The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

stockings and leather gloves, he was walking through an avenue of elm trees. That by the time Rosa found a manager and an announcement was made over the loudspeaker— Mr Z Litvinoff, calling Mr Z Litvinoff. Would you please meet your wife in Ladies’ Footwear —he had reached a pond, and was watching as a boat rowed by a young couple floated towards the reeds behind which he was standing, and the girl, thinking she was hidden, unbuttoned her shirt to reveal two white breasts. That the sight of these breasts had filled Litvinoff with regret, and he hurried back through the park to the department store, where he found Rosa—her face flushed and her hair damp at the nape of her neck—talking to a pair of policemen. That when she threw her arms around him, telling him he’d scared her half to death and asking where on earth he’d been, Litvinoff answered that he had gone to the bathroom and gotten locked inside the stall. That later, in a hotel bar, the Litvinoffs met the one editor who would agree to see them, a nervous man with a thin laugh and nicotine-stained fingers who told them that though he liked the book very much, he could not publish it because no one would buy it. As a token of his appreciation, he made them a gift of a book his publishing house had just brought out. After an hour he excused himself saying he had a dinner to attend, and hurried out, leaving the Litvinoffs with the check.
    That night, after Rosa had fallen asleep, Litvinoff locked himself in the bathroom for real. He did this almost every night because he was embarrassed that his wife should have to smell his business. While he sat on the toilet, he read the first page of the book the editor had given them. Also, he cried.
    It is not known that Litvinoff’s favorite flower was the peony. That his favorite form of punctuation was the question mark. That he had terrible dreams and could only fall asleep, if he could fall asleep at all, with a glass of warm milk. That he often imagined his own death. That he thought the woman who loved him was wrong to. That he was flat-footed. That his favorite food was the potato. That he liked to think of himself as a philosopher. That he questioned all things, even the most simple, to the extent that when someone passing him on the street raised his hat and said, “Good day,” Litvinoff often paused so long to weigh the evidence that by the time he’d settled on an answer the person had gone on his way, leaving him standing alone. These things were lost to oblivion like so much about so many who are born and die without anyone ever taking the time to write it all down. That Litvinoff had a wife who was so devoted is, to be frank, the only reason anyone knows anything about him at all.
    A few months after the book was published by a small publishing house in Santiago, Litvinoff received a package in the mail. At the moment the postman rang the bell, Litvinoff’s pen had been poised above a blank piece of paper, his eyes watery with revelation, filled with the feeling that he was on the verge of understanding the essence of something. But when the bell rang the thought was lost, and Litvinoff, ordinary again, dragged his feet down the dark hallway and opened the door where the mailman stood in the sunlight. “Good day,” the mailman said, handing him a large, neatly wrapped brown envelope, and Litvinoff did not have to weigh the evidence for long to come to the conclusion that while a moment ago the day had verged on being excellent, more than he could have hoped for, it suddenly had changed like the direction of a squall on the horizon. This was further confirmed when Litvinoff opened the package and found the typeset of The History of Love , along with the following brief note from his publisher: The enclosed dead matter is no longer needed by us and is being returned to you. Litvinoff winced, not knowing it was a custom to return the galley proofs to the author. He wondered if this would affect Rosa’s