Books Burn Badly

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, ‘that smile of yours. The tic of the frozen smile.’

‘One moment, Santos. Allow me to introduce you to an impregnable fortress. Chief Ren!’

Paúl Santos had heard about Chief Ren. He’d come from Barcelona. Two years’ intense work experience in Crime. Every police station had an unusual character who became famous further afield and Chief Ren was one of those veterans. The only reference he had was the inspector’s name. Nothing else. ‘You’re from Galicia? Then you’ll know Chief Ren.’ ‘No, I don’t.’ ‘Well, you’ll meet him.’ ‘What’s so special about him?’ ‘You’ll meet him soon enough.’

What did surprise him was that the station chief should call Ren chief, albeit colloquially. People on top don’t tend to fool about when it comes to hierarchy. But Santos soon learnt that Ren moved in a different orbit. Had his own circle of power. Which he carried with him. The chief, that is the station chief, had been right when he described him as a fortress. Aside from a few details of clothing, such as his hat and his tie, which he wore tight as a hangman’s rope, splitting his neck in two, and which Santos would have loved to pull loose, apart from such details, Ren looked like a large, medieval defence work.

‘Chief Ren, this is Paúl Santos Unknown, who’s joining Crime. The first year to graduate in Modern Criminology. We’re getting old, Ren.’

‘You just got out of school?’

Santos knew he was walking a tightrope. There was no way he was going to call him chief.

‘I’ve come from Barcelona, Ren. Two years on the streets.’

‘Listen, Santos,’ said the station chief. ‘In this building, Chief Ren carries a lot of responsibility. He’s in charge of the Brigade of Politico-Social Investigation. But you should also know he’s one of the greats. This is one of the greats, Santos. Hierarchies aside, in our view he’s the best. In terms of information and in terms of application. Did you hear what the Minister said when he was decorated?’

‘That’s enough, boss! I’m getting overweight.’

‘He called him Great Captain. A great captain of State security. Now what do you say?’

‘It’s a great honour.’

‘It is. He called him something else. A soldier of God and the State. Sometimes you have to recognise things for what they are. Listen to this, Santos. If our archives ever disappeared, there’d be no problem. We’d have Chief Ren’s brain.’

‘Thank you, that’s enough. I think Mr Unknown is like me. He’s not easily impressed. Doesn’t give words great importance.’

‘No, no. I give them every importance.’

Ren’s head was very wide. So was his body. But not his eyes. His eyes were small, didn’t stop moving in their sockets, seemed to suffer from a deliberate squint in contrast to the amimia of his podgy face. The boss’s deference went beyond mere courtesy and momentarily pulled in his large body, which was wide and asymmetrical. The structure of his torso was still that of a strong man, but taken together, Paúl Santos reached the conclusion he was in the presence of a body that was seriously dysfunctional, starting with a belly that had long since stopped trying to be discreet. As for his face, it was noticeably swollen. Santos was meeting him for the first time, but it was a work in progress and he assumed it had something to do with the abuse of alcoholic drinks. It could also be a physical strategy since, when they shook hands, Ren’s face revealed a hard kernel, the scrutinising look of those sunken eyes. His hand was almost twice as big as Santos’, but he didn’t hold back on the handshake.

‘At your service, Mr Ren.’

‘I’m in a dilemma. I’m not sure which you like better, Santos or Unknown.’

‘My friends call me Unknown.’

‘Then I’ll call you Santos. Let me tell you what a confessor told my rather gullible spinster aunt, “Listen, Milucha, even saints have pricks.”’

They burst out laughing. Santos felt his colleague’s slap. A slap of intimacy, which knocked him forwards. Ren seemed to feel better, having got this off his chest. He crossed his arms and his body regained a certain symmetry.

‘Till now, the only Unknowns I’ve met were criminals. Santos, right? So you went to university. Got yourself an education.’

‘I studied law, Mr Ren,’ said Santos, who couldn’t help varnishing his words with a hint of pride.

‘Yeah, me too,’ said Inspector Ren, looking at the station chief. ‘It was lawful.’ They again burst out laughing as if they’d played a joke on a novice.

Santos went along with it. Forced a smile. His first impressions were confirmed. The tone used by the station chief to refer to Ren wasn’t just one of loyalty, even friendship. It pointed to the mental position of a subordinate.

‘I’m called Unknown because I grew up in Charity Hospital, Mr Ren,’ said Santos politely.

‘I know that,’ Ren replied gruffly.

‘His head contains our finest archive,’ said the station chief. ‘All the city’s secrets.’

‘You’re exaggerating. But we have picked up something along the way. Now things will improve. Our friend Santos here will incorporate new methods. Long live scientific police work! I always wished I’d had a scientific training.’

‘The departments are different, but you’ll have to work together when necessary,’ said the station chief. ‘So welcome and don’t hesitate to seek help from a master like him.’

Ren couldn’t hide the fact he enjoyed adulation. Paúl Santos measured his proportions. Ren’s ego was large, physiological. It had increased in size. Ren took up more space now than when they’d first been introduced.

‘Tell me something, Santos,’ Ren intervened. ‘How did you get to Charity Hospital? Did someone take you in their arms? Were you left at night at the wheel? What’s your story? Have you looked into who your parents were?’

The man was wide. That was the word. Strong, robust, but above all wide. His manner of speaking was also expansive. With his arms crossed, he heaped rubble at the other’s feet, without caring if it landed on top of him. The only thing that was different were his eyes. They were lively and small calibre.

‘I was born in the Room for Secret Deliveries.’

Ren fell quiet. He’d be searching through the Archive for Secret Deliveries. This is where rich women gave birth to their indiscretions, so it was said. Santos thought Laboure had trained him to deal with just such people. People like Ren. Laboure’s pauses were not meant to transmit calm, but greater speed to the engine. First she’d drink some coffee. Light a cigarette, inhale deeply and seem to wait for the smoke to go to her head. Then she’d stand up and blow a plume of smoke, ‘Courage!’

It wasn’t easy to explain. A nun who gave him strength. Not with tales of martyrs. Her motto was, ‘No excuses’.

‘You weren’t born just anywhere. You were born in the Room for Secret Deliveries. You’ve been called. You’re a chosen one. You have to fight against evil. Il faut tuer le mal!’ She spoke with drunken clarity. Catherine Laboure visited every corner of the city. Went down alleyways. Knocked at doors. Left a trail of black tobacco, her Gauloises. She’d go down to the port, where she had some local skippers who kept her supplied. But today she was smoking thanks to a legionnaire who’d gone blind and sometimes dealt in cannabis.

‘You can tell good by looking at it.’

She was half crazy. Perhaps the only way to gain respect in such an enclosed space.

‘Ah, que tu es beau!’

Then very seriously, ‘You were born in the Room for Secret Deliveries.’

‘So what?’

‘Never be inhuman.’

When they were left alone, the boss said about Ren, ‘He’s not a bad person, it’s just he has a problem with people. There was a British king, George I, a Hanoverian, who was said to be an extraordinary person because he hated only three people in this world: his mother, his wife and his son. Ren’s mother died long ago and he doesn’t have a wife or child. So he’s plenty to choose from.’

Santos smiled the Paúl Santos smile.

‘I think he includes you in that category.’

‘What category?’

‘Humankind.’

On leaving the office, Santos had formed a different idea about the boss’s character. He was one of those who, instead of taking your hand, let theirs hang loosely and quickly withdraw it like a slippery concession. He wondered now whether this sharp observation he’d made about Ren, to his surprise and in confidence, wasn’t in fact a message. A warning from on high.