Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [147]
Coccinella septempunctata came into the house shortly after Santiago Casares’ photo turned up inside The Time Machine. Now he knew what the young man from Durtol and 12 Panadeiras Street looked like, he could imagine him growing up.
As for Mr Schmitt, he was there, on one of the main bookshelves, behind his father’s chair, sharing the stage, so to speak, with other notables the judge admired. He was there for ages. Gabriel couldn’t say when Mr Schmitt, Don Carlos, vanished from between the tomes of Aranzadi. It was in 1994, on one of his furtive visits just before the trip to Paris, he noticed he was no longer in the portrait gallery. The two photos of the judge with Schmitt had disappeared. The ones he’s looking at now, because there they are for all to see, in the inner sanctuary, a motive of pride, an honour for the judge to be portrayed next to his revered master, both photographs having been dedicated and signed: Katechon. There’s a symmetry in the dates. The first photograph flanked by juridical volumes is dated 1942 in Madrid. The more recent of the two was taken twenty years later, in 1962. It’s strange, despite the time that’s gone by, there’s not much difference, perhaps because the latter’s quality is no better than the first. There’s a certain imperative urgency in Schmitt’s eyes. Gabriel recalls the judge saying it was unusual since his master generally tried to avoid having his photograph taken. On both occasions, the two of them look serious. The second portrait is dated in Madrid and gives the day and month as well. 21 March 1962. Which is when Carl Schmitt received his decoration. Showing the photograph allowed the judge to describe this great event, to which he had the good fortune to be invited by the master of ceremonies, who would later, in July, be appointed Minister of Information. And there was another signed photograph. From the Minister himself. His father knew him, they even went hunting together, but, after the appointment, he simply referred to him as the Minister. There are the two of them. The Minister and he. Smiling at the camera.
The Paúl Santos Smile
‘Paúl Santos Unknown. But you can call me Unknown.’
He said it as if he’d read his name on a poster. An exercise in esteem, control, but also in fathoming out his interlocutor. Simply saying his full name provoked a reaction he measured according to what he ironically termed ‘the Unknown scale’. It immediately helped him to discover if the person he was introducing himself or being introduced to knew something about life, the existence of a very special door in the city, the wheel, a kind of turnstile, where almost every night newborn babies were left, who knows how many, thousands since Charity Hospital opened back in 1791, before which date all Galicia’s unknowns, if they went somewhere, ended up in Santiago’s Royal Hospital.
This is what a priest had written on the baptism certificate. ‘Father’s name: unknown. Mother’s name: not given.’
When Catherine Laboure finally agreed to go with him and show him the document, he read it with care and serenity. Had he been asked, he’d have said he felt well, really well. His only reaction was to gaze at Mother Laboure and smile. This smile that was as slow to form as it was to leave. One of the features that made him so popular inside the grounds of Charity Hospital. The Paúl Santos smile. In short, Paúl Santos smiled when least expected. For example, when something went wrong. When he dropped a plate in the middle of the dining-hall and it smashed into pieces. When . . . Some older children conducted a secret experiment. They inflicted small tortures on him, which increased the more he smiled. He knew they weren’t bad, not especially wicked, they just wanted to see how long his smile would last. And there was nothing he could do. He didn’t know how to erase it.
‘It’s a tic,’ said Laboure one day,