A Coffin For Two

53

I left the apartment before Prim returned from Girona. I didn’t want to have to spin her a story about why I was going out, and I didn’t want any problems over her insisting on coming with me.

So I headed out of St Marti in mid-afternoon and drove up to Figueras. Parking near the Dali museum is never a problem because of the concrete multi-storey hidden behind it. I stuck a long-term ticket on my windscreen and went for a wander round the lanes which surround it.

After almost an hour poring over the books, prints,T shirts and other memorabilia, I paid my admission fee and went into the museum itself. I had been there before, of course, and essentially the Dali is a pretty static exhibition. There’s the car in the courtyard, which fills up with water whenever someone’s daft enough to put 100 pesetas in the slot, there’s the Mae West room, there’s the ceiling with the sole of god’s foot descending from it, and there’s the stereoscopic painting which somehow turns, when seen through a viewer, into the head of Abraham Lincoln. All these plus dubious sketches from the early days, mad sculptures and other oddities, but very few of the recognisable great works. They are scattered in public galleries around the world, and in private collections … just like the Toreador of the Apocalypse.

I began to wonder if their absence was an accident of fate, or something else. Finally, just as the place was about to close for the day, I made my way down to the cellar. It’s much bigger than the one at Pubol, and Dali’s tomb is much grander than Gala’s, with a greater show of memorials.

I stood before it and I tried to recapture the feeling of loneliness that had come over both Prim and me as we stood before the grave in Pubol. Somehow, it wouldn’t come. I had read all about the crazy artist and his equally crazy wife, and I had heard the tales of them in St Marti and L’Escala. It seemed natural that they should be buried side by side, yet here was Dali in his emperor’s tomb, and somehow that seemed right also.

There was another puzzle there, but I didn’t have time right then to work it out, for a bell was ringing to chase the last of the visitors from the building.

I hung around in Figueras for most of the evening, reading the Dali book and dining in a bar off one of the narrow streets. At last, with ten o’clock approaching, I went back to the multi-storey park, picked up the Frontera and headed south for Pubol.

The road from Figueras was almost straight. I drove slowly, taking my time, preparing myself for my meeting. More than once, the thought came into my mind that I had set myself up to be killed, but every time I put it aside. There was no possible reason to kill me. Well, maybe there was one, but I couldn’t take that seriously; not even then.

I reached Pubol twenty minutes early, and parked in the big, flat, red-ash area which was as far as cars could venture, tucking the Frontera out of sight as best I could. The night was moonless and the stars stood out more vividly than they normally did in the southern sky, as I walked quietly into the hamlet.

The bar and restaurant were closed and shuttered. Nothing stirred as I slipped across the narrow street, and up the steps which led to Gala’s castle. The gate was locked, but I climbed it, quickly and noiselessly. As I had been told, I hurried round the corner, my left hand on the wall in the darkness, and cursing myself for my stupidity in not bringing a torch.

I had never noticed the side door in all my earlier visits, but it wasn’t difficult to find. Three metres along from the locked garage doors, behind a bush which deepened the darkness, my searching hand found a sudden break in the wall, and felt the touch of wood. There was a handle on the right. I turned it, opened the door and stepped inside. At first the blackness was complete. I stretched my hands out on both sides and realised that I was in a short corridor. Slowly, I inched along it, until my foot encountered something solid: another door. It opened easily too. Suddenly, the night was less dark, as the starlight shone down into the castle’s open courtyard. I stood there, like a nervous burglar, listening for a footfall upstairs, until my eyes could make out the cellar door, and the light which shone under it.

I crossed to it in four long steps and slipped inside, opening and closing it as quickly as I could. Blinking at the sudden brightness, I tiptoed down the curving stone way, my heart thumping.

I knew he would be waiting for me in the Delma, beneath the castle. He was, but not where I had expected.

The second great stone slab, on the left of Gala’s tomb, had been slewed round, through an angle of around sixty degrees. The area of surrounding stone over which it had passed was white with French chalk, used, I guessed, as a lubricant to ease its movement. As I stared at it, I saw that the stone was, in fact, a gateway. The stairway which it concealed was narrow, and very steep, as steep in fact as that on Trevor Eames’ boat. But it went down much further, around eighteen feet, I guessed, as I looked into it. Light spilled up from a chamber, a catacomb, a hidden apartment below the Delma.

I guess I should have been scared shitless as I made my way down, bracing my hands against the stone on either side of the steps. But I wasn’t. It never occurred to me that I should be scared of a friend.

The main chamber was big; thirty feet square, I guessed, and it had been cut out of rock. The air should have been stale, but it wasn’t. A ventilator shaft had been cut in the far wall, leading, I guessed, to an outlet way beyond the garden. Beside the stair, to my left, there was a wooden door, leading perhaps to other rooms.

The secret apartment was as brightly lit as the cellar above. At first my mind was blown. I had to force myself, but eventually I regained some kind of self-control and looked around. The stairway had opened out not quite into the centre of the room. It was furnished with a dining table without chairs, an old red leather chaise longue with mahogany legs, and an ornate, hand-carved bed, set away in the corner to my left. Around the walls, pictures were hanging. Magnificent, explosive paintings, full of life, full of colour, full of warmth; full, I could tell, of love. At another time, I would have stared at them for hours, but I couldn’t because right there and then, my attention was drawn to the other things in the room.

There was a large television set, with a video recorder below, both plugged into a socket in the wall, and both switched on. The pause button on the video had been hit, and a face was frozen on the screen: a terrified face, that of Adrian Ford.

Beyond the appliances there were three easels, each supporting a picture covered by a sheet. They were all around three feet by four; the one in the centre was landscape format, while those on the outside were portrait.

Finally, on trestles, beside the far wall, there was an open coffin, a fine affair, a work of art, carved in dark wood, and highly polished. Beside it, on the floor, a dining chair lay, on its side. As I looked at it, I saw in its shadow a small brown plastic bottle, without a lid.

My eyes were on the floor as I stepped towards the bier. I knew what it was I would find, but I didn’t want to see it. But finally I stood beside it, put my hand on its edge and lifted my gaze.

Davidoff didn’t look old at all now. All of the lines had gone from his face, and from the hands which lay crossed over his chest. He was wearing his black satin outfit, his hair was sleek, and his skin was oiled, still with that olive tinge, only a little waxy.

I knew, all right, but I put my hand on his forehead just to make sure. It was the first time I had ever touched a dead person. He was still warm, but it was leaving him, as his life had ebbed away an hour or so earlier, on a tide of sleeping pills from the empty bottle on the floor, taken after he had used the chair to climb into his own coffin.

I looked at him, lying there. He’d won all the way, and I’ll swear he was smiling.

I knew what he wanted me to do next. I picked up the chair, set it down in front of the television, then, when I had made myself as comfortable as the hard seat would allow, reached down and pressed the play button of the VCR.

‘All right, all right,’ said Adrian Ford, fear making his voice harsh and shrill. As the picture began to move, I could see that he was standing with his back to the gaping mouth of the Cadillac’s open trunk. ‘I’ll do it, but come on, what for?What’s all this about?’

‘In good time.’ Davidoff’s voice came from off camera. ‘First oblige me, and shave off that unspeakable fucking beard.’

‘Dav, this is crazy. If I’d known you’d flipped at last I’d never have agreed to meet you.’

‘Of course you would. You couldn’t say no to your friend Davidoff, the guy who made you all that money. Now shave!’

On screen, Ford began to do as he was told. His beard was tough and tangled, but he hacked away at it with the trimmer of the Philishave, and smoothed it with the triple foil head. It took him ten minutes, but at last his chin and jaw were clean and white, and he had become the man in Shirley’s photo.

‘Satisfied?’ he said eventually looking not at the camera, but behind it.

‘Sure.’ I heard Davidoff reply. ‘Now you look like you did when you killed my young friend Ronnie.’

‘What!’ It was a shriek.

‘You heard me. I know about it. You killed Ronnie Starr, up at St Marti, and you buried his body. Then a few months later, you sold his pictures. The picture of Cadaques, you had Trevor Eames sell to your nephew to give to your sister. The other one, the one which Ronnie did not paint, the one with the authentic signature of Dali, you sold in June, at a phoney auction for four hundred thousand US dollars; a quarter of a million sterling; fifty million pesetas. That’s a good enough reason to kill someone; a good enough reason for you anyway. You going to admit it for my camera, or will I just shoot you like a dog?’ Ford threw up his hands, as if to ward someone off. ‘Okay, okay, I sold the pictures, but I didn’t kill Starr. Trevor did that. We arranged to meet him up at St Marti, one night. After we’d eaten, and everyone was gone, we walked round to the headland. I suggested the auction idea to Ronnie. I said that Trevor and I would fix up the sale of the Dali, and that we’d split the profits. He’d get half andTrevor and I would split the rest. Ronnie said no, no way. I’d have left it at that. But Trevor picked up a rock behind his back and smashed his head in. He’s a violent man, is Trevor.’

‘Was,’ said Davidoff’s voice.

Confusion mingled with the fear on Ford’s face.

‘Ah, you hadn’t heard about Trevor, then. It’s too bad. Somebody went on board his boat and killed him. Tragic.’ Ford’s right eye began to twitch, uncontrollably. ‘Don’t tell me such shit, Adrian,’ said the off-screen voice, sighing contemptuously. ‘Trevor Eames was no leader. He was a deckhand, not a captain. If he killed Ronnie, it was because you told him to. But I don’t think that. I think you did. You have to be real greedy to kill someone. Trevor wasn’t that greedy. You are.’

Ford began to beg with his eyes. ‘No. Trevor killed him, honest. Afterwards, well we had to clear traces of him away. So Trev went and got his pictures from the woman in La Pera, and told her that Ronnie had done a runner. Since we were left with the pictures anyway, Trev said we should go ahead with the auction. He knew a chap up at Pals, who suggested that we set up some silly, picture-crazy chum of his. That’s how it happened. It was all Trevor.’

I heard Davidoff snort. ‘That is unspeakable bullshit. You made the booking at Peretellada. I checked. You paid for the dinner. And you paid for the dinner later, when Trevor and Foy came along to collect their cut … at least that’s what Senor Foy thought he was there to do.You paidTrevor seventy five thousand dollars from the four hundred. John Gash even paid for the dinner at the auction, with the money he gave you for the Cadaques picture.’

‘How can you know that?’ Ford squealed.

‘Simple. I asked. The manager at Peretellada, he’s Catalan. My people will tell you anything, if you ask them in their own language. That’s the key to them. As for Trevor; well, most people will tell you the truth if you hold a gun to their head. Only the really tough ones, like you, will try to lie their way out of danger, right to the end. I learned that in the Civil War, my friend. I wish I’d been able to blowTrevor’s brains all over his boat. But I couldn’t make so much noise. So I had to use a knife. I learned that in the war also. There’s no one around here. I can make as much noise as I like.’

On screen, I could see Adrian Ford begin to shake. ‘Wait a minute Dav,’ he screamed, as if a gun had been raised. ‘It’s your fault too. If you hadn’t introduced us to Starr in the bar across the road, none of this would have happened. He’d never have shown me the Dali. He’d be alive today but for you.’ A last flicker of defiance showed in his face. ‘You evil old bastard!’

‘I know that,’ said the voice. ‘And for that I must die too. But evil, no. Davidoff is good, and at the end, good usually wins.’

Pure astonishment spread across Ford’s face, as the first bullet hit him, and as the first red flower bloomed on his chest, all of it simultaneous with the sound of the pistol as the shot cracked from the speaker of the television set. I think he died then, but Davidoff shot him twice more, just in case, hurling him backwards into the trunk of the Caddy.

His feet hung out over the body panel, until a slim figure, wearing a black T-shirt and trousers, stepped into the frame, swung them into the car, and slammed the lid shut. Then Davidoff turned, revolver held in his left hand, and reached for the camera.

The screen went blank, but only for a few seconds. When it cleared, Davidoff was sitting calmly, facing the camera. He held up a newspaper. ‘This is to show you the date, Oz. It’s today’s, Tuesday’s. They always do this in the movies, so I thought I would too. Not that I want you ever to let anyone else see this tape.

‘That’s how he died,’ he said, ‘that bastard Adrian, who betrayed my friendship and trust and who killed Ronnie Starr. For either, I’d have shot him.’

He smiled, then reached down and picked up a book. The Dali volume. ‘But enough of Adrian and Trevor,’ he drawled, in that strange Hispanic American accent. ‘Have you found the answer, on page three hundred and twenty? I know you; you’re a smart boy. I reckon you have.’ He grinned at me from the screen.

‘There were two of you,’ I said, as if he could hear me. ‘You’re his brother.’

‘That’s right,’ Davidoff said, as if in answer, as he waved the heavy volume at the camera. ‘The book says that Salvador Galo Anselmo Dali i Domenech was born at Number 2 °Carrer Monturiol, in the town of Figueras on the twelfth of October, 1901, and that he died in August, 1903. It says that Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali i Domenech was born in the same house on May 11, 1904.’

He beamed, like a magician about to pull a rabbit from his hat. ‘I am Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali i Domenech. Yes Oz, what the book says is true. My father had two sons named Salvador. But it is not correct when it says that my elder brother died as an infant. That was a story which my father put about to cover the real truth. For my father was a very private man, with a misplaced sense of shame, and there were some things which he simply could not have borne had they become public knowledge and matters for discussion.

‘From his earliest days, my brother Salvador behaved oddly. As a very small baby he did not smile, or laugh. Our mother used to say, when she could speak of it, that his eyes were always fierce.’ He frowned. ‘As he grew he seemed to have a hostile spirit within him. When he cut his teeth, he would bite the nipple at which he sucked, he would bite our father, he would bite himself. His fingernails had to be cut short, for he would scratch anything he could touch.

‘Salvador was a strong, healthy child, yet he would not walk. He had a loud voice, yet he would not learn to speak. Instead, as he grew bigger he spat and snarled with fury in his eyes at anyone who would come near him. Everything that came into his hands he tore or threw about. He had to be force fed. If mother and father did not watch him he would eat his own shit, and they had to be careful he did not smear it on them.

‘You have to understand, Oz, that my father was a very religious man. He believed in the embodiment of good and of evil. And he came to believe that his son was possessed by a devil.’ He paused, to let his words have effect. ‘I tell you something. Even today, so do I.

‘When my brother was only eighteen months old, a priest was brought into the house, to perform the rite of exorcism. When he said the Latin words, Salvador, for the first time in his life, shrieked with a mad laughter. Afterwards, his behaviour continued unchanged.’

Davidoff glanced at the floor, looking away from the camera for the first time. ‘No one from outside the family had ever been allowed to see my brother,’ he said at last. ‘When he was nine months old, my father dismissed his two servants, for fear that they would spread stories.

‘As I said, he was ashamed, Oz, of this, this thing, that had been visited on him and on my mother. I think that if he had been a less strong-willed man, he might have killed Salvador for the child’s own sake. Instead, he chose a more difficult road.

‘When his mad son was about two years old he let it be known that he had died. He determined that he and my mother would look after him in secret, in the sound-proofed attic of the house in Carrer Monturiol, that they would be his nurses and his jailers, until he was full grown and could be put away in an asylum. They could simply have sent him away at that time too, of course, but my father believed in duty, and he loved Salvador, crazy or not.’ Davidoff smiled. ‘My father was a great man, Oz. He made Dali, but as you could never have imagined.’

He paused, picked up a glass of red wine from the floor and took a sip. ‘I was born in the year after my father made his choice. He named me Salvador also, hoping that he had not cursed me with the name. But he had not. I was the opposite of my brother in every way, a loving, thoughtful, intelligent, happy little boy.

‘I was born into comfort. My father was a merchant, and rich. Many people worked for him in his warehouses. One of my earliest memories is of the sea, and of my mother. I remember visiting Cadaques by boat. I would have been three years old at the time. We took many excursions, my mother and I, when I was too young to wonder, far less ask, why my father never came with us.’ He smiled for a second, his eye blank, looking into the past.

‘I suppose I must have known from an early age that there was something strange about our house. I was never allowed to bring playmates home with me. In fact no one ever came there, other than my grandparents. As I met other children too, I noticed that their parents had servants, and I began to wonder why I had none. Yet I never asked.To complain about these things would have been rude, and as I have said, I was a polite little boy.’

Davidoff took another sip of wine, then topped up his glass, as I watched, fascinated. ‘My parents felt that I was too young to understand, so they kept their secret from me for almost seven years. Maybe if they could, they would have held on to it for ever, but that would have been impossible. I suppose it was only because I was such a submissive little bastard that it lasted so long.

‘Our house had three floors, and the attic. We lived during the day on the ground floor, mostly. My bedroom, the music room and the nursery were on the first floor, and my father’s study and my parents’ bedroom was on the second. I was allowed up there only rarely, and never at all was I allowed to go up to the attic.

‘Of course I could not contain my curiosity for ever. My father used to spend long hours in his study, or so I was told. I wondered more and more what he did there. I had my toys, and eventually my crayons, pens, brushes and paints, for my talent began to emerge at an early age, but what did he have? Did he draw and paint too?

‘I wanted to know, yet I had always been told that it was not polite to ask questions. So one day, just before my seventh birthday, I went up to his study, when I had been told by my mother that he was there, I opened the door just a fraction and I looked inside. The room was empty. I closed the door and turned to go. My father was standing on the stair to the attic, looking at me, very sadly. I got such a fright I almost pissed my pants.’ As Davidoff grinned at the memory, I realised that my mouth was hanging open. I snapped it shut.

‘I thought that he might beat me,’ he went on, ‘though he never had before. Instead, he took my hand and he led me up to the attic. At the top of the stair there was a big, heavy door. He unlocked it, and opened it, for me to see inside.

‘Everything in the room was soft. The walls, the back of the door, even the floor coverings. They were all padded so that my brother could not damage himself. There was no bed as such, only a big cushion against one wall. There were toys on the floor, stuffed animals, all shapeless and battered.’ He paused. ‘I remember an elephant. It had no ears, because he had torn them off.

‘Yet also there was the giraffe. It was stuffed like all the rest, but it was undamaged. My father told me that it was the one thing that he did not destroy, the only thing in his life, up to that point, for which he had shown any affection.’

Davidoff’s face twisted with the sudden pain of his memories. ‘Salvador was sat strapped into a harness, attached to a big padded chair,’ he said. ‘He was nine years old when first I saw him, yet he wore a diaper. There was a commode in the corner of the room, but when he was tied in his chair, as he usually was when my mother or father were not with him, he wore that diaper.

‘You must understand, Oz, that they loved him as much as they loved me. All those years were an ordeal for them. They spent hours alone with him, feeding him, bathing him, touching him, although he was like a wild beast and would not respond to them. When I saw him first he was dressed in fresh white clothes, unusual only in that they had no buttons. My mother made them herself, as she made some of mine.

‘I stared and stared at him from the doorway. Then I looked up at my father, and saw that he was weeping. That made me afraid. The boy in the chair stared at me. I asked my father, “Who is he?” He told me, “This is your poor brother. He is possessed.”’

As he paused, I saw that his eye was glistened with tears, as, I realised too, were mine. ‘I slipped free of his hand and I ran into the room, up to the boy in the chair. My father tried to stop me; he was afraid for me. But Salvador just looked at me, and he smiled. I said “Hello, brother.” He made a strange baby sound. He was nine years old, yet he had not learned to speak properly. I unfastened the straps of his harness. I hugged him, and he hugged me. Behind me, I heard our father say, “It is a miracle.”

‘If Salvador was possessed, as I believe, maybe I drove some of the demons from him. I know that my father truly believed that. Certainly, from that day on, he was never violent again; at least never when I was about. When my parents were convinced that it was safe, he was brought down from the attic. He slept with me in my room. He watched me in the playroom. He copied me and he learned from me. There were no doctors for Salvador, only me. He learned to speak by listening to me. He learned to read and write by copying what I had done at school.

‘Yet still he was a secret from the world. My parents were afraid for him, afraid to let people see him because of how they would react. I was forbidden to speak of him, and I withdrew from all my childhood friends. My poor mad brother became my life; we grew up together in our own little world.

‘When Salvador was twelve, and I was ten, my father made a decision about our future. He bought a villa in Port Lligat, a tiny place near Cadaques. Salvador, my mother and I moved there, where no one knew our family, and where we could live a more normal life. There was a garden in which Salvador and I played, and a big room at the top of the house in which I was able to paint, and where my brother would draw. A tutor was hired, a nurse for us, and a maid for my mother. Father would visit at weekends, and for holidays. My parents’ ordeal was over, and for the first time in our lives, we were a happy family, if not a normal one.’

Davidoff stopped again, and took a deep draught of his wine, then put the glass down again, out of camera shot. ‘We stayed in the villa for seven years, in our contented isolation, until it was time to contemplate life as adults. Salvador had come a long way since first I met him in the attic. He had learned proper behaviour, and he could look after himself physically like anyone else. To a stranger he would have looked normal.

‘But behind his eyes — ’ he reached up and tapped his head ‘- in here, he was still as crazy as a bedbug. Also, emotionally, he was completely reliant on me. I was only seventeen, but one thing was clear to me. I was, and I would always be, my brother’s keeper.’

He paused. ‘My talent as an artist was developing, until finally I told my father that I wanted to study painting at college. He found a place in Madrid, with a good reputation but where the only entry requirement was money. Of course, Salvador had to go also. He had developed a limited talent for pen and ink drawing, and so he was enroled too.

‘At that point, our shared name became a problem. I suppose I could have become Felipe, or Jacinto, but I hated them both. However I had just read a book in which the principal character, a young man like me, was called Davidoff. I persuaded my father to enrol me simply as Senor Davidoff, Salvador’s cousin. That is who I have been from that day on.’ He smiled again at the camera and gave a brief nod. I couldn’t help it; as he resumed his story, I nodded back.

‘College was a problem, for several reasons. First, having lived in virtual seclusion for most of my life, I found myself overwhelmed by the mass of humanity amongst whom I had thrust myself. I was shy, and reserved. My brother, on the other hand, in my company … and meeting outsiders for the first time, behaved as bizarrely as always. His flamboyance made him a celebrity. It was very difficult to control him at times. I never let him out of my sight, although by now he was not afraid to be without me. You will find references to that period in the book. You will also, if you look carefully, see a young Davidoff beside Salvador in a class photo which is reproduced there.

‘Our studies were a drama also. Because we had to be in the same classes, Salvador had to take painting with me. The trouble was, while he could draw well enough, he could not paint worth a damn. His work was awful. Mine on the other hand, was technically far and away the best in the college. However, my subjects and my compositions were as shy and reserved as I was. There was no soul to them.

‘That landed us in trouble. Once, my tutor said to me, in front of the class, “Senor Davidoff, you have a great talent: for painting biscuit tins. You should stick to that.” Salvador roared and threw his paints at the man. He was almost expelled, but our father’s fees were more important than the tutor’s suiting.’

Davidoff laughed and shook his head. ‘We left eventually, but for another reason. As my brother came to realise, if not to understand, his sexuality, he developed a fondness for girls, for very young girls. He touched no one, you understand, but he used to stare at them in the street, sometimes to the annoyance of their parents. It came to a head when he made some filthy, obscene drawings, and sold them for publication in a magazine for people who liked to indulge in that way. Someone gave the Principal a copy … or maybe he was a paedophile himself … and that was the end.

‘Salvador passed it off by announcing that there was no one in the college fit to judge his work, and with that he and I returned to Port Lligat. We were hermits again, for a while, and it was in that period that we found our destiny.’ His face lit up, with pride. As he paused, for more wine, I fidgeted in my seat, impatient for him to go on.

‘As I have told you, Oz,’ he resumed at last ‘my brother Salvador was quite mad. Also, he could not paint.Yet he could draw; and he could see things, my friend, visions that were not accessible to a sane eye. One day at Port Lligat, while I was painting the same old hillside, he made a drawing of the scene. It was bizarre, but as he explained it to me, I could see what he meant, and I realised that I could paint it as he saw it.

‘When I was finished, I signed it “Dali” and we showed it to my mother. She didn’t understand it; in fact it disturbed her. But next day, we took our art round to Cadaques, where many artists lived, and we put it in a gallery. My brother did the talking, for I was still a shy boy. Next day it was sold, and the gallery owner said, “Gimme more.” So Salvador did more sketches, Davidoff painted them, and the gallery sold them. Gradually the reputation of Dali spread, until one day, we were invited to exhibit in Figueras.

‘We worked all winter in Port Lligat. The show opened in the spring, and it was a sensation. The newspaper critics came and declared Dali a genius, the inventor of surrealism. Salvador spoke to them, and agreed with them all. I sat by his side, and said nothing.

‘Surrealism is a good word, and appropriate. It means “surpassing reality”; some would say that means madness. The work of Dali sprang from the visions of my possessed brother’s mad eye, and for that reason, I was happy that he should take all the credit for our joint creations.

‘The fame of the work spread beyond Spain. In 1929 we went to Paris to exhibit, and it was there that Dali met and fell in love with Gala, the wife of a poet, Paul Eluard.’

He leaned forward and looked at the camera, hugely intense. ‘I say “Dali”, Oz, deliberately, for Dali is the artistic identity of the brothers Salvador and Davidoff, and it was both of them who fell in love with Gala. Yet it was Salvador she saw first. Before I could do anything about it, they had run off together. I was left to organise the exhibition in Paris, and to console Paul, while they fucked each other’s brains out in Spain. It was the first time that Salvador and I had been apart in almost twenty years.’

He paused again, and even on the screen, I could see his eye mist over again. ‘It didn’t last long between them. Pretty soon, he became dysfunctional without me. Pretty soon, we were back at work in our studio in Port Lligat. Gala was there too, only now she was sleeping with me. Her influence began to pervade Dali’s work, because she was almost as crazy as Salvador, and she contributed to and featured in his visions.

‘Our fame and our reputation grew through the thirties. So did Salvador’s notoriety, for his public behaviour and his appearance were always bizarre. But then the Civil War came along, and with it the curse of Franco. I hated the fascists, although I was no communist. I was, as I still am, a liberal. Yet I left Salvador with Gala, and I went to fight against the dictator. Like I told you once, I learned many things in the war. How to kill, and how to avoid being killed. Most of all, I learned how to look after my body. Seeing so many torn to pieces made me realise what a precious gift a healthy body is.

‘I never forgot that. Today, Oz, I am more than ninety, though no one would think me older than my seventies. I have looked after my body for all my life. I have treated it like a temple. I have always done what it permitted me to do, no more, no less. Ten years ago, I had a heart by-pass in New York. Seven years ago, my prostate gland was removed because of cancer. I survived both crises. I had intended to live until I was one hundred and ten. Sadly, because of what has happened, that cannot be.’ He snapped his fingers suddenly and sharply, making me jump. ‘But more of that later.

‘My luck in the war ran out eventually, when I was wounded, and so, for a while, did our time in Spain. Dali, the public face and the unknown brother, childhood roles reversed, went to America, taking Gala with them. Eventually, the dictator begged us to return. Like everyone else he thought it was all Salvador. He didn’t know about me, or my part in the war against him.’ He chuckled. ‘In the end, I said we should go back just to spite the bastard!

‘Through the decades Salvador’s visions continued, and our riches grew to unbelievable proportions. As my crazy brother grew older, his madness deepened into true genius. Happily my art was able to grow with it. We saw the strangest things together in our joint life, and together we gave them to the world. The thread of Gala runs through it all, for we both loved her ceaselessly. Over the years, she moved from one of us to the other, then back again, time upon time. She was Dali’s woman, in the truest sense.’

Davidoff shook his head. ‘It was Salvador who promised her the castle, but of course, he forgot, so it was I who kept his promise. I found it, I bought it, I restored it. It was I whom she invited to see her here, never Salvador. It was Davidoff who prepared the Delma as her tomb and who placed the second slab beside hers. Salvador never even thought of being buried here. He knew nothing of it.

‘When she died, a very old lady, at Port Lligat, it was Davidoff who put her in the Cadillac and drove her back here. Salvador’s madness was edged with senility by then. I brought him to the funeral, though. He stood beside me, nodding and dribbling slightly, until it was over, then I took him back home.’

Davidoff reached up and wiped his eye. ‘I have loved five people in my life, Oz. My parents, Salvador, Gala, and one other. When Gala went, I told Salvador that Dali the artist had died also, and he agreed. She had been so much part of the visions, you see. It was her influence and her involvement that made the work truly great.

‘My dear brother lived on, in my care as always, for a few more years, until 1989 when he died. It is quite fitting that he is buried in the museum, in the town where he was born, and where he spent his first strange and unhappy years. For most of the design of the place was his alone, his vision executed by others, not me …’ He paused. ‘… apart from the great foot in the ceiling, of course. We did that in secret, by night.’

On the tape, he sighed audibly, looking incredibly sad. ‘With Salvador’s death, Davidoff was free. I was lonely, and bereft, but I was free. I handed over control of the Dali Foundation, which I had exercised for many years, ostensibly as Salvador’s Trustee. Then I came back here, to live in the secret apartments below the Delma, which I had discovered when I bought the place, and had made ready years earlier during the restoration, to become eventually my own tomb, beside that of Gala.

‘You see, Oz, it was always my intention that in the end, I would have her to myself. What’s wrong with that, I ask you? Everything else of my life, I gave to my brother: even my identity.’

All of a sudden, the shock and enormity of it all caught up with me. I hit the ‘Pause’ button. Davidoff’s face froze, his eye staring at me, his mouth turned up in a smile. I shook my head, thinking back over everything he had told me, taking it all in, realising how perfectly the pieces of the puzzle fitted together. I looked around the room again, and my eye was caught by a bottle on the floor, not far from where I sat. It was red wine, a 1979 Rioja, I saw from the label, and it was half full. A glass stood beside it; clean, waiting for me. I walked across and poured myself some of Davidoff’s fine vintage, then, taking the bottle with me, returned to my seat and set the video to play once more.

‘There was a fire once,’ Davidoff went on, ‘while I was in Port Lligat with Salvador. I left the work of repair to the Foundation. Had I known they were going to open the castle to visitors, I would have forbidden it, but I did not find out their intention until too late. Still, I have come and gone by night for years, before and since the tourists. Occasionally I have lived at Port Lligat, and at Shirley’s of course, but mostly here. No one knows of this apartment, and the secret entrance, not even the people in the Foundation. Gala never knew, nor Salvador; only me.

‘I saw the years that were left to me as a kind of retirement. I painted a little, and found that even without Salvador’s vision, I was still some sort of a genius. Some of my work is hanging on the walls of this room, to be with me for ever, as a sort of memorial. Though I say so myself, it is all quite brilliant.

‘But my masterpiece, beyond a doubt, was the Toreador of the Apocalypse. You have seen it, my boy. You know what I mean. It is my tribute to my crazy brother, to our Gala, and to the unsurpassable artistic force which the three of us became. She is in it, the ghostly figure. So is he, in the skeleton of the giraffe, the only thing he loved in his early possessed years. And so am I. It is brilliant, and the crowning jewel within it, is the tear on the face of the toreador, on my face. It is glistening and as you look at it, you can feel its softness on your cheek.

‘Nobody, Oz, nobody but Davidoff can paint the softness of a tear.’ His slim chest puffed out with pride as he said it. I raised my glass and drank a toast to the truth of what he had said.

‘I signed it Dali, of course, although the vision was all mine. For now, at the end, I realise that in my own way I am just as crazy as my brother.’

I shook my head at that. ‘Not you, pal,’ I whispered. ‘Sanest man I ever met.’

Davidoff shifted in his chair, the one in which I now sat, making himself more comfortable, more relaxed. ‘As I said, I treated my years down here as a kind of retirement. I had money, my secret home, and my little car. I hung around Pubol, La Bisbal, Girona. I walked a lot, and I swam in the sea. I was Davidoff, gentleman of means, man of mystery, who kept himself to himself.

‘Then some things happened. First and best of all, in 1990 I met Clive Gash, in the bar in Pubol. I liked him at once. He was no artist, just an ordinary man who happened to have made himself a billion pesetas or so. When he invited me to his home, it was the first time in my life, would you believe, that I had ever been invited anywhere in my own right, not as my brother’s appendage.

‘I loved it there in L’Escala, with Clive and Shirley. I told them nothing about myself, and they never asked. We just got on. Clive said that their summerhouse was mine whenever I wanted it, and I took him at his word.

‘Shirley was devastated when he died, but she insisted that I should still come to L’Escala, to her little house in the garden. I decorated it for her, you know.‘He laughed.’Before, it had plain white walls; now they are covered with murals that are absolutely priceless, yet she hasn’t a fucking clue what they are!’

His laughter subsided. ‘Last year something else happened. A young man named Ronnie Starr came to Pubol. I met him in the bar, where I had met Clive, and I spoke to him. He was different, this young fellow, and he had talent, great talent as an artist. He could paint the sunlight, you see. Very few Northerners can do that, but Ronnie could. A great painter: not a genius, but still great.

‘He had something else too; a huge knowledge of the work of Dali. He would talk to me about him for hours. He knew that two sons named Salvador had been born to my mother. And he told me something very interesting. He had a theory that some of the early work in the catalogues was wrongly attributed. He showed me illustrations of some early works, which he said were quite different in style and quality from what came after.

‘Ronnie didn’t realise what he was saying, of course, but he was right. When Salvador and I were back in Port Lligat after college, he sold some of his own work, through another gallery in Cadaques. Real crap it was. I put a stop to it as soon as I found out, but years later, it found its way into the listed works.

‘My young friend from Wales had actually stumbled upon our secret. I couldn’t tell him that, of course, but I felt I had to reward him. More than that, he was a disciple, a true apostle of Dali, and I felt that he deserved recognition. So I gave him my masterpiece. I gave it to him, because in the end I could not bear the thought of it being buried in the dark for ever.

‘You understand that Oz, don’t you. You’ve seen it after all.’ I nodded, as if he could see me. ‘I told him that it was a Dali, but that it could never be authenticated, or shown as such. I gave him it to keep for ever, and to show to his friends as his proudest possession, on condition that he never sold it, or told anyone how he had come by it.

‘He agreed to all that, and he took it. In exchange, he gave me one of his paintings, of Port Lligat. It is very fine. You will find it hanging in this room.’ He waved a hand, vaguely, over his shoulder.

‘Then,’ said Davidoff, ‘soon after, I did the thing which cost him his life. I introduced him to Adrian Ford, Shirley’s no-good, greedy, jealous, envious, grasping, murderous bastard of a brother. He befriended Ronnie, and Ronnie must have shown him the picture, of which he was so proud. You know the rest, and you have just seen how it finished.

‘I almost died when you showed me the copy in your apartment, Oz, and told me how you had come by it. I guessed at once what had happened. Tonight you know that I made amends. That is why I had to bring you here, and to make you the only man who knows all about Davidoff.

‘I place this story in your hands, my boy. I make you the keeper of the truth, of the legend of Dali. For it is time for me to die now. But one thing. I want to stay here for ever, beside Gala, and I don’t want my tomb to be disturbed. I trust you with this, because I see the honour in you, like I saw it in my poor friend Ronnie.

‘Some things you can do for me. First, finish the wine, for it’s the best you’ll drink this year. Share a last bottle with a friend.

‘Second, take the pictures on the easels and put them where they’re meant to be. They are what I’ve been doing since I shot that bastard Adrian.

‘Third, put the lid on my coffin, and say a prayer for my soul, if you have one in you. I carved the box myself. Yes, my friend, Davidoff was a sculptor too.

‘Fourth, switch out the light and seal my tomb on your way out. The mechanism which slides the slab is another work of genius. I designed it myself, and burned the plan, after I had it installed by a non-Spanish speaking engineer from America. He died in a car crash ten years ago … nothing to do with me, honest!

‘It only works when you insert a steel bolt into a slot in the stone. It’s in there now. The slab will slide back into place at a touch. When it’s perfectly positioned, you’ll be able to withdraw the shaft and it’ll be locked for ever. Next time you cross a river, toss my key away.

‘As a bonus for all these favours, you can keep the video camera. It’s a good one, I promise, and it’s only been used twice.’

He paused, and he looked at me. ‘Oz, my true friend, for any wrong you may think subsequently that I have done you, I apologise most sincerely. Now go with God, and have a good life, one at least as long as mine. Remember, treat the body as a temple.’ Then he winked his one eye, and gave me a long slow smile. ‘Now, goodbye.’

There was a click, and the screen went dark.

I stood there staring at it, as I shared the last of his wine, savouring every drop. When it was done, I walked over to the three pictures, and took the sheet from the one on the left. It was a portrait of Shirley Gash, and a man I recognised from photos in her house as Clive, painted exquisitely, as if both were alive on the canvas.

Moving on after a while, I unveiled the one in the centre, and gasped, not for the first time that night. It was Primavera. She was lying on a couch in silver moonlight, and she was naked. It was so real, I wanted to touch her.

I was afraid, almost, to lift the third sheet, but I did.

It was me, of course. In the background, I picked out the ghostly figure of a woman, the skeleton of a giraffe, and the very faint shadow of a man, with a patch over his right eye. In the foreground, I was wearing a toreador’s colourful uniform, with a red cape over my arm. My expression was solemn, and down my right cheek, a single tear ran, so bright that it seemed to glisten, so gently done that you could feel its softness. Like the other two, it was signed, ‘Davidoff’.

When I could, I bent over the coffin and kissed my friend on his forehead. Then I lifted the heavy lid and laid it over him, settling it into the grooves which he had carved to receive it. As I straightened up, and as I said my prayer for Davidoff’s soul, I looked into the eyes of Gala. Carved into the lid, she smiled up at me, with the same look that had bewitched the brothers Dali.