Victor del Arbol - The Sadness of the Samurai: A Novel by Víctor del Árbol Page B

at a closed door. And the longer she waited, the more a strange feeling of uneasiness grew in her, a tingling on the roof of her mouth, and without fully knowing the reason, she started to feel insignificant. That sensation grew overpowering when someone came in after her and, without going through the purgatory of waiting, crossed through the door, which was opened wide to him without his even having to knock.
    María tried to distract herself by looking around her. The windows, high and unreachable, were small skylights through which occasionally peeked the gleam of a lightning bolt. The storm’s thunderclaps buried the clatter of typewriters and telephones. She imagined that during the day that racket was enough to drive you mad. At some tables in the back, there were men drinking coffee and others writing with their forearms resting on the chairs, wearily. The furnishings were old, of grayish metal. Dozens of files were piled up in drawers that made do as improvised filing cabinets.
    Every once in a while someone came in from the street, dragging the rain in with them and leaving footprints on the unpolished terrazzo floor. She got up and went over to a window that overlooked the street. Once or twice she could see the dripping boots of the police on guard outside. She guessed that they submitted every person who entered to the same scrutiny, and that, to justify it, they explained that anyone could blow that miserable station house to pieces.
    Finally, the door to the office she was waiting at opened. The man who came out didn’t even notice her presence. He passed by her deep in thought, meditating on something that must be profoundly worrying him.
    “Lorenzo!”
    Lorenzo turned. Suddenly, his face transformed into a poem. He couldn’t believe that the lovely woman he was looking at was María.
    “My God, I barely recognized you,” he murmured admiringly, approaching to give her a kiss.
    María stopped him by offering him a hand to shake.
    “You look pretty much the same,” she replied, hesitantly. Actually he looked much older and more tired. His hairline had seriously receded, and the rest was very gray. He had also gotten fatter.
    Lorenzo was perfectly aware of those changes.
    “It looks like you benefited more from the separation than I did,” he said somewhat sarcastically, although it was true. “You look different, I don’t know, must be your haircut or your makeup. You never used to wear makeup or such elegant dresses.”
    María faked a polite smile. Lorenzo didn’t realize that the change in her wasn’t physical, and that it wasn’t due to the bangs falling into her eyes or the blue Italian dress, or the high heels. She was a different woman now, a happy one, you could say. She radiated a different light from within. But for Lorenzo to admit that would mean implicitly admitting that he was part of the problem that kept her from being this way when they were together.
    “Why did you want to see me?”
    Lorenzo’s imperturbable face moved slightly, like the rubble that falls before an avalanche. He looked dubiously toward the exit, checked his watch, and remained pensive.
    “I need a personal favor.”
    “You need a personal favor?” she repeated, shocked.
    “I know you think I’ve got a lot of nerve, showing up after so long to ask you for something, but it’s important.”
    He took her into his office, an austere landscape of old furniture and metal filing cabinets. There was a frame with a strawflower in one corner that held a portrait of a woman and a boy about two years old.
    Seeing that photograph, which was probably of his new family, María had mixed feelings. For some strange reason she had imagined that Lorenzo was the typical miserable loner, married to his job.
    “Is that your wife?”
    Lorenzo nodded.
    “And that’s Javier, my son,” he added proudly.
    María felt an uneasiness in her belly. It was the name they were going to give the child she had lost if it had been a