‘I understand, Dez. I’ll talk to Chelo. There won’t be a problem. She may seem to have her head in the clouds, but she’s rooted in reality.’
‘I know. That’s why I came to you. I thought it had something to do with Sada. A pseudonym. I spoke to him before, without telling him the truth. You know how it is, he needs feeding separately.’
‘We’ll solve the case of the perverse verses,’ said the judge ironically. ‘I mean it. Perversity is a concept of great importance in our legal history.’
‘As for the other matter,’ continued Dez, ‘I thought you’d want to know. Something’s come up in the case of Black Eye.’
The censor saw yet again how the mere mention of that name, for whatever reason, had an epidermal effect on the judge. It altered his disposition. To help him relax, he added, ‘I’ve taken a liking to western novels and brought you a present.’
To the judge’s surprise, he pulled a western novel out of his pocket. Samos went along with the joke and accepted it. It was called Romantic the Horse. And signed John Black Eye. Showing he already knew it, even though it had only just been published, he searched for the chapter where there was a trial and discovered that Dez had already underlined the relevant paragraph. The judge nodded in acknowledgement. He read, ‘Even after the verdict, the lawyer Henry Botana had the courage to tell the Judge of Oklahoma that the death penalty was a form of premeditated killing.’
‘Of course we couldn’t just leave that alone,’ said Dez. ‘With all this fuss about Grimau being shot! But in the censor’s office there’s a dislike for trashy literature. My colleagues are highly academic. Who’d have looked at Romantic the Horse past the first paragraph? Even that would have been a lot. There are more readers of sentimental stories.’
Dez opened the novel at the beginning and adopted the tone of a radio series, ‘Henry Botana was six feet tall, had a girlfriend who loved him, a horse named Romantic and a head the judge had set a humiliatingly low price on. He hoped, on the day of the Last Judgement, Archangel Michael would be fairer about his soul’s weight.’
Dez smiled ironically and closed the book.
‘Not bad, eh? Listen, Ricardo, I wasn’t inactive. If you thought that at some point, you were mistaken. The truth is it wasn’t a difficult mystery to solve. There was some confusion because, at his publisher’s in Barcelona, our man was known as Dr Montevideo, actually an alias. Force of habit. That is until, after my insistence, you might say warning, they uncovered his real identity. Héctor Ríos. He’s our man.’
Dez had known all of this for quite some time, without having to read Romantic the Horse. But he thought the judge would enjoy the dramatic denouement. Samos’ expression wasn’t exactly the look of someone who’s finally trapped their prey. He seemed to grow pale.
‘Do you know that name?’
‘Yes, a bit.’
‘Was it who you suspected?’
In the storm, the Orzán waves attempt to regain their ancient channel, the memory of the isthmus, before the great Recheo put a stop to the union of two seas, the wild side and the calm bay. The former attempts to force an entry, climbs up Riazor and manages with its tassels of foam to get as far as the giant eucalyptus in Pontevedra Square, the spot where day labourers wait to be hired. And where saleswomen from the suburbs and washerwomen moor their beasts of burden. It’s raining with seaside conviction. They’re young. Héctor’s a little older. He’s been in Santiago for two years, studying law, but at weekends he still works with the group of theatre and declamation in the Craftsmen’s Instructive and Recreational Circle. Thanks to him, Samos read in public for the first time in the hall there. They recited the scene with the two gravediggers in Act V of Hamlet. He played the part of the First Clown. How often had they weighed up the curve of that question! ‘What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?’ Now Héctor’s planning a new project. An adaptation for Coruña Radio, which is due to start broadcasting, of Herbert George Wells’ most popular works. Samos has to help. They share a passion for this author. A series called Wells, Wells, Wells. With a signature tune in Morse code. They’re on their way to rehearsal, in the rain. It doesn’t matter. Ríos pulls out a book from under his coat. Reads, ‘“From Castro to Mount Alto, the face of Coruña was grimy with powder of the Black Smoke”. Yep, the first radio broadcast will be a version of The War of the Worlds. What do you say? Then we’ll move on to the adventures of The Invisible Man.’
Héctor doesn’t let up. He’s optimism personified. In the summer, he helps out in the family academy. Since he was a child, he’s been good at both skills, typing and shorthand. He always says they were his childhood games and he finds it difficult to write normally. He’s a devotee of Esperanto, which he’s fluent in, having studied it at nights. His passion for a universal language is based on the ideals of rational socialism, for which he drew inspiration from Ramón de la Sagra, a Coruñan of the nineteenth century who, in his opinion, is on a par with the Frenchman Proudhon or the Welshman Owen. He’s also always flicking through his notes on ethics by Xohán Vicente Viqueira. To start with, Ricardo Samos likes the sound of this message of faith in humanity. They’re heading towards the Craftsmen’s Circle, down San Andrés Street. Héctor Ríos, as always, is carrying a book in his hand. He alternates between speaking and reading, with fervour, as if it were a musical score. They bump into Dr Hervada, who points out he’s walking with one foot in the road and the other on the pavement. Héctor replies with quick wit, ‘Thank you, doctor, I thought I’d suddenly gone lame.’
‘In the time of the Spanish Republic, were you never tempted?’ Schmitt asked Samos one day when they met in Casalonga during the summer of 1962.
‘I was a rational socialist for a few hours of crazy joy,’ he replied ironically.
His attraction for Ríos lasted a little longer than that. Samos had been brought up in an atmosphere of traditional, monarchist Catholicism. A few months earlier, in April, the Republic had been declared. The swift course of events made him dizzy. To start with, he shared the other students’ joy. The Republic had arisen like spring, a creative impulse in society. In that vote in 1931, of the thirty-nine members of Coruña Town Hall, only five were monarchist. But gradually he felt the distrust that dominated in the family home, where the fall of the monarchy was labelled a disaster. There was an air of tension at home. His mother’s apprehension about laicism led her to pray for the salvation of Spain, sometimes on her own, other times with groups of female friends. His father, a Navy legal officer and historian by vocation, seemed to be distant from it all, including his marriage, though he’d occasionally let fly about the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Morocco and the Statute of Catalonia. Whether he liked it or not, Ricardo Samos was subject at home to a constant sense of apocalyptic doom. During this time, Héctor Ríos provided a balance. It was he who embodied the charming side of current events. Ricardo was also going to study law. If they coincided in Santiago, could Ríos teach him Esperanto? Of course he could. But when that meeting took place, a year later, Samos expressed no interest and Héctor was no longer absorbed in the task of disseminating a universal language.
‘There’s one priority for which we need all languages. We have to talk about the League of Human Rights.’
Samos was unhappy about the boarding-house. Perhaps because he was a freshman, he’d been given a small, dark room with damp patches on the ceiling. He still hadn’t decided whether he was going to fulfil his promise to his mother to attend first Mass in the cathedral the next morning.