The Course of Love. A novel pdfdrive com

Mein Herr
!’” she sings under her
breath, and Rabih’s own breath catches in wonder at her charm. He feels fifteen

---

again and she is Alice Saure.
She flew into Frankfurt the day before and took the train here, she tells him;
she finds European trains so good for thinking. Rabih realizes it must now be
close to bathtime back at home. How simple it would be to explode his life
simply by moving his hand ten centimeters to the left.
“Tell me about you,” she prompts. Well, he studied in London, then went up
to Edinburgh; work keeps him busy, though he likes to travel when he can; yes,
he does rather mind the gloomy weather, but perhaps it’s a useful discipline not
to worry too much about the state of the skies. The editing comes with
unexpected ease. “What did you do today, Daddy?” he hears his children
inquiring. Daddy gave a talk in front of lots of people, then read his book for a
while and had an early night so he can take the first plane home tomorrow to see
his darling girl and special boy—who might as well not exist right now.
“I can’t face the delegates’ dinner,” she says at seven, after Eichmann returns
to ask if they would like a cocktail now.
So they walk out of the bar together. His hands are trembling as he presses the
button for the lift. He asks what floor she needs and stands opposite her in the
see-through glass cubicle on its way up. A fog has settled over the landscape.
The forthrightness of the middle-aged seducer is rarely a matter of confidence or
arrogance; it is instead a species of impatient despair born of a pitiful
awareness of the ever-increasing proximity of death.
In its basic form, her room is nearly identical to his, but he is surprised by how
different its atmosphere seems. A purple dress is hanging on one wall, and a
catalogue from the Neues Museum has been set down by the television; there’s
an open laptop on the desk, there are two postcards of a painting of Goethe near
the mirror, and on the night table her phone is docked into the hotel stereo. She
asks if he has heard of a certain singer and summons up her album with a few
taps: the arrangement is spare, just a piano and some percussion in what sounds
like a cavernous cathedral, and then a powerful female voice cuts in, clear and
haunting, unusually deep and then suddenly high and fragile. “I especially love
this part,” she says, and then closes her eyes for a moment. He remains standing
next to the foot of the bed as the singer repeats the word 
always
in rising
octaves, like a cry that goes straight to his soul. He has kept clear of such music
since the children were born. It serves no good purpose to be transported like
this when the confines of his life demand resoluteness and impassivity.
He goes to her, takes her face in his hands, and puts his lips to hers. She draws
him close and shuts her eyes again. “I will give you everything . . . ,” sings the

---

voice.
It happens much as he remembers it from before, that first span with someone
new. If he could collect every such scene from across his past and put them
together on a single loop, the total running time might be no more than half an
hour, yet these would in many ways be the finest moments of his life.
It feels as if he had been granted access to a version of himself which he had
long thought dead.
What dangers are posed by those touchingly insecure men who, unsure of their
own powers of attraction, need to keep finding out whether they are acceptable
to others.
She turns down the lights. There are so many differences within the same basic
parameters: her tongue more curious and impatient, her back arching just as he
moves to her stomach, her legs tauter, her thighs darker. What would stop him
now? The idea that all of this is wrong has moved away into the far distance, like
an alarm bell ringing through a deep sleep.
They lie still afterwards, their breathing slowly calming itself. The curtains are
open, providing a view of the brightly illuminated power station in the fog.
“What’s your wife like?” she asks, smiling. It’s impossible to judge her tone
of voice or to know how to answer. His and Kirsten’s challenges feel too
distinctly their own to share, even if they have now attracted a new, more
innocent satellite into their orbit.
“She’s . . . nice.” He falters. Lauren maintains her inscrutable expression but
doesn’t press. He caresses her shoulder; somewhere, through a wall, a lift can be
heard descending. He can’t claim to be bored at home. It’s not that he doesn’t
respect his wife, nor even that he doesn’t desire her anymore; no, the truth of his
situation is more peculiar and more humiliating. He is in love with a woman who
too often appears not to need love at all; a fighter so capable and strong that
there are few opportunities afforded to nurture her; someone with a problematic
relationship to anyone inclined to help her, and who sometimes seems most
comfortable when she feels disappointed by those to whom she has entrusted
herself. It appears he has had sex with Lauren for no greater or lesser reason than
that he and his wife have of late been finding it extremely hard to have a hug—
and that he is, somewhere inside, without much justice, really rather hurt by, and
furious about, the fact.