Pretending he was seriously interested in what she was saying, Saadi gazed into his wife’s face and held back his rage at her open mouth, from which words kept flowing without a break. He was sure that if at that moment he had stabbed her with a knife nothing would have come out of her veins except words that looked like little hedgehogs. She spoke at length about the neighbors, their lies, and their fascination with glittery appearances. She spoke at length about the butcher, who didn’t fear God but cheated all his customers. If he sold meat to his own mother he would still have cheated her. And she spoke at length about a cat that prowled the streets. It stole into people’s homes and pinched meat set aside for cooking. She fed its kittens only the most tender pieces. The wife praised dogs and insisted they keep a vicious dog who would make it his task to kill the cat. Saadi interrupted, asking her to stay quiet if only for two minutes, and she looked at him reproachfully. “Are my words that offensive?” she asked.
“God save us!” he exclaimed. “Don’t misunderstand me. Your words are rich, and the listener needs a break in order to swallow and digest them, and turn them into vitamins that run their course in the body.”
“In that case,” she said, “since I give you the best nourishment and save you from doctors, you must pay me what you would pay one of them.”
“It’s true,” he said, “I haven’t been to a doctor since we got married, but my heart tells me that a doctor will soon visit and examine me, and will decide that I died from a heart attack.”
“Haven’t they invented something to protect against heart attacks?” she asked.
“Inventions are many,” he answered, “but they have yet to invent a drug for someone dying from feeling sick at heart.”
At that moment, like an unexpected savior, the telephone rang and Saadi rushed to answer it. He held the receiver close to his ear and spoke with a friend who invited him to get together at a coffee house. Saadi then returned the receiver to its place and told his wife a friend had called from the hospital, where he was taken after a car had run him over and broken his leg and he had no one to look after him.
“What about his wife?” she asked.
“He’s not married,” he answered.
“How old is he?”
“Thirty, or may be a little less.”
“Is he rich?”
“He’s not in need.”
“What does he do for a living?”
“He doesn’t work. He has enough properties to save him having to work.”
“And what does he look like?”
“He could be the brother of Suad Husni, may God have mercy on her soul!”
“How much did she leave him?”
“I said he could be her brother, I didn’t say he was her brother.”
“What do you think of marrying him to my sister In‘am? Come, don’t waste time in chattering. Go see him in the hospital and speak to him eloquently and intelligently about my sister, her beauty and moral character, and her skill in cooking.”
“Should I also tell him about her skill in beating her first husband, who had to spend three days in hospital?”
“Her husband was unbearable and deserved what he got. He used to fall asleep and snore whenever she tried to talk to him. If he’d been my husband, I wouldn’t have been satisfied with beating him, I would’ve killed him.”
Utterly stunned, Saadi fell silent, and his wife asked in surprise, “What happened to you? Have you swallowed your tongue?”
Saadi then placed his hands over his ears, pretending to be in great pain, and said to his wife that he could see her lips moving but couldn’t hear her voice, and he begged her to hurry and call a doctor.