slightly under its weight. Toria would avert her eyes and they would pass through the courtyard to the household annex, and just as silently, they would part ways in the kitchen, after Egert had received in reward for his labor sometimes a roll with butter, sometimes a dripping fragment of honeycomb, sometimes a glass of milk. Carrying away his loot, Egert would return to his room and, with a light heart, sink into a book with the hard-earned delicacy sitting ready at hand in anticipation of the moment when it would finally be eaten.
At the dean’s request, Toria did try to tutor Egert two or three times. These attempts, unfortunately, were a decided failure: both tutor and student went their separate ways annoyed and exhausted. The joint lessons were discontinued after one memorable episode when Toria, beginning to enjoy the philosophical discussions about creation and mortality, exclaimed, leafing through the pages, “But that isn’t so, Dinar, it’s—”
Stopping short, she met Egert’s terrified gaze and immediately said her good-byes. That evening the two of them, in different parts of the massive, dark building, abandoned themselves to the same oppressive thoughts.
In all other respects, a tepid neutrality now held sway between Egert and Toria. Toria taught herself to nod when she ran into him, and Egert learned not to blanch when he heard the light tapping of her heels at the end of the corridor.
In the meantime, melons, pumpkins, gourds, and squash appeared in the stalls in the city, the heat of the day gave way to the chill of the night, and the studious youths, sunburned and plump from home cooking, gradually began to return to the university.
The annex was revivified. The dust was chased from the corridors, halls, and auditoriums. The cook returned and commenced her work, so there was no longer any reason for Toria to walk to the bazaar every day. A cleaning woman fluffed pillows and feather mattresses, and down flew about in clouds, as if a horde of geese and ducks had gathered in the university courtyard for a fateful battle. In the mornings two or three youths with bundles over their shoulders usually gathered in front of the grand staircase: these were prospective students who had traveled to the university from far-off cities and townships.
Mouths agape, the newcomers gazed upon the iron snake and the wooden monkey, became embarrassed whenever someone asked them a question, and hesitantly followed Dean Luayan, who invited them to join him in his study for an interview. After the interviews, a portion of the prospective students, despondent, set out on the return trip home; Egert suffered and felt despicable as he watched those who were turned away: any one of them was far more worthy of the standing of a student than Egert.
It must be said, however, that the summer days spent behind books had yielded their own modest fruits; in the domain of academia, Egert felt himself to be somewhat more confident, although he was certainly not going to set the heavens aflame with his brilliance. In exchange for Conversations with Young People, he received from the dean a book of monumental proportions and extravagant title: The Philosophy of Stars, Stones, Herbs, Fire, and Water, as Well as Their Incontrovertible Relationship to the Features of the Human Body, and in addition to this weighty tome, he received Anatomy, which was full of graphic and colorful illustrations.
These illustrations shocked and horrified him, and at the same time they aroused an unprecedented interest in him. Egert marveled at the intricate network of veins, the extraordinary arrangement of bones, and how the liver, seemingly enormous and quite brown, resembled those he had seen at market. In his innocent simplicity, Egert had always thought that the human heart looked exactly like those little hearts that were drawn in the corners of love letters, and he was shocked when he saw on the page that complicated knot, resembling bagpipes, with all its chambers and blood vessels. The dreadful skeleton, which only lacked a scythe in its hand to be truly terrifying, lost all its horror as soon as Egert delved into the study of the minute explanatory inscriptions that accompanied it: detailed and meticulous, these commentaries completely dispelled all thoughts of death, evoking instead reasonable and practical questions.