My Heart

Preface

We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverable for ourselves and for others.

Goethe (Source: Elective Affinities, a novel)

Introduction

My heart still beats in my chest; but when you read this book we will all be dead. I and he and She. Yes, we will be dead, but this book is not about death and darkness, but about Love and Light. I know that people have written thousands and thousands of books about love, but this is a subject that can never run dry because, as Turgenev said so beautifully, love is the axis upon which life turns, spinning ever onward.

People will never grow tired talking about and hearing about Love. The most stern and grim people want to love and want to be loved. No matter what kind of wondrous machines will be invented in the future, still Love will remain the most mysterious and wondrous thing in all the World, even the entire Universe. Young men and women dream of a beautiful and ideal love. But what love is beautiful, and what love is ideal? Every lover believes that he loves best of all.

I will not sin against Truth if I say that my love is both wondrous and beautiful. I think that it deserves to be written about and to be read about. I never thought that I would want to tell people about my love for Her. But now that I am old and death is knocking on my door, I want to tell you this story of a beautiful and extraordinary love.

Such things happen in life that cannot be made up in the richest of imaginations of the most talented writer. I am no kind of writer, but writing this book will be easy because the story I want to tell you is one written mainly in letters. We wrote these letters to each other over a few years. All I need to do is read them to you without inventing anything, without hiding anything, and without embellishing.

We know that some writers use the method of storytelling as lovers writing letters to each other. Before you is a true romance in letters; a true story with real letters. For many, many years I have carefully kept these letters. I keep these letters while I am alive, while my heart beats within me, and when it stops beating, when I die, these letters may, perhaps, be lost, or even be destroyed and then no one will be able to tell the marvelous story of our beautiful love.

But before you start reading these letters, I would like to tell you about that short period of time that preceded them.

Chapter 1: Morning

They say that a child is like wax: while he is young you can form him into any shape. I was a very calm, obedient and gentle child, but I would not allow anyone to shape me into something I wasn’t.

I do not want to touch on some tragic events that befell me in the very early years of my life. Let us let it go for now.

Until I was seven years old I lived in a small, provincial town with my grandfather and grandmother. They were religious people, but I did not become religious myself. Despite my atheism I was always a little bit fatalistic. This was not a belief in the inevitability or the inescapable nature of our Fate, on the contrary, I believed that one should not be led like a lamb to the slaughter, but must fight for one’s own happiness. So what is the nature of this slight fatalism?

This is where we run into the question of the fortunate and unfortunate. Who would deny that there are the lucky and the unlucky? There are people who are constantly tripped up by Fate. I’m not talking about the clumsy and woolgatherers, but sometimes a person is both smart and full of energy, but simply has no luck. This is not mere supposition but a fact, and we all know people about whom it is said: “Once unlucky, always unlucky.”

In contrast to these unlucky souls, there are those who are always lucky. Whatever storms and squalls may come to them they are always carried safely to shore. Whatever seeming difficulties may fall into the path of these lucky men, it always falls to their advantage. It is said that “even the Devil aids the lucky man.” This doesn’t mean that lucky men don’t have their own obstacles in life. There’s plenty of trouble to go around, but in a decisive life eventually Fortune will always smile on him. And I should know; I am one of the lucky ones.

The years passed by and the child became a teenager and the teenager a young man. Oh, this springtime of human life, when the very young have a very vivid experience of everything. The young are especially sensitive and vulnerable! This is the time of great plans, when a worldview comes into being, when every person often and deeply thinks long and hard about the meaning of life in general and about his life in particular. This is the time when everyone’s heart is overflowing with love and waits impatiently and with longing for a requited love like a field under the hot, baking rays of the sun waits for a life-giving and blessed rain.

We have all lived through this time and have expectantly waited for this fantastic and ineffable wonder, that is called – Love. And every youth dreams that She, the woman he comes to love, will be the most beautiful and kind, and the most gentle and alluring maiden in the world. But how do you find Her; where does one look for Her? How do you recognize Her? No one knows. How does one recognize that she really is She — the one and only and unlike anyone else? You can look for her all your life and never find her. You can walk right past her and never even know that you just walked by your Destiny, walked by, didn’t recognize Her, and now you will never see her again and never meet her again. Life is the greatest miracle of Nature and Love is the greatest miracle of Life.

From the school I was attending they were transferring several classes to another school. Starting September 1 our ninth grade was wholly moved to a school on Eight Suvorovsky Street in Leningrad. My friend Syoma Krumer and I did not want to go to the new school. We didn’t have any special reasons for not wanting to go. We just didn’t want to leave the school we had been going to for eight years. We were just stubborn. And the school administration also became stubborn, “If you don’t want to be transferred with your class, take your school records and go wherever you feel like going.”

I really liked my new class. These were good and friendly kids. Not one was lazy, a hooligan, snobbish, condescending, or stuck-up. The guys were good, the girls were nice and the relationships between them were kind. The teachers were good too. My favorite subjects were literature and history. The history teacher was pleasant, but didn’t leave much of an impression on me. But the literature teacher got my attention right away.

She was. . .over 25 years old. Back then I wasn’t that good at judging someone’s age. I remember that I was especially impressed that she did not wear make-up. “Made up” women were always hiding something, I thought, and I never fully trusted them. I really liked her intelligent eyes and her heartfelt relationships with her students. She led her lessons in a very engaging way; her great enthusiasm created great enthusiasm in her students. She was very genuine and charming which was very attractive right away. Later, I would often go back to that time and remember in particular the way my literature teacher was dressed. She dressed modestly yet elegantly: a pretty blouse; a dark skirt; black silk stockings; patent leather pumps; and a beautiful necklace on her neck. She would wear neither earrings nor rings. Looking at this elegant and graceful woman, dazzling in her extraordinary charm, I suddenly wondered: would I want her to be my wife?