Romance. Dating story no. 15

All the most beautiful things in the world are born where opposites meet. The magical colours of sunrise and sunset are born where day meets night. Dreams are born where sleep meets waking. Desires are born on the edge between the permitted and the forbidden — and romance... Romance is born where emotion meets logic, reason meets feeling. It is both reason’s attempt to awaken feeling in itself and feeling’s striving to merge with reason in order to express the inexpressible. It is an idea that reigns in people’s minds and gives this world that sweet, intoxicating aftertaste for the sake of which you want to live one more life, and then another, and another, because it is this idea that gives you wings while you are still alive and, for brief but priceless moments, turns our sinful, long-suffering world into something like paradise.

Sveta and Misha met in decidedly romantic circumstances, which set the tone for the relationship that followed. It was a smart restaurant on the roof of a tower block with a view of the sunset, which that day turned out to be especially bright and colourful. The warm pinkish-orange glow lent their faces a particular tenderness and a fairy-tale quality, playing and reflecting in the champagne in their glasses. A conversation full of promise that committed them to nothing, first shy smiles and accidental, unintended touches. The breeze stirred her hair, one strand kept trying to fall across her eyes, and he kept wanting to put it back for her. She was enchanted by the casually undone top button of his shirt — it seemed to be telling her that behind all his outward restraint and composure he was, deep inside, very vulnerable and tender.

The evening flew by. He drowned in her eyes, she bathed in his careful, attentive gestures. They exchanged phone numbers and heartless taxi drivers carried them off to opposite ends of the city. They met regularly: by chance at events and on purpose in beautiful restaurants. He was struck by her femininity and her quiet, unshowy beauty, by her modesty and her faith in what is beautiful. He was struck by her rich inner world, her spontaneity and sincerity, by the delight in her eyes that appeared every time she saw him. In his presence she allowed herself to relax, to open up, to become even softer, gentler and more caring, full of admiration for his strength and quiet confidence. Beside him, and only beside him, she knew for certain that everything would be all right.

But it was not for nothing that I wrote at the beginning that romance is born where logic meets emotion. Those very qualities that do not go together were what Sveta and Misha embodied in full.

Sveta was magnificent in her emotionality: you could only marvel that such a fragile, airy person could hold so many contradictory, seething feelings and emotions. That seething was like a kaleidoscope turning without a pause, and it was sometimes hard to guess which picture would come together this time. Only one thing could be said with certainty: for some time now the centre of that picture had been Misha alone. Misha, by contrast, seemed not to trust his own feelings. Sparing with emotions, he had a rational explanation, cause or reason for everything. If Sveta’s kaleidoscope was of the brightest palette, Misha seemed to see everything black and white, simple. Yes or no, one or zero, clear and precise, like a computer. Sveta was flexible, pliant, mobile, gliding, like a whirlwind able to lure you in, draw you in, sweep you up and carry you to heights unknown. Misha was straightforward not only in his words but in the way he showed himself. Neat clothes, a precise, immaculate haircut, slightly chopped movements and facial expressions. He seemed such a reliable stone wall, solid and able to protect her from every misfortune. A man’s word is a man’s deed.

It is hard for emotion to get used to “a man’s word is a man’s deed”. After Misha had fixed the next date and plunged headlong into work, a fresh kaleidoscope of “what if...” would explode in Sveta’s head. These were entirely illogical guesses with nothing whatever to support them, since Misha never gave her a single reason; but emotion needs no reason for the imagination to gallop off and for all of Sveta’s thoughts to be swallowed up by the question of why he had not called for so long. She restrained herself as best she could. Misha could not begin to imagine the flights of imagination hidden behind Sveta’s relief and joy at every new meeting. She tried hard not to scare Misha off, but experience, the cursed experience of past relationships, made itself felt.

Coping with your own emotions is always hard. Sometimes it seemed to Sveta that she died several times a day; she felt physically ill from her own guesswork and from the fear that it might all happen again, that she would be used again. And when the emotions no longer fitted inside her, they came crashing down on Misha in waves. First in small, tentative waves, and then came that one big wave that manages both to wash away the sandcastles and to soak half the towel. You want to swear at it, but in essence it is too late — the wave runs back and merges with the mass of the sea, and good luck finding it. She apologised, she hesitated, she was afraid, she was not sure whether they should get any closer, whether all of this was serious.

Misha did not understand these waves, but he honestly tried to. He had said it, so that is how it would be — where did such a reaction come from? And it was not that she did not trust him. It was like some strange switching of modes: here is cuddle mode, here is panic mode, and here are whingeing mode and victim mode. He did his utmost to work out what governed these modes, because Sveta was becoming more and more important to him, and these sudden switches were knocking him out of his own well-worn groove too — and what was bound to happen happened: logic tried to understand feelings and to influence them, to make sense of them, to find the pattern, to put them in order. The equation was rapidly turning from a linear one into a logarithmic one, multi-level and with many unknowns. An equation like that called for non-standard solutions, and Misha started acting in a non-standard way: romantically.

Their relationship, tender and elevated as it already was, filled up with the magic of little presents, tokens of attention, coffee in bed, bouquets of flowers and unfailingly beautiful emotions, passion and tenderness. And every such small thing only strengthened this paradoxical bond between them, a bond that neither feeling nor logic could govern on its own. Some would say that they had nothing in common. But they had each other. Somebody will ask how long you can coast on romance. In principle, for as long as they themselves want to. The child of logic and emotion needs neither recognition from outside nor anyone’s permission.