Though his parents did not realise it, Ignacio Fernández Salgado was acutely conscious that he was not going back to Spain. He could not go back because he had never been there. And so he did not understand their frowns, the brooding air, the weariness that came over them at Christmas and New Year, an expression that greeted him again that morning over the breakfast table.
‘Tell me, hijo, do you really want to go?’ His mother took the initiative.
‘Go where?’
‘To Spain, where do you think?’
‘I’d rather go to Greece, but I’m happy to go because all my friends are going and I suppose it’ll be fun. It’s just that . . .’ He paused, careful not to choose words that might offend or upset them. ‘I’d prefer to have gone somewhere else, because it’s like I already know Spain, even though I’ve never been.’
‘But you don’t know it.’ His father’s tone was unfathomable. ‘You have no idea what it’s really like, deep down.’
‘You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. You can go somewhere else instead, we’ll pay,’ Anita added.
‘But . . .’ Ignacio could not believe what he was hearing. ‘I don’t understand. You spend your whole life talking about Spain, comparing everything here to what it was like back there - like that thing about the aubergines, Mamá. Spain is like an illness with you two and now . . . You don’t want me to go? Why not?’ They looked at him, but neither wanted to answer. ‘You don’t even let us speak French at home. We have to stop as soon as we’re inside the door ... I don’t get it, I just don’t get it ...’
‘It’s not that I don’t want you to go,’ his father said, ‘but it’s true I don’t like the idea. It’s complicated.’
‘It’s dangerous.’ His mother was more honest, and dealt calmly with the mounting astonishment in her son’s eyes. ‘Don’t look at me like that. It is dangerous. Not for your friends, but for you. I’m not saying something would happen, but your father is right. You don’t understand, hijo, you were brought up in a democratic country, a country where the police are officials who represent the government, where there are laws and people respect those laws, but Spain is not like that, not any more . . .’
‘Do me a favour, Mamá . . .’ Olga, who was four years younger than her brother, and had been quietly dunking biscuits in her coffee, heaved a sigh: ‘Don’t start, please . . .’
‘Oh, I will,’ Anita got to her feet, raising her voice, ‘I will start, because I know what I’m talking about and you don’t have the first idea, either of you.’
‘I won’t go looking for trouble, Mamá, I promise. Nothing’s going to happen to me, I haven’t done anything, and I’m not going to do anything.’
‘That’s what my father said when they came and arrested him.’
‘Come off it, Mamá,’ her son exploded, getting to his feet and heading for the door. ‘It’s always the same old story . . .’
‘Of course it’s the same old story . . .’ she shouted after him. ‘Because that is what my father said, I can still hear him, “nothing’s going to happen to me, I haven’t done anything”. And they shot him, understand ? He was thirty-six, he had four children, and . . .’ Her whole body was trembling. ‘And I’m the only one left, the only one of my family who survived . . .’
Ignacio Fernández Muñoz went to his wife, took her in his arms and whispered her name: ‘Anita.’
‘What?’ She did not look at him.
‘Let it go . . .’ She struggled and glared at him, but he calmed her. ‘Let it go, please . . . Think about it. He’s not going to war, he’s just a tourist . . .’
That night, when she came home from work, Anita Salgado apologised to her son, who was sitting in the living room waiting to apologise to her. It was not easy for either of them. She felt the same cold chill she had felt when her father had pressed the freshly washed apricot he was about to eat into her hand and said, ‘Don’t cry, silly, nothing’s going to happen to me, I haven’t done anything.’ He had leaned down to kiss her, but before he could the Guardia Civil gripping his right arm had dragged him out of the house.
It had been twenty-eight years since Anita Salgado ate that apricot, but she still hadn’t digested it. She did not eat apricots any more, but she could remember the taste. She wished she had kept the pit, which she had bitten and sucked until the last thread of pulp was gone so that she could slip it into the pocket of her apron without knowing why she was doing it. She did not need it to remember her father, and so that she could still be with him, she had slipped it into the pocket of his shirt when she next saw him, stiff, bloodstained, his eyes closed, on the day they buried him. Then, as though she were an adult rather than a girl of twelve, she had gone to a fountain, soaked her handkerchief, and cleaned the bloody face and neck of the corpse. After that, she passed out. A neighbour took her home, sat her in an armchair, gave her a glass of water, and talked and talked, desperate to distract her from the funeral. She was sorry not to have been at that brief, pitiful ceremony, but she was sorrier still that she had not kept the apricot pit so that she might slip it now into the pocket of her son.
He knew the story of the apricot pit by heart, but he also knew that almost thirty years had passed since then. Almost thirty years according to the clocks, according to historians, but not according to his mother. That was what was so unbearable, agonising and grotesque about his situation. And now he was going to Spain with friends who would expect him to play a role he would have given anything to avoid: that of translator, interpreter, expert in this absurd country which even the Spanish did not understand.
Laurent had already spent the summer in Spain twice, once in Majorca and once in Torremolinos, and what he had told Ignacio on his return bore no relation to the descriptions he had heard at home. To Laurent, who was one of his best friends, Spain was a charming, inexpensive country, the people were friendly, a little strange, but welcoming. True, there were a lot of police in the streets, the women in the villages always wore black, everyone went to mass on Sunday, and it was very difficult to pick up girls, not because the girls didn’t like the idea, but because they were constantly being watched. Normal girls were not allowed out at night, nor were they allowed to talk to strangers. At the beach, during the daytime, things were different, but the girls always insisted on immediately introducing any boy they met to their mothers. So, in spite of the killjoys constantly dressed in mourning and the heavily guarded girls, Laurent thought Spain was great, he liked the music, the cooking, the bars and the insatiable Spanish compulsion to have a good time. His sister thought so too; in fact, she had signed up to go with them.
‘Book another place,’ his father asked him early in March when he finally seemed to have come to terms with the idea.
‘Why?’ Ignacio looked at Olga, who was sitting next to him on the sofa watching television. ‘Are you coming?’
‘Are you out of your mind?’ Olga rolled her eyes and used one of her mother’s favourite expressions. ‘Not if I was drunk as a skunk.’
‘Who then?’
‘It’s for Raquel, isn’t it?’ Anita smiled and her husband nodded before turning to his son. ‘You know Raquel, Aurelio and Rafaela’s daughter . . .’
‘What?’ As he glared at his parents, Ignacio Fernández Salgado kicked himself for being so stupid; he should have known that something like this was coming. ‘There’s no way I’m looking after some kid.’
‘What kid?’ His mother cut him off. ‘She’s older than your sister, she must be . . . nineteen, I think.’ She glanced at her husband again, but this time he did not come to her rescue. ‘Let me think ... I met Rafaela when she was pregnant and that must have been just after we arrived in Paris, at the beginning of 1945, so . . .’
‘I don’t care, Mamá! I don’t care whether she’s nineteen or twenty, I’m not looking after her!’
‘Of course you’re not looking after her, Ignacio,’ his father said in the calm tone he employed when his authority was not to be questioned. ‘S
he’s a big girl, she can look after herself.’
‘No, Papá, don’t do this to me! It’s always the same, why can’t I be like other kids?’
‘Laurent’s sister is going with you,’ Anita reminded her son.
‘But she’s his sister! Don’t you get it? She’s his sister, so it’s different! He can hardly say no, and anyway . . .’ He knew he was lost, but he tried once more. ‘I don’t even know this girl.’
‘Of course you do.’ His mother laughed. ‘You remember, you used to see her at the party the newspaper L’Humanité used to give when you were both little. She always wore a flamenco dress with a flower in her hair, I think she still dances . . .’
‘L’Humanité, Jesus. I remember ... “a galopar, a galopar”. From the poem “Galope” by Rafael Alberti that became a popular anti-Franco refrain. Please, Mamá, do you have to remind me?’
‘You used to love going to those parties . . .’
‘I loved going?’ It had to come to this, he thought. ‘I did not love going, you know very well I never liked going. You made me go, it’s not the same thing . . .’
‘I don’t want to hear any more about it.’ His father brought the discussion to a close. ‘Either Raquel goes to Spain with you or neither of you is going. It’s as simple as that. I’m paying for this trip, so what I say goes.’
‘You see? Marxism in action.’ Anita looked at her son and smiled.
‘Anita, please . . .’ Her husband looked shocked. He turned to look at his son. ‘She may not be your sister, but that girl is part of this family. Her father has been like a brother to me for years.’
‘No, Papá . . .’ Ignacio Fernández Salgado shook his head. ‘That girl is not part of this family, because we’re not a family, we’re a tribe!’
‘OK, then ...’ Ignacio Fernández Muñoz smiled at the inventive turn of his son’s anger, ‘maybe we are a tribe, but we’re your tribe. You’re just one more savage, I’m afraid, but that’s the way it is. One more thing, I want you to go and visit your Aunt Casilda, and that’s even less up for discussion. How much free time do you have in Madrid ?’
The day in 1964 that Anita referred to as the Friday of Sorrows, Ignacio Fernández Salgado took a taxi to the airport. His parents had offered to drive him, but he had refused their offers, pointing out that they would be at work. Thankfully he would not have to face the embarrassing goodbyes, more scenes, more tears, ‘a galopar, a galopar’, so he headed off alone, and found his friends happy and excited at the prospect of the trip and this new girl.
‘Don’t get your hopes up.’ He had not wanted to say more. It would not have made any difference, since when they were young, none of his friends had been forced by their parents to go to the party given by L’Humanité. That last argument had brought it all back: the taste of churros, the lyrics of the fandangos, the sound of cider trickling into a glass, and the disturbing, almost terrifying sight of the huge, lumpy empanadas they called ‘pregnant buns’. The same greasy paellas, the same women wearing mourning dress, the same men wearing berets, and the shame of having to walk through the streets dressed in an Aragonese peasant outfit, with the same checked scarf his mother forced him to wear every year tied round his head, especially after Olga opted to wear the regional costume of her father’s province.
‘You’re a cheat, Ignacio!’ Anita said to her husband when he first showed up with the tasselled black shawl embroidered with flowers that Casilda, his sister-in-law, had sent him from Madrid.
Even without the shawl, his sister much preferred the long close-fitting white dress with red polka dots, with which she was allowed - like Andalusian women - to wear high heels. Once Olga saw the shawl, there was no going back, and Anita, having painstakingly cut and sewn a skirt, a corsage and a fichu, exacted her revenge on her son.
‘Ah, look at him! Doesn’t he look cute in his scarf?’
It was awful, all the more so because the scarf was called a cachirulo; it was completely awful. It was beyond awful.
At first, Olga enjoyed it because Mamá would put her hair up, paint her eyes with eyeliner, put carnations in her hair. She looked pretty in her little dress, but him . . . every year it was the same, a piece of fabric wrapped several times around his waist and his cachirulo perched just above his jug ears, making them even more noticeable. And every year, Olga would step out into the street, smiling, hands on hips, and Ignacio would follow, staring at the ground, trying to hide behind his father or his mother so as not to be noticed. But someone always spotted him, some neighbour would always ask, ‘Hey, you, what are you dressed as?’, and there’d be a skinny girl with braces on her teeth waiting for any occasion to stamp her feet, ¡olé! ¡olé!, lifting her skirt and twisting her lips as though in pain. He could still remember that she had a forest of hair on her legs, could remember that final pose, one leg forward, the other hidden, one arm raised, the fingers stiff as though she were suddenly paralysed down one side, a broad smile, her hair plastered to her forehead with sweat.
‘Are you Ignacio?’
This was why he had said to Laurent and Philippe, who was the sex maniac in the group, not to get their hopes up. This was why he was unable to make sense of the question asked by this pretty French girl, defiantly modern, wearing a white dress, her hips accentuated by a belt in the same fabric, and barely a few inches below, her long, smooth, beautiful legs.
‘Is your name Ignacio Fernández?’ Her French would have been perfect but for the fact that two rival accents, French and Andalusian, clashed with every word.
‘That’s me.’
‘Hi,’ she held out her hand, ‘I’m Raquel Perea. I think you’ve got my ticket?’
‘Yes.’ He was dumbstruck.
‘Well, could you take my suitcase as well and go and check the bags in . . .’ The vicereine of India addressing a servant could not have mustered greater condescension. ‘I’ll be right back, I just have to say goodbye.’
‘Oh . . .’ He picked up the suitcase and immediately put it down again when he realised it was twice as heavy as his own. ‘Wait, I’ll go with you. I’d like to say hello to your parents.’
She turned and looked at him, puzzled, ‘My parents?’, then continued walking until she came to a tall, stocky boy with the loathsome look of someone who had been champion of something or other at school.
Clearly - ¡olé! ¡olé! - Raquel Perea now had a boyfriend. Ignacio Fernández Salgado noticed as much in the twenty minutes that followed, his friend Laurent noticed, Philippe noticed, as did a number of other passengers who passed the two-headed monster embroiled in a steamy kiss.
‘So who was that?’ he ventured when she condescended to recover her belongings.
‘He’s my boyfriend, who did you think he was? He’s leaving for the Dordogne tomorrow, going to his grandmother’s to eat foie gras. I thought about going with him, but my father was determined to pack me off to Spain with you,’ she paused, jerking her chin upwards, almost defiantly, ‘to eat garlic.’
Her jibe stung him like a mosquito. ‘Look, I didn’t ask you to come.’
‘Just as well. I recognised you by your ears, though they’re not as obvious with your long hair.’
Nice, thought Ignacio, and he almost shot back that he didn’t recognise her without the forest of hair on her legs, but he didn’t because he realised that she would probably take it as a compliment. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, and they did not exchange another word until he found her sitting next to him on the plane.
‘We’re not even going to Málaga.’ She sounded less like a fractious empress than a disappointed child.
‘I know, but we’re going to Seville,’ he said, without asking himself why he was trying to cheer her up. ‘And to Córdoba and Granada . . . It’s still Andalucía, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but it’s not the same. Listen, I’m sorry for that crack about your ears earlier. It was rude, it’s just . . . I didn’t want to come, but my father wouldn’t let me go on holiday with my boyfr
iend, you know what it’s like, they’re old and they’re square. I said: “I don’t understand, Papá, you won’t let me go on holiday with Jean-Pierre, who you know well, but you’re determined to make me go away with some boy you don’t know from Adam because you haven’t seen him in years.” You know what he said ? He said it wasn’t the same thing, because you’re your father’s son and you’re Spanish. Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous? They’re insufferable, honestly, there’s no talking to them!’
‘You think that’s bad?’ Ignacio smiled. ‘My mother told me she didn’t want me to go because it was dangerous, and when I said nothing was going to happen to me she told me that’s what her father said just before they took him out and shot him.’
‘Really?’ She looked at him, wide eyed. ‘It’s unbelievable they’re still going on about that stuff even now. It’s like they get off on it.’
Only when the air hostess announced that they were beginning their descent did they finally stop criticising their fathers, their mothers and the rest of their tribe. As they landed, Ignacio looked out at the runway of grey tarmac and white paint identical to the one in Paris. There was nothing special about the runway and yet, looking at it, contrary to what he had expected, Ignacio Fernández Salgado felt a hole in the pit of his stomach, a lump in his throat. He also felt pressure on his arm, but was so absorbed by this unforeseen mutiny of his own body that it was a moment before he wondered what the pressure was. When he did, he found Raquel Perea leaning over him, looking at the same unremarkable stretch of Seville airport runway.
The Frozen Heart Page 64