The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi Page B

against the bushy beard. “Now I can do anything I want with you!” She lifts her head, to get a better look at her vacant-eyed man. Stares at him a long time, close up. “I can talk to you about anything, without being interrupted, or blamed!” She nuzzles her head into hisshoulder. “After I left, yesterday, I was filled with such a strange, indefinable feeling. I felt both sad and relieved, both happy and unhappy.” She stares into the thickness of his beard. “Yes, a strange relief. I couldn’t understand how, as well as feeling upset and horribly guilty, I could also feel relieved, as if a burden had been lifted. I wasn’t sure if it was because of …” She stops. As always, it is difficult to know whether she is blocking out her thoughts, or groping for the right words.
    She rests her head back on the man’s chest, and continues. “Yes, I thought that maybe I felt relieved because I had finally been able to desert you … to leave you to die … to rid myself of you!” She huddles into the man’s motionless body, as if cold. “Yes, rid myself of you … because yesterday, all of a sudden, I started thinking that you were still conscious, quite well in mind and body but determined to make me talk, to find out my secrets and possess me completely. So I was scared.” She kisses his chest. “Can you forgive me?” She looks at him tenderly. “I left the house, hidden beneath my chador, and wandered the streets of this deaf, blind city in tears. Like a madwoman! When I went back to my aunt’s house in the evening, everyone thought I was ill. I went straight to my room to collapse into my distress, my guilt. I didn’t sleep allnight. I was sure I was a monster, a proper demon! I was terrorized. Had I lost my mind, become a criminal?” She pulls away from her man’s body. “Like you, like your cronies … like the men who beheaded the neighbor’s whole family! Yes, I belonged to your camp. Coming to that conclusion was terrifying. I cried all night long.” She moves closer to him. “Then, in the morning, at dawn, just before it started raining, the wind opened the window … I was cold … and afraid. I snuggled up to my girls … I felt a presence behind me. I didn’t dare look. I felt a hand stroking me. I couldn’t move. I heard my father’s voice. I gathered every ounce of strength, and turned around. He was there. With his white beard. His little eyes blinking in the darkness. The worn-out shape of him. In his hands he was carrying the quail I had given to the cat. He claimed that everything I told you yesterday had brought his quail back to life! Then he embraced me. I stood up. He wasn’t there. Gone, taken by the wind. The rain. Was it a dream? No … it was so real! His breath on my neck, his calloused palm against my skin …” She rests her chin on her hand, to keep her head upright. “I was thrilled by his visit, lit up. I finally realized that the cause of my relief was not my attempt to abandon you to death.” She stretches. “Do you under stand what I’m saying? … The thing thatwas actually releasing me was having talked about that business of the quail. The fact of having confessed it. Confessed all of it, to you. And then I realized that since you’ve been ill, since I’ve been talking to you, getting angry with you, insulting you, telling you everything that I’ve kept hidden in my heart, and you not being able to reply, or do anything at all … all of this has been soothing and comforting to me.” She grasps the man by the shoulders. “So, if I feel relieved, set free—in spite of the terrible things that keep happening to us—it is thanks to my secrets, and to you. I am not a demon!” She lets go of his shoulders, and strokes his beard. “Because now your body is mine, and my secrets are yours. You are here for me. I don’t know whether you can see or not, but one thing I am absolutely sure of is that you can hear me, that you can understand what I’m saying.