The Course of Love. A novel pdfdrive com

parts of him, the entire relationship was a charade. Now “good enough” is
becoming good enough.
He notes a developing interest in certain sorts of news stories about middle-
aged men. There was a guy from Glasgow who threw himself under a train,
having amassed large debts and been caught out in an affair by his wife. Another
drove his car into the sea near Aberdeen following some online scandal. It
doesn’t, in the end, take very much, Rabih can see: just a few mistakes, and
suddenly one is in the realm of catastrophe. With a few twists of the dial, with
enough outside pressure, he, too, would be capable of anything. What enables
him to think of himself as sane is only a certain fragile chemical good fortune,
but he knows he would be very much in the market for a tragedy if ever life
chose to test him properly.
At those times when he is neither fully awake nor quite asleep but traveling
through the interstitial zones of consciousness, at two or three a.m., he feels how
many images and stray memories his mind holds, all waiting to come to his
attention when the rest of the static has receded: glimpses of a trip to Bangkok
eight years before, the surreal view of villages in India after a night squashed
against an airplane window; the cold tiled bathroom floor in the house his family
lived in in Athens; the first snowfall he ever experienced, on a holiday in eastern
Switzerland; the low grey sky observed on a walk across fields in Norfolk; a
corridor leading towards a swimming pool at university; the night spent with
Esther in hospital when they operated on her finger. . . . The logic of some things
may fade, but none of the images ever really go away.
During his sleepless nights, he occasionally thinks about and misses his

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mother. He wishes with embarrassing intensity that he might be eight again and
curled up under a blanket with a slight fever and that she could bring him food
and read to him. He longs for her to reassure him about the future, absolve him
of his sins, and comb his hair neatly into a left-sided parting. He is at least
mature enough to know there is something important which ought to resist
immediate censorship in these regressive states. He can see that he hasn’t,
despite the outward signs, come very far.
He realizes that anxiety will always dog him. It may appear that each new
wave of it is about this or that particular thing—the party where he won’t know
many people, the complicated journey he has to make to an unfamiliar country, a
dilemma at work—but, considered from a broader perspective, the problem is
always larger, more damning, and more fundamental.
He once fantasized that his worries would be stilled if he lived elsewhere, if
he attained a few professional goals, if he had a family. But nothing has ever
made a difference: he is, he can see, anxious to the core, in his most basic
makeup—a frightened, ill-adjusted creature.
There is a photograph he loves in the kitchen, of Kirsten, William, Esther, and
himself in a park on an autumn day, throwing leaves at one another from a pile
blown together by the wind. Joy and abandon are evident in all their faces, a
delight in being able to make a mess without consequence. But he recalls, also,
how inwardly troubled he was on that day; there was something at work with an
engineering company, he was keen to get home and make some calls to an
English client, his credit card was far above its limit. Only when events are over
is there really any chance for Rabih to enjoy them.
He is aware that his strong, capable wife is not the best person around whom
to have a nervous breakdown. There was a time when he would have felt bitter
about this. “Insomnia isn’t glamorous; now just come to bed”—is all Kirsten
would say if she woke up now and saw the light on in the den. He’s learnt, over
many painful episodes, that his beautiful, intelligent wife doesn’t 
do
reassurance.
But, better than that, he’s started to understand why. She isn’t mean; it’s her
experience of men and her defenses against being let down kicking in. It’s just
how she processes challenges. It helps to see these things; he is accruing
alternatives to vengeance and anger.