The Night Watchman: New Year’s Soup Summary & Analysis

This is the first time Zhaanat’s medicine hasn’t worked, Patrice thinks about her eyes. “White-man diseases need white-man cures,” Zhaanat says. She travels to a clinic, where a nurse gives her ointment to rub into her eyes, saying she might have gone blind if it had been left untreated for much longer. After Patrice talks about all of the things she would have missed if she had gone blind, Wood Mountain asks if she would have missed seeing him too. He says that Patrice is the only one for him, that he means it with his whole heart, and ends by asking her, for god’s sake, to marry him. After, Patrice feels relieved because she hadn’t promised anything, and Wood Mountain is relieved that she didn’t say no.

In the moment, though, Patrice had wanted to say that she wanted him too. Patrice thinks of something that her mother told her, which she thinks is definitely true: you don’t really know a man until you tell him you don’t love him. That’s when his true viciousness, below the surface so he could charm you, might come out.