(Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)
One night it was worse than usual. It was three o'clock, then four. Construction work had been taking place for the past few nights on their street, giant bins of rubble and concrete were moved and crushed, and Moushumi felt angry at Nikhil for being able to sleep through it. She was tempted to get up, poured herself a drink, took a bath, anything. But fatigue kept her in bed. She watched the shadows that the passing traffic threw onto their ceiling, listened to a truck wailing in the distance like a solitary, nocturnal beast. She was convinced she would be up to see the sun rise. But somehow she slept again. She was woken just after dawn by the sound of rain beating against the bedroom window, pelting it with such ferocity that she almost expected the glass to shatter. She had a splitting headache. She got out of bed and parted the curtains, then returned to bed and shook Nikhil awake. "Look," she said, pointing at the rain, as if it were something truly extraordinary. Nikhil obliged, fully asleep, sat upright, then he closed his eyes again.
At seven-thirty she got out of bed. The morning sky was clear. She walked out of the bedroom and saw that rain had leaked through the roof, left an unsightly yellow patch on the ceiling and puddles in the apartment : one in the bathroom, another in the front hall. The sill of a window left open in the living room was soaked, streaked with mud, as were the bills and books and papers piled on it. The sight of it made her weep. At the same time she was thankful that there was something tangible for her to be upset about.
"Why are you crying ?" Nikhil asked, squinting at his pajamas.
"There are cracks in the ceiling," she said.
Nikhil looked up. "They're not too bad. I'll call the super."
"The rain water came right through the roof."
"What rain ?"
"Don't you remember ? It was pouring rain at dawn. It was incredible. I woke you."
But Nikhil didn't remember a thing.
A month of Mondays and Wednesdays passed. She began to see him on Fridays as well. One Friday she found herself alone in Dimitri's apartment ; he went out as soon as she arrived, to buy a stick of butter for a white sauce he was making to pour over trout. Bartok played on the stereo expensive components scattered on the floor. She watched him from the window, walking down the block, a small, balding, unemployed middle-aged man, who was enabling her to wreck her marriage. She wondered if she was the only woman in her family ever to have betrayed her husband, to have been unfaithful. This was what upset her most to admit : that this affair caused her to feel strangely at peace, the complication of it claiming her, structuring her day. After the first time, washing up in the bathroom, she'd been horrified by what she'd done, at the sight of her clothes scattered throughout the two rooms. Before leaving, she'd combed her hair in the bathroom mirror, the only one in the apartment. She'd kept her head bent low, glancing up only briefly at the end. When she did she saw that it was one of those mirrors that was for some reason particularly flattering, due to some trick of the light or the quality of the glass, causing her skin to glow.
There was something on Dimitri's walls. He was still living out of a series of mammoth duffel bags. She was glad not to be able to picture his life in all its detail, its mess. The only thing he'd set up are the kitchen, the stereo components, and some of his books. Each time she visited, there were modest signs of progress. She wandered around his living room, looked at the books he was beginning to organize on his plywood shelves. Apart from all the German, their personal libraries are similar. There was the same lime green spine of The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. The same edition of Mimesis. The same boxed set of Proust. She pulled out an oversized volume of photographs of Paris, by Atget. She sat on an armchair, Dimitri's only piece of living room furniture. It was here that she'd sat the first time she'd visited, and he'd stood behind her, massaging a spot on her shoulder, arousing her, until she stood up, and they'd walked together to the bed.
She heard Dimitri's footsteps on the stairs, then sound of key in the lock, slicing sharply into the apartment. She got up to put the book away, searching for the gap in which it had stood.
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