Juan Gomez-Jurado - The Traitor's emblem

Following the initiation, Paul’s life went back to normal. That night he’d returned home at dawn. After the ceremony the brother Masons had enjoyed a banquet in an adjacent room that had lasted into the early hours. Sebastian Keller had presided at the feast, because, as Paul learned to his great surprise, he was the Grand Master, occupying the highest position in the lodge.

In spite of his best efforts, Paul hadn’t been able to find out anything about his father, so he had decided to let some time go by in order to earn the trust of his fellow Masons before he started asking questions. Instead he devoted his time to Alys.

She had started speaking to him again, and they had even gone out together. They discovered that they had little in common, but surprisingly this difference seemed to bring them closer. Paul listened intently to her account of how she’d escaped from her house to avoid the planned marriage to his cousin. He couldn’t help but admire Alys’s bravery.

“What will you do next? You’re not going to take photos in the club all your life.”

“I like photography. I think I’ll try to get work with an international press agency… They pay good money for photos, though it’s very competitive.”

In turn, he shared with Alys the story of his previous four years, and how his search for the truth about what had happened to Hans Reiner had become an obsession.

“We make quite a couple,” said Alys, “you trying to recover the memory of your father, and me praying never to have to see mine again.”

Paul grinned from ear to ear, but not because of the comparison. She said “couple,” he thought.

Sadly for Paul, Alys was still upset about that scene with the girl at the club. When one night he tried to kiss her after walking her back home, she gave him a slap that shook his back teeth.

“Damn it,” said Paul, holding his jaw. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Don’t even try it.”

“Not if you’re going to give me another one of those, I won’t. You obviously don’t hit like a girl,” he said.

Alys smiled and, grabbing hold of him by his lapels, she kissed him. An intense kiss, passionate and fleeting. Then she suddenly pushed him away and disappeared up the stairs, leaving Paul bewildered, his lips hanging half open as he tried to understand what had just happened.

Paul had to fight for every small step of progress in the reconciliation, even on matters that seemed simple and straightforward, such as allowing her to go through doors first-which Alys couldn’t bear-or offering to carry a heavy package or to pay the bill after they’d had a beer and a few snacks.

Two weeks after his initiation, Paul went to pick her up at the club at about three in the morning. Walking back to Alys’s boardinghouse, which wasn’t far, he asked her why she minded his displays of gentlemanly behavior.

“Because I’m perfectly capable of doing these things for myself. I don’t need anyone to let me go first or to escort me home.”

“But last Wednesday, when I fell asleep and didn’t come to fetch you, you flew into a rage.”

“You’re so clever in some ways, Paul, and so stupid in others,” she said, waving her arms about. “You get on my nerves!”

“That makes two of us.”

“So, why don’t you stop pursuing me?”

“Because I’m afraid of what you’d do if I really did stop.”

Alys looked at him in silence. The brim of her hat cast a shadow across her face, and Paul couldn’t tell how she was reacting to his last comment. He feared the worst. When something made Alys angry, they could go days without speaking.

They reached the door to her boardinghouse on Stahlstrasse without exchanging another word. The lack of conversation was emphasized by the tense, hot silence that engulfed the city. Munich was bidding farewell to the hottest September in decades, a little breathing space in a year of misfortune. The stillness of the streets, the late hour, and Alys’s mood imbued Paul’s heart with a strange melancholy. He felt that she was about to leave him.

“You’re very quiet,” she said, searching for her keys in her purse.

“I was the last one to speak.”

“Do you think you can stay just as silent as you go up the stairs? My landlady has very strict rules about men, and the old cow has extremely good hearing.”

“You’re inviting me up?” asked Paul, astonished.

“You can stay down here, if you’d rather.”

Paul almost lost his hat running through the doorway.

The building had no elevator, and they had to climb three flights of wooden stairs that creaked with every step. Alys stuck close to the wall as she climbed, which was less noisy, but all the same, as they passed the second floor they heard footsteps inside one of the apartments.

“It’s her! Go on, quickly!”

Paul ran past Alys and reached the landing just before a rectangle of light appeared, outlining Alys’s slim figure against the peeling paintwork of the staircase.

“Who’s there?” asked a croaky voice.

“Hello, Frau Kasyn.”

“Fraulein Tannenbaum. What an unseemly time to be getting home!”

“It’s my work, Frau Kasyn, as you know.”

“I can’t say I approve of this sort of behavior.”

“I don’t much approve of the leaks in my bathroom, either, Frau Kasyn, but the world isn’t a perfect place.”

At that moment Paul moved slightly and the wood groaned under his feet.

“Is there someone up there?” said the landlady, outraged.

“Let me check!” replied Alys, racing up the flight of stairs that separated her from Paul and ushering him toward her apartment. She put the key in the lock and had just managed to get the door open and push Paul inside before the old woman-who had hobbled after her-poked her head up the staircase.

“I’m sure I heard someone. Do you have a man in there?”

“Oh, nothing for you to worry about, Frau Kasyn. It’s just a cat,” said Alys, closing the door in her face.

“Your trick with the cat works every time, eh?” whispered Paul, putting his arms around her and kissing her long neck. His breath burned. She shivered and felt goose bumps rising up her left side.

“I thought we’d be interrupted again, like that day in the bathtub.”

“Stop talking and kiss me,” he said, holding her shoulders and turning her toward him.

Alys kissed him and moved in close. They then fell onto the mattress, her body beneath his.

“Stop.”

Paul stopped abruptly and looked at her with a shadow of disappointment and surprise on his face. But Alys slipped between his arms and moved on top of him, taking over the tedious task of freeing them both from the rest of their clothes.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” she replied.

“You’re crying.”

Alys hesitated a moment. To tell him the reason for her tears would be to bare her soul, and she didn’t think she could do that, not even at a moment like this.

“It’s just that… I’m so happy.”

When he received the envelope from Sebastian Keller, Paul couldn’t help shuddering.

The months that had gone by since his admission to the Masons’ lodge had been disappointing. At first, there had been something almost romantic about entering the secret society almost blindly, the thrill of adventure. But once the initial euphoria had faded, Paul began to wonder about the point of it all. For a start, he’d been forbidden to speak at the lodge gatherings until he’d completed three years as an Apprentice. But that wasn’t the worst of it: the worst thing was performing the extremely long rituals, which seemed to be a waste of time.

Stripped of their rituals, the meetings were no more than a series of conferences and debates on Masonic symbolism and its practical application in improving the virtue of the brother Masons. The only part Paul found even vaguely interesting was when the members decided which charities they would donate to with the money gathered at the end of each meeting.