“Well, we’d better end this unexpected wrangle,” said the young man, striding about. “You appear to want to be left out of everything, and that’s enough.”
“My body, my miserable body,” she sighed. “Why isn’t it strong? Oh, why can’t I walk away and be gone? Why can’t I finish my duties and be gone? Why do I get headaches and puff when I walk? And all the time this to do and that to do and this to do in your way and that to do in her way, and everything sympathy and confusion and bearing one another’s burdens. Why can’t this be done and that be done in my way and they be done and I at peace? Why has anything to be done, I cannot see. Why all this marriage, marriage? . . . The human race would have become a single person centuries ago if marriage was any use. And all this rubbish about love, love in a church, love in a cave, as if there is the least difference, and I held up from my business over such trifles!”
“What do you want?” he said, exasperated. “Can you state it in simple language? If so, do.”
“I want my pack of patience cards.”
“Very well, get them.”
He found, as he expected, that the poor girl was crying. And, as always, an Indian close outside the window, a mali in this case, picking up sounds. Much upset, he sat silent for a moment, thinking over his mother and her senile intrusions. He wished he had never asked her to visit India, or become under any obligation to her.
“Well, my dear girl, this isn’t much of a home-coming,” he said at last. “I had no idea she had this up her sleeve.”
Adela had stopped crying. An extraordinary expression was on her face, half relief, half horror. She repeated, “Aziz, Aziz.”
They all avoided mentioning that name. It had become synonymous with the power of evil. He was “the prisoner,” “the person in question,” “the defence,” and the sound of it now rang out like the first note of new symphony.
“Aziz . . . have I made a mistake?”