It rained all Sunday, and that was the best thing that could have happened.
Not because I like rain. But because all our plans fell through: we did not go to my parents’, we did not go to the cinema, we did not go anywhere. What was left was the flat, two people, and the eight hours that we usually fill with something.
In the morning it was still fine. We made coffee and talked about how good it would be when we finally lived in a bigger flat, and where we would put the books.
By the afternoon there was nothing left to talk about.
That is the hardest part of a marriage — not the arguing, but the moment when there is nothing to say and you cannot leave. At times like that a person starts looking at the other, and notices things they do not notice on ordinary days: that they no longer hold a book the way they used to. That their hair is different. That they are tired.
Towards four o’clock she said:
“There’s something I should tell you.”
I did not ask what it was. I only waited.
“I don’t know whether I still love you,” she said. “I mean, not the way I used to. Differently. And I don’t know whether that is enough.”
I had felt that sentence in the air for weeks, and still I was not prepared for it.
“Why now?”
“Because it’s raining, and there’s nowhere to go.”
That was the most honest thing she had said in months.
I did not answer straight away. I got up and made a tea. Two. I took one over and sat down beside her on the sofa.
“I don’t know either,” I said. “I used to think love was something you know. That there is a feeling, and either you have it or you don’t.”
“And?”
“And now I think it isn’t a feeling. It’s a decision. Every morning.”
It was not a pretty sentence, and it was not comfort either. But it was true.
She looked out of the window for a long time, where the rain was falling vertically and the street was completely empty.
“Then what do you decide?” she asked.
“That I’m staying. And that I’m not staying because there’s nowhere to go.”
She laughed at that. It was the first laugh of the day, and I knew that it mattered more than anything I could have said.
At seven in the evening it turned out there was no bread in the house. I said I would go.
“In this rain?”
“Yes.”
“Then we both go.”
We went. Under the umbrella the two of us tried to fit, and one shoulder always got wet. The shop is five minutes away, but we walked for twenty, because we were not hurrying.
On the way home she said:
“Do you know what I was most afraid of?”
“What?”
“That you would say everything was fine. Because then I wouldn’t have known whether you were paying attention.”
Nothing was resolved that evening. That sort of thing does not take one Sunday. But something shifted, and from then on it rained every Sunday — at least, that is how I remember it.
Since then we have a habit: if it rains, we plan nothing. We just stay, and we talk about the things we would keep quiet about in sunlight.
That is the best thing the rain has brought.
