‘That’s my business, Ren. He’s my ward. Didn’t I tell you he was my ward, Ren? I think I made it clear.’
He was going to add, ‘Gilda has a ward.’ Because nothing is hidden and Commander Dez also has his spies. Out and about. One of whom informed him. Too much drink and even mutes loosen their tongue. Which is what happened to him. He referred to Gilda when talking about the staff working in censorship. He quickly pointed out he didn’t mean anyone in particular, but it was too late for that.
‘We all have our things, Ren. I have an assistant, like so many others. He’s clean and attentive. And if I ask him to sing, he sings. Even “Amado Mio”, like Gilda, like Rita Hayworth doing a striptease. He sings very well, but I don’t have to force him. Got it, Ren?’
Ren grunted and fell silent. He understood.
Yes. The judge and he were old friends. He’d picked up one of the most beautiful women in Coruña. Not that it was obvious, you had to spot her beauty and he’d spotted it. Good shot, Ricardo Samos. A woman who was both artistic and sporty. Modern, but not in the modern style. A futuristic woman, he thought, and chuckled. He also had been a futuristic poet. For a few months, like Eugenio Montes. What had happened to futurism? In fridges. He found it in the advertisements for electrical appliances. Yes. Artist and swimmer. He’d known Chelo Vidal before the war. She was one of the sirens who swam from Coruña to Ferrol. The judge was a Triton. Dez too, in his own way. He laughed to himself. So the judge spotted her, if you like, at sea. Next they coincided at an exhibition. A retrospective of women painters. The Republic encouraged all that stuff about free women. It included María Corredoira, Maruja Mallo, Elena Olmos, Lola Díaz Baliño and others. Chelo Vidal was one of those unknown others. She used a pseudonym back then, what was it? Oh, it doesn’t matter. She was there. Samos spent more time looking at her than at the paintings. And the paintings weren’t bad. What Dez noticed was Chelo’s outfit. Each to his own. Now, in censorship, he enjoyed going to measure the cabaret singers’ skirts and necklines. Chelo Vidal was wearing a black rayon suit, with wide trouser legs like two hybrid skirts. Around her waist, an esparto belt like a sailor’s rope. The shape of the sleeves accentuated her slim arms. The whole effect was boyish. So natural, so simple, that was what made it so provocative. Whatever happened to that black rayon suit? The war had quashed such pleasures and it would be many years before a woman, even Chelo Vidal, dared to wear a trouser suit again in public. He used to say, as a provocation, that he liked women in trousers. Women dressed as men. It upset his machos. What the hell, he could afford to take such liberties. After all, he was one of the conquerors. From censorship, I grant you, but I have my tastes. And closet intimacies. He didn’t say this, of course. If he didn’t do what he did, he could have been an expert in fashion. The point is Ricardo Samos and Chelo Vidal were distant relations through her father and his mother. Half cousins. Yes, he remembers Samos’ eyes and impassioned words when he fell for the rayon artist, ‘This cousin of mine is worthy of a crime!’ A real compliment. The war found her in France on a scholarship awarded by the government to a group of young artists. But, unlike many others, she came back after the Victory. She was an artist but without blemish. None that could be uncovered. Except for her brother. That good-for-nothing photographer. This Leica was friends with Huici, who turned his tailor’s shop into an avant-garde hang-out and ended the way he did. Leica saved his skin thanks to his sister and her marriage. He’s not a bad lad. He married a local boss’s daughter, who was crazy about him. He must have something. She won’t let him out whatever the weather. Enough to make any stone warm, so I’m told. He went to photograph a couple who’d just got married, straight out of church, in Mariñán Gardens. First, photos of the two of them, like that, smiling. Now the bride on her own. He takes his time, adjusts the white tulle dress without spoiling the train. That’s right. The bridegroom gets bored, heads off to see to the reception. The photographer and bride are left alone to work with the light. The expression, look at me, don’t look at me. They touch, hair better like that, he moves the bouquet, neckline far prettier, and of course it was a hot day, filled with aromas, on the banks of the Mandeo, a day for Caneiros, anything could happen and it did. They thought they were alone. He stood with her on top, wrapped in tulle, her back pressing against the trunk of the old Jupiter tree, shaking the heavy clusters of pink flowers. The photo they made. A good one, unforgettable. It may not have been next to the Jupiter tree, but under the large canopy of the Caucasian fir. Or the showy cedar. It worked well with any tree, though he preferred the one with the pink flowers. The point is they shook their bodies and the branches. This story Dez had embroidered, which was based on unconfirmed rumours, met with great success on evenings out, especially among well-to-do couples. He avoided rude words, using instead French delicacies copied from out-of-print erotic novels, the coup de foudre, coup de folie, the coup created an atmosphere. He gave particular emphasis to his description of the combined movements of pink flowers and tulle and could see the jubilant perturbation, the colour in their cheeks. He took pleasure in their pleasure at being shocked. Listening to the censor, with a bard’s qualities, giving a coup sur coup account of the s’accoupler under the tree of the wedding photographer and newly-wed bride.
Of course he never told his elaborate story if Ricardo Samos and Chelo Vidal were present. He felt great admiration for her, the painter. She had all the presence of a great lady with the charm of a young girl who’s come from Cuba and a slight touch, like eye shadow, of having had contact with Bohemian life in the Republican city. But she always put art first. Minded her own business. Her most revolutionary act, thought Dez, had been to wear that rayon suit and dazzle Samos, it wasn’t easy for a woman to quicken his heartbeat. Samos had confided in him. First he’d made that unusual declaration, ‘This cousin of mine is worthy of a crime!’ Then he’d affirmed, ‘She’ll be my wife.’ Dez, at the time, was already a Falangist, but Samos, the future judge, still moved in the world of ideas, fancied himself as an intellectual and contributed to the magazines Acción Española and Integralismo Lusitano, fostered by two monarchist, Catholic groups whose goal was a conservative Iberian league. Back then, Samos claimed the City of God went against the Falange’s ‘primitive aggression’, though he conceded a certain ‘barbaric charm’. So Dez made fun of him, ‘If it’s action you’re after, real action, then you know whom you have to talk to.’ But it was books, not Dez’s perseverance, which led Samos to become a Fascist and join the conspiracy against the Republic. The discovery of Carl Schmitt, that Don Carlos. When they walked through Mina Square, with the huge flag bearing a swastika hanging outside the German consulate, Dez would deliberately make the Roman salute, which bothered Samos to start with. He had that Catholic prejudice against the Nazis. But he got over this after reading Schmitt. This Don Carlos took him back to Donoso Cortés and Joseph de Maistre. A concoction that transformed Samos.