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By Root 378 0

waved to them without getting a response. It wasn’t yet eight and the lawyer’s doors were still closed. He walked past them, not wanting to seem impatient, and came back fifteen minutes later to find the guard opening them. The latter didn’t seem to recognize him. He wanted to follow the guard inside, but the trembling old man who had left the room when his patience had run out last time now jumped in front of him and, pushing him aside, sneaked in first. A bit out of breath, the old man rushed to a chair and was about to sit down when he saw the guard and changed his mind. So he remained standing, all sheepish, hat pressed against his stomach. Five other clients arrived and got behind him into a tight queue, nose to nape. “You’d think they were in a penitentiary,” thought Louis Normil, who had settled himself comfortably into a chair. He thought these people were clients who couldn’t pay the lawyer in any way besides flattery and he felt the money in his pocket with satisfaction. So he was more than a little shocked when he saw the toothless old man pulling out his wallet and taking out a twenty-dollar bill, which he slipped the guard with a conniving wink. The peephole opened and an eye slithered into its frame. As if awaiting this signal, the guard opened the door and had the old man go in. The others executed a sharp ballet step forward that brought them closer to the guard.

“Settle down,” he told them with a look of disapproval, like a schoolmaster talking to his students.

“But they pushed me,” the first one whispered humbly.

The old man’s visit didn’t last ten minutes. He reappeared, fidgeting and trembling more than ever.

“An arm and a leg!” he was heard mumbling. “Costing me an arm and a leg!”

Seeing the guard motion to another client to go in ahead of him, Louis Normil understood that the exact time of his appointment had no significance and that he would again just waste his morning waiting if he remained glued to his chair. So he went to line up behind the other four clients, having firmly decided not to give up his place to anyone. Two hours later, he was finally able to get into the lawyer’s office.

For a long time, the latter looked at him in silence, without even moving, as if he wanted his immobility to prove to Louis Normil the futility of his endeavor.

“Really now, sir,” he said in a nasal voice, “what do you want from me?”

Louis Normil took the money out of his pocket and patted it between his palms:

“To bring you this,” he said. “Didn’t you ask me for five hundred dollars?”

“What right have you to present yourself without an appointment?” the lawyer yelled.

“But,” Louis Normil stammered, disconcerted.

“There is no but,” the lawyer continued. “I remember making an appointment with your daughter, not with you. Take this money back with you.”

Louis Normil felt his father’s anger rising in him. The shock was what saved him. He instinctively tilted his head to take his leave of the lawyer and made for the exit. He thought he caught a glint of mockery in the guard’s eyes, but he paid him no mind and went to work. It was about eleven and, to excuse his absence, he pretended he had been unwell and had to go see his doctor. The two employees he had run into earlier exchanged a quick look and smiled sardonically. The atmosphere of the office was heavy, smothered in layers of unbearable silence worsened by the sudden arrival of the director.

He was a reddish, paunchy mulatto who carried himself like a Jesuit and spoke to his employees in an insufferably soft voice. His myopic eyes, encircled by glasses, rested unforgivingly on Louis Normil.

“Late again, Normil,” he said, discomfited, as if he wanted the other employees as witnesses. “Is it your health that is the source of the problem?”

“Precisely,” Louis Normil uttered, his tone a bit forced. “I wanted to see you to apologize. I am currently being treated by my doctor.”

“In that case, why not take a few days off! We’ll find you a substitute. How long will your treatment last? A month? Two months? You mustn’t neglect your health, take as much time