The Frozen Heart

by Almudena Grandes

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hi, it’s me.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  When the unfamiliar French accent slashed through the sails of my hope, the shock all but paralysed me, but fate intervened in the person of the charming, elderly woman from the second floor who appeared at that moment and made my decision for me.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, handing me a rectangular package tied with string. ‘Could you hold these cakes for me?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, taking the box without really knowing what I was doing.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, rummaging in her bag. ‘Cream eclairs, they melt if you so much as look at them . . .’

  She found her keys and went inside, not even looking to see whether I’d followed her. When we stepped into the lift, she took back the box of cakes, pressed the button for the second floor and said: ‘You’re going to the fourth?’

  ‘Yes.’ I gave her a smile.

  She knows. At least she knows. That was what my smile meant. This woman I didn’t know had recognised me, had acknowledged me, borne witness to a story that was true. She knew who I was, she knew my place in the world, she did not doubt my sanity or my intentions. She’s going to disappear now, I thought, she’s going to vanish in a puff of smoke. But she stepped out of the lift with her cream cakes and said goodbye; she was real, she was flesh and blood. When I got to the fourth floor, the shadow of her presence gave me courage as I stepped up to the door and, without a flicker of hesitation, pressed the buzzer.

  ‘Hi ...’

  That was all I could say before I froze, speechless, as I stared at the space, the table, the coat rack, the paintings, the light still hanging in the same place, still with one burned-out bulb, exactly as it had always been.

  ‘Hi . . .’ a young woman said. She was about the same age as Raquel, about the same height, she was pregnant, and she had glasses and a ponytail.

  I studied her carefully and saw that her skin was unremarkable, her eyes were blue, she had a square jaw with a protruding chin, utterly unlike the graceful curve of Raquel’s neck, her face, but I also noticed that in some small way she looked like Raquel; it might have been the proportions of her features, it might simply have been the vague similarities common to even distant members of the same family.

  ‘I rang the intercom a minute ago,’ I said, after a protracted pause which the girl accepted without any sign of impatience, though her neighbour, coming back from a walk with his dog, noticed. ‘My name is Álvaro, Álvaro Carrión, I’m looking for Raquel Fernández Perea, she owns the apartment . . .’

  The girl nodded: ‘I know, but as I told you, she’s not here . . .’

  ‘No, of course . . .’

  The neighbour was pretending to search for his keys, or maybe he had really lost them, but his presence made me even more nervous. The girl looked at him, and I realised that she too thought he was pretending so that he could eavesdrop on our conversation.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  She opened the door and stepped aside, then closed it behind me with the exaggerated grace, the excessive warmth, one might offer a stranger.

  ‘You’ve been expecting me, haven’t you?’ I ventured.

  ‘Well . . .’ she spoke with a strong French accent, pausing from time to time to choose her words. ‘My mother told me that Raquel ... she have a ... relationship?’ She looked at me and I nodded. ‘With a man, but this is over . . .’

  ‘But it’s not over!’ I protested. Her eyes flew open and I knew at once that I needed to temper what I said. ‘What I mean is, that’s not the way I saw it. She just disappeared without telling me why, but before she did, she sent me a message . . .’

  ‘Listen . . .’ the girl interrupted me. ‘I know nothing. I do not see my cousine. Tomorrow, I go back to Paris, the holidays they are over.’

  ‘I see . . . So you’re not here for long?’ She nodded. ‘And you’re Raquel’s cousin?’

  ‘Yes, my mother is a sister of her father. My name is Annette.’

  ‘Like your grandmother ?’ I smiled.

  ‘Oui . . . like my grandmother.’ Then, for the first time, she smiled too, and I realised that she had understood what I meant, had realised that this casual remark was proof of how close I was to Raquel, an assurance that I was telling the truth.

  ‘You know, you look a lot like Raquel when you smile.’

  Just then, a man about my age carrying a little girl who was wearing a bib spattered with baby food popped his head round the door and glanced at Annette questioningly.

  ‘C’est un ami de ma cousine,’ she reassured him, then turned back to me. ‘That’s Claude, my husband, he doesn’t speak Spanish.’

  Her remark was intended to bring my visit to an end, but we were all so well brought up that he and I shook hands and he led me into the living room.

  ‘Listen, Annette, I . . .’ I was about to say ‘I’m desperate’, but the word was too theatrical to be true. ‘Could you do me a favour? Even if you’re not going to see Raquel, I assume you have to leave the keys for her somewhere?’

  ‘At my mother’s house . . . well, it’s my grandmother’s house too.’ She smiled again and her smile was so like that of her cousin that it hurt my eyes. ‘At my grandmother Anita’s house.’

  ‘Would you mind leaving Raquel a note? It’ll only take me two minutes to write, I don’t want to disturb you, it’s just . . . I’m in a bad way. I need to . . .’

  ‘But . . .’ she looked down, twisting her hands as though trying to dissuade me, ‘I don’t have any paper. I don’t know where there is any.’

  ‘I do.’ I was counting on my self-assurance to dispel her doubts.

  ‘Alors . . . ’ I headed down the corridor and she followed me; her daughter was whimpering now and her husband was trying to comfort her, making soft rhythmic sounds like a train. This strange music followed me all the way to Raquel’s room, this bedroom where the most astounding moments of my life had been played out. And yet, when I opened the door, all I saw was a suitcase open on the bed, unfamiliar clothes strewn over the duvet, pots of cream and cologne bottles on what had been my bedside table. I noticed that Raquel’s was empty, there was a space where the photo of me being awarded my prize for mental arithmetic had been. If she’d left the frame, I would have assumed she’d torn up the picture and thrown it away, but the photo of her grandparents was gone too, and the chaos pendulum. She’s taken them with her, I thought, she’s taken the photo of me and the one of her grandparents. I could almost see her. But her cousin was staring at me anxiously, as though suddenly wary of this strange man standing stock still in the middle of the bedroom. I opened the desk drawer and took out the notepad.

  I sat down in the leather armchair, took out my pen and wrote:Call me, Raquel. Please, call me, tell me what’s happened. It doesn’t matter what it is, I’m not afraid of anything. I love you, Raquel, I love you, and nothing else matters. Call me. Don’t leave me like this, I’m begging you. I love you so much, you can’t imagine, I love you so much I think I’m going mad, I love you more than anything, more than anyone in the whole world, I love you. Álvaro.

  When I’d finished, I reread what I’d written and thought it was terrible. It was clumsy and stupid. It was full of repetitions and clichés, I could do better than this, I could have written something better if I’d taken the time, chosen my words carefully, but I ripped the page from the notepad, folded it and gave it to Annette, without even bothering to put it into one of the envelopes I’d seen in the drawer. It was best to leave it as it was, awkward, clumsy, and full of clichés. It was best if her cousin, her aunt, her grandmother read it before she did. It was best to have them on my side. There was only one good thing about the note: the touching sincerity of despair. And yet, when I thought about it, I realised that I was no longer a desperate man.

  Maybe it was a premonition. Maybe it was just that I was so devastated that the simple news that Raquel was still alive, the possibility, the probability, that sooner or
later she would read this note was enough to shake me out of the stupor and the self-pity I’d been wallowing in. I didn’t know where Raquel was, yet I could see her reading this note, I could imagine her astonishment, the shudder that she would feel when she got it.

  Maybe it was because I had been so devastated that the smallest of things could comfort me, for a couple of days later, as I watched my students take their resits - the same innocent fools who in their first term had heard me say that the whole is only the sum of its parts when those parts do not interact - I told Fernando Cisneros that I was feeling much better.

  ‘In that case, I’m not sure I should give you this,’ he said, handing me a web page listing times and ticket prices for a theatre in Salamanca.

  It was 11.10 p.m. and I was already in my pyjamas. It was Wednesday, 28 September, and one of the TV stations was showing a repeat of Walking with Dinosaurs, a programme I never tired of watching.

  I was sitting on the sofa waiting for the wicked tyrannosaurus to savagely attack the poor, gentle triceratops when I heard my mobile phone bleep to say I had a new text message. The phone was on the coffee table next to me. I picked it up, still watching the TV, and didn’t look at the message until the prehistoric homicide had been committed. At that moment, everything stopped: time, history, the pitiless chronicle of extinct cruelty. It took me only a second to read the message, from an unknown number, only six words. Am at Calle Jorge Juan. Come. Six words, only twenty-two letters, twenty-nine including punctuation and spaces. Am at Calle Jorge Juan. Come. No greeting, no sign-off, nothing to mark the dividing line between good and bad, between peace and dread. I’m on my way, I replied, wait for me. When I got to my feet, I was surprised my legs could hold me.

  Mai was in bed watching a film. ‘More dinosaurs?’ she’d asked after Miguelito had gone to bed, and I’d nodded. ‘Are these new episodes or repeats?’ I’d smiled. ‘I’m afraid they’re repeats, but don’t worry, I’ll go and watch them in the bedroom.’ ‘No, no . . .’ she’d insisted with the same gentle consideration she had treated me with since she’d discovered that something to her advantage had happened, ‘I’ll go into the bedroom. Although I love films, I always end up falling asleep . . .’ This was true. When I stepped into the bedroom, she was already half asleep. I walked past the bed, took a clean shirt from the wardrobe, and when I turned round she was suddenly wide awake, sitting up in bed.

  ‘Are you going out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I went into the bathroom to get dressed and when I looked at myself in the mirror I realised that she would have seen the alarm signals even if I hadn’t changed before going out. I was ashen, my eyes were wide and red rimmed. This strange face fascinated me, as though it belonged to someone else, to a very different man to the one I felt inside. The worst is over, I thought, I’m not hurting any more, but my face refused to listen. There was an obscure, almost tragic wisdom in the face I saw in the mirror. Something I couldn’t decipher.

  ‘Álvaro, Álvaro . . .’ Mai was hammering on the bathroom door.

  I quickly buttoned my shirt and unlocked the door.

  She stood there, wrapped in the velvet shawl I had once brought her from La Coruña, her arms folded, shoulders tense, in her eyes a look of anger and pain.

  ‘If you go, don’t bother coming back.’

  I was about to say ‘Fine’, but the answer sounded so flippant, so cruel in its terseness, yet this was the only sentence I could formulate. ‘Fine, in that case, I’m going out and I won’t be back.’ Mai glared at me, then turned on her heel. I finished getting dressed. I didn’t want to think about her ultimatum. Raquel is back, she’s waiting for me, I said to myself over and over as I slipped on my shoes and my jacket and checked my pockets.

  I was leaving my wife, I was finally leaving, not really knowing where I was going or what I might find there. I left with no guarantees, nothing but an address, a meeting, six words, but I didn’t want to think about that, I didn’t want to admit that the best thing, the thing any sane man would have done, would have been to ring this unknown number, talk to her, postpone the meeting by a few hours, burn no bridges. But I didn’t have any bridge to burn because Raquel was back, she’d sent me a message, she was waiting for me, and that was all that mattered. That was why I was leaving, not really knowing where I was going or what I might find there. I wanted this to be over quickly, I didn’t care how it happened as long as it happened quickly. I knew that what Mai had said was just words, that she did not really mean what she said, that I could come back once, twice, ten times if I wanted to, but I also knew that I wouldn’t want to, that I wouldn’t do that to her. I knew that even if Mai had held a gun to my head I would have left just the same, because Raquel was waiting for me and nothing would stop me from going to her.

  ‘Did you hear what I said, Álvaro?’ Mai was standing in the hall by the front door.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know I mean it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you’re going anyway?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Outside, I waited for a surge of happiness, I tried to feel it, but I felt nothing. But my joy was there somewhere, it had to be, I knew this with the certainty that I knew the dragon would cower meekly at my feet, surrender rather than face my sword. I knew it because I had heard it, though in words that were more circumspect.

  ‘Raquel will come back, she’ll show up when you least expect it,’ Berta had told me the previous Saturday. ‘She’ll come back because it’s the last thing she should do and in the state she’s in people never do what they ought to.’

  When I tried to ask her what she meant, she raised her hand. ‘Don’t ask me any questions, Álvaro, I’ve said too much already ...’

  ‘Why are you a woman, Pichona?’

  The actor playing Silver Face had already slipped his hand down the front of Berta’s dress. She threw her shoulders back to assist this provincial Lothario in his machinations, all the while staring into his eyes, her head held high, her face a mask of satisfaction in spite of her protestations.

  ‘Please don’t . . .’ but her arms hung limply by her side and she did nothing to stop his greedy hand from capturing her breast.

  ‘They are firm.’

  ‘Do not touch them.’

  ‘Why are you a woman?’

  ‘You should know.’

  ‘But I don’t know.’

  ‘I am a woman, I need to be a woman so that you will come to see me for a day, for a year if it should last so long. To squander an ounce with you, if I should have it. But I cannot admit that you should flaunt it publicly.’

  Convinced that she will have Silver Face in her bed that very night, Pichona dares to shift from the formal usted to tu without warning. ‘You don’t mind if I address you as tu, do you?’

  By the time Fernando Cisneros took his leave, there were only three students left in the exam hall. One departed before the end, but the other two took advantage of the extra half-hour I had added to the two hours of official time for the exam. The last student to leave, a tall, leggy blonde with large breasts and a tiny waist, flashed me a sly smile and murmured that she hoped she would pass. She paused for a moment, in case I had something interesting to say, but I simply told her that she’d have the results in ten days.

  Then I locked myself in my office and typed in the URL for the website Fernando had shown me, a theatre putting on Valle-Inclán’s Barbaric Comedies. And there was a picture of Berta with long dark hair tumbling over bare shoulders in the poster for Silver Face and Emblematic Eagle. She didn’t appear in the last play, A Romance of Wolves.

  ‘They’ve obviously decided to perform all three as a single piece,’ Fernando had said, but they were performing them in chronological order over several days. They had spent the summer touring the production around Spain, but had taken a break in September, which was why Fernando’s friend had taken so long to track them down.

  That morning, I bought a ticket in the fifth row of
the stalls for the first performance of Silver Face, then I went to the library in the Department of Philology, took out a critical edition of the three plays and spent the next few days reading them from start to finish. Mai did not comment on my sudden interest in the plays of Ramón del Valle-Inclán, didn’t bat an eyelid when I told her I had to go to Salamanca on Saturday on some university junket, though I was vague about the details. In the end, the play which, when I bought the ticket, I’d no intention of seeing, now fascinated me.

  ‘Open the door, Pichona!’

  ‘I am naked in my bed.’

  ‘That should save me some little time!’

  ‘Oh, Moorish king! Tell me who you are.’

  ‘You know all too well.’

  ‘I tell you I do not know you.’

  ‘Open the door!’

  ‘Let me put on a petticoat. Do not break down the door, my darling.’ But Berta, who was indeed naked in her bed, simply slipped her arms into a white lace bedjacket, which she did not even button as she crossed the stage to open the door. I remembered Raquel telling me, ‘Directors are always getting her to take her clothes off, she’s stunning when she’s naked.’ She had been right on both counts.

  Raquel had also said that Berta was a fine actress, and she was, so much so that as she crossed the stage, it seemed that she was fully clothed by the talent of the playwright whose lines she spoke with such artlessness, such conviction. Her nakedness was less arousing than it was poignant, and her performance overshadowed the other actor.

  I felt that this guy didn’t really understand the shadows of the passions that motivated his character, the impotence of a younger son challenging his father for a woman they both desired, the malevolence that pushed him towards La Pichona, his casual betrayal of his beloved Sabelita, a girl more faint-hearted than feeble, whom his father, Don Montenegro, would seduce then cast aside in a heartless show of arrogance that broke every law, human and divine. Silver Face was handsome, strong, young, ambitious, capable of inspiring in Sabelita that same love that he felt for her, a love he was prepared to swear before God, to commit to for life, but his father was more powerful and wanted the girl for himself. His desire marked the alpha and omega of all things. When I bought my ticket, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see the play before I’d had a chance to speak to Berta. But I’d finished correcting my exam papers and needed to find some other way of killing time, and so I read this brutal, brilliant, savage play. I remembered Raquel saying, ‘Spanish stories ruin everything.’ This particular Spanish story seemed to have been written in a frame of mind that precisely anticipated my own mood when I arrived to see it.