Books Burn Badly (65 page)

‘Freemasonry never rests, Mr Novás.’

‘Why don’t you take a rest, Santos?’

Santos’ problem, as happened with other quotes that caught his fancy, was that he’d pull them out in quite different circumstances so that the quote became a sort of rejoinder he had to put in the same hiding place as ‘God’s hose’ when he was rebuked by a superior.

It was a long time, not until he met Inspector Ren, before he repeated the formula ‘Freemasonry never rests’.

He opened the door. The torch landed on an imitation skull with a bulb inside, a kind of graveyard souvenir. The light jumped up. There, hanging from the wall, was a skeleton, this time genuine, bones are never deceptive. On a wooden stool, acting as a table, was some sulphur and salt. This rustic table also contained a sheet of paper. Santos pointed the torch and read. It was a questionnaire:

Santos always tried to keep a cool head. An investigator’s main weapon was his mental control. The mind had to be kept permanently running. He imagined situations of general panic and how he’d react. Mother Laboure’s common sense could be summed up in the joke about a woman who, in the case of a fire, prayed for the Lord to intervene, to which a neighbour said, ‘Tell God, if he’s coming down, to bring a fire-hose’. Once, shortly after starting at the seminary, he told this joke at the end of some spiritual exercises for which the teacher had proposed the theme ‘The Meaning of Prayer in Modern Society’. He just came out with what he thought would be an original response to the theme. He’d never forget their dumbfounded faces. It was as if they’d been listening to Luther once more nailing the Ninety-Five Theses to the wooden door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. This anecdotal event was an important experience for him. He fully understood the meaning of the phrase
initium sapientiae timor Domini
. He had to know how to keep quiet or camouflage himself in the words of a superior. Yes, the fear of the Lord was the beginning of wisdom. But he also had to fit out a hiding place in his head where he could store the joke about God’s hose. If he couldn’t find that cranny, then he would lose his mind.

Scattered on the floor, as if they’d fallen off a snooker table, the torch lit up some black and white balls. Santos was about to take one. At least he’d have that as a memory. A black ball.

It was then he heard a noise. The front door opening and closing, footsteps in the sitting-room. Whoever it was moved with fluency, though the way of walking and negotiating the furniture was that of a heavy, sluggish man. Probably Ren, the owner of the house. The one who’d turned his lair into a strange museum of spoils. In his dark room, simulacrum of the Chamber of Reflection, Santos lived out an initiate’s experience, interpreting the movements outside (whoever it was struck a quick hand through a bundle of papers), but all the time thinking about the questions ‘What does a man . . . ?’ like waves crashing against his temples, without finding a suitable answer.

The visitor was in a hurry. He heard papers being shuffled, a cupboard door slamming. Followed by silence. Paúl Santos held his breath. He knew how to interpret this kind of silence. It was the silence of someone sniffing the air. Having a premonition. Waiting for something to creak. He had to be careful. Had Ren heard the hourglass? The last grain of sand would have fallen by now. The sky was on the earth. Ren closed the front door. Santos stayed still. Ren opened again, a surprise tactic. No, nobody here. False alarm. He left. The objects in Ren’s museum had labels. There was an envelope on which it said ‘Recovered Photos’. Santos opened it. There were three photos and the negatives. Promising. They showed smoking pyres in a scene he immediately recognised, the docks and María Pita Square. In all of them, there was a group making the Fascist salute. He couldn’t work out what was burning, just embers on the ground. He carried on exploring. In one corner, there were flags, remnants of standards, a few artistic signs with an emery design on glass. In one, the torch followed the line of a wave and found the dorna boat floating on it. Read ‘Maritime Awakening’. And, in smaller letters, ‘Union of the Fishing Fleet’. The standards belonged to workers’ associations. They had coloured ribbons, embroidered letters and occasional motifs relating to the profession. They reminded him of the banners carried by lay brotherhoods in processions. The union of carpenters ‘Emancipation’, of builders ‘Social Aurora’, of printers, of ‘Light’, of bakers ‘New Union’. There were other smaller, more modest symbols, banderoles hanging from the wall, such as the union of barbers ‘Fraternal’, of net-makers ‘Port’s Progress’. In the case of the ‘Union of Water, Gas and Electricity’, he noticed a single boxing glove tied to the crossbar. Pictures of marine life. One showing Hercules defeating the giant Geryon. Sports trophies. An ABC with wooden upper- and lower-case letters by the Workers Press on Socorro Street.

Then there were books and leaflets, ordered not as in a library, but as in the display of confiscated goods. In gaps between the books, there were emblems, badges, slugs cast by a Linotype machine, typographical devices including a set of borders. In the light of the torch, they were like archaeological remains alternating with ancient parchments.

One leaflet caught the torch’s attention. On the cover was a group of naked men and women bathers, wearing seaweed as a kind of natural dress. He opened it in the middle and read with the torch. There was a question. ‘Is Man a carnivore? No.’ Followed by thirty-five vegetarian dishes for the seven days of the week. He picked one at random. ‘Thursday: rice with apple’. Closed his eyes. Acquired the two flavours on his palate. Thought of a pippin, cinnamon apple. He needed it. He’d been there long enough to hear things speak, the terrible murmur of imprisoned things, and he hankered after fruit. The booty of war, on display, which included a gold tooth. There it was. The size of a grain of maize, it seemed to have broken off a brilliant sentence arrested in mid-air. All the same, the wedding rings were the most impressive. They formed a fraternity of circles, of varying diameter and thickness, but with the natural complementary function of circular figures when placed or drawn together. One of them, which from the size must have belonged to a woman, was labelled with a date. In Ren’s museum, ‘18 August 1936’ was often repeated. The first 18th after 18 July. Santos knew the importance of dates in the history of crime. Dates that can be identified as the mark of a calibre on a missile. The imitation effect. The echo of a date resounding in mental cavities. But he’d never applied this basic criterion of criminology to the calendar. Seasons were important. Abrupt climatic vicissitudes. A leaden sky. He’d just been investigating a series of suicides in the district. The same week, the same early hour, people hanging from the same species of tree, the apple tree. Yes, the sky’s weight. But from now on he needed also to study the history of days.

The stubborn torch persevered like another circle among circles. Awoke things. Unearthed them like a shovel of light. Over the years, how many eyes would have seen this, guided there by the Collector? He suddenly felt something he never allowed himself. Fear. He’d decided to forbid himself fear as others forbid themselves tobacco or alcohol. But now he felt fear. A fear with no exact location in his body. That affected neither his respiratory system nor his sweat glands nor his locomotion. That didn’t belong to him, but alighted on him. A fear that sounded like a whisper. That issued from the intimacy of things. The experience of things. An exhibit’s fear of being erased. Fear of disappearing. The torch took the initiative. Here, on a file like those used in a notary’s office for keeping title deeds, a terse message: ‘Castellana Bridge, River Mandeo’. As he took it, the cover gave way and out fell photographs that seemed to float on the table. That river. It could be said that river was the merriest in the whole of Galicia. It took the sea to the mountains. In the direction of the Caneiros festivities. Santos knew this. He’d gone there once with a group of Law students from Betanzos. He was so impressed he went to tell Catherine Laboure about it. She enjoyed music. That river was like a gramophone. The sailing of the boats, a stream of song. Of course this was no place for her. ‘A nun in Caneiros?’ she mused. ‘Nuns bring bad luck to boats.’ She liked these stories, to hear how people had fun. Listening to them, she’d smoke like a chimney. Not long before, as summer approached, Santos had thought about Catia and Caneiros. Upriver, rays of sunlight among alders. At dusk, the sun like a charred log in the water. Contact between boats, bodies carrying the day’s enjoyment on rippling skirts and blazing shirts. What Santos saw now were corpses. Bodies thrown into the river from the Castile road. Among the photos he saw bobbing on the table, a woman’s face. A small portrait, the edge of which matched the smile and teeth. An inscription on the back in well-rounded handwriting: ‘Monelos Schoolmistress’. He’d never felt so confused. He thought of an unending debate, one of few possible, in the Law Faculty. That of the Plank of Carneades. Two shipwrecked sailors with a single plank. Not helping the other wasn’t a crime if there was only one plank to save yourself. He’d vehemently taken the opposite side. It was a crime. It wasn’t a question of codes. It was a question of conscience. The line between humanity and inhumanity.

‘The thing about Carneades’ Plank is that there’ll always be someone to support, in theory, what you’re saying,’ the Professor with the Pimpled Nose remarked ironically. ‘I’d like to see what you’d do with the plank if you were shipwrecked.’

He couldn’t see himself abandoning or getting rid of the other sailor. So he failed to understand his own actions when he put down the photo of the Woman with Curls, stuffed the photos back into the file and returned it to the shadows.

His mind sought out an alibi. He wasn’t at sea with a plank and another sailor. It’d already happened. They’d already drowned. This was something else. His attention was drawn to a bookshelf with various Bibles, different editions, most of them old and in several volumes. He leafed through one of the books the torchlight fell on, perhaps because of the golden letters on its spine. It was Bernard Lamy’s
Apparatus Biblicus
, containing beautiful illustrations of animals and plants. There was another book on that shelf,
Ulysses
, a foreigner taken in by Holy Scripture. It was the book’s foreignness that made him pick it up. Open it at random. There was an ex-libris with a geometrical design: ‘This book belongs to Huici’. It was written in English. He turned the pages. Tried to translate something easy, but his eyes landed on a sort of medley:

The torch headed urgently for the desk. Went straight to an artistic paperweight. A polished, oval shape. A black woman’s head in ebony. Very pretty. Where’d it come from? He had to go. He’d been here too long. On the desk was a blue cardboard folder with a white label and a name: ‘Judith’. He opened it, though he knew it wasn’t necessary. From the weight, he could tell it was empty.

Blue Mist

‘Here it is.’

A car driving slowly along Aduanas Esplanade. Just now, with the aid of two tugs, the cargo boat
Chemin Creux
started weighing anchor. The mist colours the night and makes land and sea machines act with animal caution.

Manlle gets out of his vehicle and comes over to the half-open window of the Opel where Ren, Mancorvo, Santos and Samos the judge are waiting. Deliberately seeks out the gaze of the new kid on the block in Crime, Paúl Santos is his name, sitting in the back with the judge, but talks to the chief of the Political Brigade. An old acquaintance. ‘Here it is. She’s in that car. I’ll be off now, gentlemen. I’ve done my bit.’ He doffs his hat in a mocking gesture. ‘Lots to do tonight.’

Two women emerge. One of them is Chelo. The other is taller, walks stiffly. In a hat with veil.

‘There they are,’ says Ren. ‘Chelo and the Portuguese architect.’

The judge is amazed. ‘What architect? That’s a woman!’

Mancorvo reacts fast, ‘Not under her skirts she isn’t!’

‘Stay calm, your honour. Don’t move. Don’t rush into anything.’

They were arm in arm, two girlfriends out for a walk, but now they’ve separated. The two of them quicken their pace over the flagstones. There’s an uneasiness, a bewilderment in their movements when they realise the
Chemin Creux
is being towed away from the jetty. The lights of the tugs are on, their powerful engines snort loudly in the night. But the cargo boat is like a phantom ship being dragged along in slow motion. The two women reach the edge of the jetty. Suddenly a shadow appears astern and emits flashes with a small torch.

The couple look at each other. Turn around. Head back towards the car. The driver is expecting this and has kept the engine running, though the lights are switched off. He turns and goes to meet them.

‘Come on!’ says Santos.

The judge grabs at the door. Trips and falls out, shouting, ‘Chelo!’

The woman’s name is the first cry to break out in the night. A commanding and yet anxious call. But no one replies. His intervention speeds up every movement. Only he stays still, petrified on the flagstones. The tragic balance of an intoxicated man.

‘Stop!’ shouts Santos. ‘Police!’

Ren gets out of the car, but his behaviour is unusual. He gestures towards the dark, in the direction of the yacht club and House of Pilots, from where ambushed guards emerge. He gestures for calm, for them not to intervene.

Santos again tells them to stop. Measures the distance. If they don’t heed him, and it looks as if they’re not going to, he won’t be able to reach them before they get in the car. He looks back. Come on, Santos, what’s happening? You’re the only one running after the fugitives. You should stop and think. This is what he does. He stops. His heavy breathing has more to do with the sudden agitation in his mind than with physical effort. As Chelo Vidal and the other fugitive get in the car, Paúl Santos turns around. Mancorvo hasn’t moved. He’s still at the wheel. The judge is on the ground, petrified, a white cravat around his neck like a luminous noose. Ren stares at him, at Paúl Santos, and nods mockingly when he gestures for the car to start, to follow him. Ren climbs in. The fugitives’ car has already gone through the gears and is moving swiftly away, with a screech of tyres as it twists between the cranes, heading for the eastern exit.