‘Really?’
‘No,’ her brother confirmed, ‘Papá and Mamá were only children. Have you got cousins?’
‘Yes, lots . . . Miguel and Luis, who live in Málaga, Aurelio, Santi and Mabel, who live near my other grandparents in Torre del Mar, Pablo and Cristina, who live here in Madrid, and then I have cousins in Paris, Annette and Jacques.’
‘You’ve got cousins in Paris?’
‘Yes. We used to live there. I was born in Paris.’
‘That means you’re French.’
‘No, I’m Spanish. My parents are Spanish, and my grandparents. ’
‘That’s weird.’ The boy stared at her as though he didn’t believe a word she had said. ‘People who are born in France are French.’
‘Have you got any brothers or sisters?’ asked the little girl.
‘I have a brother, his name is Mateo, he’s four. But I’m going to have another one in November.’
‘There are five of us,’ the boy said, ‘Clara is the youngest.’
‘And you’re the second youngest, Álvaro, so there . . .’
Fuensanta served the hot chocolate, it was delicious, and she put two plates in the middle of the table, one with buns, and the other one with freshly made toast. ‘Don’t eat them all,’ she warned. ‘Your brothers will be home soon and they’ll be starving after the match . . .’ When she couldn’t eat any more, Raquel tilted her chair back and to her surprise, almost against her will, she experienced a moment of genuine contentment, as though the taste of the chocolate and the sweet buns had banished the feeling of being trapped in enemy territory.
‘I have a train set,’ the boy told her, ‘I’ll show you if you like.’ They trooped out into the corridor, the boy leading the way, Raquel in the middle and the little girl behind, and headed to a bright, spacious room with two balconies that overlooked the street. There was a pile of toys in the middle of the floor and a door on either side.
‘Is this your room?’
‘No, this is the playroom. I sleep in there,’ he pointed to the door on the left, ‘with my brothers, and the girls sleep in the room opposite.’
‘Do you want me to show you my dolls?’ said Clara. ‘I have lots of dolls.’
‘No, she doesn’t want to see your dolls.’ Álvaro spoke to her with the contempt of an older brother. ‘She wants to see my train set. Look . . .’
The train set was laid out on a board between the two balconies, and it was beautiful, because it had a bridge and a tunnel and a train station with tiny little people standing on the platform and others sitting on benches; there were even little mountains and a town in the background. The set had two engines, an old, black train that pulled three wagons full of coal, and a newer one painted in bright colours, hitched to a long line of passenger carriages.
‘It’s not your train set, Álvaro, it belongs to the three of you.’ The little girl came over to Raquel carrying two almost identical dolls wearing identical clothes in different colours. She held them out as though she wanted Raquel to pick one. ‘Look, they’re twins. Aren’t they pretty? Here, you take one . . .’
The trains had started up and were chugging along in opposite directions, accelerating as they went, when a chorus of male voices erupted in the hall singing a victory song. ‘Hemos Ganao! Hemos Ganao! el equipo colorao!’
‘Papá!’ the two children cried out as a tall, plump, dark-skinned man - not young, but with the athletic build of a much younger man - came into the room preceded by a lanky blond boy and another boy who looked a lot like the first but was older.
‘Three - nil!’
The father shouted the result, holding up three fingers of his left hand and making a zero with the thumb and index finger of his right to illustrate the score, then he scooped his two younger children into his arms and tickled them and they tickled him until all three of them collapsed on to the floor in a ball of arms and legs, barely stopping to catch their breath.
‘And I haven’t even told you the best bit. Julio scored two goals, he was great, wasn’t he, Rafa?’ And then, with Álvaro still hanging on to his neck and Clara still clinging to his feet, he turned and stared at Raquel. ‘And who might you be?’
‘She’s our cousin,’ the little girl said, ‘her name is Raquel.’
He burst out laughing, kissed his daughter, and smiled at his pretend niece, and it was then that she realised that, aside from her blonde hair and her caramel-coloured eyes, the reason Clara was so pretty was that she had her father’s smile.
‘We’ll see, we’ll see . . .’
As she watched him crawl towards her on all fours, with his dark eyes, his brilliant white teeth and an expression on his face like that of an overexcited child, Raquel instinctively felt that she liked this man and did not wonder why he radiated warmth and confidence, and something more, a feeling of closeness, of intimacy, as though she had always known him and could trust him.
‘Tell me something . . .’ He knelt beside her and talked to her gently, his voice seductive and soothing, as though no one else could hear them. ‘Do you like lollipops?’
‘Yes.’ Raquel smiled without knowing why.
‘Are you sure?’ He held out his empty hand, closed it and brought it up close to her face. Suddenly he looked amazed. ‘You must really like them, because you’ve got one in your ear . . .’
Raquel stared at him, open mouthed, as though hypnotised. She heard a burst of nervous applause and laughing from the audience before she felt his fingers stroke her jaw.
‘Look.’ He held up a lollipop wrapped in orange paper. ‘Take it, it’s yours. I found it in your ear.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, grinning.
‘But maybe you prefer strawberry lollipops. Let me have a look in your other ear . . .’ He performed the same operation with his other hand and found another lollipop, this one wrapped in bright pink paper. ‘Wow, you’re lucky! You’ve got lollipops growing out of your ears!’
Without thinking about what she was doing, Raquel threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek, and he hugged her back, and for a moment it was as though they had always lived together, as though she were another daughter for this father who went to cheer on his children at football games, who let his children tickle him and rolled on the floor with them, and pulled sweets out of their ears.
‘Julio . . .’ The voice of the blonde lady came from the doorway, breaking the spell. ‘Julio, we have a visitor.’
‘I can see that,’ he said, laughing, ‘I’ve just been introduced to my niece.’
‘Well, yes, it’s just . . . this is the granddaughter of Ignacio Fernández, you know, my mother’s cousin. He’s waiting for you in the study.’
The man closed his eyes for a second and then opened them again, studying Raquel’s face; he smiled at her, but it was not a smile of pleasure or affection. He slowly got to his feet, patted down his clothes and left the room without looking back.
‘Papá! Papá! Don’t go!’ Alvaro called to him. ‘I’ve got both of the trains working at the same time, you have to see . . .’
‘In a minute, hijo. I’ll be right back.’
But Raquel did not see him again. It was the blonde lady who came to fetch her. Raquel was bored of looking at the trains and was now playing with Clara and her twins. ‘I’ll be their mummy and you can be their auntie, OK?’ the girl said as she showed Raquel her impressive collection of accessories, the twin-size cot and the pram and the highchair and the wardrobe, and a bathtub big enough to fit both dolls. By now they had bathed them, put them to bed, woken them up, and fed them.
‘It’s time to go, Raquel, you grandfather is waiting,’ the blonde lady said, as pale and nervous as before.
‘Oh, no, Mamá! Please!’ Clara protested. ‘We’re having a great time!’
And this strange woman hugged her daughter, held her close and kissed her once or twice, but she didn’t say anything. Then, she took Raquel’s hand and they went back the way they had come earlier
, through the bare, bright corridor and into the corridor full of paintings to the entrance hall, where Ignacio Fernández, very tall and very stiff, very alone, stood waiting by the door for his granddaughter. Clara followed them all the way, whimpering and begging to be allowed to play a little longer, something Raquel knew would not happen, because the highly strung movie star was walking faster and faster, and because she turned around twice and told her daughter to shut up, screaming the second time, before they entered the hall.
‘Raquel . . .’
Her grandfather called out her name, and at that moment she realised she was still clutching one of the dolls, the red-headed one in the green dress, and she froze, not knowing what to do, her right hand stretched towards her grandfather, her other stretched back towards Clara, who was already running to get her doll when her mother stopped her with a gesture that was intended to look like a hug.
‘You can keep it if you like.’
‘No!’ Her daughter tried to wriggle from her grasp but the woman held her tighter.
‘Of course she can,’ the woman said, and forced herself to smile. ‘It’s a present.’
‘But Mamá, they’re twins!’ The little girl looked up into her mother’s eyes and started to cry, genuine tears this time. ‘You don’t understand . . .’
‘It’s true.’ Raquel thought that Clara was right, and held the doll out towards the girl. ‘Anyway, I’ve got lots of dolls already.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ The blonde lady persisted in this arbitrary display of generosity. ‘Take it. I’ll buy her another one.’
‘Mamá!’
Suddenly, Raquel found herself outside on the landing. Her grandfather had removed her from that house and closed the door without saying goodbye. This was strange, but she didn’t dwell on it because the scene in the hall had brought back the lump in her throat she had felt when they first arrived, when she was scared, when she had struggled for breath, as though the air inside the apartment was thinner than the air outside. Then she remembered that this was not going to be fun, she had known that from the beginning. She wondered how she could have enjoyed the hot chocolate and the train set and the dolls and yet now, as her grandfather led her down the stairs rather than taking the lift, she felt relieved because with every step her breath seemed to come more easily, until, still hand in hand, the two of them reached the cold, high-ceilinged foyer and beyond the door the reward of a bright, clear May afternoon, with a light breeze rustling the leaves on the trees and the sun warm on their faces.
‘They have a very big house, haven’t they?’ She did not dare speak until they were on the pavement walking at the same slow, relaxed pace they did every Saturday. ‘And it’s pretty, too. They must be very rich.’
Her grandfather did not answer straight away, he just kept walking, head high, eyes fixed on the horizon; his face seemed pale in the sunlight and there was a slight but steady quiver on his closed lips.
‘They’re sons of bitches, that’s what they are.’
He said this but did not look at her. They had come to an unfamiliar square with a large building at the far end. There were trees and a newspaper stand and a number of benches. Her grandfather chose an empty bench and sat down, as though he had forgotten about his eight-year-old granddaughter. He set down the battered brown leather folder, its edges faded by time, and took his face in his hands. For a moment, nothing happened. Then his head began to shake, slowly at first then more quickly, more vigorously, so that his shoulders, his arms, the hands that were still pressed against his face, all began to shake too. The girl stood facing him, unable to believe what she was seeing - not him, not her Grandfather Ignacio - as the hoarse, guttural sounds that trickled through his fingers grew louder, clearer, became irrefutably the sound of sobs, until she could no longer ignore the evidence of her eyes and ears.
This was the first time that Raquel Fernández Perea had seen her grandfather cry, the first and only time, though she did not feel privileged to be a witness to his grief, because her grandfather wept like a child, uncontrollably, forgetting his granddaughter, forgetting himself, forgetting the man he had once been, the man he still was, the man who might have died many times but who had survived to celebrate the death of his enemy by dancing a paso doble with his wife in a square in the Latin Quarter in Paris, forgetting Ignacio Fernández, aka ‘The Lawyer’, defender of Madrid, captain in the Ejército Popular de la República, combatant against the fascists during the Second World War, twice decorated for his role in the liberation of France; just as his granddaughter would never forget this afternoon when she saw him cry, heartbroken and desolate, unable to hold back the tears he had not had time to shed while he was dodging death, while he was escaping from prisons, camps and trains, while he was fleeing the men hell-bent on killing him simply for being who he was, while he was reconciling himself to the perpetual disappointment of a prosperous life in an alien country and to the impossible dream of the city where he was born which died a little every day.
‘Don’t cry, Grandpa . . . Please don’t cry.’
‘What’s the matter?’ she wanted to ask. ‘What have they done to you, Grandpa?’ But she could not say a word, could not even tell him that she loved him, that sunny May afternoon that had taught her how much she loved him, that there was no one in the world she loved more than him. What hurts you, hurts me, this was what she thought, what she would have liked to say, but she couldn’t because now she was crying too, inconsolably, the words she wanted to say dying in her throat, drowned by her sobs, though she did not know the reason for these tears that splintered every word she tried to say, although she sensed that they were bitter because they were his tears, because she had chosen to share the grief of a lifetime.
‘Don’t cry,’ she finally managed to say again, hugging his arms and burying her face in his neck. This time he responded. He squeezed her tightly and kissed her on the head, pressing his lips into her hair until they were both calm again. His eyes were red and swollen and the skin on his cheekbones suddenly seemed so fine, it looked like paper.
‘This is the Plaza de las Salesas,’ he said, his voice still cloudy with tears. ‘The name comes from the fact that there used to be a convent here, and the church over there is called the church of Santa Barbara, because it was founded by Barbara of Braganza, who was queen of Spain and daughter of the king of Portugal.’ He paused, wiped his eyes and smiled. ‘The street takes its name from her. Over there is where the tribunal took place that sentenced my brother-in-law Carlos, you remember? And the grey building behind the church - see it? - that’s the Supreme Court. The entrance is on the Plaza de la Villa de París.’
Raquel was quiet for a moment, she did not know what to say, how to take these words that seemed so warm and yet so cold, so she dried her eyes, blew her nose and said exactly what she would have said if nothing had happened that afternoon.
‘And both of the plazas are square, because if they were round, they’d be called glorietas.’
‘Exactly.’ For an instant, tears welled again in Ignacio Fernández Muñoz’s eyes, but this time he held them back. ‘Promise me you won’t say anything to your grandma, OK?’
‘Promise.’
He smiled at his granddaughter’s seriousness as she raised her right hand to reinforce her vow.
‘Pick up your doll,’ he said, looking down. ‘You’ve dropped it.’
‘I don’t want it.’ Raquel laid it on the bench, then fumbled in her pockets until she found the lollipops and laid them beside the doll, the orange on the left, the strawberry on the right. The doll looked so pretty, she thought as she said goodbye to it, with its red hair and green dress fringed with ruffles and lace. ‘I never wanted it.’
‘It looks like an offering,’ her grandfather commented.
‘What’s an offering?’
‘Nothing. It was a silly thing to say . . . But some little girl will be very happy when she finds it. Let’s go.’
And then, as though nothing had
happened that afternoon, he got to his feet, slipped the battered leather folder under his left arm, held his right hand out to his granddaughter and, calmly, they strolled towards the Paseo de Recoletos, just as they did every Saturday.
‘Do you want an ice cream?’ he suggested when they arrived at Recoletos.
‘Please. Strawberry, but just a little one, because I’ve just had a . . .’ She was about to say ‘snack’, but she held her tongue, she did not want to remember anything good about that afternoon.
Grandfather asked for a large vanilla ice cream and ate it slowly, savouring the taste and the view of the Paseo full of children on roller skates, mothers with babies, couples kissing on the benches and groups of friends gathered on the café terraces with tall glasses of beer. They could hear conversation and laughter, hear the children playing pat-a-cake and singing rhymes.
‘What happened, Grandpa?’ she finally plucked up the courage to ask him as she finished the last crumbs of her ice-cream cone.
‘Oh, it’s a long story. A very long, very old story. You wouldn’t understand, and anyway . . . I think it’s best if you don’t know.’
‘Why?’
He slowly turned to look at her, look deep into her eyes, into the heart of this eight-year-old girl, and Raquel sensed that he would not answer her question, but she was wrong.
‘OK . . .’ He hesitated at first. ‘We’ve come back to live here, haven’t we? If things were different, if things had been normal, you would have lived here all your life. But to live here, there are some things it’s better not to know. Things it’s better not to understand.’ He paused and smiled at the look of concentration on his granddaughter’s face as she tried to work out what he meant. ‘Tomorrow morning, we’ll go to the flea market if you like. The weather’s nice, and I’m sure your grandma will want to come with us. You know how much she loves to buy things . . .’
Ignacio Fernández might have died many times, but he had survived so that he could decide what was best for his granddaughter Raquel, what she should and should not know. Many years would pass and much would happen before she understood what he had meant by these mysterious words, before she saw them as luminous, honourable, the necessary truths we give up over time for love.
The Frozen Heart Page 10