The Frozen Heart

by Almudena Grandes

  ‘Where did you learn to do magic?’

  ‘My father-in-law taught me. He is a real magician, you know. He used to work for one of the finest Italian circuses and he travelled half the world, even went to America. But then he came home and he met my mother-in-law, they got married and went to live in Madrid. I met him before I met his daughter. I saw him perform one night, in a theatre, and was really impressed, so afterwards I waited around outside to say hello to him. I never thought about giving up my job and taking up magic, but it was something I’d always loved ever since I was a boy. I started learning tricks myself, but I wouldn’t have got far without him.’

  ‘So why don’t you teach me?’

  ‘Do you really want to learn?’ Julio looked into his eyes and nodded solemnly. ‘OK, then, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. This is what my father-in-law did to me. I’ll let you come up close, right in front of me, and I’ll do some tricks a little more slowly, but only a little. We’ll do that for . . . let’s say a week. If you can see what’s happening, if you can guess the trick, I’ll teach you. If you can’t - no deal. OK?’

  ‘You’re on!’

  That night, Julio concentrated until his eyes hurt, but he didn’t see anything. But the next day, he concentrated on the position of one of Manuel’s thumbs, which was not always visible, although he was waving his fingers about so you thought you could see ten when actually there were only nine. It took a couple more sessions before Julio understood what he was seeing, and he did not quite guess everything, but it was enough.

  ‘That’s exactly what I noticed,’ said Manuel, smiling broadly.

  The hand is quicker than the eye, especially when it deceives the eye, makes it focus on some irrelevant detail. A perfect illusion is nothing more than skill, cunning and misdirection, Julio discovered that afternoon; in fact, the eye is always quicker than the hands. Never forget that, and take your time. ‘You’re better than I am,’ Manuel began to say, ‘and you’ll learn to be even better still.’ He suggested Julio might perform with him, assisting him at the events held in the Casa del Pueblo every Saturday night, at schools when they held parties to take the children’s minds off the horrors they saw every day, and in the barracks when he performed for the soldiers of the Popular Front.

  Julio accepted eagerly, making sure he knew exactly what to do, and for a few months he was happy, happier and less happy than he had been before. Happier, because he liked Manuel and it was fun travelling with him, along with his mother and sister, to the outlying villages where the girls did nothing to hide the fact that they fancied him, and would come up after the show and ask him his name, how he did the tricks and when he was coming back. Less happy because he discovered the truth, the shallow foundations on which his happiness was built.

  Teresa gazed at her house guest with an utterly covetous devotion, a look Julio had never seen before in his mother’s eyes. Manuel was always attentive to her, eager to have her around, to protect her, not to lose sight of her as they moved through the crowded streets, and every morning, at breakfast, he would make a little paper bird and give it to her and she would smile gratefully, too gratefully, as though she had much more to be grateful for. Julio could see them, hear them, comrade this, comrade that, innocent, almost insignificant words, but which, on their lips, seemed loaded with a meaning he could understand. And he could have given in, could have believed the simple version, the polite version in keeping with the war, with the terrible, raging atmosphere of the world around them, but he did not want to; he was too proud to give up on what was his, to play a minor role in a dream that was not his. Several times Manuel gave him the opportunity, but he did not want to take it.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he asked, and Julio was aware that Manuel was treating him as an adult, a man, but he could not bring himself to feel grateful.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Do you want to talk?’

  ‘No.’

  If he had talked to him, everything would have been different. If he had talked to him, they would not have left him behind. But in the lawless country where Julio Carrión lived the hand was still quicker than the eye, quicker than war, quicker than fear, uncertainty, shame, and all the rest was skill, cunning and misdirection, in reality the eye is much quicker than the hand, Julio, never forget that, and he would never forget it after that May afternoon when he came face to face with the truth he had been attempting to ignore.

  He was on the main square, flirting with some girls, when he realised he had lost the green handkerchief. He looked for it everywhere, asked his sister Teresa, who was playing with her friends nearby, to help him look, but they didn’t find it. In fact, he didn’t need it, he could do the trick with four handkerchiefs, but there had been five and he had lost the green one. I’ll go and borrow Manuel’s, he thought. The house was close by and he ran all the way. As he went in he called out, ‘Hi, it’s me! Anyone home?’ but he was not expecting an answer. At that time of day, his mother was usually busy with one of the innumerable committees that included Manuel and almost everyone in the street, and his father would be out, as usual. Afraid of getting back and finding his audience gone, he dashed up the stairs to the attic, so excited that at first he thought that the noise he could hear was his own breathing. But it was not him. For a moment, he thought about turning around and leaving, he had four handkerchiefs, one red, one white, one blue, one yellow, the trick would be just as good with four, but he did not turn back. There was a small window between the stairwell and the attic; it was very high, but sunlight streamed through it as there was no curtain. The hand is quicker than the eye and Julio found a stool he could stand on. The eye is quicker than the hand, and so it proved for him in the end as he watched his mother, naked, smiling, at the height of a beauty that constantly seemed to be gainsaying time itself, sitting astride Manuel, naked too, the fingers of his hands - ten this time, no tricks, no misdirection - caressing her waist, her hips, before seizing her and pulling her down on top of him. The hand is not quicker than the eye, it is nothing but illusion, cunning, misdirection. Nothing but shit, thought Julio Carrión González, nothing but shit.

  ‘Julio, hijo, are you still here?’ His mother, having looked all over the house for him, finally found him stretched out on his bed; they had a function to go to that night. ‘Hurry up, we’re going to be late.’

  ‘Leave me alone, Mother.’

  ‘Mother?’ Teresa sat on the edge of the bed and attempted to stroke his hair, but gave up when her son pushed her hand away.

  ‘You are my mother, aren’t you?’ he said with a harshness he had never felt before. ‘Among other things. So I’ll address you any way I like.’

  He cut them off. Later, when he began to miss them, when he gave in to temptation, he tried to find some other explanation for things, felt that it was they who had abandoned him, but he knew that was not the truth. They hurt him. They hurt him so much that he preferred to lose them rather than face the misery of his own life, which had been trampled on, torn and ruined. He was the one they had betrayed, thought Julio, he had loved them, admired them, had been happy with them even if he did not side with them. It did not even occur to him to see things the other way round. He was too arrogant, too proud, too selfish, and he did not know everything.

  There’s a man in this house, and I don’t mean my father, he thought. There’s a man in this house, and that man is me. Afterwards, when it was too late, he realised it had been a mistake, but only afterwards, when there was no way back, when his schemes, his tactics, his furious tyrannical plan were shattered by a cardboard suitcase and an envelope containing his mother’s letter, ‘For Julio’, at the foot of his bed. It was 2 June and the house was deathly silent. There was no one left to make a sound.

  ‘This soup is cold, Mother,’ he had said to her a few nights earlier, tasting it and dropping his spoon into the bowl.

  ‘It’s not true, Mamá,’ said his sister Teresita, ‘tell him. It’s not cold, Julio, why are being
horrible to Mamá?’

  ‘Shut up, you little brat.’ As Julio said this, Manuel sat back in his chair and glared at his disciple in warning; Julio, with all the pride he could muster, held his gaze. ‘If I say it’s cold, it’s cold. Heat it up for me, Mother.’

  ‘Heat it yourself,’ said Teresa, the firmness in her voice belied by the tears in her eyes.

  ‘No!’ Julio stood up. Manuel stood up too, but Julio was not afraid, not yet. ‘You heat it up for me, that’s your responsibility, you’re the lady of the house, aren’t you? The least you can do is keep up appearances even if everyone knows you’re nothing but a tart.’

  ‘Don’t speak to your mother like that!’

  By the time he heard the words, Julio was already sprawled on the floor, Manuel towering over him. His face stung with rage and pain as he got to his feet, ready to rush Manuel, who, though he was no stronger than the boy, was quicker and had been in many fights, so he managed to send the boy sprawling again before Julio had a chance to land a blow. He had no intention of giving the boy another chance. He threw himself on top of Julio, held him down with his left hand and slapped him with his right, a humiliating slap full of contempt.

  ‘Who do you think you are, you little fool?’ he said. ‘You’re nothing but a coward, Julio, a little shit, nothing more, nothing less . . . Your father’s son.’

  ‘Leave him alone,’ Teresa separated them, ‘he’s only fifteen, Manuel, please let him go.’

  It was the last time he ever spoke to them. As soon as he could, he got to his feet and rushed out, running around the back of the house until he came to a narrow, filthy alleyway nobody ever used, and there he slumped to the ground and started to cry. You’ll see, he muttered, surprised to hear his own voice ragged with sobs, filled with the same bewildered, desperate helplessness he heard when his father cleaned his rifle. You’ll see who I am, you fucker, I’ll show you, take my word for it, I’ll kill you . . . He stayed there for a long time, calming himself, and only then did he go back to the house. He sat on the bench beside the front door, intending to wait up for his father, but he fell asleep and was wakened by the cold before Benigno came home. Nor did he see his father the next day, because he stayed in bed until he was sure everyone had gone. He spent the whole day out and when he came back after dark, he found a hunk of bread and some cheese and took it to his room. He did not speak to them, but they were not speaking to him either: this he realised the following day when he woke up to find an empty house, a cardboard suitcase filled with handkerchiefs, decks of marked cards, and boxes with secret compartments, and the last words his mother would ever address to him. ‘My darling Julio, please forgive me for all the pain I have caused you, I never meant to hurt you, because I have always loved you and I will go on loving you until the day I die. And maybe someday, when you grow up and you fall in love with a woman and you know what heartbreak is, you’ll understand . . .’

  ‘Mamá!’ Julio could not bear to read on. ‘Mamá!’

  Without knowing what he was doing, he jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes and searched for them all over the house, opened every door, every wardrobe, every drawer and found nothing but bare wood, some crumpled, dusty tissue paper and some old shoes thrown in a corner. Then he went out and looked for them at the school, on the square, in the Casa del Pueblo, asking people if they had seen them, but no one seemed to know anything. ‘They’ll be back this afternoon, or your mother will, at least,’ one of the teachers told him. ‘The Evacuee Support Committee is meeting at seven o’clock and she’s the president . . .’ At a quarter to eight, the committee was called to order without Teresa González, but her son Julio went on waiting until the last woman left, the teacher who had told him she would be there. ‘Go home,’ she said. ‘Maybe she wasn’t feeling well, or something happened, and she had to go straight home.’ He already knew he would not find her there, but he took the woman’s advice, and went back and stared at the bare wood, the scrap of crumpled tissue paper, the shoes tossed into a corner.

  He felt nothing. As he wandered through the empty house, he felt nothing. The day had slipped away in what seemed like an instant, but it was nearly nine o’clock and he was hungry. This was the first feeling that returned: hunger; then all the others came flooding back, anger, longing, cold, pain, guilt, rage, despair, until he realised that once again he had only one place to go, and again it was not a path he had chosen.

  Never again, he said to himself with every step as he walked to the rectory, never again, as he knocked on the door and nobody opened, never again, as he knocked again and heard footsteps, whispering, the rasp of the peephole opening, never again, as he greeted Sister Consuelo and told her he had come to fetch his father, never again, and there they were sitting in the basement around the radio, Father Pedro, the sacristan, the chemist, two men who had stopped greeting his mother when they met her in the street and his father, Benigno Carrión, miserable, old and bovine; never again would Julio Carrión González be on the losing side, he promised himself in that moment, never again.

  It was a promise he would always keep, though he could not have known that then. Nor could he have known that he would make three mistakes before he would finally, permanently, get it right. On 24 June 1941, he ducked down the narrow backstreets to dodge the flood of blue shirts trooping down the Gran Vía only to happen on another wave on the Calle Alcalá. His purpose was as firm as ever but he could no longer doubt his stupidity. Nor was he the only one. ‘You disgust me, Julio Carrión,’ Peluca’s daughter Mari Carmen had said to him some two years earlier, carefully enunciating his name and surname like a warning.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you, Julio, where have you been?’ she had said that Sunday morning in May 1939, a morning when he had not thought to avoid her. When she had emerged from the church on her mother’s arm, wearing a veil, she had appeared so demure that he had had to look twice to make sure it was her. ‘I called for you at the boarding house a couple of times.’

  It had been almost two months since Franco had marched into Madrid and he had been wrong in thinking that there was only one way to interpret so much interest. Not so insignificant now, am I, Mari Carmen? Just thinking this gave him a thrill of pleasure, but he was genuinely fond of her, and quickly decided not to give in to the temptation of hurting her. Instead, he gave a radiant smile and told her the truth.

  ‘It’s just . . . I’m out most of the day. I’ve been looking for work.’

  ‘Like everyone else.’ She smiled back at him before dashing his hopes with a cautious but firm whisper. ‘I wanted to talk to you because there’s a meeting on Thursday at the Casa de Virtudes. We can’t do much at the moment, we don’t know how many of us are left, a lot of others are in jail and there are others we haven’t been able to locate . . .’ She paused and, seeing that his expression had not changed, smiled again, mistaking his impassiveness for quiet courage. ‘You know where the Casa de Virtudes is, don’t you? The party will send someone to take charge. We don’t know who it will be yet, but I’m sure whoever it is will know what to do, it’s mostly a question of helping the people who’ve been arrested, that’s the main priority . . .’

  ‘What are you talking about, Mari Carmen?’ He cut her short, a fear growing inside him unlike anything he had ever felt. ‘Are you mad?’

  It was a solid, physical sensation, and all he could see was a reflection of his own fear in this beautiful madwoman whose long, gorgeous legs had taught him that, even in Madrid, the memory of Teresa González still lived on in her son because he, who believed only in what suited him, was attracted only to women who were brave to the point of being foolhardy.

  ‘Well, don’t count on me,’ he said, in spite of the fact that Mari Carmen’s eyelashes were just as thick, just as long, behind her veil of black lace. ‘Don’t wait around for me, don’t call me, don’t ever come looking for me,’ he said, although beneath her blouse buttoned to the throat, he could still feel the power of the most immaculate décolleté he ha
d ever seen. ‘Don’t even mention my name, is that clear ? Don’t go telling people I know you or that I’m one of you. I don’t want to get involved, all I want is a quiet life, but if you cause trouble for me, I can cause trouble for you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  He said this in a frantic, hurried whisper, as Peluca’s daughter drew herself up to her full height, put her hands on her hips, and in five well-chosen words, spat her contempt:

  ‘You disgust me, Julio Carrión.’

  This was what she said before she turned on her heel and walked away without looking back. She had carefully enunciated his name, his surname, and said nothing more. She did not need to. She knew he would understand. And he did, because he knew her. And there she was, the hija de puta, he had not seen her for two months and it would be only three weeks until he saw her again, for the last time.

  In the meantime, everyone had been arrested - those at the Casa de Virtudes were the first to go, but many more followed. ‘Mari Carmen and I escaped by the skin of our teeth, macho,’ Isidro told him shortly afterwards, ‘she wasn’t there because the metro wasn’t working, so she had to walk. I got away because I’d never been there before and had written down the address wrong. By the time we arrived, they’d all been taken away . . .’ Someone - but not him - had informed the police, although the traitor, if he was still alive, could hardly have slept worse than Julio Carrión, who was torn between the fear that Mari Carmen might be arrested and the fear that he might go on running into her in the street. He could not decide which was worse - that she had been arrested and might at any moment choose to denounce him, might say his name, or that he might spend weeks, months, even years panicking over the thought that it would happen sooner or later. For the moment, they had not caught the loudest, bravest, wildest of them all and she was still free.