The Traitor's Emblem

by Juan Gomez-jurado

  “Paul, the son of Hans Reiner.”

  They set off again. Paul noticed that the ground beneath his feet was harder and more slippery, possibly stone or marble. They walked for a long while, although inside the hood time seemed to have a different consistency. At certain points Paul felt—more out of intuition than any real certainty—that they were covering ground they’d covered before, as though they were walking in a circle, then being made to retrace their steps.

  His guide stopped again and began to undo the straps of Paul’s hood.

  Paul blinked when the black cloth was pulled back and he realized that he was standing in a small, cold, low-ceilinged room. The walls were completely covered in limestone, on which could be read disordered phrases written in different hands and at different heights. Paul recognized different versions of the Masonic commandments.

  Meanwhile, the suited man stripped him of metallic objects, including his belt and the buckles of his shoes, which he tore off without a thought. Paul regretted not having remembered to bring different footwear.

  “Are you wearing any gold? Entering the lodge with any precious metal is a grave insult.”

  “No, sir,” replied Paul.

  “Over there you’ll find a pen, paper, and ink,” said the man. Then, without another word, he disappeared through the door, shutting it behind him.

  A little candle illuminated the table on which the writing implements sat. Beside them was a skull, and Paul realized with a shiver that it was real. There were also a number of flasks containing elements that signified change and initiation: bread and water, salt and sulfur, ashes.

  He was in the Chamber of Reflections. The place where he was to write his testimony as a Profane. He took up the pen and began to write the ancient formula, which he had not completely understood.

  All this is bad. All this symbolism, the repetition . . . I have the feeling that it’s nothing more than empty words; it has no spirit, he thought.

  Suddenly he had a desperate longing to walk along Ludwigstrasse, by the light of the streetlamps, with the wind in his face. His fear of the dark, which hadn’t abated even in adulthood, had crept up on him inside the hood. In half an hour they would be back to fetch him, and he could simply ask them to let him go.

  There was still time to turn back.

  But in that case I would never know the truth about my father.

  29

  The man in the suit returned.

  “I’m ready,” said Paul.

  He knew nothing of the actual ceremony that was to follow. All he knew was the answers to the questions they asked him, no more than that. And the time had come for the trials.

  His guide placed a rope around his neck, then covered his eyes once more. This time he didn’t use the black hood but a blindfold made of the same material, which he tied with three tight knots. Paul was grateful to be able to breathe more easily and his feelings of vulnerability decreased, but only for a moment. Suddenly the man tugged off Paul’s jacket and tore off the left sleeve of his shirt. He then opened the front of the shirt, leaving Paul’s torso exposed. Finally he rolled up the left leg of Paul’s trousers and took off the shoe and sock on that foot.

  “Let’s go.”

  They were walking again. Paul had a strange feeling as his naked sole touched the cold floor, which he was now sure was marble.

  “Halt!”

  He sensed a sharp object at his chest and felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

  “Has the aspirant brought his testimony?”

  “He has.”

  “Let him place it on the end of the sword.”

  Paul raised his left hand, in which he held the piece of paper he’d written on in the Chamber. He fixed it carefully on the sharp object.

  “Paul Reiner, have you come here of your own free will?”

  That voice . . . it’s Sebastian Keller! thought Paul.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you ready to face the trials?”

  “I am,” said Paul, unable to suppress a shudder.

  From that moment on, Paul began to drift in and out of consciousness. He understood the questions, and replied to them, but his fear and inability to see had heightened his other senses so much so that they had taken over. He began to breathe faster.

  He was climbing a flight of stairs. He tried to control his anxiety by counting the steps, but he quickly lost count.

  “This is where the trial of air begins. Breath is the first thing we receive when we are born!” thundered Keller’s voice.

  The suited man whispered in his ear: “You’re on a narrow gangway. Stop. Then take one more step, but make it a decisive one or you’ll break your neck!”

  Paul obeyed. Beneath him, the surface of the floor seemed to have changed from marble to rough wood. Before taking the final step, he wiggled the toes of his bare foot and felt that they were at the edge of the gangway. He wondered how high he might be, and in his mind the number of steps he’d climbed seemed to multiply. He imagined finding himself at the pinnacle of the towers of the Frauenkirche, hearing the pigeons cooing beside him, with the bustle of Marienplatz an eternity below.

  Do it.

  Do it now.

  He took a step and lost his balance, falling headfirst, for what couldn’t have been more than a second. His face hit a thick net, and the impact made his teeth clatter. He bit the inside of his cheeks and his mouth filled with the taste of his own blood.

  When he recovered, he realized he was clinging to the net. He wanted to pull off the blindfold to be sure that this was so, that a net had indeed broken his fall. He needed to escape the darkness.

  Paul barely had time to register his panic, because at once several pairs of hands dragged him from the net and straightened him up. He was back on his feet and walking as Keller’s voice announced the next challenge.

  “The second trial is the trial of water. It is what we are, what we have come from.”

  Paul obeyed when told to lift his feet, first the left, then the right. He started to shiver. He had stepped into a huge container of cold water, and the liquid reached up over his knees.

  Again he heard his guide’s whisper in his ear.

  “Crouch down. Fill your lungs. Then allow yourself to fall back and stay submerged. Don’t move or try to get out, or you will not pass the trial.”

  The young man bent his knees, curling up as the water covered his scrotum and abdomen. Waves of pain ran up his spine. He breathed in deeply, then threw himself backward.

  The water closed over him like a blanket.

  At first the dominant sensation was the cold. He had never felt anything like it. His body seemed to solidify, turning to ice or stone.

  Then his lungs began to complain.

  It began with a rasping groan, then a dry croak and then an urgent, desperate appeal. He inadvertently moved his arm and had to summon all his willpower not to put his hands against the bottom of the container and push up toward the surface, which he knew was so close, like an open door through which he could escape. Just when he thought he couldn’t take it a second longer, there was a sharp tug and he found himself out of the water, gasping, filling his chest.

  Again they were walking. He was still soaked through, his hair and clothes dripping. His right foot made a ridiculous sound as the shoe pressed against the floor.

  Keller’s voice:

  “The third trial is the trial of fire. It is the Creator’s spark, and what moves us.”

  Then there were hands twisting his body and pushing it forward. Whoever was holding him drew very close, almost as though he wanted to embrace him.

  “In front of you there is a circle of fire. Take three steps back to build up momentum. Stretch your arms out in front of you, then take a run and jump forward as far as you can.”

  Paul could feel the hot air on his face, drying his skin and hair. He heard a sinister crackling, and in his imagination the burning circle assumed massive dimensions until it became the mouth o
f an immense dragon.

  As he took three steps back he wondered how he would be able to jump through the flames without being burned alive, and trusted to the dampness of his clothes to protect him. It would be even worse if he miscalculated the jump and fell headfirst into the flames.

  I simply have to mark an imaginary line on the floor and jump from there.

  He tried to visualize the jump, to imagine hurtling through the air as though nothing could hurt him. He tensed his calves and flexed and stretched out his arms. Then he took three running strides forward . . .

  . . . and jumped.

  30

  He felt the heat against his hands and face while he was in midair, even the hiss of his shirt as the fire evaporated some of the water. He fell to the floor and started patting his face and chest, looking for signs of any burns. Apart from his bruised elbows and knees, no damage had been done.

  This time they didn’t even allow him to get to his feet. He was already being lifted up, like a shivering sack, and dragged into a confined space.

  “The final trial is the trial of earth, to which we must return.”

  There were no words of advice from his guide. He simply heard the sound of a stone blocking the entrance.

  He felt around him. He was in a tiny room, not even large enough to stand up in. From his crouching position he could touch three of the walls and, stretching his arm out a little, he could touch the fourth and the ceiling.

  Relax, he told himself. This is the final trial. In a few minutes it’ll all be over.

  He was trying to regulate his breathing when suddenly he heard the ceiling start to descend.

  “No!”

  No sooner had he uttered the word than Paul bit his lip. He wasn’t allowed to speak during any of the trials—that was the rule. He wondered fleetingly if they’d heard him.

  He tried to push against the ceiling to halt its descent, but in his position he could gain no leverage against the enormous weight advancing toward him. He pushed with his whole being, but to no avail. The ceiling continued to lower, and soon he had to press his back against the floor.

  I have to shout. Tell them to STOP!

  Suddenly, as though time itself had stopped, a memory flashed through his mind: a fleeting image from his childhood, of coming home from school with the absolute certainty that he was going to receive a thrashing. Every step he took brought him closer to the thing he feared most. Not once had he turned around. There are choices that are simply not choices at all.

  No.

  He stopped pushing at the ceiling.

  At that moment it began to rise.

  “Let the voting begin.”

  Paul was back on his feet, hanging on to the guide. The trials were over, but he did not know if he had passed them. He’d dropped like a stone in the trial of air, not taken a firm step as they’d told him to. He’d moved during the trial of water, even though that was forbidden. And he’d spoken during the trial of earth, which was the most serious fault of all.

  He could hear a noise like a can containing a stone being shaken.

  He knew from the book that all the current members of the lodge would be making their way to the center of the temple, where there was a wooden box. Into it they would drop a small ivory ball: white if they gave their assent, black if they wished to reject him. The verdict had to be unanimous. Just one black ball would be enough for him to be led to the exit, his eyes still blindfolded.

  The sound of the voting stopped and was replaced by a loud patter, which ceased almost at once. Paul guessed that someone had tipped the votes out onto a plate or a tray. The results were there for everyone but him to see. Perhaps there would be a solitary black ball that would render all the trials he’d been through meaningless.

  “Paul Reiner, the result of the vote is definitive and cannot be appealed,” thundered Keller’s voice.

  There was a moment of silence.

  “You have been admitted into the mysteries of Masonry. Remove his blindfold!”

  Paul blinked as his eyes returned to the light. He was struck by a wave of emotions, a wild euphoria. He tried to take the scene in all at once:

  The enormous room in which he was standing, with a marble chessboard floor, an altar, and two rows of benches lining the walls.

  The members of the lodge, almost a hundred formally dressed men wearing elaborate aprons and medals, all standing to applaud him with white-gloved hands.

  The equipment from the trials, ridiculously inoffensive once his sight had been restored: a wooden staircase over a net, a bathtub, a couple of men holding torches, a large box with a lid.

  Sebastian Keller, standing in the center beside an altar adorned with a square and a compass, holding a closed book for him to swear upon.

  Then Paul Reiner placed his left hand on the book, raised his right, and swore never to reveal the secrets of Masonry.

  “. . . on pain of having my tongue torn out, my throat cut, and my body buried in the sands of the sea,” Paul concluded.

  He surveyed the hundred anonymous faces around him and wondered how many of them had known his father.

  And if somewhere in their midst was the man who had betrayed him.

  31

  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 minde
d 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.