The rain fell violently, striking the window pane without mercy or pity...
He turned his head to where she sat and cried:
“Tell me, for God's sake, what did the doctor say?”
She closed her hand over his and said with a mighty calm:
“Why do you insist on knowing? Don't you trust us?”
“I am afraid, and a frightened man trusts no one. Tell me. I want the truth...”
“He said that if the danger grows worse, he will be forced to cut it off”...
“No, no... he is mad... he is mad...”
She bowed her head and he turned his face away, and the rain went on striking the glass with violence and cruelty...
“I will not let him cut it off — no, by my God, I will not let him”...
She wept, hiding her face in her hands — bitter, frightening tears...
He left her to weep, not sensing that she was weeping, and began striking the edge of the bed with his left hand, raging, feverish...
“Why do you torment yourself so? It may be that the danger will not grow worse”...
He looked at her slowly, as though seeing her for the first time — a weeping woman whose eyes carried the tenderness of the earth and the blue of the sky...
“I am a terrified coward. Forget my terror and do not weep... perhaps the pain will ease, as you say”...
She smiled, and he tried to smile and could not...
The rain slackened a moment, then returned to its cruelty, and
the darkness of dusk embraced the blackness of night...
“Hayat, sleep. I have worn you out today with my shouting”...
She passed her hand over his forehead, then laid her head upon his chest and said:
“You have not worn me out. It is you who are spent. The pain has worn you out...”
He kissed her hair and closed his eyes...
The rain stopped, making a cold stillness broken by the moans of an angry, open-winged wind...
“Hayat”...
“Yes, my darling, I am here, listening”...
“They used to call me a simpleton, a freak — all of them: my father, my mother, my brothers... taking no account of the trembling of my heart... I was afraid to sit with them and talk with them... afraid of their jokes and their conversation and their love
for one another. Do my words disturb you?”
“Not at all. I have often wished you would talk to me like this”...
“I loved my mother very much. Her face was the first beautiful thing my hand ever drew. I hid the drawing in my breast and showed it to her one evening, on a night like this one, wet and black... She looked at it a long while, then turned her face
