Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 28: The Fourth Notebook

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 28: The Fourth Notebook · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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He says we should come for the opening, she said,
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when the new office opens. Both of us. Tell him
0:07
we'll come, I said. We'll come, she said into
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the phone. Both of us. He says we'll come. My
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Playful Wife. Episode 28. The Fourth Notebook.
0:22
Written by Mia. The Fourth Notebook was smaller.
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I chose it deliberately, a pocket size the kind
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you carry rather than leave on a table because
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the whole point of it was that it had to come
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with me into the days rather than wait for me
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at home at the end of them. The first three had
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been objects you went to. You sat down at the
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kitchen table in the evening, after the day was
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over and safely passed, and you wrote at it,
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looked back at it, made sense of it. The fourth
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had to be a thing I carried into the live current
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of the present, so that I could catch the day
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while it was still happening, before it cooled
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into the past where the other notebooks had always
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met it. So small. Pocket -sized. A thing that
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rode in a shirt pocket against the chest, warm
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from the body, ready. The first entry read exactly
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as I had told Celonie it would, that evening
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in the workroom doorway. Tuesday. May. She finished
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something in the workroom. I finished something
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at the kitchen table. We stood in a doorway.
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The city did what the city does. And then below
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it because it was true and because the new kind
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of notebook was allowed to be true without being
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conclusive. We are still here. We are still learning.
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This is the beginning of the part one don't have
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words for yet. That was the whole first entry.
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No meaning extracted. No listen. Just a record
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that we had been there and that I had seen it,
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which was the entire new discipline. I carried
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it everywhere. To work, where I would take it
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out at my desk between things and write a line.
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Not about work, almost never about work, but
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about a thing I'd noticed on the way in, the
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particular quality of the morning light on the
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flyover, an old man feeding dogs at the corner
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with a regularity that suggested it was the most
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important appointment in his day. On the bus,
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where I wrote with the notebook braced on my
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knee, the handwriting jolting with the road.
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At the gym, where I had been going now for nearly
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two years, long enough that I had become part
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of the furniture of the place. Samir had, over
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those two years, graduated me through the stages
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of his regard. When I first came, a wrecked man,
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though I didn't know yet how thoroughly wrecked,
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going to the gym the way a drowning man grabs
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at anything, he had treated me with a careful,
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watchful concern, the attention you give a thing
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that might break. He spotted me more closely
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than I needed. He asked, in his minimal way,
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how I was sleeping. That had lasted months. Then,
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as I studied, the concern had eased into instruction,
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proper coaching, the assumption that I would
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be around long enough to be worth correcting.
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And lately, this past year, I had arrived at
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the final and highest stage of Samir's esteem,
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which was approving indifference. He no longer
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watched me. He no longer corrected me. He would
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nod when I came in and go back to whatever he
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was doing and leave me entirely alone. which
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in Samir's vocabulary was the warmest possible
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statement. You're fine. You don't need me to
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watch you anymore. You've got it. I had come
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to treasure his indifference more than most people's
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enthusiasm. It had been earned. It meant I no
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longer looked like a man who might break. One
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morning, between sets, I took the small notebook
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out and wrote a line about exactly that, about
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Samir's indifference and what it meant, and he
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saw me writing, and instead of asking what it
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was, he just looked at me writing in a tiny notebook
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on a bench in his gym and gave a single small
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nod, and went back to the front desk. He had
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decided somewhere that the writing was part of
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whatever had fixed me, and he respected it the
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way he respected the deadlift, as a thing that
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was working. I wrote that down too. Samir saw
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me writing and approved of it the way he approves
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of a good lift. He thinks the notebook is reps
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for some muscle he can't see. He's right. I showed
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Saloni the first two entries. Only the first
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two. I was not ready to hand over the running
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present the way I had handed over the finished
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past. The fourth notebook was, by its nature,
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more exposed, being unedited, being the day caught
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raw before I decided what it meant. But I showed
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her the opening, standing in the kitchen, holding
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the small book out. She read the two short entries.
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She read them twice, I think the second time
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slower. This is better, she said. Better than
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the others? Different than the others. The others
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were necessary. You had to write those. You'd
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have died without writing those. The year had
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to come out of you somehow, and ink was how.
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But they were about something that was over.
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This. She tapped the little page. The running
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present. The unfinished day. This is alive. The
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others were beautiful the way a held breath is
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beautiful. This one's breathing. She handed it
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back. Carefully. The way she handed back anything
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that mattered. Keep going. This is the one. The
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others got you here. This is the one you get
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to keep writing for the rest of your life. It's
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harder, I said. I keep wanting to explain. I
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write down what happened, and then my hand wants
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to add what it meant, and I have to stop it.
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It's a physical effort, not explaining. I know,
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she said. It's the same in the cloth. The temptation
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is always to over -design, to add the explaining
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stitch, the one that tells the viewer what to
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feel. The discipline is leaving it out, trusting
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the thing to mean itself without you standing
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next to it pointing. She smiled. We have the
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same disease you and I, the compulsion to point
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at our own meaning, and the same cure don't.
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Make the thing and step back and shut up and
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let it breathe. Make it and shut up, I said.
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You should teach that. Saturday mornings. I do,
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she said. It's the whole syllabus. It just takes
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the eight of them a while to believe me. Here
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are some entries from that first season of The
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Fourth Notebook, so you can see the kind of thing
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it became. I copy them out exactly. Monday. Rain
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in the night. Gone by morning. The neem dripping.
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S. Asleep with one foot out of the blanket, the
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way she does when the weather turns. Didn't wake
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her. Made the chai quietly. The whole flat smelled
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of wet dust through the window. Wednesday. The
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old man at the corner had a second dog today.
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Where do they come from, his dogs? He feeds them
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from a steel tiffin. I have decided he is the
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most reliable man in Delhi. Thursday. S. Swore
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at a zip for 10 minutes. Beautiful, sustained,
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inventive swearing. I wrote some of it down on
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the facing page. Will not reproduce it here.
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A woman who can swear like that at a zip is a
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woman fully alive. Married well. Saturday. She
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taught. Came home lit. Eight women. One of them
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finished a thing today, S said, and held it up
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and cried. Not the sad kind. I know that crying
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now. I have done it myself. Over a full rail
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at four in the morning. Sunday. Did nothing.
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The good nothing. Read on the balcony. She sketched.
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Neither of us spoke for two hours, and it was
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the opposite of lonely. Wrote this and put the
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book down to do more of the nothing. Friday.
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Caught myself not seeing all morning. Autopilot.
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Eyes somewhere else. The old slackness. Took
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the book out at lunch and made myself find five
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things. Pigeon on the AC unit. A colleague's
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brave new haircut. The exact blue of the afternoon
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between two buildings. The taste of tea I'd been
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drinking without tasting. Her in my mind unbidden
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mid -laugh. Five things. The muscle came back
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by evening. You see what they are. They are nothing.
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They are the grain of the ordinary. The days
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that do not announce themselves. The texture
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of a life no longer in crisis. A life that has
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discovered the absence of crisis is not boredom,
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but the actual prize. The thing the crisis had
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been clearing the ground for all along. I had
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spent the first 35 years of my life waiting for
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my life to start, for the next achievement, the
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next arrival, the thing after which I would finally
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be living. The year had cured me of waiting.
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The fourth notebook was the record of a man who
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had finally understood that this was it, that
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the ordinary Wednesday with the old man and his
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dogs was not the waiting room for life, but the
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life itself, the whole of it. the only one on
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offer, and that the single tragedy still available
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to me was to fail to notice it while it was here.
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I failed often. That belongs in the record, too.
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The discipline of presence is not a thing you
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achieve and keep. It is a thing you fail at hourly
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and return to. There were whole days the small
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notebook stayed in my pocket, and I moved through
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the hours half -asleep on the old autopilot,
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the attention gone slack. not seeing. And then
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something would catch, the light, a thing she
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said, the particular way the evening came down,
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and I would surface and remember and take the
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book out and try again. The trying again is the
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practice, not the success. Nobody is present
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all the time. The saints lie about that. You
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just keep coming back to it. The way you come
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back to the breath, the way you come back every
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ordinary morning to the choosing of your own
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life. There was a morning at the gym that belongs
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here, though it has nothing and everything to
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do with the notebook. I had been going for nearly
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two years, and Samir and I had long since arrived
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at our wordless understanding, and one morning,
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as I racked the bar after a heavy set, I caught
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him watching me. Not the old concerned watching,
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something else assessing. Then he came over.
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He does not come over anymore. The coming over
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was itself an event. You're different than when
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you started, he said. It was, by a distance,
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the longest, unprompted, personal remark he had
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made to me in two years. Two years of your excellent
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coaching, I said. He shook his head, dismissing
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the joke, wanting the real thing, which clearly
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cost him. Samir is not a man of words. Watching
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him reach for one was like watching a strong
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man lift something awkward. All the effort and
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the grip. Not the body, he said. The body's whatever.
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When you came in here that first year, you were
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somewhere else. You'd lift, and your eyes were
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somewhere else. Somewhere bad. I used to watch
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you to make sure you came back from it. Now you're...
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He tapped the air beside his own head. Here.
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In the room. Behind your own eyes. I don't know
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what happened to you, and I'm not going to ask,
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but you came back. I've seen a lot of men not
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come back from wherever you were. You came back.
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I didn't know what to say. He had been watching,
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all this time, more closely than I had understood,
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had appointed himself, silently, a guard at the
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edge of my worst year, spotting me in more than
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the literal sense. The gym had been one of the
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places I survived, and the big quiet man at the
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front desk had known it the whole time and never
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said, and was saying it now, at last, because
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I was finally far enough from the edge that it
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could safely be said. Thank you, Samir, I said.
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He was already embarrassed, already retreating
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into the indifference that was his native country.
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Don't drop the weights, he said, and went back
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to the desk. but he had said it. I wrote it in
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the car, the whole exchange, my hand not quite
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steady. Samir said he used to watch to make sure
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I came back. He's been guarding me for two years
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without a word. The people who save you don't
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always announce it. Some of them just spot your
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bar and keep an eye on your eyes and wait for
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you to climb out and only tell you afterward
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when it's safe in a sentence before telling you
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not to drop the weights. She asked a few weeks
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in to read more of it. Not all of it. She had
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the same instinct about the running present that
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I did, that it was more exposed than the finished
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past, but a week of it, a sample, to see what
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the days looked like through the small book.
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I gave it to her and watched her read this time,
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because the fourth notebook held nothing to be
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afraid of her seeing. It was just the days, just
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the grain. I watched her find the Thursday entry,
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the zip one, and watched her face go from reading
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blank to indignant to helplessly delighted in
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about four seconds. You wrote down my swearing.
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I wrote down that you swore. I didn't reproduce
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it. I noted for the record that it was beautiful,
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sustained, and inventive. It says married well.
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I stand by it. She read the rest, shaking her
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head, occasionally reading a line aloud in disbelief.
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The most reliable man in Delhi, she read about
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the dog man and looked at me as if I'd lost my
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mind and then looked again as if she'd understood
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something. She went quiet at the Sunday entry,
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the two hours of silence one. She read that one
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twice. This is what you see, she said. Not quite
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a question. All day. The dogs and the light and
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my swearing and the silence not being lonely.
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This is what's in your head now. This is what
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I trained myself to see, I said. It was always
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there. I spent 35 years not looking at it. Now
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I look, and it turns out the days are full of
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this. They were always full of this. The notebook
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is just me finally noticing what was in front
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of me the whole time. She handed the little book
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back, her eyes doing the bright thing. Don't
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lose it, she said. If you lose this one, I'll
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be more upset than about almost anything. The
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others were about the bad year. This one's about
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us. Now, keep it where it's safe. I keep it where
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it's safe. Shirt pocket by day, the drawer by
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night, with its three larger brothers. The archive
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grows. The practice continues. The days go by,
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full of what they were always full of, and now,
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at last, witnessed. Piyush called that weekend.
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He had news, and I knew it from the first syllable,
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the old reliable frequency a voice takes on when
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it's carrying something, though the something,
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these days, was always good. A project. A big
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one. The firm was expanding, opening something,
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and his role was expanding with it. More responsibility.
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A team of his own. The specific excitement of
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a man whose ambition is finding its footing,
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and discovering the ground will hold his weight.
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I listened. I asked real questions. I had become,
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over the years of letters and Sunday calls, genuinely
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fluent in the shape of his work, able to ask
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the question that showed I'd actually been following,
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which is the only gift worth giving a person
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talking about the thing they love. And under
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the listening, I felt the plain, uncomplicated
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pleasure of a brother's success. No shadow in
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it. No comparison, no ledger, just the clean
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gladness of watching someone you love be good
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at his life. It is one of the great underrated
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pleasures, that, and one I had nearly lost the
18:02
capacity for in the worst of the year, when everything
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good that happened to him had a blade in it for
18:08
me. The blade was gone. There was just my brother
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building something telling me about it, and me
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glad. Anyway, he said, winding down a little
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embarrassed by his own enthusiasm. The way he
18:22
gets. Enough. Tell Saloni I said hello. Tell
18:28
her yourself, I said. She's right here. And I
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held the phone out across the kitchen to Saloni,
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who was at the table and had been listening with
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the small private smile she wears for conversations
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she's not nominally part of. The smile of a woman
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pleased to be in a house where the phone gets
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held out rather than carried into another room.
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She took it. Hello yourself, she said into it,
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and her voice did the warm thing it does for
18:57
him, and I got up and went to the stove and put
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the kettle on, leaving the two of them to it,
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the way I do now, without it costing me anything,
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without even the memory of what it used to cost.
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I made the chai. I listened to the half of the
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conversation I could hear, Saloni laughing at
19:16
something, asking after Mira, the easy, ordinary
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music of a family that had, against every reasonable
19:24
prediction, simply become a family. And I thought,
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this is the fourth notebook too. Not just the
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morning light and the old man with the dogs and
19:34
Samir's indifference. This. The phone held across
19:38
a kitchen. A wife saying hello yourself. A kettle,
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a brother building something far away, and calling
19:46
to say so. The ongoing, unremarkable, entirely
19:50
miraculous life of a marriage that had been broken
19:53
all the way open and put back together more honestly
19:56
than it had ever been assembled the first time.
19:59
And that went on proving, in these small, uncountable
20:03
ways, on an ordinary weekend afternoon, that
20:07
it held. I poured the chai. I set a cup at Saloni's
20:12
right hand while she talked, the right temperature,
20:15
without her having to ask or look. She covered
20:19
the phone for a second. He says we should come
20:22
for the opening, she said. When the new office
20:24
opens, both of us. Tell him we'll come, I said.
20:31
We'll come, she said into the phone. Both of
20:35
us. He says we'll come. I wrote it in the small
20:40
notebook later. That night pee. Called. Big news.
20:44
Firm expanding. He's expanding with it. I listened
20:48
and was just glad. No blade in it. The blade's
20:51
gone. Held the phone across the kitchen and S
20:54
said hello yourself. Made chai. We're going to
20:58
Bengaluru for the opening. This is the fourth
21:01
notebook. The phone held out the hello yourself,
21:04
the chai at the right hand. Nothing happened.
21:07
Everything is happening. I was here for it. I
21:11
saw it. That's the entry. To be continued in
21:28
That was episode 28 of My Playful Wife. If this
21:33
story is staying with you, The next episode is
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already waiting. Subscribe so you don't miss
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Links are in the description. Thank you for listening.