Chapter 149: A Visit to Prozen (3)
A cramped studio apartment. Clara Magal listened to Felix's story.
"It started with hospital bills. The 5,000 Livres we urgently needed for my mother's surgery... Last week, was it, Lorraine? When that Social Party politician got caught gambling illegally, a single chip was worth 5,000 Livres, so, well, anyway."
He continued in a voice that sounded already worn down, laying bare his deepest wounds.
"The banks completely turned their backs on our family. Said we had no collateral and no proper employment. In the end, my father turned to loan sharks."
A story all too common, and all the more despairing for it.
5,000 Livres. Starting from a trivial sum, the interest ballooned by ten percent every week. Unpaid interest was added back to the principal, returning as vicious compound debt.
In just a few months, the debt had grown to 50,000 Livres, and a year later, it had become an astronomical figure that strangled the life out of his family.
In the end, his mother took her own life, consumed by guilt that her treatment had brought the family to ruin, and his father, drowning in despair at having failed to protect his family, chose the same path just one week later.
"...That was exactly ten years ago. Nothing particularly special about it."