Free The Symmetry Teacher by Andrei Bitov Page A

don’t know how to love, just as monks don’t know how to believe. If you love and believe, why write or pray? You love a living woman—and it’s an image; you reach toward God—and it’s words; you fall to Earth—and it’s your homeland. If you’re a writer, the Earth shoves you out, larger than life, like a monument, like relics, so that you don’t linger on Earth but in your homeland, unburied after all …
    “I have always dreamed of one thing only: giving up writing and being able to live. Oh, I could have! And I wouldn’t have written another word. With the utmost satisfaction. To my profound delight. I almost managed to love! Fate took it away. We were already leaving the altar when she trod on that gray, unseen … It was raining, and we were running, clasping each other by the hand, laughing, away from the city hall to the car. She got tangled in the hem of her wedding dress, lost her slipper … and landed with her heel on the bare electrical cable … But there had been a way out! I had always had a way out—to love . I could have vanquished the one with the briefcase and the photographs through love alone, as in a fairy tale. Could have sent him on his way, and not attached any meaning to this forgery … because it was a forgery! I forged my whole life according to it. If only it had been just mine … If only I were a scoundrel. If only I had abandoned Dika, or the Frenchwoman, even the Dutch woman, for love. But no. Not one of them! I could definitely have loved the hairdresser … But I only loved ONE: that paper Helen. I had a dream about that, too.
    “After Dika’s death, I burned the novel and refused to leave the house. Someone brought me my meals. Maybe it was even the hairdresser, but I don’t recall any woman. A year later I dreamed I was flying over a painting or an etching of a country, perhaps Greece, which looked like one of Picasso’s graphics on a mythological subject, only it was more conventional, and more parodic. There below me reigned a bacchic idyll: sheep, goats, shepherds, shepherdesses … And they were all making love. They were also made of paper, like children’s dolls cut out of the lined pages of a notebook. It was like the dream itself was on lined notebook paper. The vision of their paper love made me laugh at first, then it amused me, then it intrigued me. I felt I was just as papery, but just as capable of love as they were. I flew around looking for a girlfriend, but they were all engaged. My ability grew, but there was no girlfriend to be found. Finally, I saw one. I descended; she opened herself to accept my embraces. I swooped down on her … and then I became myself, no longer paper, but flesh and blood, and I felt myself rip bodily through this page from a school notebook.
    “That was the day I went out into the city for the first time. I wandered aimlessly, peering again into faces, but no longer in search of the mythical Helen, not differentiating between women and men, just studying people’s faces: What are they like, and who are they, these people? I stopped into cafés, stores, parks—and left without sitting down, without eating, without buying anything. I was tired, so I decided to go home. Then I found I was no longer walking, but standing, standing in front of a display window and looking dully at two mannequins, male and female, who seemed to be striding toward one another with outstretched arms, to embrace at last, only something prevented them. Was it my reflection between them? And then, through the display window, between the mannequins, I saw her: Helen from the photograph. For this time it was she, down to the minutest detail. How could I have failed to notice this shop before? I had passed this place thousands of times in my life during my quests! But it was new, a store that had just opened during the past year, while I was secluded in my room. I calculated—exactly seven years had gone by. And while I was standing there,