Last year she’d had a look at the guidance counselor’s notebook. The woman had called Soon into her office to talk about her integration problems—Soon never would have diagnosed herself that way, with integration problems—but she had to step out for a moment to make a private telephone call—a private telephone call, she’d said: the guidance counselor talked like that all the time. Soon sat waiting in her chair with the assessment notebook in front of her, facing the other way, open to her page. Afraid she would be caught, she strained to read it without moving, deciphering the letters upside down, which wasn’t an easy task. And what did it say?, asks Old Man, also intrigued. Integration problems, replies Soon, those two words were underlined in red. And also: maladjusted but intelligent, possibly believes herself superior to her peers. This surprised her a lot, because what Soon feels is somehow inferior, not superior to others, and she’s offended that the guidance counselor, who hasn’t spoken to her for even a single minute, would write precisely the opposite. There were also some notes on her family. Structured, it said. Older parents. Liberal professions. Second child. Good neighborhood. She couldn’t help but reach out and flip through some other pages in the book, those of other students in her class. She read things like: Parents separated. Eats at grandmother’s house every day. Cumulative shortcomings from primary school. Cognitive problems. Attention Deficit? Hyperactive. Good personality, but difficulty conceptualizing. Need for social intervention. Bulimic. Attention seeking, possibly doesn’t receive enough affection at home. Well-integrated. Competitive and responsible. She slammed the book closed when she heard the guidance counselor’s footsteps; the woman entered with the same smile as always—her neat teeth bound by very fine braces—and returned to her seat. Soon doesn’t remember what they talked about. She kept thinking about what she’d read. She was terrified to think that the teachers shared those kinds of notes, that they talked about them, the students, exchanging their files like baseball cards. Old Man nods. Those files, he says, are like the ones they used at the hospital! The guardians of morality make their mental diagnoses by dissecting families, they never get past that! And it’s always about mothers, one way or another, whether they’re present or not, loved or not, whether they’re young or old, abusive or controlling: even if they’re dead, they’re discussed! It bothered him when people talked about his mother. He got violently upset every time it happened, even when it only seemed like it might be happening—because they also talked about her behind his back, in whispers. There were a lot of files at the hospital, a lot of records, two or three rooms full of records in blue folders, hundreds, thousands of blue folders stuffed with records. He would have summed up his file in a single sentence: This man needs to walk. To walk alone, without anyone bothering him!, and that would have been enough. How simple! If you think about it, each one of the patients’ files, or the students’, could be summed up in a single sentence. What a bunch of wasted words!