The Frozen Heart

by Almudena Grandes

  ‘It’s impossible.’ Rufino, a Catalan railwayman his father’s age, interrupted Ignacio, shaking his head vehemently. ‘You can’t throw yourself from a moving train like that. You’ll kill yourself.’

  ‘Clever, isn’t it?’ Roque gave Ignacio an admiring glance.

  He had liked the idea from the outset, so much so that, when he was summoned, he had taken the risk of assuming a false identity, adopting the name of one the soldiers who had served under Ignacio, a lad his own age who might be alive or dead, might even be here in the Albatera camp. It was a dangerous ploy, and he knew it, but his name was Roque Ansó Ansó, and neither peace nor justice was going to get him out of here, so Roque trusted to luck.

  ‘I was thinking . . .’ Rufino came to see them some days later. ‘It’s not going to be easy, because they’re probably going to put you in freight cars, but if you pay attention to the light, you can count the tunnels. After the ninth tunnel, you’ll notice that the train slows down. That’s where you should jump. It’s flat land, but there are trees, you’ll be easy to spot, but at least you won’t kill yourselves jumping. You’ll need to hide out until it gets dark, and then if you follow the tracks for a couple of kilometres you’ll come to Tarancón. If the same stationmaster still works there - a pot-bellied man of about sixty with grey hair, though he’s almost bald - you can trust him. His name’s Alfredo, tell him I sent you and he’ll put you on a goods train to Barcelona.’

  ‘What if this Alfredo isn’t there?’ asked Roque anxiously.

  ‘If he’s not there, then we’ll get on to the Barcelona train ourselves. And from Barcelona, we can get to your village and from there we can get across the border,’ said Ignacio.

  ‘Sure . . .’ Rufino smiled. ‘I swear, you lads from Madrid, you’re unbelievable, you don’t know the first thing - have you even seen the Pyrenees?’

  ‘I’ve seen a photo.’ Ignacio laughed.

  ‘That’s what I thought. How do you intend to cross the Pyrenees without a guide?’

  ‘What would you do, Rufino?’ Ignacio asked.

  ‘Me? I’d stay in Barcelona.’ Rufino paused for a moment and studied the two men carefully, then continued, his voice hesitant and serious. ‘I’m from the city and my wife still lives there, but I couldn’t give you her address. If you were followed . . . It’s too dangerous, and she already has enough on her plate with three kids and me locked up here.’

  ‘Of course, Rufino, don’t worry about it,’ Roque reassured the man.

  ‘As far as we’re concerned, you don’t have a wife,’ said Ignacio. ‘All right, so, there we are in Barcelona, we don’t know anyone, what do we do?’

  ‘You go to the market at La Boquería,’ Rufino said, calmer now. ‘I used to go there all the time when I was your age. Hang around, give a hand unloading the trucks, get yourself known, and wait until you find someone who’s going to Gerona and is prepared to take you along. It used to be easy to get work there, though nowadays I imagine there’s thousands of people willing to turn their hand to whatever they can get, but I can give you a couple of names.’ He fell silent for a moment. ‘It’s not dangerous, and from Gerona, find some way of getting to Puigcerdá. The women there cross the border all the time to go shopping in France. They follow the train tracks, carrying a basket. Obviously you two can’t do that, but you can go across the fields, it’s much easier to cross there than at Huesca because the pass is wider and the terrain is flat. That’s what I’d do.’

  ‘Then that’s what we’ll do.’ Ignacio looked at Roque.

  Ignacio thought of Rufino as he jumped from the train, thought of him when they said goodbye to Alfredo, who gave them civilian clothes, a bottle of Valdepeñas and a ham sandwich from a pig he’d slaughtered himself, before putting them on a goods train to Barcelona. When they tried to give him some money, he laughed.

  ‘The money you’ve got is worthless,’ he said.

  ‘I know, but you could change it at a bank, couldn’t you? At least some of it?’

  ‘No, you can’t even change a céntimo . . .’

  ‘But what about everyone else? What about all the people from our zone, how do they manage?’

  ‘They don’t,’ said Alfredo, ‘they’re fucked.’

  As he heard the words, Ignacio remembered his cousin Mariana, the placid, metallic glitter in her eyes, the impassive, implacable gaze of a farmer who does not see the rain that falls gently on the meadows. He consoled himself with the thought that at least he had been able to say thank-you the night before they left to Rufino, who, in his way, had saved Ignacio’s life. Even Roque admitted as much, and stopped insisting that they would be better off in his village when things in Barcelona began to go to plan. Barely had they helped to unload three trucks in the market when they found what they were looking for, and from Gerona they made their way to Puigcerdá, through the fields by day, along the road by night, by cart and by truck. Without Rufino they would not have got far, nor without the help of the shepherd they ambushed near Puigcerdá only to discover that he would have shown them the way even if they had not knocked him to the ground and put the man’s own knife to his throat. When they realised that they had finally arrived in France, the two men hugged, they laughed, they screamed, then they walked on towards lights in the distance that seemed to be a village and spent the night in a barn, each under his own blanket, the only thing they still possessed. They were exhausted, but still Ignacio found the time to think of Rufino. ‘If you make it to France, write to me and let me know,’ he had said, hugging them hard. ‘Where will I write to, Rufino?’ He had looked at Ignacio and hugged him harder still. Before he fell asleep on that penultimate night of June 1939, Ignacio Fernández Muñoz thought of the people to whom he owed his life and the fact that he needed to find some means of repaying that debt.

  ‘Bonjour, messieurs.’ He opened his eyes the following morning and found two gendarmes staring down at him. ‘Vos papiers, s’il vous plaît.’

  ‘Bonjour,’ Ignacio said, bounding to his feet, trying to convince himself that he saw no malice in the faces of these officers. ‘Mais nous n’avons pas de papiers, parce que nous sommes des réfugiés espagnols, républicains, vous savez . . . Nous sommes arrivés hier, très tard.’

  ‘Huh?’ Woken by the voices, Roque stared at Ignacio in astonishment. ‘You speak French!’

  ‘Alors,’ the gendarme gestured for them to follow him, ‘venez avec nous.’

  Roque got to his feet ready to go. So began the second part of their journey, which was easier than the first and more difficult, for there was no Rufino, no Alfredo, to help them.

  The gendarmes loaded them into a truck in which there were a number of other Spanish people - a short, bald man of about forty wearing glasses and a suit and tie, clutching the briefcase containing his papers, a grey-haired woman who did not speak, but wept quietly throughout the whole journey, and two milicianos who looked quite like Roque, one from Galicia, the other from Valencia. They explained what would happen next but Ignacio could not believe it was true. Not in France, in spite of the non-intervention policy, the closing of the border, the guns legally bought with Spanish republican currency that were still rotting in a customs house somewhere, having never reached the border. He did not want to believe it, but he thought back to the crack of bullets in Alicante, to the Spanish men and women who took their own lives rather than live in Spain when they discovered that the whole world had abandoned them, when they realised that neither the French nor the English nor the Americans, none of the countries that claimed to be the enemies of fascism, would send a ship for them. No one had wanted to help them, even if it was only so that they might taste the bitterness of exile; they were left to be cannon fodder, to be the spoils of war for the victors, the last of the faithful, betrayed by everyone. He knew what had happened, he had been there, and still he could not bring himself to believe it. Back then, perhaps, but surely not now that they had been defeated, surely France had always opened its doors to exiles . . .


  Ignacio Fernández Muñoz did not want to believe what the men told him. He would quickly learn that whenever anyone, anywhere, in any language, sang the anthem that urged the wretched of the earth to rise up, it would be about them, about the republicans, about the Spanish communists, for there were perhaps others in the world as wretched as they were, but none more wretched.

  It was something he learned quickly, when he got up from the long bench where dark-skinned men clung to their blankets, where women with children sat carrying wicker baskets, and went over to the officer sitting at a table with a sign marked ‘Information’.

  ‘Excuse me, monsieur, I’d like to know why I was arrested,’ he said in French with exquisite deference.

  The man dropped the pen he had using to fill in a form and studied Ignacio.

  ‘If I’m not mistaken, you’re Spanish, yes? A republican soldier ? And you crossed the border illegally.’ Ignacio nodded and got a mocking smile for his pains. ‘In which case we have an excellent reason for arresting you, since we do not want our country overrun with murderers.’

  ‘Murderers?’ Ignacio repeated, feeling the blood freeze in his veins. ‘I am not a murderer, monsieur, I am an anti-fascist who fought for the freedom of my people.’

  ‘Killing priests and nuns.’

  ‘Priests and nuns?’ Ignacio Fernández Muñoz paused for a moment to suppress the righteous anger boiling in him. ‘I never killed a priest or a nun. I fought for three years in defence of the elected government of my country. I fought a war, and we lost. We lost because the French, like the English and the Americans, did nothing and allowed fascism to triumph . . .’

  ‘Get back to you seat! At once!’ the gendarme shouted. And yet, when it was his turn to be questioned, the civil servant behind the desk treated him with greater respect.

  ‘You speak very good French.’ He smiled before continuing, ‘Have you family here in France?’

  ‘Yes, my parents and my sisters live in Toulouse. I crossed the border hoping to find them,’ he explained.

  ‘Are they Spanish refugees like you?’ Ignacio nodded silently, though he could sense that the conversation was not going well. ‘You’re not Basque, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m from Madrid.’ The answer seemed to do little to cheer the official. ‘Why? Are there different rules for Basques?’

  ‘Not exactly, but the government is negotiating on their behalf, they’re counting on the support of the Church, of the French bishops. They say the Basques are a very devout people, conservative, respectful of tradition, not at all like you lot.’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Like the rest of you!’ The man took off his glasses, then went on in an amiable, seemingly well-meaning tone, ‘The ones who burn down churches.’

  ‘I’ve never burned down a church in my life . . .’ Ignacio protested, his voice a whisper.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid even so, it’s not possible . . . Are you married ?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then there’s no possibility of you meeting up with your family. If you had a wife and children here in France, you could request a transfer to a camp for families but . . .’

  ‘A camp . . .’ Ignacio repeated the word as though he did not understand it.

  ‘Yes. For the time being, republican combatants are being housed in camps, although in your case . . . You’re not like the people over there, you’re an educated man. Now, if your family’s financial circumstances were . . . You take my point. What I mean is that in certain circumstances, I might be able to do something. If you’d like to take a seat over there, until I finish interviewing the others . . .’

  Ignacio Fernández Muñoz accepted the suggestion and got to his feet. The next interviewee was Roque, who was so short, so dark skinned, a typical farmer’s son raised in the great outdoors. Roque Ansó Ansó, who had risked his life to get to the promised land and who now, in the face of a French uniform, visibly shrank, as he had when faced with Spanish uniforms, as though aware of the inferiority that flowed in his veins, as though before he learned to speak, to walk, to laugh, he had learned that people like him could not expect any favours, or even impartiality from any authorities anywhere.

  Ignacio heard him stammer, ‘Es que no le entiendo, lo siento pero no le entiendo.’ He remembered his father saying those same words, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand’, on the days when the terror, the shame, were at their worst. ‘We are what we are, no matter what, and we belong here with our own people.’ I am who I am, thought Ignacio as the official said again, ‘Nom, prénom,’ in an arrogant, scornful tone very different from the one he had used with Ignacio, a tone reserved for those without the wherewithal to pay backhanders. ‘I am what I am’, and only when he thought of the prospect of living in Toulouse, sleeping in a bed again, finding a job and maybe a wife, sleeping in on Sundays, did Ignacio understand what his father had meant when he said, ‘I am who I am, no matter what, and I belong here with my own people.’

  Faced with this burning chasm, the son of Mateo Fernández Gómez de la Riva learned also that his righteous anger could grow and change, could become tinged with tenderness and pride, the basic ingredients of a nebulous yet universal love for humankind. If only for that love, it was worth trying. This is what Ignacio was thinking when he got up from the chair to interrupt the tableau. He went over, put his arm around Roque’s shoulder, and acted as his interpreter until the interview was over.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ he said, patting Roque on the back as he watched the official finish his report with a single, damning word: indésirable. ‘I think they’re sending us all to the same place.’

  ‘Excuse me . . .’ The next person in line, the short bald man with the glasses, still clutching his briefcase, said to Ignacio in his thick Majorcan accent, ‘Would you mind interpreting for me too?’

  ‘You’re the one from Madrid, the one who speaks French, the one they call The Lawyer?’ At the Barcarès camp, Ignacio Fernández Muñoz quickly became famous, although most people did not know his real name, only his nickname. ‘Wait a minute, we need to talk about your case . . .’ the official had said to him that morning when he had finished interpreting for those being interrogated that day. ‘I don’t think so. I have nothing to say to you. I’m a Spanish communist just like them and just as indésirable. The man looked at him, irritated to lose a backhander, but simply scribbled the word on Ignacio’s form and stamped it. ‘Fine, have it your way . . .’ Then they were all boarded on to a truck and driven to a forbidding stretch of beach enclosed by barbed-wire fences.

  ‘Fuck,’ Roque said when they arrived, ‘we’ve gone halfway round the world to wind up somewhere just like Albatera . . .’

  ‘True, but the ground is softer here, and there’s no shooting,’ Ignacio comforted him.

  ‘You’re the one from Madrid, the one who speaks French, the one they call The Lawyer?’ His clients from the commissariat, some twenty of them, though the women had been taken to a different camp, had spread the word, and now everyone called him The Lawyer. He liked it, it made him sound like a bullfighter. ‘That’s me.’ ‘Could you tell them my wife is here, I don’t know where she is, but she’s got my two with her, I have to find her’, ‘Tell them I didn’t do anything, tell them I’m from a village near Sevilla and that I fought in Santander, but we didn’t kill anyone’, ‘My brother’s in France and I want to find out where he is, that’s all, can you tell them that? And my fiancée, she’s all alone, I don’t know where she is, but I’ve got to find her, but they don’t understand’, ‘I think my wife is dead, and my children are only young, they won’t listen to me, I don’t know what to do’, ‘I have two daughters, one seven, the other one’s eleven, they’re supposed to be with their older sister and their mother is worrying herself to death because she can’t find them, go on, tell them, tell them . . .’

  They came from all walks of life, young and old, tall and short, educated and illiterate, they came from the city and from the country,
from the coast and the interior, from the mainland and the islands. ‘You’re the one from Madrid, the one who speaks French, the one they call The Lawyer ?’ He heard the same question in every imaginable accent, and his answer was always the same: ‘That’s me’. ‘The thing is, I have got this problem and these people don’t give a fuck . . .’ They came from all walks of life, and each of them had a problem, and the problems were all the same - a wife, a fiancée, a mother, a father, a brother, a sister, children. He listened to them and did what he could for them even though he knew that it was pointless.

  ‘Hey, Lawyer. I did burn down the church in my village . . .’ a boy from Zamora told him one day. ‘No one died, but only because the priest had already done a runner. If he hadn’t, who knows, I mean, there’s no point lying to you . . . So anyway, we took all the statues out and put the boy saints on top of the girl saints, and it was a laugh.’ Ignacio smiled but the boy went on, his voice serious, ‘I just wanted to tell you in case someone said something, but don’t go telling the French, OK?’

  ‘They don’t care,’ Ignacio said to the boy, ‘it’s just an excuse, a way to justify what they’re doing to us, it’s completely cynical.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Cynical ?’

  He went over, put his hands on the boy’s shoulders and looked him in the eye. ‘It means they don’t give a fuck if you burned down the church. If you were a republican, you’re fucked. That’s what it means.’

  Then he went to the commanding officer, ignoring the bored expression on the man’s face and pleaded the case of a Spanish lad, recently married, whose friend had said he’d seen his wife sitting in a ditch just across the border. He got the same answer he always did: ‘No.’