Juan Gomez-Jurado - The Traitor's emblem

Just like the tuxedo.

“Five years after the fall of the monarchy: terror, killings in the streets, hunger, poverty. Which version of Munich do you prefer, lad?”

“The real one, I suppose.”

Keller looked at him, evidently pleased with his response. Paul noticed that his attitude had changed slightly, as though the question had been a test for something much greater still to come.

“I met Hans Reiner many years ago. I don’t remember the exact date, but I think it was around 1895, because he came into the bookshop and bought a copy of Verne’s Castle of the Carpathians, which had just come out.”

“He liked reading too?” asked Paul, unable to hide his emotion. He knew so little about the man who had given him life that any flicker of resemblance filled him with a mixture of pride and confusion, like the echo of another time. He felt a blind need to trust the bookseller, to extract from his head any trace of the father he had never been able to meet.

“He was a real bookworm! Your father and I talked for a couple of hours that first afternoon. That was a lot of time in those days, as my bookshop was full from opening to closing time-not deserted like it is now. We discovered common interests, such as poetry. Although he was very intelligent, he was rather slow with words, and he marveled at what people like Holderlin and Rilke could do. Once he even asked me to help him with a little poem he’d written for your mother.”

“I remember her telling me about that poem,” said Paul sullenly, “though she never let me read it.”

“Perhaps it’s still in your father’s papers?” suggested the bookseller.

“Unfortunately, the few possessions we had were left in the house where we used to live. We had to leave in a hurry.”

“A pity. Anyway… every time he came to Munich we’d spend interesting evenings together. That was how I first came to hear of the Grand Lodge of the Rising Sun.”

“What’s that?”

The bookseller lowered his voice.

“Do you know what the Masons are, Paul?”

The young man looked at him in surprise.

“The newspapers say they’re a powerful secret sect.”

“Run by Jews who control the fate of the world?” said Keller, his voice full of irony. “I’ve heard that story many times, too, Paul. All the more so these days, when people are looking for someone to blame for all the bad things that are happening.”

“So, what’s the truth?”

“The Masons are a secret society, not a sect, made up of select men who seek enlightenment and the triumph of morality in the world.”

“By ‘select,’ do you mean ‘powerful’?”

“No. These men choose themselves. No Mason is allowed to ask a Profane to become a Mason. It’s the Profane who has to ask, just as I asked your father to grant me admission to the lodge.”

“My father was a Mason?” asked Paul, astonished.

“Wait a moment,” said Keller. He locked the shop door, flipped the sign to CLOSED, and then went to the back room. On his return he showed Paul an old studio photograph. It showed a young Hans Reiner, Keller, and three other people Paul didn’t recognize, all of them looking fixedly into the camera. Their rigid pose was common to pictures from the beginning of the century, when models had to remain still for at least a minute so the photo didn’t blur. One of the men was holding up a strange symbol that Paul remembered having seen years earlier in his uncle’s study: a square and compass facing one another with a big G in the middle.

“Your father was the keeper of the temple of the Grand Lodge of the Rising Sun. The keeper ensures that the door to the temple is closed before the Work can begin… In the language of the Profane, before beginning the ritual.”

“I thought you said it had nothing to do with religion.”

“As Masons, we believe in a supernatural being, whom we call the Great Architect of the Universe. That’s as far as the dogma goes. Each Mason venerates the Great Architect in whatever way he sees fit. In my lodge there are Jews, Catholics, and Protestants, although this isn’t talked about openly. There are two subjects that are forbidden in the lodge: religion and politics.”

“Did the lodge have anything to do with my father’s death?”

The bookseller paused for a while before answering.

“I don’t know very much about his death, except that what you’ve been told is a lie. The day I saw him for the last time, he sent a message to me and we met close to the bookshop. We talked hurriedly, in the middle of the street. He told me he was in danger and that he feared for your life and your mother’s. A fortnight later I heard a rumor that his ship had gone down in the colonies.”

Paul wondered whether he should tell Keller about his cousin Eduard’s last words, about the night his father had visited the Schroeders’ mansion, and the shot Eduard had heard, but he decided against it. He’d given the evidence a great deal of thought but couldn’t find anything conclusive to prove that his uncle had been responsible for his father’s disappearance. Deep in his heart he believed there was something to the idea, but until he was quite sure, he didn’t want to share that burden with anyone.

“He also asked me to give you something when you were old enough. I’ve been looking for you for months,” Keller went on.

Paul felt his heart somersault.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know, Paul.”

“Well, what are you waiting for? Give it to me!” said Paul, almost shouting.

The bookseller shot Paul a cool look to make it clear that he didn’t like people giving him orders in his own home.

“Do you think you’re worthy of your father’s legacy, Paul? The man I saw the other day at the BeldaKlub didn’t seem to be any better than a drunken lout.”

Paul opened his mouth to reply, to tell this man about the hunger and cold he’d endured when they were thrown out of the Schroeder mansion. Of the exhaustion of hauling coal up and down damp staircases. Of the desperation of having nothing, and knowing that in spite of all the barriers you still had to continue your search. Of the temptation of the Isar’s cold waters. But finally he repented, because what he’d suffered did not give him the right to behave as he’d done over the previous weeks.

If anything, it made him even more guilty.

“Herr Keller… if I belonged to the lodge, would that make me more worthy?”

“Were you to ask for it from the bottom of your heart, that would be a start. But I assure you, it won’t be easy, not even for someone like you.”

Paul swallowed before replying.

“In that case, I humbly ask for your help. I want to be a Mason, like my father.”

Alys finished moving the paper around in the developing tray, then placed it in the fixing solution. Looking at the image made her feel strange. Proud, on the one hand, because of the photograph’s technical perfection. That tart’s gesture as she held on to Paul. The shine in her eyes, his eyes half closed… The details made you feel you could almost touch the scene, but despite her professional pride, the image gnawed at Alys’s insides.

Lost in her thoughts inside the darkroom, she barely registered the sound of the bell announcing a new visitor to the shop. However, she looked up when she heard a familiar voice. She peered through the red glass spy hole, which gave a clear view of the store, and her eyes confirmed what her ears and her heart had told her.

“Good afternoon,” Paul called out again, approaching the counter.

Aware that the business of selling shares could be exceedingly short-lived, Paul still lodged in the boardinghouse with his mother, so he had taken a long detour in order to call at Muntz and Sons. He had obtained the address of the photographer’s studio from one of the workers at the club, having loosened his tongue with a few banknotes.