I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops Read Online Free PDF Page B

shows ingratitude for God’s gifts.”
    The young man then turned to address the aunt, and told her that he intended to marry Almaza, regardless of her illness. But the aunt insisted that Almaza was no better than an attack of fleas or lice under the arms, an unkind niece whom God had decreed should never marry because she didn’t deserve anything good in this world.
    He gave up with the aunt, although he couldn’t help watching her as she started gathering the money in her skirt as if she were picking fruit. He turned back to Almaza to tell her he had decided to marry her and nothing would make him change his mind. Almaza was silent; she was disillusioned by what was happening to her and gazed abstractedly beyond him. She had expected anything but this from the marriage fair: he hadn’t run away like the others, he hadn’t flushed or turned pale when she told him about her illness, stuttered with embarrassment, shaken his headregretfully. Instead it was as if she’d opened her arms to him, said she was in the best of health and promised him lots of beautiful children.
    He was urging her to say yes, but she said nothing and stared fixedly at the dried cane stalks stacked at the far end of the room, hoping to make him think that her illness was preoccupying her. But she was afraid that her patience was wearing thin and she might blurt out the truth: that he had guessed right and she was not ill but had decided never to get married years before, when she had realized that marriage poured cold water on the excitement and strange, special nature of a relationship, and love froze over. The longed-for, lusted-after sweetheart became the traveling companion who smoothed out the bumpy road, a cow with milk exploding from her udders, a pair of hands to wash the sheets and make the bed ready, not for uninterrupted intimacy, but for sleep as heavy as a temporary death, and a husband snoring after a heavy meal, his sense of smell gone now that he had stopped sniffing out women.
    She remembered the second night with her cousin in the tent. She had walked for three days to reach him. She and her mother were supposed to take turns on the donkey, but because her mother had agreed to the difficult journey despite her frail constitution, Almaza insisted that she ride all the time.
    The second night he had made sure they were all asleep in their tents, just as he had done the first night, but he hadn’t approached her in the same way: she didn’t hear the beating of his heart before she felt his hand; he didn’t strike his nose with his clenched fist when he saw her breasts, which were permanently in his mouth the second night, except when he snuffled around between them a little, then lifted his head to ask her an irrelevant question.
    Almaza forced herself to shake off the images of the tent, to break free from the pervasive odors of her cousin-lover’s body, and reimmerse herself in her recollections of the days following the weddings of female relatives and neighbors, when she had been shocked by the way they looked—as if someone had scooped the froth off a drink and left the flat, stale, lifeless liquid. She was shocked too by their empty eyes, which only ever lit up at the sight of their wedding dresses. These outfits reminded them of the days of their engagement, when they were waiting for a new, delightful, unknown page to be turned as they wove the cloth and embroidered it with bright colors. Even this sight lost its appeal as the colors faded, and they were too bowed down by the cares of home and children to look anymore.
    The young man was interfering, and drawing her away from these black clouds, wearing down her obstinacy, entreating her to accept. Perhaps she should. Perhaps he wasn’t like other men. He had followed her there and he was trying his best to persuade her. But he was raising his voice, declaring that he would marry her even if he had to force her, for she had pulled him halfway out of the well, then cut