Damn it.
“Watch these men,” he said, turning to the crew. “Otero, give them some blankets and get something hot inside them.”
The captain returned to the bridge, where Roca was plotting a course for Cádiz, avoiding the storm that was now blowing into the Mediterranean.
“Captain,” said the navigator, standing to attention, “may I just say how much I admire what . . .”
“Yes, yes, Roca. Thank you very much. Is there any coffee?”
Roca poured him a cup and the captain sat down to savor the brew. He took off his waterproof cape and the sweater he was wearing underneath, which was soaked. Fortunately it wasn’t cold in the cabin.
“There’s been a change of plan, Roca. One of the Boche we rescued has given me a tip-off. Seems there’s a band of smugglers at the mouth of the Guadiana. We’ll go to Ayamonte instead, see if we can steer clear of them.”
“Whatever you say, Captain,” said the navigator, a little put out at having to plot a new course. González fixed his gaze on the back of the young man’s neck, slightly concerned. There were certain people you couldn’t talk to about certain matters, and he wondered whether Roca might be an informer. What the captain was proposing was illegal. It would be enough to get him sent to prison, or worse. But he couldn’t do it without his second in command.
Between sips of coffee, he decided that he could trust Roca. His father had killed nacionales after the fall of Barcelona a couple of years earlier.
“Ever been to Ayamonte, Roca?”
“No, sir,” said the young man, without turning round.
“It’s a charming place, three miles up the Guadiana. The wine is good, and in April it smells of orange blossom. And on the other bank of the river, that’s where Portugal starts.”
He took another sip.
“A stone’s throw, as they say.”
Roca turned, surprised. The captain gave him a tired smile.
Fifteen hours later, the deck of the Esperanza was deserted. Laughter rose from the mess, where the sailors were enjoying an early dinner. The captain had promised that after they’d eaten they would drop anchor at the port of Ayamonte, and many of them could already feel the sawdust of the tavernas under their feet. Supposedly the captain was minding the bridge himself while Roca guarded the four shipwrecked passengers.
“You’re sure this is necessary, sir?” asked the navigator, unconvinced.
“It will just be the tiniest bruise. Don’t be so cowardly, man. It has to look like the castaways attacked you in order to escape. Stay down on the floor for a bit.”
There was a dry thud and then a head appeared through the hatch, quickly followed by the castaways. Night was beginning to fall.
The captain and the German lowered the lifeboat into the water, to port, the side farthest from the mess. His companions climbed in and waited for their one-eyed leader, who had covered his head with his hood once more.
“Two hundred meters in a straight line,” the captain told him, gesturing toward Portugal. “Leave the lifeboat on the beach: I’ll need it. I’ll fetch it back later.”
The German shrugged.
“Look, I know you don’t understand a word. Here—” said González, giving him back his knife. The man tucked it away in his belt with one hand while he fumbled under his raincoat with his other. He took out a small object and placed it in the captain’s hand.
“Verrat,” he said, touching his index finger to his chest. “Rettung,” he said next, touching the chest of the Spaniard.
González studied the gift carefully. It was a sort of medal, very heavy. He held it closer to the lamp hanging in the cabin; the object gave off an unmistakable glow.
It was made of solid gold.
“Look, I can’t accept . . .”
But he was talking to himself. The boat was moving away already, and none of its occupants looked back.
To the end of his days, Manuel González Pereira, former captain in the Spanish navy, dedicated every minute he could spare away from his bookshop to the study of that gold emblem. It was a double-headed eagle set on an iron cross. The eagle was holding a sword, and there was a number 32 above its head and an enormous diamond encrusted in its chest.
He discovered that it was a Masonic symbol of the highest rank, but every expert he spoke to told him that it had to be a fake, especially since it was made of gold. The German Masons never used noble metals for the emblems of their Grand Masters. The size of the diamond—as far as the jeweler was able to ascertain without taking the piece apart—made it possible to date the stone approximately to the turn of the century.
Often, as he sat up late into the night, the bookseller thought back to the conversation he’d had with the “One-Eyed Mystery Man,” as his little son, Juan Carlos, liked to call him.
The boy never tired of hearing the story, and he invented farfetched theories about the identity of the castaways. But what excited him most were those parting words. He had deciphered them with the help of a German dictionary, and he repeated them slowly, as though by doing so he might better understand.
“Verrat—treachery. Rettung—salvation.”
The bookseller died without ever having solved the mystery hidden in his emblem. His son Juan Carlos inherited the piece and became a bookseller in his turn. One September afternoon in 2002, an obscure old writer came by the bookshop to give a talk about his new work on Freemasonry. Nobody turned up, so Juan Carlos decided, in order to kill time and lessen his guest’s obvious discomfort, to show him a photo of the emblem. On seeing it, the writer’s face changed.
“Where did you get this photo?”
“It’s an old medal that belonged to my father.”
“Do you still have it?”
“Yes. Because of the triangle containing the number 32, we worked out that it was—”
“A Masonic symbol. Obviously a fake, because of the shape of the cross, and the diamond. Have you had it valued?”
“Yes. The materials are worth about 3,000 euros. I don’t know if it has any additional historical value.”
The writer looked at the piece for several seconds before replying. His lower lip trembled.
“No. Definitely not. Perhaps as a curiosity . . . but I doubt it. Still, I’d like to buy it. You know . . . for my research. I’ll give you 4,000 euros for it.”
Juan Carlos politely refused the offer, and the writer left, offended. He started coming to the bookshop on a daily basis, even though he didn’t live in the city. He pretended to rummage among the books, though in reality he spent most of the time watching Juan Carlos over the thick plastic frames of his glasses. The bookseller began to feel harassed. One winter night, on his way home, he thought he heard footsteps behind him. Juan Carlos hid in a doorway and waited. Moments later the writer appeared, an elusive shadow shivering in a threadbare raincoat. Juan Carlos emerged from the doorway and cornered the man, holding him up against the wall.
“This has to stop, do you understand?”
The old man started to cry and fell babbling to the ground, hugging his knees.
“You don’t understand, I have to have it . . .”
Juan Carlos softened. He accompanied the old man to a bar and set a glass of brandy in front of him.
“Right. Now, tell me the truth. It’s very valuable, isn’t it?”
The writer took his time before replying, studying the bookseller, who was thirty years his junior and six inches taller. Finally he gave up.
“Its value is incalculable. Though that’s not the reason I want it,” he said with a dismissive gesture.
“Why, then?”
“For the glory. The glory of discovery. It would form the basis for my next book.”
“On the piece?”
“On its owner. I’ve managed to reconstruct his life after years of research, digging around in fragments of diaries, newspaper archives, private libraries . . . the sewers of history. As few as ten very uncommunicative men in the world know his story
. All of them Grand Masters, and I’m the only one with all the pieces. Though no one would believe me if I told them.”
“Try me.”
“Only if you’ll promise me one thing. That you’ll let me see it. Touch it. Just once.”
Juan Carlos sighed.
“All right. On the condition you have a good story to tell.”
The old man leaned over the table and began to whisper a story that had, till that moment, been passed from mouth to mouth between men who had sworn never to repeat it. A story of lies, of an impossible love, of a forgotten hero, of the murder of thousands of innocent people at the hands of one man. The story of the traitor’s emblem . . .
THE PROFANE
1919–21
Where understanding never goes beyond one’s own self
The symbol of the Profane is a hand held out, open, solitary but capable of grasping hold of knowledge.
1
There was blood on the steps of the Schroeders’ mansion.
When he saw it, Paul Reiner shuddered. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen blood, of course. Between early April and May 1919, Munich’s inhabitants had experienced in thirty days all the horror they’d managed to avoid in four years of war. In the uncertain months between the end of the empire and the proclamation of the Weimar Republic, countless groups had attempted to impose their agendas. The Communists had taken the city and declared Bavaria a Soviet republic. Lootings and murders had become widespread as the Freikorps narrowed the gap between Berlin and Munich. The rebels, knowing their days were numbered, tried to get rid of as many political enemies as they could. Mostly civilians, executed in the dead of night.
Which meant that Paul had already seen traces of blood, but never at the entrance to the house where he lived. And although there wasn’t much, it was coming from beneath the big oak door.
With any luck Jürgen has fallen on his face and knocked out all his teeth, thought Paul. Maybe that way he’ll give me a few days’ peace. He shook his head sadly. He didn’t have that kind of luck.
He was only fifteen, but already a bitter shadow had been cast on his heart, like clouds blocking the sluggish mid-May sun. Half an hour earlier, Paul had been lazing around among the bushes of the Englischer Garten, glad to be back at school after the revolution, though not so much for the lessons. Paul was always ahead of his classmates, and of Professor Wirth, too, who bored him immensely. Paul read everything he could get his hands on, gulping it down like a drunk on payday. He only feigned attention during lessons, but always ended up top of the class.
Paul didn’t have friends, however hard he tried with his classmates. But in spite of everything, he did enjoy school, because the hours of lessons were hours spent away from Jürgen, who attended an academy where the floors weren’t made of linoleum and the edges of the desks weren’t chipped.
On his way home Paul always took a turn around the Garten, the largest park in Europe. That afternoon it seemed almost deserted, even by the ubiquitous red-jacketed guards who would reprimand him whenever he strayed off the path. Paul made the most of this opportunity, and took off his shabby shoes. He liked to walk barefoot on the grass, and bent down distractedly as he went, picking up a few of the thousands of yellow pamphlets that the Freikorps planes had dropped over Munich the previous week, demanding the Communists’ unconditional surrender. He threw them in the bin. He would gladly have stayed to clear up the whole park, but it was Thursday, and he had to polish the floor of the fourth story of the mansion, a task that would occupy him until dinnertime.
If only he weren’t there . . . thought Paul. Last time he locked me in the broom cupboard and poured a bucket of dirty water onto the marble. Good thing Mama heard me shouting and unlocked the cupboard before Brunhilda found out.
Paul wanted to remember a time when his cousin hadn’t behaved like that. Years ago, when they were both very small and Eduard would hold their hands and take them to the Garten, Jürgen used to smile at him. It was a fleeting memory, almost the only fond memory of his cousin that remained. Then came the Great War, with its orchestras and parades. And off marched Eduard, waving and smiling as the truck that carried him away gathered speed and Paul ran alongside it, wanting to march with his big cousin, wishing he were sitting beside him sporting that impressive uniform.
For Paul, the war had consisted of the news he read each morning posted on the police station wall, which was on his way to school. Frequently he had to slip through a thicket of legs—something he never found difficult, as he was as thin as a rake. There he read delightedly about the advances of the Kaiser’s Army, which daily took thousands of prisoners, occupied cities, and expanded the borders of the Empire. Then in class he would draw a map of Europe and amuse himself by imagining where the next great battle would take place, and wondering if Eduard would be there. Suddenly, and quite without warning, the “victories” started happening ever closer to home, and the war dispatches almost always announced “a return to the position of security originally envisaged.” Until one day a huge poster announced that Germany had lost the war. Underneath was a list of the price that would have to be paid, and it was a very long list indeed.
Reading that list and the poster, Paul had felt as if he’d been deceived, cheated. Suddenly there was no cushion of fantasy to mitigate the pain of the increasing number of thrashings he received from Jürgen. The glorious war would not wait for Paul to grow up and join Eduard at the front.
And there was certainly nothing glorious about it at all.
Paul stood there for a while, looking at the blood at the entrance. In his mind he rejected the possibility that the revolution had started again. Freikorps squads were patrolling the whole of Munich. This puddle seemed fresh, however, a small anomaly on the great stone whose steps were large enough to fit two men lying end to end.
I’d better hurry. If I’m late again, Aunt Brunhilda will kill me.
He debated a little longer between fear of the unknown and fear of his aunt, and the latter prevailed. He took the little key to the service entrance from his pocket and let himself into the mansion. Inside, everything seemed quiet enough. He was approaching the staircase when he heard voices from the main living quarters of the house.
“He slipped as we were climbing the steps, madam. It’s not easy to hold him up, and we’re all very weak. It’s been months and his wounds keep reopening.”
“Incompetent fools. No wonder we lost the war.”
Paul crept across the main entrance hall, trying to make as little noise as possible. The long bloodstain that ran under the door narrowed into a series of drips that led toward the largest room in the mansion. Inside, his aunt Brunhilda and two soldiers were leaning over a sofa. She kept rubbing her hands together until she realized what she was doing and then hid them in the folds of her dress. Even though he was hidden behind the door, Paul couldn’t help quaking with fear when he saw his aunt like this. Her eyes were like two thin gray streaks, her mouth was twisted into a question mark, and her authoritative voice trembled with rage.
“Look at the state of the upholstery. Marlis!”
“Baroness,” said the servant, approaching.
“Go and fetch a blanket, quickly. Call the gardener. His clothes will have to be burned, they’re covered in lice. And someone tell the baron.”
“And Master Jürgen, Madam Baroness?”
“No! Especially not him, you understand? Is he back from school?”
“He has fencing today, Madam Baroness.”
“He’ll be here any moment. I want this catastrophe sorted out before he returns,” Brunhilda ordered. “Go!”
The servant rushed past Paul, her skirts swishing, but he still didn’t move, because he had spotted Eduard’s face behind the legs of the soldiers. His heart began to beat faster. So that was who the soldiers had carried in and laid down on the sofa?
Good God, it was his blood.
“Who is responsible for this?”
“A mortar shell, madam.”
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“I know that much already. I’m asking why you’ve brought my son to me only now, and in this state. It has been seven months since the war ended, and not a word of news. Do you know who his father is?”
“Yes, he’s a baron. And Ludwig here is a bricklayer, and I’m a grocer’s assistant. But shrapnel has no respect for titles, madam. And the road from Turkey was a long one. You’re lucky he’s back at all; my brother won’t be coming back.”
Brunhilda’s face turned livid.
“Get out!” she hissed.
“That’s nice, madam. We return your son to you and you throw us out into the street without so much as a glass of beer.”
A glimmer of remorse might perhaps have crossed Brunhilda’s face, but it was overshadowed by rage. Speechless, she raised a trembling finger and pointed toward the door.
“Piece of aristo shit,” said one of the soldiers, spitting on the carpet.
Reluctantly they turned to leave, their heads down. Their sunken eyes filled with weariness and disgust, but not surprise. There was nothing, thought Paul, that could shock these men now. And when the two men in large gray greatcoats moved out of the way, Paul finally understood the scene.
Eduard, Baron von Schroeder’s firstborn son, was lying unconscious on the sofa at an odd angle. His left arm was propped up on some cushions. Where his right should have been, there was only a badly sewn fold in his jacket. Where he should have had legs, there were two stumps covered in dirty bandages, one of which was seeping blood. The surgeon had not cut them in the same place: the left was severed above the knee, the right just below.
Asymmetric mutilation, thought Paul, remembering that morning’s art history class, and his teacher discussing the Venus de Milo. He realized he was crying.
When she heard the sobbing, Brunhilda raised her head and hurled herself toward Paul. The look of contempt and disdain she usually reserved for him had been replaced by one of hatred and shame. For a moment Paul thought she was going to strike him and jumped away, falling backward and covering his face with his arms. There was a tremendous crash.