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By Root 669 0

prison, turn her into a social outcast. But his plan, the revenge that most satisfied him, was to pardon her and have her, self-confessed, at home. Watch the guilt drive her crazy. One day, he found her removing the dust from her opera records with a cloth. Her finger, in a velvet hood, circled slowly around the vinyl grooves. Her finger like the needle of a bodily appliance. Her gaze distracted. That’s how he’d like to see her all the time. Especially after discovering, in the false bottom of a wooden chest, a Getúlio-Vargas-style revolver with a pearly handle, perfect for what we might call an artistic denouement. All this had been in a fit of passion. He calmed down the day she herself mentioned the Portuguese architect. Without being asked, Chelo simply untied the knot that had so entangled him. She came to his study. Looking beautiful as always. Wiping her fingers on a colour-stained cloth. He adopted his recent glowering expression. Chelo said, ‘Ricardo, the Portuguese architect called this morning. Remember? The one I took on a tour with students of boat-houses.’

‘Yes. So what?’

‘He’s come back from Holland.’

‘From Holland?’

‘Yes, he lives and works in Holland. He’s giving a seminar in Lisbon and has come with his students. I told you about it.’

It was quite possible she had, but for some time now he hadn’t wanted to listen.

What was worrying him now had nothing to do with Chelo. It was the implementation of the newly created Tribunal of Public Order. Samos had been one of the advisers. Not the main one, but he’d made a contribution given his knowledge of political law. A state of emergency had just been declared for a period of two years. He’d written an article signed by Syllabus, in which he quoted Schmitt: ‘A state of emergency is to law what a miracle is for theology.’ As a result of the new tribunal, the state of emergency would no longer be a military matter, that burden on the regime that is a state of war, and instead would become a civil affair. Ricardo Samos had reason to believe that the creation of the tribunal would enable him to receive a promotion, finally to occupy a position of high authority. But he was concerned. The sentencing to death and execution of the rebel Julián Grimau for alleged crimes committed more than a quarter of a century earlier, in time of war, agreed by a military tribunal, had been accompanied by the irregularity of delaying the start of the new tribunal, which necessitated a legal artifice. Only a few knew about it, of course. And he was one of them. He wasn’t quite sure what to think. He aspired to be a great jurist, but all that manoeuvring on their part . . . If only he could make it to the Supreme Court. Yes, the Supreme Court was where he should be.

The censor Dez arrived a little late and sat down next to him. Dez did know where he was going to be. After the summer, he’d finally make the move to Madrid. He was bored, he said laughingly, of his job as censor, of running after poets with a red pencil. Now he’d be on the front line. In the Ministry of Information. Instead of cutting bits out, he’d be adding them. There his publication was guaranteed.

‘Don’t say you’re going to stop writing poetry?’ asked Fasco the prosecutor. ‘That new collection you promised us, The Moment of Truth, what will happen to it?’

‘I’m going to let it sit for a while,’ said Dez, diverting the conversation. ‘Publish something different. A novel. You’ll be surprised, I’m sure.’ And he murmured enigmatically, ‘I myself was surprised when I pulled that out of me.’

The judge had also pulled something out. He wasn’t quite sure why or when or under what impulse the story had reared its head, but the fact is he again told the story of the tribute to Schmitt in Madrid a little over a year earlier, which he’d had the good fortune to attend as one of the jurist’s Spanish disciples.

They egged him on. Some had not heard the story before and were greatly interested in Don Carlos, a living myth for jurists and practising judges, such an influential and mysterious figure.

As had happened in the Crypt,