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By Root 773 0

exerted a kind of esoteric influence on him. The first person he knew who’d studied in detail the Coruña Bible, now known as the Kennicott Bible, kept in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Sulfe had been there in 1935 and he described it as if he’d impressed a copy of that treasure on his memory. The Sephardi script, the colourful illustrations in burnished gold and silver leaf, the strange morocco goatskin box binding, blind-embossed on all six sides. Yes, he could see it now. One of the unforgettable illustrations showed the moment Jonah was swallowed by a whale. And you simply had to see that of the astrologer Balaam consulting an astrolabe. This miniature alone was worth a civilisation. Samos had asked a question Sulfe found a little naive. How had they let such a treasure get away? The Bible was made in 1476, Sulfe explained, shortly before the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. Samos should not forget the Coruña Bible was commissioned by a Jewish family and illuminated by a very talented Coruñan Jew, Joseph Ibn Hayyim. ‘I don’t mean that, I mean the book,’ said Samos. ‘Shame such a treasure got away.’

He was surprised by Sulfe’s call the day after the tribute to D’Ors. Jonah’s whale would let him out of house arrest in the case of such a stimulating proposal. He’d be there. Samos was pleased about this re-encounter. They’d shared an interest in Lusitania and for the poet Teixeira de Pascoaes, though one day they’d had a lively disagreement on the subject of saudade or longing. The judge had even raised his voice and got quite angry. He’d kept using the word outrage. ‘An outrage, Sulfe. Teixeira’s proposal to declare a metaphysical concept such as saudade a tenet of the New State. A State is something very serious. You’re not a jurist, so you can’t know. Without wishing to boast, I’d say there’s a moment for the soldier and a moment for the jurist. An act of victory has to be translated into law. But what’s saudade? It has no juridical worth. You can’t sustain a State with a wooden sword.’

‘A wooden sword?’

‘Yes, all that about saudade is a wooden sword for floral games.’

‘And when they talk about the grace of God? Caudillo by the grace of God? The New State as creatio a Deo?’

The judge glanced in amazement at the others who were present.

‘Such a comparison is improper,’ said Samos. ‘Between God and saudade.’

‘Of course it is. Floral games! Like that, on its own, doesn’t it sound funny?’ asked Sulfe, adopting a conciliatory tone. ‘So too does the grace of God.’

And they all laughed with jovial relief.

Alfonso Sulfe stayed behind. He clearly wanted to see Ricardo Samos on his own. Not quite on his own. Gabriel was there, in the alcove, camouflaged in a green skin from the desk-lamp, as he liked to think, and focused on the text from Durtol Château Sanatorium. It described New Year’s Eve, 1913. How much he missed his family. It also said how much he’d weighed that day, though in his case he’d used data from the Toledo-Ohio scales in Villar the chemist’s.

‘Dear Samos, I wanted to ask you for a special favour.’

‘What is it, Sulfe?’

‘At university, shortly after the war, you mentioned some very interesting books that had come your way by a stroke of fate.’

Ricardo Samos raised his guard. The tension of being with an acquaintance who you fear is about to commit an act of folly. Not a simple slip-up, but a grave mistake.

‘One of those books was called Le Nu de Rabelais . . .’

‘What?’

‘Le Nu de Rabelais. In French. Highly illustrated. Drawings and photographs of extraordinary erotic grace . . .’

‘No, I don’t have that book.’

Sulfe didn’t seem to register the negative. He rubbed his hands together and his eyes gleamed. ‘You’ll wonder why I’m bringing this up after so many years,’ he said. ‘It was, for me, a very special night of friendship. The evening before the trip to Paris, Milan and Berlin. There was something that separated us from the rest of the group. A passion for books. You then had the kindness to share a secret.’

Samos had remained rigidly silent, but at this point he interrupted the story