The Course of Love by Alain de Botton Read Free Book Online Page B

comparison with his own financial status. She owns a little place already, hasbeen working for four years longer than he has and wasn’t unemployed for eight months along the way. He has money enough to pay for the equivalent of a broom cupboard, she remarks (kindly). They find somewhere they like on the first floor of a building on Merchiston Avenue. The seller is a frail, elderly widow who lost her husband a year ago and whose two sons now live in Canada. She isn’t so well herself. Photos of the family when the boys were young line a bank of dark-brown shelves which Rabih promptly begins sizing up for a TV. He’ll strip off the wallpaper, too, and repaint the vivid orange kitchen cabinets in a more dignified color.
    â€œYou two remind me a little of how Ernie and I were in our day,” says the old lady, and Kirsten answers, “Bless,” and briefly puts an arm around her. The seller used to be a magistrate; now she has an inoperable tumor growing inside her spine and is moving to sheltered accommodation on the other side of town. They settle on a decent price; the seller isn’t pushing the young couple as hard as she might do. On the day they sign the contract, while Kirsten ventures into the bedroom to take measurements, the lady holds Rabih back for an instant with a remarkably strong yet boney hand. “Be kind to her, won’t you,” she says, “even if you sometimes think she’s in the wrong.” Half a year later they learn the seller passed away.
    They’ve reached the point where, by rights, their story—always slight—should draw to a close. The Romantic challenge is behind them. Life will from now on assume a steady, repetitive rhythm, to the extent that they will often find it hard to locate a specific event in time, so similar will the years appear in their outward forms. But their story is far from over: it is just a question of henceforth having to stand for longer in the stream and use a smaller-meshed sieve to catch the grains of interest.
    One Saturday morning, a few weeks after moving into the newflat, Rabih and Kirsten drive to the big Ikea on the outskirts of town to buy some glasses. The selection stretches over two aisles and a multitude of styles. The previous weekend, in a new shop off Queen Street, they swiftly found a lamp they both loved, with a wooden base and a porcelain shade. This should be easy.
    Not long after entering the cavernous homeware department, Kirsten decides that they should get a set from the Fabulös line—little tumblers which taper at the base and have two blobs of swirling blue and purple across the sides—and then head right home. One of the qualities her husband most admires in her is her decisiveness. But for Rabih it swiftly becomes evident that the larger, unadorned, and straight-sided glasses from the Godis line are the only ones that would really work with the kitchen table.
    Romanticism is a philosophy of intuitive agreement. In real love, there is no need tiresomely to articulate or spell things out. When two people belong together, there is simply—at long last—a wondrous reciprocal feeling that both parties see the world in precisely the same way.
    â€œYou’re really going to like these once we get them home, unpack them, and put them next to the plates, I promise. They’re just . . . nicer,” says Kirsten, who knows how to be firm when the occasion requires it. To her, the plain tumblers are the sort of thing she associates with school cafeterias and prisons.
    â€œI know what you mean, but I can’t help thinking these ones will look cleaner and fresher,” replies Rabih, who is unnerved by anything too decorative.
    â€œWell, we can’t stand here discussing it all day,” reasons Kirsten, who has pulled the sleeves of her jumper down overher hands.
    â€œDefinitely not,” concurs Rabih.
    â€œSo let’s just go for the Fabulös and be