The History of Love by Nicole Krauss Page B

of The History of Love, and wanted me to take it to the post office. “Sure,” I said, tucking it under my arm. Instead, I walked to the park and worked my thumbnail under the seal. On top was a letter, one sentence, written in my mother’s tiny English handwriting:
Dear Mr. Marcus,
    I hope these chapters are all you hoped for; anything less is my fault entirely.
    Yours,
Charlotte Singer
     
My heart sank. Fifteen boring words without even the slightest hint of romance! I knew I should send it, that it wasn’t up to me, that it isn’t fair to meddle in other people’s business. But then, there are a lot of things that aren’t fair.
33. THE HISTORY OF LOVE , CHAPTER 10
     
    During the Age of Glass, everyone believed some part of him or her to be extremely fragile. For some it was a hand, for others a femur, yet others believed it was their noses that were made of glass. The Age of Glass followed the Stone Age as an evolutionary corrective, introducing into human relations a new sense of fragility that fostered compassion. This period lasted a relatively short time in the history of love—about a century—until a doctor named Ignacio da Silva hit on the treatment of inviting people to recline on a couch and giving them a bracing smack on the body part in question, proving to them the truth. The anatomical illusion that had seemed so real slowly disappeared and—like so much we no longer need but can’t give up—became vestigial. But from time to time, for reasons that can’t always be understood, it surfaces again, suggesting that the Age of Glass, like the Age of Silence, never entirely ended.
    Take for example that man walking down the street. You wouldn’t notice him necessarily, he’s not the sort of man one notices; everything about his clothes and his demeanor ask not to be picked out from a crowd. Ordinarily—he would tell you this himself—he would be overlooked. He carries nothing. At least he appears to carry nothing, not an umbrella even though it looks like rain, or a briefcase though it’s rush hour, and around him, stooped against the wind, people are making their way home to their warm houses at the edge of the city where their children lean over their homework at the kitchen table, the smell of dinner in the air, and probably a dog, because there is always a dog in such houses.
    One night when this man was still young, he decided to go to a party. There, he ran into a girl he’d gone up through the grades with since elementary school, a girl he’d always been a little in love with even though he was sure she didn’t know he existed. She had the most beautiful name he’d ever heard: Alma. When she saw him standing by the door her face lit up, and she crossed the room to talk to him. He couldn’t believe it.
    An hour or two went by. It must have been a good conversation, because the next thing he knew Alma had told him to close his eyes. Then she kissed him. Her kiss was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering. He felt his body shaking. He was scared he was about to lose control of his muscles. For anyone else, it was one thing, but for him it wasn’t so easy, because this man believed—and had believed for as long as he could remember—that part of him was made of glass. He imagined a wrong move in which he fell and shattered in front of her. He pulled away, even though he didn’t want to. He smiled at Alma’s feet, hoping she’d understand. They talked for hours.
    That night he went home full of joy. He couldn’t sleep, so excited was he for the next day, when he and Alma had a date to go to the movies. He picked her up the following evening and gave her a bunch of yellow daffodils. At the theater, he fought—and triumphed over!—the perils of sitting. He watched the whole movie leaning forward, so that his weight was resting on the underside of his thighs and not on the part of him that was made of glass. If Alma noticed she didn’t say. He moved his knee a