“So then, counselor,” Louis Normil added in an attempt to break the grotesque and sensual atmosphere.
“Five hundred dollars up front,” the lawyer cut in. “And I am so sure that we’ll get our due process that I won’t ask you for more until the end of the trial. Send the money with this nice young woman by next week.”
“It will be my pleasure to bring it myself.”
“My dear, I have a soft spot for pretty people, and I really don’t like to be contradicted. I will only take the money from your daughter.”
“Fine, sir, goodbye, counselor. Come, Rose, let’s go.”
She wobbled on her legs and clutched her father’s arm.
“Must be the heat,” the lawyer said idly.
And he purred for a little while as if inwardly savoring a voluptuous idea.
This time, he said goodbye first and opened the door for them himself. He rubbed his hands as he watched them leave, though his lips were twisted in a hateful rictus.
In the hallway Rose breathed easier, even though it wasn’t ventilated any better. Her father grabbed her arm and whispered:
“Don’t you say a word, wait until we’re outside.”
They both staggered as they reached the street under the mocking eyes of the guard.
“My God!” Rose groaned. “My God!”
“Yes,” was all her father said in response.
They went home together because it was about one and time for lunch. They found the family sitting at the table, eating in silence. As soon as they came in, they were greeted by anxious eyes. They sat down and Rose casually heaped her plate with food.
“I’m starving,” she said, looking her brother straight in the eye.
Before putting any food in her mouth she suddenly burst into tears. Getting up from the table, she covered her face with her napkin and ran upstairs.
“What’s the matter with her?” the invalid asked.
“Nothing,” the father answered, “a little tired. We had to wait a long time at the lawyer’s.”
“And so what happened?” the grandfather asked.
“It worked out. The lawyer thinks there’s a good chance we’ll recover our property.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The father knew how to find the five hundred dollars. He hadn’t given his word lightly. For the last six years, he had been seeing a very rich young woman who had often proven her devotion to him. He would go and tell her everything. She lived just outside of town. Maybe she didn’t know about any of this. He would pay her back as soon as he had taken care of things. So firm was his intention that he decided he would refuse to accept the sum without an IOU. He would drop by that very afternoon, after the office closed, and then return late at night in the car she drove like a madwoman on the deserted roads that led to her house. Was it because he had seen his wife day in and day out for the last twenty years that he was unable to desire her? He knew very well he had little cause to be unhappy with her save for that lack of spontaneity that made her ever the same, always a bit taciturn and plump, idle and wistful. Her nonchalance surfaced even in their physical relations, and he sometimes had the awkward feeling she submitted to them only out of duty. Was he sure of this? Had he tried to understand her? Did the coldness she affected conceal a mute reproach, some deep-seated and unexpressed grievance? Sometimes he wondered, was he blameless? He had been too flattered by the interest he aroused in this thirty-year-old heiress to linger on such questions. And to absolve himself he came to believe that all she wanted was to live in peace and that he spared her as much as possible. Levelheaded, modest, he had never boasted of this affair. Did his mistress love him? On that subject, too, he avoided self-examination. It was enough for him to hold her in his arms and hear her ramble on about love for him to feel fully a man, fully happy. He had once condemned adultery and was now astonished to find himself basking in it without remorse. The rare moments of happiness can be found only in love, he noted, and discovered that in the arms of his mistress his passion was still intact, that in the warmth of a new sensation he could forget the small humiliations he bore at the customs office where he worked as a simple inspector. In life, mediocrity usually destroys a man’s ideals and ambitions; you cease to believe in yourself, he had said to himself one day, so you might as well forget yourself in a woman’s arms. For her, I am a kind of god able to please her sexually, and that makes me feel alive…
The mother had gotten up. He calmly looked at this body of hers, still desirable, reassuring himself that she thought herself old. She stood by the window watching the stakes, nervously smoking a cigarette. Though she had her back to him, he had the impression that she was following each of his movements with sustained attention. Her thoughts were palpable to him and he thought, She’s angry at me, no doubt about it. And he understood that should she break this silence with a single word, he would no longer be able to lie to himself. At that precise moment, she turned around:
“Never again,” she said. “Never again will Rose go with you to that lawyer, you hear me, never again.”
There was such force in the measured tone of these words that he looked at her stunned.
He saw a grimace of disgust on her lips and he felt ashamed. The other woman is the one lying to me, he told himself, disconcerted. I may be a good lover, but I am not a man.
“That’s what I was telling myself,” he answered. “These lawyers’ offices have become veritable brothels.”
“You didn’t know that?” Paul shouted at him.
“No,” he replied, “I didn’t know that.”
The invalid began to fidget in his chair and would have fallen out if his mother hadn’t rushed to him in time.
“Calm down, come, come,” she urged. “Come, I’ll put you to bed.”
“I don’t want to go upstairs,” he protested. “Rose is crying and I don’t like to hear people crying.”
“Let him be,” the grandfather then said.
“He really hears too much for his age,” the father murmured.
“Grandfather says that heroes are predestined and that those who are predestined are beings set apart,” he pronounced in a superior little tone.
“Give us a fucking break with your heroes,” Paul retorted, looking him up and down.
“Oh, if you only knew, if you only knew… But I won’t tell you.”
“Come with me,” the grandfather said.
And getting up, he took him in his arms and carried him to the porch, from which one could hear them whispering.
The mother went to Rose’s room. She was lying on her bed and calmly reading a book, which she closed.
“I don’t know what came over me,” she said. “I have no idea”-she laughed in mild amusement-“probably just nerves…”
“You don’t need anything?”
“No, thank you.”
“And there’s nothing you want to tell me?”
“No, why?”
“I thought maybe you’d had a shock at the lawyer’s office, that you’d seen or heard things you might have found unpleasant.”
“No. He just insisted that I bring him the five hundred dollars he wanted from Papa.”
“Five hundred dollars!… I forbid you to return there.”
“I have to.”
“What does that mean?”
“That I’m old enough to stand up for myself.”
“Alas, my poor pumpkin! They’ll devour you before you can say how do you do.”
“I’m not afraid of them.”
“You talk like a child.”
“I’ll ask Paul to wait for me outside.”
“And if you take your time coming out?”
“He will come get me.”
“So they can tear him to pieces? Rose, you’re smart enough and you’ve seen enough to understand…”
“But, Mama, what is it that you want?” the young woman cried out with impatience. “That we fold our arms and wait to get old and die like you?”