"What do you mean saying you don't go to our house?" Mansour tried to change his authoritative voice as best as he could.
"That is our place now, yours and mine!"
Neda was startled by his timid talk. She did not know how to respond, how to think. All she knew and felt at that moment was that she did not want to be married. She had thought before that by marrying, a fuller life would open before her. Now her soul only possessed disgust, aversion, and disappointment.
What would she say? Who could she talk to? Where could she run away to, and from what? All these inclinations had formerly appeared to her but in a meaningless way. In comparison, what she experienced now was a complete darkness that obscured her being, yet they seemed trivial. Sitting in the garden, under the dark and dull sky, yet full of stars and the moon light, a point, a place that her future had established, and her present was now ultimately unclear and baffled.
Mansour put his hand under her chin and raised her face. What he saw was so unnatural to him that he was almost shocked. The beautiful, young face of his new wife and bride was all blackened by crying. Eye shadow, eye liner, rouge, and every other paint that the Wig Woman had used on her face, were smeared together. Her face looked like a painting of a mad painter. But that was besides the point for him. What he saw was a face full of suffering and pain.
"Honey, what is it? Are you frightened?" He said it in a very genuine tone.
This was the only right thing she had heard all day and night. Yes, she was frightened, yes, she was not confident. She looked at him through the mist of her eyes and said with a trembling voice:
"Very much!"
"So am I, very much! I guess it's normal! It'll be okay!"
So, he was afraid, too. Neda always thought that men had no fear especially of things like this. But there was a difference between his fear and hers. He was ready to go through it; she wanted to run away from it. But on the second thought, was she petrified or regretful and disappointed? She knew that at that moment she was in a tremendous agony. She almost had anxiety attack; nevertheless, she also had apprehension for Mansour, even a greater one. Nobody had forced her to marry him; even though she later would find out that both of them were set up by her father. She was as responsible for this union as he was; but if only his never- ending shrill tone of voice would stop... She could not stand his familiar pitch of voice, his black mustache, once seemed so charming to her, his black full hair which he combed it all up, his dark, influential eyes, and his trim body. Yes, she could not stand this handsome man, as everybody said so, which now was her husband. Now she finally grasped that it was all her fault. She was just not in love with him. He was too mature; she was still a child.
"I want to end this!" she murmured in a way that even herself could not hear it; but she raised her voice enough at the last two words for him to hear it; but not the remaining people in the garden who were cleaning up and constantly interrupting them. She said it again just in case he had not heard it the first time.
"I want to end this. It is a disaster, and affliction. It is bad news for you and a blight for me, for both of us. I don't know how! I can't know how to end it! I can't recognize this. It is not me. I can't see me like this. It's dreadful, so unnatural!"
To Be Continued
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