The Frozen Heart

by Almudena Grandes

  ‘But not you,’ Ignacio ventured.

  ‘No, not me . . .’ Casilda smiled and carried on down the steps. ‘But they don’t understand. That’s why I wanted to walk you out ... and besides, Andrés has always been jealous of my first husband, Mateo. In the beginning, I could understand it, because, before he asked me to marry him, he asked me straight out and I told him the truth, I told him I didn’t love him as much as I loved Mateo. And he said, “It’s because he was executed, isn’t it?” and I said no, I didn’t think that was the reason, but he’s always said it was . . . He took it very badly, but he still insisted on marrying me.’

  She looked at them again. Ignacio looked at Raquel and saw that she was looking at him. Neither Ignacio nor Raquel knew what to say, and they carried on down the stairs in silence, concentrating on her words, because Casilda, for her part, had a lot to say: ‘He’d only just got out of prison. He spent five years inside. After he got out, he gave up on politics. He was all alone, he didn’t have any family, and he was living in a boarding house. Things were even harder for me. I used to work as a cleaner and I didn’t even make enough money to pay the rent. I’d had to give up my parents’ apartment, and all I could afford was an attic room with a leaky roof on the Calle Venture del Vega . . . It was no kind of life for me or for my son, that’s why I married Andrés. I’m not sure I did the right thing, that’s the honest truth, because although we got married, and had two children, he still hasn’t forgotten. He’s alive and Mateo is dead, he’s been dead for more than twenty years, the “twenty years of peace” those bastards are celebrating . . . I’ve been a good wife to him, but it’s not enough, and I can’t do any more. Things are going from bad to worse because he’s still jealous of a dead man, he gets furious if I so much as mention his name, and my son . . . Well, Andrés is the only father he’s ever known and that’s why he hates it when I talk about my first husband, that’s what he calls him, “my first husband”. It makes me angry, but what can I do?’

  They had arrived at the front door of the building, but she did not go outside, she leaned against the wall, as though afraid someone might see her, and slipped her hand into the plastic bag. She glanced back up the stairs to make sure they were alone, and only then did she open her hand: laid across her pale palm was a gold bracelet encrusted with diamonds and sapphires and an enormous pearl in the centre.

  She took Ignacio’s hand and placed the bracelet in it. ‘Here. Look after it, don’t lose it, it’s worth a lot of money. That bracelet was your grandmother’s dowry, she gave it to me the last time I saw her, when she found out I was pregnant. I was very fond of her, she was always good to me. That’s why I want you to give it back to her.’

  ‘But why?’ If she gave it to you, then it’s yours.’

  ‘I know, but I want her to have it, or one of your aunts, or your mother . . . “Take it,” she said to me, “if things get worse you can always sell it, you might need the money.” And she was right, the money would have come in useful, but I never could bring myself to sell it. In any case, it would never have worked, they’d probably have locked me up for theft.’

  ‘Why would they?’ said Raquel. ‘I mean, you’re her daughter-in-law ...’

  ‘Not to them. They said my marriage - all marriages performed during the republic - were invalid. I was a communist, and a communist couldn’t possibly have a bracelet like this unless she’d stolen it.’ She smiled. ‘No one would have dared buy it from me, they’d have called the police . . . For people like me, everything was dangerous ...’

  ‘What about now?’ Raquel said. ‘Surely now you could . . .?’

  ‘. . . sell it? Of course I could sell it now, but I don’t want to any more. If Mateo had been a girl, then maybe I might have kept it until he was a bit older, in case he came to his senses and I could have given it to him, but . . .’ She turned to her nephew. ‘I’d rather you took it back to your grandmother, tell her how much I love her, and thank her for me. And, oh, there’s something else I want you to have . . .’ Her lips suddenly began to tremble as her hand slipped once more into the plastic bag and took out a photograph with a scalloped border, the whites yellowed and the blacks mottled with grey. ‘I’m sure you’ve never seen this, have you? Take it. I have another one taken on the same day.’

  ‘It’s very beautiful,’ said Ignacio, who had never seen the portrait, but he immediately recognised the smiling soldier as his Uncle Mateo, his arm around a slim, graceful girl.

  ‘Yes,’ Casilda smiled, ‘Mateo is very handsome in that photo, and I look pretty too, I was pretty back then. That’s why I want you to take it to your grandparents and tell them . . . Tell them I think about Mateo every day, every day without fail . . .’ For a moment, her face contorted in a paroxysm of grief and she could not go on, but then she composed herself. ‘Fifty-six days of my life we spent together. Fifty-six days, not even two months, over a period of two years, and often I didn’t even get to spend the whole day with him, a couple of hours, maybe three . . . But still . . . I remember that first night he showed up at my house in the early hours, dripping wet, I remember him leaving in a hurry because his commander had said that if he was late back, he would be court-martialled and shot for desertion.’ Though there were still tears in her eyes, she laughed. ‘Every morning, I think about that night, I remember every detail so as not to forget, and I can still see him, still hear his voice, I still remember the things he said to me right up to the fifty-sixth time, the morning when he picked me up and took me to the truck that was taking me to Cartagena. I was inconsolable and there he was smiling and waving, and even after the truck pulled away I heard him shout, “See you soon, gorgeous!” That was the last thing he said, “gorgeous”, and I never saw him again . . .’

  She wrapped her arms around herself and began to cry, to sob with such grief that it was as though it had been yesterday, as though twenty-four years had not passed. She had been a widow for almost twenty-five years according to the clocks, the calendars, but not to her. Not to her.

  Ignacio Fernández Salgado knew how badly Mateo’s death had affected his father, his grandparents. They had often spoken about it, too often for his liking, and yet he felt an instinctive shudder of pain run through him, because he could not doubt the grief this woman still felt, this woman who had a second husband, three children, and a life that did not matter to her. If someone had described this scene to him, he would have found it laughable, just one more pitiful example of Spanish foolishness, but he was here, he could see it and hear it, there was a taste of apricots in his mouth, and he felt an overwhelming need to hug this woman, to hide himself within her so that he could weep for all the dead, all those people for whom, until now, he had not shed a single tear.

  ‘I remember it every morning.’ Casilda’s voice was firm now. ‘I wake up every morning before the alarm clock goes off, and I remember those fifty-six days, because no one can forbid me, no one can stop me, not my husband, not Franco, not his fucking mother . . . Tell your grandmother that, and tell her . . .’ She closed her eyes, gritted her teeth and carried on. ‘Tell her that on the twenty-ninth of every month, I buy a bunch of flowers, I put on a black dress and I go and stand by the cemetery gates because I don’t know where he’s buried . . . They won’t tell me where he’s buried ...’

  She fell silent, as though she could not bear to go on, and Ignacio took her hand and squeezed it.

  ‘I wasn’t allowed to wear mourning when I went back to Madrid. Everyone in my area knew me . . . I was a coward, I didn’t dare. The second day I went out wearing black, a policeman who lived next door took me to the station and they asked me how I could possibly know who I was mourning for, they said I was a whore, that I slept with anyone and everyone. That was just the start . . .’ She paused, looked at Ignacio and Raquel, then gestured with her hand as though waving away temptation. ‘Pff, why would I bother telling you what they said all those years ago . . .? The fact is I couldn’t mourn, and I was a coward, I didn’t dare
. . .’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Casilda.’ Raquel spoke the words Ignacio had been thinking. ‘Wearing mourning doesn’t mean a thing, it’s just clothes, it’s just a colour.’

  ‘It does matter,’ Casilda was insistent, ‘it mattered to me. But I was scared, and I had a baby . . . That’s why I wear mourning now - in secret, obviously - but only so that I don’t have to fight with my husband. I take the clothes to work, and I change again before I come home. My son knows, he says I’m crazy, but I don’t care. On the twenty-ninth of every month I buy the biggest bunch of flowers I can afford, and at lunchtime I go to the cemetery and I leave the flowers by the wall and I stay there for a while, until they throw me out, because sooner or later a guard always shows up and moves me on . . . I know the flowers don’t last. I know the guards give them to their wives or their girlfriends, but I don’t care. I go on buying flowers just to piss them off, I leave them by the wall where they shot him just to piss them off . . .’ For a second, her eyes flared with the fire of the young girl in the photograph. ‘One day, about ten years ago, I saw a name written on the wall in chalk: Victoriano López Aguilera. I don’t know who he was, but I’ll never forget his name. I asked around - because I go to the cemetery so often, I’ve got to know the other women who go - but nobody knew who had written it. One of them said, “It must have been written on one of the other days, I come on the twenty-ninth.” Since then, every month I write his name on that wall: Mateo Fernández Muñoz, and I write 1915-1939. I know they rub it out as soon as I’m gone, but before they can erase it they have to read it. Fuck the lot of them! Because what they want is for Mateo never to have existed. Do you understand, Ignacio?’

  She looked at her nephew and he nodded without quite knowing why, because he did not yet understand, but she sighed as though she had finally reached a place where she might rest.

  ‘It’s not enough for them that he’s dead, they want him never to have been born, that’s why they claim he was never married to me, that his son has no right to take his name, that’s why there’s no tombstone. But Mateo did live, and I lived with him, and that’s the only reason I go on . . . “How can you go on like this, Mamá? What good do you think all this hatred, this bitterness, will do?” That’s what my son asks me.’ She closed her eyes then and smiled a bitter smile. ‘He doesn’t understand that it’s the only thing that keeps me going in this fucking awful country, until all this is over, until your father comes back, until your grandparents come back, the people he knew, the people he loved. For the moment, he only has me, but I’ll go on wearing mourning, I’ll go on buying flowers, I’ll go on writing his name in chalk on the wall where they shot him until the day I die. Tell that to your grandparents, Ignacio, and tell Paloma that whenever I have time - because sometimes the guards move me on straight away - I write her husband’s name, I don’t remember the year he was born, but I write 1910, because he was older than Mateo.’

  ‘He was born in 1911.’ Ignacio would never know where the voice came from that uttered these words, but he knew that he could not leave without saying them. ‘It had to be 1911, because he was twenty-eight when they shot him.’

  ‘From now on, I’ll write 1911.’ She brought her hands to her face again as though to wipe away her tears, her anger, as though to put things in place. ‘I’m so happy to have met you, Ignacio.’ In 1971, when their first son was born, Ignacio Fernández Salgado and Raquel Perea Millán would decide to name him Mateo. No one asked them why, but everyone assumed that it was to close the gap that had opened in September 1944 when Ignacio Fernández Muñoz said to Anita Salgado Pérez that he would have preferred his firstborn son to have taken his older brother’s name rather than his own.

  No one saw them on that April evening in 1964, as they walked together along the deserted pavements, in this deserted district of a city they did not know. She was watching out for taxis but there were none, he was wondering whether he was going mad or whether he had miraculously recovered his sanity.

  ‘Tell your father I think about him all the time.’ This was the last thing Casilda had said to him, hugging him fiercely. ‘No one would think it to see us now, but once upon a time we did something great here, something truly magnificent. They were the best years of our lives, despite the war, the bombings, the starvation, because we were doing something important and we believed that what we were doing was worthy of the sacrifice ...’

  Casilda’s words resonated in Ignacio’s head and brought back other words he had often heard but did not understand until that afternoon. No, Gloria, not with the rabble. With the people of Madrid - The first man to run, I’ll shoot him - We’re not like them, Mamá, they were the ones who started it - Don’t cry, silly, nothing’s going to happen to me, I haven’t done anything - We are what we are, María, and our place is here with our own people - The fascists won’t set foot here, not even over my dead body, because even if they kill me, I’ll come back from the grave - and the salchichón . . . ‘why don’t you hang it up in the pantry and we can worship it for a few days before we eat it?’ - ‘I’ve thought about you so much, Papá . . . After I was arrested in Madrid, I thought about you all the time, I was so happy that you weren’t there to see it, to see how we were betrayed’ - I have loved you with all my strength, Paloma - Mateo was killed not just for being who he was, but for being Papá’s son, Mamá’s son, for being your brother, Ignacio, for being Carlos’s brother-in-law - We have nothing to be sorry for, Ignacio . . . That afternoon, his grandfather’s voice seemed to be speaking not to his father, but to him. I don’t regret anything, hijo.

  Ignacio Fernández Salgado - who was not Spanish, who was not French, who did not know where he was from and who had been born into a fucking tribe - finally realised that his mother was right, that this trip had been dangerous for him, because he could not go back to being the person he was before. Suddenly face to face with the maelstrom of contradictions that he had spent a lifetime avoiding, when Ignacio finally accepted his destiny, he found he was at peace with himself and, though he hardly realised it, he was crying.

  They were standing at a traffic light.

  ‘I’m not crying because I’m sad,’ he said. ‘It’s not because I’m sad.’ And Raquel kissed him.

  After that, everything happened quickly, easily, even the taxi ride was merely a formality between two halves of a single kiss.

  They did not get back to the city centre until 9.15 p.m. and neither of them wasted time asking the other whether they wanted to go for dinner. From that night, Laurent shared a room with his sister and Ignacio and Raquel slept together, first in Madrid, then in Barcelona. When they got back to Paris, Raquel dumped her boyfriend, and her parents were as delighted as Ignacio’s were the first time their son brought her home to lunch. They were married two years later, and in the spring of 1969, their first child, a girl, was born.

  When Ignacio Fernández Muñoz took the baby in his arms for the first time, he felt proud and emotional at being a grandfather for the first time. It was a feeling he would relive with the birth of each of his grandchildren, but he would never love any of them as much as he loved his first granddaughter, whom they named Raquel Fernández Perea.

  ‘Excuse me ...?’ It wasn’t her voice.

  ‘Raquel?’

  ‘No, Raquel’s not here ...’ It wasn’t her voice, it wasn’t her voice.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ It was a young woman who spoke with a French accent. ‘ ’Bye.’

  When I saw the light shining out across the balcony, I felt so nervous that I didn’t know what to do and I walked around the block three times, the first time quickly, then more and more slowly, my heart in my mouth. Then I went into a bar, ordered a drink and downed it quickly, never taking my eyes off the door to the building. I had been watching the apartment for almost a fortnight but until that night, nothing had happened.

  I was looking for Raquel. I was searching for her because she wanted me to search for her. This was the one thing I felt sure of when I
got back to Madrid on 26 August, exactly a week after receiving her last text message: Goodbye, Álvaro, I love you. I LOVE YOU, Raquel. I hadn’t erased the message, and sometimes I would pick up my mobile just to make sure it was still there, to be sure she had definitely sent it. Definitely. I no longer knew anything for definite, no longer knew what was true and what was a lie, but every time I pressed the message button, those seven words appeared, and they comforted me. Raquel had written this message and she had sent it to me, just as suicides who don’t really want to die pick up the phone immediately after swallowing the bottle of sleeping pills. The message was not a message, it was a cry for help. Raquel had left, she had disconnected the answering machine on her landline, had changed her mobile phone number, changed offices and moved away, but before she did all these things, on 19 August 2005 at 11.39 a.m., she sent me that message.

  ‘I’m afraid Señora Fernández Perea no longer works here.’

  On 1 September at five past nine, I stepped out of the lift into the foyer, but this time the receptionist at the Department of Asset Management at the Administrative Society of Cooperative Investment Institutions, SA, did not direct me to Raquel’s office.

  ‘She applied for a transfer to another office.’ Mariví, as over-made-up as she had been in April and considerably fatter, anticipated my first question.

  ‘Could you tell me where she’s working now?’ Mariví looked at me, shook her head, and I was surprised to see a glimmer of compassion in her eyes. ‘Please . . .’

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ she looked away, ‘I’m only a secretary, I can’t ...’

  ‘I wouldn’t tell her you told me . . .’

  ‘Let me finish,’ she smiled, and I knew then that I was lost, ‘I can’t tell you because I don’t know. Nobody told me and I didn’t ask. It’s a big company, and people get transferred all the time. I’m really sorry, but I can’t help you.’