The book on the nightstand: Our souls at night

The pen of Kent Haruf says no to unnecessary descriptions, to improbable dialogues, to heroic situations. The American writer is interested in talking about the daily life, the extraordinary and beautiful everyday life that inhabits Holt, the fictional Colorado town where he set (also) the last of his novels: Our souls at night.

It all begins when Addie Moore proposes to Louis Waters to spend a few nights with her and she does so directly, without allusions, with the tender embarrassment of one who knows she is asking for something unusual.
“When Louis opened the door, she said, I come to talk to you about something?
They sat in the living room. Would you like a drink? A tea?
No thanks. I do not know if I’ll stop enough to drink it. She looked around. It’s a lovely home.
Diane has always treated it well. A little I’m trying to do so as well.
It’s still pretty, she said. It has been years since I’ve been there. (…)
You are probably wondering what I’m doing here, she said.
Well, I do not think you came here to tell me that my house is pretty.
No. I would suggest one thing.
Eh?
Yes. A kind of proposal.
Okay.
Not marriage, she said.
I did not think that even.
But it has to do with a kind of marriage. But now I do not know if I can. I’m having second thoughts. He gave a little laugh. In a way it’s a bit ‘like a wedding, do not you think?
What?
Indecision.
Maybe.
Yes. Well, I’ll tell you.
Tell me, Louis said.
I was wondering if you would, sometimes, to stay the night.”

The author takes us, holding hands, in the peace of their nights.
It is the intimate story of a knowledge that soon turns friendship into love, a feeling that will feed the daily and mutual attention.
It is a relationship that is not afraid neither of the age nor of the lack of time because it knows only present: “I want to know everything about you. We were not rushed, he said. No, let’s take the time we need”. Theirs is the time of night, living without limitations: both try to shake off the past retracing, in night confessional, poor choices or no choices made. It is a time missing of expectations, in which they do not imagine a future beyond the next night.

Addie and Louis are extraordinary because they are not trying to fill a void, they are not trying to give presence to absence.

They are just trying to give themselves a second chance but they falter outside of the night. They believe they are free to live what is going to arise between them, but in the daylight they can not escape the prejudices of acquaintances, the assumptions of those who think they know what their relashionship is made of or who arrogantly makes decisions in their lives.

Freedom is definitely a daily conquest, for all ages.

I sense that there is so much needed to believe that there may be something magnificent even in the daily lives of two seventy-years-old, that love can truly be born at any age and that you never give up the struggle against prejudice and appearances.

I love this physical world.
I love this life with you.
And the wind and the countryside.
The courtyard, on the gravel driveway.
The grass. The cool nights.
Lie in bed in the dark
to talk to you.

How much life there is until the end.

Reading time:
few nights in the company of souls Haruf

Ph. Sara Cartelli
© The Eat Culture