It isn’t disrespectful to Rabih to suggest that he doesn’t really know why he has asked her to marry him, know in the sense of being in command of a rationally founded, coherent set of motives which could be shared with a skeptical or probing third party. What he has instead of a rationale is feelings, and plenty of them: the feeling of never wanting to let her go because of her broad, open forehead and the way her upper lip protrudes ever so slightly over her lower one; the feeling that he loves her because of her furtive, slightly surprised, quick-witted air which inspires him to call her his “Rat” and his “Mole” (and which also, because her looks are unconventional, makes him feel clever for finding her attractive); the feeling that he needs to marry her because of the diligent concentration on her face when she prepares a cod and spinach pie; because of her sweetness when she buttons up her duffel coat; and because of the cunning intelligence she displays when she unpacks the psyches of people they know.
There is virtually no serious thought underpinning his certainty about marriage. He has never read any books on the institution; he has in the last decade never spent more than ten minutes with a child; he has never cynically interrogated a married couple let alone spoken in any depth with a divorced one and would be at a loss to explain why the majority of marriages fail, save from the general idiocy or lack of imagination of their participants.
For most of recorded history, people married for logical sorts of reasons: because her parcel of land adjoined yours, his family had a flourishing grain business, her father was the magistrate in town, there was a castle to keep up, or both sets of parents subscribed to the same interpretation of a holy text. And from such reasonable marriages there flowed loneliness, rape, infidelity, beating, hardness of heart, and screams heard through the nursery doors.
The marriage of reason was not, from any sincere perspective, reasonable at all; it was often expedient, narrow-minded, snobbish, exploitative, and abusive. Which is why what has replaced it—the marriage of feeling—has largely been spared the need to account for itself. What matters is that two people wish desperately that it happen, are drawn to one another by an overwhelming instinct, and know in their hearts that it is right. The modern age appears to have had enough of “reasons,” those catalysts of misery, those accountants’ demands. Indeed the more imprudent a marriage appears (perhaps it’s been only six weeks since they met; one of them has no job; or both are barely out of their teens), the safer it may actually be deemed to be, for apparent “recklessness” is taken as a counterweight to all the errors and tragedies vouchsafed by the so-called sensible unions of old. The prestige of instinct is the legacy of a collective traumatized reaction against too many centuries of unreasonable “reason.”
He asks her to marry him because it feels like an extremely dangerous thing to do: if the marriage were to fail, it would ruin both their lives. Those voices which hint that marriage is no longer necessary, that it is far safer simply to cohabit, are right from a practical point of view, concedes Rabih; but they miss the emotional appeal of danger, of putting oneself and one’s beloved through an experience which could, with only a few twists of the plotline, result in mutual destruction. Rabih takes his very willingness to be ruined in love’s name as proof of his commitment. That it is “unnecessary” in the practical sense to marry serves only to render the idea more compelling emotionally. Being married may be associated with caution, conservatism, and timidity, but getting married is an altogether different, more reckless, and therefore more appealingly Romantic proposition.
Marriage, to Rabih, feels like the high point of a daring path to total intimacy; proposing has all the passionate allure of shutting one’s eyes and jumping off a steep cliff, wishing and trusting that the other will be there to catch one.
He proposes because he wants to preserve, to “freeze,” what he and Kirsten feel for each other. He hopes through the act of marrying to make an ecstatic sensation perpetual.
There is one memory he’ll return to again and again in recalling the fervor he wants to hold on to. They are at a rooftop club on George Street. It is a Saturday night. They are on the dance floor, bathed in rapid orbits of purple and yellow lights, with a hip-hop bass alternating with the rousing choruses of stadium anthems. She’s wearing trainers, black velvet shorts, and a black chiffon top. He wants to lick the sweat off her temples and swing her around in his arms. The music and the fellowship among the dancers promise a permanent end to all pain and division.
They go out onto a terrace illuminated only by a series of large candles distributed around the railings. It’s a clear night, and the universe has come down to meet them. She points out Andromeda. A plane banks over Edinburgh Castle, then straightens up for the descent to the airport. In the moment he feels beyond doubt that this is the woman he wants to grow old with.
There are, of course, quite a few aspects of this occasion which marriage could not enable him to “freeze” or preserve: the serenity of the vast, star-filled night; the generous hedonism of the Dionysian club; the absence of responsibility; the indolent Sunday which lies before them (they will sleep until midday); her buoyant mood and his sense of gratitude. Rabih is not marrying—and therefore fixing forever—a feeling. He is marrying a person with whom, under a very particular, privileged, and fugitive set of circumstances, he has been fortunate enough to have a feeling.
The proposal is at one level about what he’s running towards but also, and perhaps every bit as much, about what he’s running away from. A few months before he met Kirsten, he had dinner with a couple, old friends from his days at university in Salamanca. They had a lively meal catching up on news. As the three of them were leaving the restaurant in Victoria Street, Marta smoothed down the collar of Juan’s camel-colored coat and wrapped his burgundy scarf carefully around his neck, a gesture of such natural and tender care that it had the incidental effect of making Rabih appreciate, like a punch in the stomach, how entirely alone he was in a world wholly indifferent to his existence and fate.
Life on his own had become, he realized then, untenable. He had had enough of solitary walks home at the end of desultory parties; of entire Sundays passed without speaking a word to another human; of holidays spent tagging along with harassed couples whose children left them no energy for conversation; of the knowledge that he occupied no important place in anyone’s heart.
He loves Kirsten deeply, but he hates the idea of being on his own with almost equal force.
To a shameful extent, the charm of marriage boils down to how unpleasant it is to be alone. This isn’t necessarily our fault as individuals. Society as a whole appears determined to render the single state as nettlesome and depressing as possible: once the freewheeling days of school and university are over, company and warmth become dispiritingly hard to find; social life starts to revolve oppressively around couples; there’s no one left to call or hang out with. It’s hardly surprising, then, if when we find someone halfway decent, we might cling.
In the old days, when people could (in theory) only have sex after they were married, wise observers knew that some might be tempted to marry for the wrong reasons—and so argued that the taboos around premarital sex should be lifted to help the young make calmer, less impulse-driven choices.