Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 31: The Fifth Notebook

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 31: The Fifth Notebook · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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I know, she said. Not unkindly. Just the fact
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of it, laid on the table between us where we
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put facts now. I felt you leave. Halfway through.
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You were nodding. A small wry tilt of her mouth.
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You're a very good nodder. My Playful Wife. Episode
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31. The Fifth Notebook. Written by Mia. I bought
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the fifth notebook on an ordinary Wednesday,
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and I almost didn't write in it, and that almost
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is the whole of what this volume is about. The
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first four had been easy to begin. In the way
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that grief and astonishment are easy to begin,
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they wrote themselves, because something enormous
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was happening to me, and the writing was the
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only railing I had to hold. The first notebook
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began because my life had broken open on a balcony
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and I needed somewhere to put the pieces. The
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second began because the pieces were rearranging
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into something I did not recognize and had to
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describe in order to believe. The third and fourth
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began because the new thing was so large and
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so good that I was frightened of taking it for
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granted, and the notebooks were my method against
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that fear. the daily discipline of attention,
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the refusal to sleep through my own life a second
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time. But the fifth notebook had no catastrophe
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to begin it. That was the difficulty. I stood
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in the stationery shop on Wednesday with the
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new notebook in my hand. The same kind, the dark
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cloth cover, the cream pages. I am loyal to the
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small things, and I realized I did not know what
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it was for. The crisis was over. The marriage
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was not breaking. It was the soundest structure
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in my life. The brother who had once called with
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a blade in his voice now called with a job offer
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for a cousin and a complaint about Bengaluru
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traffic. The wound that had organized four notebooks
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had healed into the foundation. Everything else
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stood on. And a man does not, conventionally,
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keep a journal of his own contentment. Contentment
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is supposed to be the place where the story stops.
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The and they lived happily, the closing of the
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book, the thing that needs no further pages because
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nothing further happens. I paid for the notebook
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anyway. I am loyal to the small things. But I
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carried it home on shore and set it on the kitchen
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table and looked at it across two days the way
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you look at a tool whose purpose you have forgotten
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and did not open it. What made me open it, in
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the end, was fear, the same engine that had begun
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all the others. Only this time the fear wore
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a costume I almost didn't recognize because it
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had dressed itself as peace. It happened on the
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Friday, an ordinary Friday evening. Saloni came
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home from the workroom later than usual. The
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third collection is pressing towards December's
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show, the deadline reel again, the beautiful
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old pressure back at her shoulders, and she came
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in tired and full of it. The work, the color
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she had finally found for the seventh piece,
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the way the drape had failed, and then suddenly
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not failed. And she stood in the kitchen telling
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me about it with her hands moving the way they
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move when the making is going well, and I...
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I wasn't listening. I want to be precise about
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this, because it frightened me more than anything
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had frightened me in two years. I was not bored.
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I was not unkind. I was nodding in the right
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places. I was making the right sounds. From the
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outside, I was a husband listening to his wife.
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But somewhere behind my eyes, I had gone away.
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I was half in tomorrow's emails, half in nothing
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at all, and the woman in front of me... The entire
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unmapped country, the fire I had spent two years
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learning to see, had become, for the length of
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that conversation, background. Furniture. The
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known quantity. The wife telling the work story,
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while the husband nods. I had heard the shape
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of it and stopped listening to the substance
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because I knew the shape because I had heard
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a hundred work stories because she was familiar,
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and the familiar is the thing the mind files
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away so it can attend to something else. And
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then she said, so I think I'll cut it on the
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bias after all, and looked at me for the answer,
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and I had to surface from wherever I'd been,
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and I didn't have the answer because I hadn't
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heard the question, and she saw it. Of course
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she saw it. She sees everything. That is the
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whole architecture of us now. She didn't say
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anything sharp. She just paused a small pause,
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and something crossed her face. Not hurt exactly,
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but a flicker of an old recognition, and she
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finished her tea and said she was tired, and
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the evening folded up early. And I sat at the
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table after she'd gone to bed with my heart going
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hard, because I had recognized the flicker. I
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had seen it before. I had been the cause of it
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before. Not in the bad year, but before that,
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in the years before the balcony, the comfortable
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years, the sleeping years. The flicker was the
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look of a woman being half -heard by a man who
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has decided, without knowing he has decided it,
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that he already knows her. It was the look from
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before. It was the first frost of the old sleep
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coming back in the middle of the best life I
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had ever had. I opened the fifth notebook that
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night. I wrote, at the top of the cream first
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page, in a hand that was not quite steady, the
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danger has changed its name. And then below it,
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the thing I had just understood at the kitchen
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table, the thing that would turn out to be the
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whole spine of this volume, that the first four
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notebooks had been written against a catastrophe,
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and the fifth would have to be written against
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something far more dangerous, because catastrophe
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at least keeps you awake. grief is many things
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but it is never drowsy the bad year had been
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the worst of my life and it had also been in
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one narrow sense easy it had made attention compulsory
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you do not sleepwalk through a fire you cannot
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take for granted a thing that is actively breaking
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the crisis had done my waking for me had held
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my eyes open by force had made every glance at
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my wife a matter of survival But the crisis was
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over, and nothing was holding my eyes open now
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except my own will. The fire that had kept me
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awake had become a hearth, warm and safe and
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steady, and the terrible secret of a hearth is
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that you can fall asleep in front of one. That
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was the danger that had changed its name. In
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the bad year, the danger was that I would lose
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her. In the good years... These years, the ones
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I was only now entering, the ones the fifth notebook
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would have to be the instrument against, the
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danger was subtler and worse. That I would keep
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her and have her and stop seeing her. That I
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would let the most extraordinary person I had
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ever known curdle slowly back into furniture,
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not through any drama, not through betrayal or
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rupture, but through the sheer relentless gravity
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of the familiar. The way a sound you hear every
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day stops being a sound at all. I had a neighbor
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once, in the years before all this, who lived
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hard against the railway line, and he swore he
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no longer heard the trains, that his ears had
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edited them out, that the great nightly thunder
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of the express had become, to him, a kind of
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silence. I had thought it a charming little story
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about the adaptability of the mind. I understood
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now that it was a horror story, and that it was
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about marriage. The mind edits out the constant.
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It is built to, it must, or we would be deafened
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by our own lives. And the most constant, most
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reliable, most every single morning thing in
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my world was the woman across the table, which
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meant she was precisely the thing my mind would
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try hardest to stop hearing, the way it had taught
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itself to stop hearing the trains. I had thought,
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two years ago, that waking up was the hard part.
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I had been wrong. Waking up is easy. A catastrophe
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will do it for you. Free of charge. Staying awake.
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That is the work. Staying awake when nothing
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is forcing you to, when the woman across the
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table is safe and loved and yours and has been
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telling you her work stories for years and will,
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God willing, tell you 10 ,000 more. Staying awake
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to that. To the daily miracle that has stopped
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announcing itself as a miracle precisely because
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it arrives every single day. That is the discipline
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of a lifetime and no crisis comes to help you
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with it. And most marriages, I understood sitting
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there with the fifth notebook open. Do not fail
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in fire at all. They fail in this. In the slow
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gray sleep that feels like peace. In the nodding
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husband who has stopped hearing the question.
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I was not going to do that. I had paid too much
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for the seeing to let it dim into a habit. That
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was what the fifth notebook was for. I had found
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its purpose. It was not a journal of my contentment.
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It was a watch I would have to keep against my
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own contentment, against the specific drowsiness
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that good fortune breeds, the sleep that wears
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the mask of peace. In the morning, I did a thing
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I had not done in a long while because I had
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not needed to. I apologized for something invisible.
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She was at the counter, hair undone, the third
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collection worry already back in the set of her
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shoulders, and I made the chai and brought it
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to her right hand the way I do, and I said, Last
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night, you were telling me about the bias cut,
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and I wasn't there. I heard the words. I wasn't
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listening. I'm sorry. She turned and looked at
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me, and the morning held still for a second the
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way it does when one of us says the true thing
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instead of the easy one. I know, she said, not
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unkindly, just the fact of it, laid on the table
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between us where we put facts now. I felt you
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leave. Halfway through, you were nodding. A small,
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wry tilt of her mouth. You're a very good nodder.
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You'd fool anyone who hadn't married you. I don't
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want to be a good nodder. I know that, too. She
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wrapped her hands around the cup, both of them,
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the old gesture. And then she said the thing
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that told me, again, why I had stayed, why I
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would always stay, why the second marriage to
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this woman was the only sane decision of my life.
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It's going to happen, you know. You leaving in
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the middle of a sentence. Me too. I do it to
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you. I've done it this week. I stopped hearing
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you tell me about your brother's cousin because
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I was three stitches deep in the seventh piece.
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It's not the crime. We're not going to be awake
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every minute for the rest of our lives. Nobody
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is. That's not a marriage. That's a vigil. And
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a vigil is exhausting and false. She looked at
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me over the steam. The thing isn't never leaving.
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The thing is coming back. You came back. You
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noticed you'd gone and you came back and you
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said so. That's not the failure. That's the whole
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of it. That's the work. I have written somewhere
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in the earlier notebooks that she is almost always
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right and that her rightness is of a particular
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kind. Not cleverness, though she is clever, but
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a sort of structural honesty, a refusal to let
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either of us hide inside a flattering version
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of the trouble. She had just done it again. I
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had come to the kitchen braced to confess a sin,
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and she had quietly reclassified it. Not a sin,
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but the ordinary tax of two minds sharing a life,
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payable not in never faltering but in the noticing
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and the coming back. There is a particular relief
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in being told that the standard is not perfection.
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I had spent the whole night building a cathedral
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of vigilance in my head, a marriage in which
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I would never once drift, never once nod, never
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once let my attention slip its leash, and the
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building of it had exhausted me before breakfast,
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because it was impossible, and some part of me
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had known it was impossible, and had therefore
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quietly begun to despair. She had knocked the
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cathedral down with a single sentence over a
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cup of tea and put something livable in its place.
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Not a vigil, but a practice. Not perfection,
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but repair. The danger was real. I was not wrong
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about the danger, but the defense against it
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was not the impossible vigilance I had been imagining
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at midnight. The defense was smaller and kinder
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and infinitely more sustainable. Notice that
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you've gone. Come back. Say so. The marriage
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did not require me to never sleep. It required
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me to keep waking up. So that is how Volume 2
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begins. Not with a catastrophe, with a chai,
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and an apology for a sin that turned out to be
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only a tax, and a wife reclassifying my midnight
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terror into something a person can actually live
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inside. The fifth notebook will be different
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from the others, I can already tell. The first
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four were written in weather, storm, flood, the
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long thaw, the first dry season. This one will
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be written in climate, which is harder to see
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and harder to write, because climate does not
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announce itself in a single dramatic morning.
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It is the slow accumulated average of 10 ,000
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ordinary ones. The drama of the bad year is over
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and will not, I hope, return. What replaces it
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is not the absence of story, but a quieter and
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more demanding kind. The story of whether two
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people who have learned to see each other can
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keep seeing each other across the long, flat
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decades, with no fire to force it, with familiarity
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working against them every single day like a
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soft, steady tide that wants to wear the looking
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smooth. I think we can. I think the noticing
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and coming back is a real method and not a comfort
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I am telling myself. But I am not certain, and
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the uncertainty is I have decided a good sign
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because the day I become certain we will keep
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seeing each other is the day I will stop watching
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for the sleep, and the stopping to watch is exactly
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how the sleep gets in. So I will stay a little
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afraid. I will keep the fifth notebook the way
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a sailor keeps an eye on a calm sea, which is
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more carefully, not less, because the calm is
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when you drown. My grandfather, who had spent
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his working life on ships, told me once that
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the sea takes more men in fair weather than in
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storms, because in a storm every man is lashed
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to his post and awake, and in fair weather they
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go below and sleep, trusting the flat water.
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I did not understand him when I was a boy. Fair
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weather sounded like the safe part. I understand
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him now. The flat water is not the safe part.
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The flat water is the test that does not look
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like a test, and the men it takes are the ones
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who mistook the absence of a storm for the absence
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of a sea. December is coming, and the third collection
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with it, Saloni's biggest yet. The one the December
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room will be full of strangers to witness, and
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I will be at the edge of that room where I do
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my best living, watching the people watch her
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work walk into the light. There is Bengaluru
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ahead, the promised trip, the dinner with the
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four of us at my brother's table in his new life.
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There are Diwali's and the Diyas along the railing,
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and Saloni's hands teaching Mira the order of
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the lighting the way her own mother taught her.
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There are, I am counting on it, 10 ,000 ordinary
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Tuesdays, the chai and the small notebook and
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the look across the table. And there is this,
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which is the only resolution I have to offer
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at the opening of a new volume, the only vow
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worth making at the start of the long awake years,
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that when she tells me about the bias cut, I
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will listen to the substance and not just the
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shape. That when the country of her becomes familiar,
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I will remember that familiar is not the same
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as known, that I have not finished mapping her,
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and will not finish until one of us dies, that
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the most dangerous sentence in any marriage is
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I already know what she's going to say. I will
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keep waking up. I will notice when I've gone.
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I will come back. And I will write it all down
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in the fifth notebook, in climate rather than
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weather, one ordinary witness morning at a time,
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because the watching is the loving, and the loving
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is the staying, and the staying, it turns out,
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was never a thing you did once on a balcony two
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years ago. It is a thing you do this morning,
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and then again tomorrow, for as long as the mornings
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last. She finished her chai. She put the cup
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in the sink. She came past me on her way to the
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door and the workroom and the seventh piece,
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and she stopped and put her hand on the back
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of my neck for a moment. Warm from the cup, the
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small proprietary sentence she says with her
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hands, and she said, tell me about your brother's
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cousin tonight. The whole thing. I'll actually
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listen this time. I'll actually tell it, I said.
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We'll see, she said, and the wry mouth. and the
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door and gone. I opened the fifth notebook and
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wrote down the morning while the chai was still
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warm in me. Day one of the awake years. The danger
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has changed its name, and so has the work. Not
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never leaving. Coming back. She taught me that
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before breakfast, the way she teaches me everything
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sideways, while pretending to talk about a cup.
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And then I closed it, and went to start my own
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day. Lighter than I had been at midnight, a man
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who had found, at last, what the fifth notebook
19:09
was for. To be continued in episode 32, The Bias
19:26
of My Playful Wife. If this story is staying
19:29
with you, the next episode is already waiting.
19:33
Subscribe so you don't miss it. The complete
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chapters are on my Patreon. Links are in the
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description. Thank you for listening.