Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [227]
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:
What does a man owe to God?
What does a man owe to himself?
What does a man owe to society?
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