“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 as you need.”
“Thank you, sir,” Louis Normil answered, convinced that they wanted to get rid of him discreetly. “I am grateful for this, but fortunately I should be done with my doctor by tomorrow.”
The director coughed and left quickly as if he had made a sudden decision.
Louis Normil again felt the five hundred dollars in his inside pocket and tried to occupy his mind with work. Papers were piling up on his desk. Despite his best intentions, he couldn’t manage to focus and absentmindedly tried to look busy under the scrutiny of a neighboring coworker. “If I lose my job,” he kept repeating to himself, “if I lose my job.” And these words caused him such despair he began to shake and sweat.
“Are you all right?” the employee staring at him asked.
“Yes, yes,” he answered and continued shuffling papers around, pretending to be busy.
At the end of the workday, he went home and found the family sitting at the dinner table. No one asked him anything this time, but Rose tried to make eye contact and he shook his head with discouragement. He got up before the others did and went up to his room to put the money back under the mattress. Actually, why not in the armoire? he wondered. But he left it there, finding that hiding place more reassuring than any other. He washed his face, changed his jacket, and decided right there and then to go see his mistress, driven by the humiliation of owing her money and the need to dispel the awful misunderstanding that had dimmed their last evening together. She’ll advise me, women have amazing ideas, he said to himself to conceal the real reason for his impatience. I’ll tell her all about that bastard sending back the money and insisting on seeing Rose again. On the landing, he bumped into Rose, who was going upstairs.
“So, Papa?”
“He refused to take the money,” he admitted.
“Don’t you think I’m big enough to take care of myself?”
“Don’t get involved in this.”
“Papa!”
“Don’t get involved in this,” he repeated and rushed downstairs without looking at her.
She slowly opened the door to the bedroom, lifted the mattress, took the money and slipped it in her bag.
CHAPTER TEN
The next day, for the Feast of Saint Peter, there was a street fair on Place de Pétionville. Small colorful lamps decorated the trees beneath which the church ladies had set up their stands. An orchestra played a lusty merengue [32] by the lawn where a few couples were already dancing. Vendors with trays of goods on their heads hawked their wares to passersby but ran off and set up on the sidewalks after they were chased away by the monks for whose benefit this feast was held. The gendarmes kept at bay a horde of beggars haunting the vicinity. Once in a while the beggars would elude the watchful eye of the police and scamper to show off their scrofula or their maimed limbs and plead for alms.
When a fanfare sounded, cutting off the orchestra, the crowd was suddenly silent and listened attentively. Men in uniform emerged like an immense black wave, rushing right into the square. Upon seeing them, the beggars yelped with joy breaking free of the police, who no longer dared interfere, they crowded round to cheer on the men.
“Long live the Blackshirts!” they cried.
A voice ordered: “Halt! At ease!” and they broke ranks. Arrogant, chests bulging, hands on their weapons, a few of them with their arms draped imposingly around young girls. The atmosphere changed, as if everyone were suddenly whipped by a mad whirlwind: the church ladies, who a moment ago had been fanning themselves quietly at their counters, were standing and laughing nervously as they dug into bags of confetti; girls went into electrified contortions on the dance floor; their partners resembled robots gone wild, mechanically crashing to the ground with every blast of the saxophone. The frenzy ended with the sound of bullets. Shots were fired in the direction of a man with his hands up. His path was blocked. The men in uniform caught him and dragged him to a tree where they tied him up.
“Let me go,” begged the man. “I haven’t done anything, I only said I was hungry. Let me go.”
“What right do you have to be hungry? Are you trying to foment rebellion?”
“Music!” another voice ordered the orchestra.
And as the musicians attacked a new merengue, the men took aim and riddled him with bullets.
No one in the anxious crowd dared move another muscle. A fanfare sounded and smothered the orchestra once more; the flag rose, the boots regrouped. The monks untied the man’s body and placed it atop a pile of others in a truck driven by an undertaker in a black uniform. The monks motioned wildly as they returned, trying to restore the peaceful and cheerful atmosphere that had been decidedly broken by the arrival of the men in uniform.