Interpreter of Maladies

by Jhumpa Lahiri

The cosmetics that had seemed superfluous were necessary now, not to improve her but to define her somehow.

She spoke slowly, as if she were thinking aloud.

Perhaps they, too, had little in common apart from three children and a decade of their lives. The signs he recognized from his own marriage were there—the bickering, the indifference, the protracted silences.

“Is it really pain you feel, Mrs. Das, or is it guilt?”

It crushed him; he knew at that moment that he was not even important enough to be properly insulted.

It was a scribble to her, but somewhere in the world, she realized with a shock, it meant something.