‘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.