The Symmetry Teacher Read Online Free PDF Page B

there a Helen at all? It is not Helen whom the poets love, but the cause that resides in her. The reason her image can be summoned up ad infinitum is because she herself never really was. Naturally, I immediately dubbed the stranger in the photo Helen; but it was initially only because of the incomprehensible cloud. At that time I didn’t think about things in the way I am explaining them to you now. Not about the Iliad , nor about the Odyssey . I didn’t know that the war was already lost, that I was already sailing away … Isn’t it strange that you and I can see clouds that Homer couldn’t see? Have you ever imagined yourself blind? Everyone imagines it … What does a blind man see? Night? No. Endless waves.”
    Vanoski’s face went blank. I was no longer there in front of him. It even seemed to me that I saw waves in his gaze; but this was fear. He was again staring at that absurd white button on the wall. Was it the button he feared, or was he afraid I would ask him its purpose? In any case, that was precisely what I intended to ask him, but he made sure to interrupt me just then.
    “You ask what the upshot of all this was?” I hadn’t asked, but he seemed to want to bring the narrative to a close. “After that everything happened very simply, and too smoothly. Without a hitch. No, I didn’t fall in love with her immediately. I’m not a soldier, I don’t fall in love with pinup girls. Besides, I was already in love. I laughed at myself with the mockery of youth, which is the way youth tries to free itself from the embarrassment that someone might notice its ineptitude. No one noticed. And shaking off the devilish delusions as something so irrelevant to my charmed, resilient life that they could, therefore, never have happened, I thrust the ‘cloud’ carelessly into my notebook and hurried on to where I had been heading from the start—only I was running ahead of schedule, which is how I had ended up on the park bench. I hurried off to meet my Dika.
    “She was Eurydice. Eurydika—though Dika was what I called her. No, she was not yet mine. You think this is all too Greek? But her father actually was Greek, although she didn’t remember him, or her birthplace, for that matter. She had grown up with her mother in Paris. I didn’t remember my father, or my birthplace in Poland, either. Now we had both become dubious Britons. This bound us together. We studied in the same department. She first, and I joined later. She was younger but outstripped me by a mile in scholarship, while I was trying my hand at poetry. She coached me in the history of poetry so that I could pass from year to year, by the skin of my teeth. She liked teaching me, and I liked being her slow-witted student. Our own subject evolved slowly. We had already started kissing. Oh, we had a world of time back then!
    “And now, half a century later, when I need nothing but dull, unremitting calm, I suppose that there is such a thing as happiness. Because that’s what it was! With our heads buried in our books in Eurydice’s tiny room, time had no ending and no beginning—it simply was. It lived in this room like a warm, languid cat, and had no intention of leaving. It was true, I had no special liking for the Lake Poets. I remember we struggled over them for a long time—but nobody had lips or voices sweeter than our own. If only we had known then how precious it all really was! They were the most minuscule living quarters I had ever seen. Believe me, it was half the size of this little shoebox of mine! The apartment was located right next to my old grade school, and I felt that we had grown up together. We remembered childhood games we had both played: tic-tac-toe, kick the can, battleships … We got lost in our games until long past midnight. ‘Sleep! Sleep!’ her beloved African gray parrot shrieked. How did he get here? I wondered. Where did he find room to fit? The room was piled high with books of erudition I couldn’t grasp,