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body of an athlete. His shirtsleeves left exposed his long, wiry arms, which he waved around parsimoniously. His enormous hands shuffled through applicants’ papers like two mas- sive crabs. He appeared to be a “shut up and obey” kind of official. Without being very friendly, his demeanor was polite. He had the face of a middle-class educated black man, eager to make a career as a public servant. He didn’t speak much Spanish and whenever he couldn’t think of the right word, he’d say it in English. I decided it would be better to talk to him than the burly white guy, who seemed shrewd and tricky. The woman, who looked slight and fragile, initially seemed the most reasonable, but as the minutes passed I noticed her inflexibility with the people she interrogated. In short, the most prudent strategy was to try to come across the black man and then to ingratiate myself with a little gab and some lies.
    I endured the languid passing of time. Half an hour later they called number twenty-five and I was finally able to sit down in the back. My pulse was still off-kilter and I felt increasingly apprehensive. I began to notice intermittent wails coming from the other side of the room. Applicants for visas who didn’t have their papers in order were sent to a confessional booth, where they tried to explain everything to the consul himself, who had the final say in the matter. About one in every three people was sent over to chat with the big boss. If he had any doubts about you, ciao —you were out on the streets. The consul wasn’t physically impressive—he was chubby, seemed good-natured, and laughed often—however, upon finding the slightest defect in someone’s papers, he became as rough and stubborn as a mule. He listened to my fellow countrymen’s whimpering with the smug smile of a friendly policeman, but later, with the severity of a public prosecutor, he denied them tickets to paradise.
    I was seated beside a woman in her twenties who was accompanied by her father. The girl was a bundle of nerves. She continually rubbed her hands together, wiped her nose as if she had a severe cold, and took her glasses off and put them back on every three seconds. Her father, a man in his fifties, was trying in vain to calm her. It was useless. The girl, staring straight ahead as if surveying a scaffold, seemed not to hear anything.
    Her father said to her, “With the shares from the beer company, there won’t be any problems. It’s a lot of money and I have twenty thousand dollars right here with me. Don’t be ridiculous. Besides, we have the deeds to our houses here with us. Calm down, you’re even starting to make me nervous.”
    The girl’s mouth was dry and she was on the verge of crying. The Americans were strict when it came to your assets: proof of properties, current tax records, and checking accounts. I had everything I needed, but my documents were all forged. My only hope was that the consular officials would fall for the fraud. It wasn’t impossible, I just needed the luck of a gypsy.
    At 11:30 on that fateful morning, a suffocating heat prevailed. So many people and so much anxiety seemed to raise the temperature. The three consular employees drank coffee, chatted, and paced around, sweating, seeming ever less friendly. With the hours’ passing, they began to look embittered and tired.
    â€œThirty-one,” announced the female interviewer.
    The young woman at my side stood up and hesitantly lugged her pile of deeds and documents that would have sufficed to liberate a Jew from the hands of the SS. She stopped before the big-headed man with the tweed jacket and handed him her papers, then turned around to look at her father for encouragement. Her father smiled at her. The girl and the guy in tweed conversed for a few minutes, with the former responding timidly to the latter’s interrogations. The torture didn’t last long; the