The Frozen Heart

by Almudena Grandes

  ‘Álvaro!’ Berta emerged, dressed now, with no make-up, from the stage door where I had been waiting for about a quarter of an hour. ‘How are you?’

  She looked exhausted but elated. She had been a great success, if an actor’s success can be judged by the bravos and the applause at the last curtain call. I’d watched her smiling, looking down into the stalls, then her eyes happened on me and her face suddenly became serious. That was what I thought I had seen, but when she appeared she kissed me so spontaneously that I gave a truthful answer to her question.

  ‘Not good. Not good at all, that’s why I’m here.’

  ‘I’m not surprised . . .’ She started walking and I followed her. ‘Let’s go for something to eat, I’m starving. Did you see the play?’ I nodded. ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘I liked it a lot.’ I wasn’t lying, and she thanked me with a smile. ‘Given my situation, it’s pretty close to the bone.’

  ‘Really?’ I realised she hadn’t understood but then the penny dropped. ‘Oh, you mean because of the relationship between the father ...’

  ‘And the son,’ I finished the sentence, ‘except I’m not planning to head off to war.’

  ‘I see you’ve read the plays.’ She sounded surprised.

  ‘Yes. I started reading Silver Face to see what the story was about but then I had to find out how it ends.’

  ‘It’s not exactly a happy ending.’

  ‘It’s a very unhappy ending, but at least your character is one of the good guys.’

  ‘That’s true.’ She slipped her arm through mine and led me to a bustling café. ‘Poor little Pichona, living on the streets, hardly better than a whore, but she’s big hearted and she’s the only one in the play who’s really capable of love. That’s the genius of Valle-Inclán. There’s always a whore, or a tramp, or a child, or a lunatic that he treats with such tenderness it compensates for his cruelty to everyone else. Anyway, Álvaro . . . you shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Silver Face is good in his own way, he’s a better man than his father and he’s a saint compared to his brothers. That’s why Valle-Inclán has him go off to war, to redeem him, so he plays no part in pillaging his mother’s inheritance, so that Montenegro doesn’t get to curse him the way he does his other sons. But Silver Face is nothing like you, whatever you might think. Shall we take this table?’

  The café looked jammed, but Berta found a table at the back, and ordered a club sandwich and a beer.

  ‘Berta, where’s Raquel ?’ I asked as soon as the waiter left.

  ‘Um . . .’ She thought for a moment. ‘She’s in Madrid.’

  ‘Where in Madrid?’

  ‘You know I can’t tell you that. Raquel’s my friend and you don’t betray a friend.’

  ‘But ...’

  ‘Don’t push it, Álvaro . . . If you keep asking me questions, I might just start telling you any old shit. I’m good at that, I’m an actress, remember ? The whole thing was madness . . . All I can say is I didn’t know anything about it until that dinner when you showed up at the pizzeria with her and she had a funny turn, remember?’ I remembered, and I believed her, I could sense that she was telling the truth. ‘When I found out, I was thunderstruck. Until then, I’d had no idea and the whole thing seemed incredible. If I’d known I’d never have let her . . .’ She let the sentence trail off. ‘Raquel’s always been the sensible one in our group. I was always the one who fucked up, got involved with unsuitable men, married with sick children and wives, all that baggage . . .’

  ‘But I’m willing to get divorced, I want to marry her if she’ll have me, and Raquel knows that . . .’

  ‘Álvaro . . . Oh, Jesus . . . Álvaro!’ She said my name as though it pained her, then stretched out her arms and took my face in her hands, as though to shut me up and console me.

  ‘Then that’s not the problem?’

  ‘No, that’s not the problem.’ She let go of my face, but in her eyes I could see a guilty compassion.

  Our order arrived, forcing us to stop for a moment. Berta was frowning, she didn’t like the way this conversation was going.

  ‘What happened Berta?’

  She took her sandwich in both hands, then closed her eyes and bit off as much as she could.

  ‘I can’t tell you, Álvaro, really I can’t . . .’ She began the sentence with her mouth full, then waved her hand, signalling me to wait until she was finished. ‘. . . it’s not my place to say, you wouldn’t want to hear it from me. This is something Raquel has to do. What I can tell you is . . .’ She took another bite, and I realised she was not starving so much as giving herself time to choose her words. ‘. . . Raquel’s in a bad way, Álvaro. As bad as you, maybe worse, because this is all her fault. She left because she doesn’t want to hurt, but, I don’t know . . . Sometimes I think the cure is worse than the disease, because, in the beginning, it did seem that leaving was the best thing she could do, even I thought that, but now . . . How was I to know how things would turn out? The guys I fall for never chase after me, not to this extent. How could I have known you’d be so persistent? I stayed with her a couple of nights ago and she showed me your note . . . She was devastated, she wanted to call you, and I . . . Maybe you’ll hit me for this, but I was the one who persuaded her not to, because she has to think things through, she can’t just call you without knowing what she’s going to say . . . Don’t be angry with me, Álvaro, please . . . I just want things to work out, and I can’t always be there for her, because I’m touring . . . Anyway, what I’m trying to say is Raquel will come back, she’ll show up when you least expect it. 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.’

  ‘What do you mean . . .?’

  ‘Don’t ask me any more, Álvaro.’ She raised her hand. ‘I’ve said too much already . . .’ But before she left, she told me one more thing, after she’d insisted on paying, after I’d told her yet again that honestly, no, honestly, I wasn’t angry with her. I hadn’t left. I watched her from the doorway of the café, silently betting that she’d take out her mobile phone and call Raquel before she got to the middle of the square, but suddenly she came back.

  ‘One more thing, Álvaro . . . There isn’t another man, not now, not before the summer, there’s never been anybody else. I’m just telling you because . . . Well, I know we’re all grown-ups, but I’m telling you because if I were you, it would be something I’d be happy to know.’

  ‘Thanks, Berta.’ It was something I was happy to know.

  We kissed goodbye again and she left, and before she’d even reached the place where she had been, she took something out of her bag. A second later I could see she had her phone pressed to her ear. For a second I thought of running after her, ripping the phone out of her hands and talking to Raquel. But we both knew I wouldn’t do that. So I just watched her go until she disappeared beneath one of the arcades on the square, then I went to my car and headed back to Madrid.

  As I drove, I tried to make sense of what she’d told me. It seemed very little and yet it was more than I had been able to find out in a month. Berta’s silences, the irregular sequence of hesitations, the dot-dot-dots of sentences that trailed out into silence had seemed more revealing than her words, and what she did say seemed to me more darkness than light, except for her last comment. It may not have seemed important to her, but it meant a lot to me, not so much to my sense of pride, but because it refuted a hypothesis which had begun to form in my imagination. The vague language with which Berta had predicted that Raquel would come back, her discreet, convoluted way of letting me know that Raquel loved only me, was useful too, especially the bit about the phone call she had persuaded Raquel not to make, proof that my most awkward words had also been the most effective. And yet none of this new data took me to any place other than where I had been the moment I found out that Raquel had disappeared. I had to wait, that was my only conclusion, the only thing I learned. I couldn’t have imagined that I woul
d not have long to wait.

  In the taxi that took me back to the place where everything had begun, the opulent apartment on the Calle Jorge Juan, the last place I would have expected to see her, I felt a strange sense of nostalgia for that wait, an incomprehensible desire to postpone the moment for a few more hours. I’m not afraid of anything, I’d said in my awkward, clumsy note to Raquel, I’m not afraid of anything, but it wasn’t true. The taxi driver, however, took less than ten minutes to get to the building, pulling up in front of the cold marble doorway. The door was closed, but I took the precaution of pushing it before gently touching the doorbell for Apartment E with a trembling finger. I felt a sense of unreality that was intensely physical yet light, a frothy whitish mist, like the nebulous light of dreams.

  This isn’t real, I thought. But I pressed the button and someone upstairs released the catch. My shoes made a soft squeaking sound on the freshly polished marble, and the lift screeched as it came to a halt on the ground floor. As it climbed towards the seventh floor, I looked at myself in the mirror and felt a surge of pity for this face which I understood better than before. It was the face of a man who was terrified, hysterical, alone, exhausted. But when I got to the seventh floor, I found myself standing before an open door and, on the other side, Raquel, dressed exactly as she had been the first time I met her: a black T-shirt with a white pattern and a pair of black jeans that did little justice to the shimmering asymmetry of her hips. She seemed thinner, paler, her eyes were puffy and the skin around them was as translucent as parchment. Looking at her, I saw a woman who was terrified, hysterical, alone, exhausted, a face so like my own yet so different. But I also saw Raquel, a clever girl, so beautiful you had to look twice. I saw the love of my life.

  ‘Álvaro.’ She took a few steps towards me, so slowly my whole body ached. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak, I could do nothing but stare at her. ‘Álvaro, there’s something I need to tell you . . .’

  ‘Don’t ever do that to me again, Raquel.’

  My arms took the initiative, wrapping themselves around her and hugging her hard, my hands moved over her back, slowly recognising her, recognising myself. I could now become myself again as I breathed her in, as I touched her, I was intensely aware that I was about to kiss her, and when I kissed her everything was calm once more, flowing gently like water.

  ‘Don’t ever do that to me again . . .’

  Clinging to my neck like a castaway, she hugged me, kissed me, gazed at me as though I held her life in my hands.

  ‘If I could, I’d eat you right now, I’d swallow you up so that you’d always be inside me, so I’d always know where you were, because I was dead, Raquel, it was like I died, and I can’t bear it, I couldn’t bear it if . . . Don’t ever do that to me again, ever, for the love of God.’

  Then, without letting go, she looked into my eyes and said the only thing I needed to hear.

  ‘The only thing I love is you, Álvaro.’

  ‘And I love you,’ I felt a rush of tenderness, a sharp pain like a knife wound, ‘I love you so much . . .’

  ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’

  ‘Not now.’ I hugged her again, kissed her. ‘Please, not now, I don’t need to know now, I don’t care, Raquel . . .’

  When I’d arrived, I knew I was going to kiss her and the mere knowledge had moved me. Later, as we lay together naked in that unfamiliar bed, I was more conscious than ever of beauty, of pleasure, of joy, of the existence of all living things, for the whole world was suspended on Raquel’s lips.

  I was risking everything on those lips.

  I was aware of it again when she moved away from me.

  ‘I never slept with your father, Álvaro.’

  This is what she said.

  She told me that she had never slept with my father and suddenly I felt a terrible urge to laugh and cry at the same time.

  On Saturday, 5 May 1956, Don Julio Carrión González, thirty-four, was joined in holy matrimony to Señorita Angélica Otero Fernández, twenty-one, at the church of Santa Bárbara in Madrid. The bride, the great-granddaughter of the Conde de la Riva, wore a white silk dress designed by Cristóbal Balenciaga and a veil of Mechlin lace, a family heirloom. The witnesses to the marriage were the father of the groom, Don Benigno Carrión Moreno, and the mother of the bride, Doña Mariana Fernández Viu. After the ceremony, the newlyweds celebrated with a dinner for two hundred guests in the state rooms of the Palace Hotel.

  ‘Listen, Julio, you may be rich, but you’re not respectable.’ Angélica turned on him those liquid, piercingly blue eyes that both captivated and unsettled him. ‘Until now, that didn’t really matter. In Spain we’ve always believed it’s good for young men to sow their wild oats, but you’re over thirty and no respectable man is still single at that age. Not in this country. How much longer do you think you can get away with being single, showing up with dark circles under your eyes to receptions full of bishops and generals’ wives? It can’t last, Julio, and you know it, unless you settle down quickly with a pretty little virgin from a good family and give her two or three children. That’s what you need, but it’s not an easy thing to come by, no matter how rich you are. There’s only one woman in the world who would make a suitable match for you, and that’s me. First, because my surname is Fernández, and that might be useful later, in certain situations. Franco can’t live for ever. But mostly because I know who you are and what you are, Julio . . . You’re a thief, an impostor, a liar and a scoundrel with a taste for whores. I know all that, but I still love you. I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you.’ Her voice as she spoke was so calm, so cold, that it was clearly a speech she had rehearsed many times. ‘Think about it, Julio.’

  He smiled almost shyly and said nothing. They were sitting on the Rosales terrace, enjoying a warm September evening; the autumn sun was fading but was still bright enough to dupe the trees, which had not yet shed their first leaves. It was not cold, but when Angélica, feeling the silence drag on, picked up a cigarette and tried to light it, she found that her fingers were trembling. Julio smiled more broadly and felt a vague, diffuse warmth course through him, fuelled by his vanity and his utter admiration for this woman.

  ‘You’re nervous,’ he ventured.

  ‘Yes,’ once again Angélica proved to him that there were different ways of being brave, ‘I’m very nervous.’

  Julio Carrión González had always been attracted to Angélica Otero Fernández. From the very beginning, in spite of her insolence, the almost suicidal arrogance that erupted into daily tantrums, making her his most troublesome employee. When she stared him down, chin held a little too high, nostrils flared, he found Angélica unbearable, irritating, stupid, but even then he found himself attracted to her. He had played with her often when she was a young girl, and he sometimes felt that this was why she had come back from Galicia, so they could go on playing.

  ‘Do that Russian trick for me, Julio . . .’

  Even as a child, when she spoke to him, there was a tremor in her voice that troubled him, a wisp of precocious, ambiguous promise that cloaked those innocent words, for they had to be innocent, even if at times there seemed to be an unconscious sexual undercurrent. Maybe even conscious, he had sometimes thought, even if it’s tentative and vague. This was why he had enjoyed flirting with her when she was twelve, thirteen, fourteen, looking at her body, which was mature beyond her years, as she posed like a vamp, showing the scabs on her knees, the smooth pink of her girlish cheeks. She would make faces at him and toss her head.

  ‘Do it, Julio . . .’ she would say in an affectionate little voice, pretending to be coy. ‘Go on, do it for me.’

  He could not suppress a smile as he remembered how many other women had said that same thing to him, in the same tone of voice.

  ‘OK, you wait here, I’ll just go to the kitchen to get a cup and a glass.’

  Back then - from the summer of 1947 to the summer of 1949 - it had been one of his favourite tricks. It was s
uch a hit, particularly with women, that he always kept a piece of sponge in his pocket. When he got to the kitchen, he pressed the sponge into the bottom of an opaque glass, took a pick and, from one of the blocks of ice they used to keep meat and fish cool, chipped off a sliver and placed it on top of the sponge. Then he went back into the living room with the cup in one hand and a small glass of water in the other.

  ‘I had a girlfriend in Russia,’ he would say, looking at Angélica, who clapped and smiled, craning forward. ‘Her name was Nadia, and I loved her very, very much. I loved her so much that when I had to leave I cried. I kept my tears in this glass and sent them to her in the post.’ With a theatrical flourish he had learned from Manuel Castro, he tipped the glass into the cup, where the sponge immediately absorbed the water. ‘And she sent me her tears, but it was so cold in Russia that they froze before I got them.’ He tipped up the cup and, instead of water, a sliver of ice dropped into his palm. He handed it to Angélica and while she was staring at it, open mouthed, he used his thumb to retrieve the sponge from the cup, wringing out the water on to the carpet, and placed the cup down next to the glass.

  ‘That’s amazing! How did you do it?’