The Frozen Heart

by Almudena Grandes

  ‘Where’s that boy?’ Nati would drive the nail in every time.

  ‘What boy?’ Raquel would say innocently.

  ‘The boy who was here last weekend. He’s been here before, too ... Paco, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s at his place, Nati, where do you think he is?’

  ‘Such a shame ...’

  ‘What’s a shame?’

  ‘He seems like such a nice boy, I think you could do a lot worse ...’ Raquel sighed. ‘Oh, hija, don’t look at me like that! I won’t say another word!’

  At moments like this, Raquel would remember Josechu and almost found herself agreeing with his complaints about their daily visits from this lonely, meddlesome old woman who was capable of turning almost anything into a crisis so she would have an excuse to ring a neighbour’s doorbell. But Raquel did not really mind Nati’s campaign in favour of Paco Molinero, and her exasperation rarely outlived Nati’s apology. In practice, when she was not plotting her great banking swindle, Raquel’s life alternated between periods of annihilation and moderate spurts of promiscuity, never reaching a happy medium. The theatre had bored her because of its excess, banking bored her by its very nature. Berta knew lots of men, many of whom were very good in bed because they were so desperate to please, but they only ever talked about themselves, their successes, their reviews, and how much they would like it if she came to see them rehearse. Her clients at the bank were deathly dull, usually married and rarely good in bed because they were in too much of a hurry and too rich to care whether they pleased anyone or not. In the end, Raquel would always find herself looking at Paco Molinero and realising that he was the only suitable man she knew.

  But this was not the only reason for her perpetual indulgence towards Nati. She was used to spending time with her grandmothers and had grown up in a family in exile, obsessed with creating support networks. Nati needed her, and Raquel felt sorry for her, but she also genuinely liked Nati. She was funny, friendly, lively, willing to do anything for a bit of company, and Raquel enjoyed the fifteen minutes they spent chatting when she got home from work — or rather the fifteen minutes Raquel spent offering monosyllabic counterpoints to Nati’s theatrical account of the most recent goings-on.

  ‘Have you heard the news?’

  If a politician had been taken to hospital, that must mean he was dead, if a gas tank had exploded at Leganès, the whole neighbourhood would burn to the ground, if an actress walked out on her husband, it had to be because he’d been cheating on her with her best friend, if there was a tailback on the M-30, it was because a school bus had crashed. Nati always talked this way, not because she lied but because she was bored and it was her way of adding a little spice to her life — admittedly by sowing imaginary death and destruction. Nati had worked out for herself that happiness did not make for gripping fiction, so she enthusiastically cultivated misfortune, oblivious to the small, constant humiliation she heaped on herself by doing so. But that afternoon in April 2004 Nati had a piece of terrible news which, for once, she had not heard on the television.

  ‘Here, take a look at this ...’ Nati hurried into her apartment and emerged with a piece of paper and an aluminium cake tin. ‘Oh, and I baked you a cake.’

  Raquel smiled and held the door open to let her pass. ‘Thanks. Come in for a minute. I’ll make some coffee.’

  ‘I can do it if you like.’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  She was exhausted after her flight back from Istanbul. It was almost 8 p.m. and she still had to unpack, do a load of washing, take a shower, wash her hair and get herself ready for an early start in the morning, so she didn’t really feel like talking to Nati, but when she sat down in the kitchen and read the letter, she was glad she had.

  ‘Don’t worry, Nati,’ she said, ‘this is just the first...’

  ‘That’s all very well for you to say.’ Raquel looked at Nati and realised it would take more than a couple of platitudes to reassure her. ‘I’m worried sick.’

  She had good reason to worry. Raquel had already heard rumours and read an article somewhere about this, but it had all been so vague she had dismissed it. Yet it had been bound to happen sooner or later, because her apartment and Nati’s, their building, the whole area, were ripe for speculators.

  When Paco Molinero, who was always keen to score points with her, had first told Raquel about the apartment on the Calle Avila, she had told Josechu that they would be living on the Avenida del General Perón. While not exactly true, this was not quite a lie. The celebrated Avenida del General Perón, which ran through the poshest part of the city, did begin near the abandoned warehouses, the nineteenth-century factories, the derelict villas and the cheap houses of the Calle Avila. From Tetuán, you could see the lights of Paseo de la Castellana, the skyscrapers of Azca and the Santiago Bernabéu stadium, but still, Tetuán was Tetuán, an old hodgepodge of an area that appealed to Raquel, but not to her husband. Recently, she had been thinking that it was only a matter of time. If urban renewal continued at this rate, the street would soon be more to Josechu’s taste than her own, but it had never occurred to her that it would happen so quickly.

  ‘Have you talked to the president of the housing co-op, Nati?’

  ‘Yes ... There’s going to be a meeting, I think, I’m not sure.’ She nodded at the letter Raquel was holding. ‘They’re going to evict us, aren’t they?’

  ‘That’s not what it says.’ Raquel shifted her chair closer to Nati, took the woman’s hand and spoke to her slowly and carefully. ‘It says that our building has been zoned for urban renewal. That means the city council,’ or some other bastards, she thought, ‘have decided to modernise the area, you understand? To knock down some of the old buildings and build new ones.’

  ‘But this isn’t an old building,’ protested Nati, her voice choked as she realised that her neighbour, who was young and knew how to work a computer, had come to the same conclusion she had.

  ‘It’s hardly new, though, is it?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ Nati was not indignant, she was close to tears, ‘then why don’t they knock down the buildings in Puerta del Sol? They’re a lot older than anything here.’

  ‘I know, Nati, but they’re listed buildings, they can’t tear down the city centre because ...’ Raquel decided that it was pointless trying to explain. ‘Listen, there’s no point in talking about it right now. The city council have laid down certain norms — rules, if you like — but they still have to be discussed, they can’t just be applied to everything. We can appeal, and we will appeal, but if we lose, well ... They still have to buy our apartments, because that’s your apartment, Nati, and no one is going to take it away from you, OK? If we have to sell, then we’ll sell, but they’ll have to give us a small fortune, or one of the apartments in the new building.’

  ‘OK, but then ... where will I live while they’re building all these new apartments?’

  ‘Well, you could go to Tenerife.’ Raquel smiled but Nati did not smile back. ‘Your daughter would love to have you ...’

  ‘If I go to Tenerife, I might not come back.’ This was Nati’s worst fear.

  ‘Don’t worry ... these things take time. There’s the appeal, the verdict, another appeal ... I’m sure by then you’ll want to go and see your daughter.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  That evening, Raquel managed to calm Nati’s fears, but they did not survive contact with the outside world. Forty-eight hours later, she accompanied Nati to the meeting of the residents’ association, at which Raquel’s predictions were systematically toppled like dominoes. The chairman argued in favour of unconditional surrender with as much passion as if he had already received a bribe from the construction company, but his arguments sounded unassailable. They were. The building suffered from a whole series of structural problems which were more than enough to have it condemned, and even if the residents’
association had wanted to repair these faults, no bank would ever lend money on a condemned building. There was one possibility, however. A construction company had offered to buy the apartments in order to secure the rights to the land. The chairman recommended that they accept this offer and sell as soon as possible, since there was no other solution. ‘We’ll see about that,’ said Raquel before leaving. She had argued strongly against the recommendation. ‘And what else can we do?’ the chairman asked, and she knew from his smile that everything had already been decided. ‘Everything ...’ she said. But by the following morning, she realised that ‘everything’ amounted to two phone calls.

  ‘You can’t appeal against the decision, Raquel.’ Her brother Mateo, a lawyer, called her back fifteen minutes after she first spoke to him. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why not?’ She was not prepared to give up so easily. ‘All laws can go to appeal ...’

  ‘No, not all of them. There are some laws — rulings, in this case — that can’t be appealed. Rulings deemed to be in the general interest cannot be brought to a standstill by individual interests.’

  ‘The general interest?’ The words repulsed her. ‘Let me tell you what ...’

  ‘No, Raquel,’ her brother interrupted her, ‘you’re not going to tell me anything ... I didn’t draft the law, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m just telling you how it works.’

  Hardly had she hung up when the phone rang again. It was her contact in the Mortgage Department.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do, is there?’ Raquel said before her colleague even had the chance to speak. ‘We’re screwed.’

  “Fraid so. I’m sorry. And I’ll tell you something else, even if you could get the money, you’d be a fool to do any work on the building, you might as well flush the money down the drain ...’

  ‘Because there’s no way to appeal the decision?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I just heard. Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.’

  ‘No problem. Good luck.’

  We’ll need more than luck, Raquel thought.

  She mulled over the problem all day. She wasn’t worried about herself — she had bought her apartment so cheaply that she was bound to make a profit — she was thinking about Nati and the old man on the first floor, about Maruja two floors up, a single mother with three teenage kids. None of them had spoken up at the meeting, but she had watched them, seen their faces fall, their shoulders sag, their eyes fixed on the floor. Their home was the only thing they had, they had spent years and years paying for it, buying themselves some measure of security. We’re fine now, they had thought, there’s nothing else that can go wrong. And now they were going to lose it all because of some greedy fucking speculator wreathed in the laurels of the ‘general interest’. It’s always the same old story. Well, not this time.

  Raquel Fernández Perea repeated these words to herself over and over until they finally rang true, then she picked up the phone again.

  ‘Don’t get so worked up, Raquel.’ Paco Molinero, the best negotiator she knew, tried to calm her down. ‘Tell me the whole story, slowly, from the beginning ...’

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked him when she had finished

  ‘Well, it doesn’t sound good.’ He attempted to temper his verdict. ‘At least on the face of it.’

  ‘I know, but I have a plan.’

  If they were incompatible in bed, over a desk, with a problem to be solved, they were all but invincible. Raquel was the more imaginative, the more daring, Paco more shrewd, more realistic. They enjoyed working together precisely because when they pooled these talents, they could come up with innovative solutions. The one they came up with that day — resistance is victory — was hardly brilliant, but at least it seemed like a solution.

  ‘So?’ Nati appeared that evening just as Raquel stepped out of the lift. ‘It’s bad, isn’t it? They going to throw us out on the street.’

  ‘Of course not!’ But looking at her, Raquel suddenly felt such a surge of pity that she put her arms around her, and hugged her harder than usual. ‘No way! I’ve taken steps ... I’ve spoken to my brother, who’s a lawyer, and to Paco, and I’m about to go up and talk to the surveyor on the top floor, because I thought he was good at the meeting last night, didn’t you?’

  Until the chairman had asked him several times to calm down, Raquel had not even known the man’s name. Sergio was short, skinny, almost insignificant and younger than Raquel, but she had the impression that she could count on him. Something he immediately confirmed.

  ‘We can’t appeal the ruling,’ he said as he opened the door.

  ‘I know. But we have to do something,’ she said, dispensing with formalities.

  ‘Of course,’ he emphasised his words with a vigorous nod, ‘by any means necessary.’

  It took them two hours and a six-pack of beer to come up with a detailed three-point plan: storm the bastions of power, bureaucratic wrangling, dogged resistance.

  Sergio had also found the chairman’s willingness to capitulate, his rush to negotiate an overall price for all the apartments, suspicious. ‘I’m sure someone’s greased his palm.’ Raquel nodded, taking her notebook out of her bag. They decided that he would be their first target. She jotted down some notes: inform neighbours, mount secret campaign to unseat chair, form administrative council, contest chairmanship, trigger election, stand as a team — Sergio chair, me vice-chair. Other way round. Sergio prefers me as chair, him vice-chair. Once elected: never file documents on time, ignore formal demands, never talk to developers, keep paying community charges etc, get independent valuation on every apartment, add 10%, eventually settle for 20% less, keep our heads down, contact media, go on TV, stand our ground even if they cut off the electricity. They can’t demolish the place with us inside, they can’t do anything while we’re still inside. When they had finished, Raquel underlined this last sentence, then got up and said goodnight to her disciple.

  ‘Let’s take twenty-four hours, think about it,’ he said, walking her to the door, ‘we can meet back here tomorrow at the same time.’

  ‘See you tomorrow, then.’ Raquel smiled and kissed him on both cheeks. ‘And remember: resistance is victory.’

  Resistance is victory, she repeated to herself, resistance is victory. Jesus, it has to work some time ...

  And for a long time, she was convinced it would work, because their plan got off to a good start. They had the support of all their neighbours with the exception of the former chair and a woman who rented out her apartment and was never there, and the week after they were elected, someone called from Promociones del Noreste, SA, to invite them to lunch.

  ‘No way!’ Raquel said. ‘If you want to see us, then you can come and meet us at my apartment. But it can’t be this week, or next, because the vice-chair is on holiday at the moment ...’

  They made them wait a month and showed up to the meeting with two lawyers, Mateo Fernández Perea, whose righteous anger his sister found terribly amusing, and Sergio’s girlfriend, who had just finished her studies and was scared to death. The developer’s spokesperson was a thirty-year-old lawyer in an Armani suit with John Lennon glasses, hair cropped short to hide the fact that he was prematurely balding. His name was Sebastián López Parra, and he handed each of them a business card before they sat down. He began by reeling off the mutual benefits of collaboration for all parties concerned, his tone polite, almost smarmy, but it became hard edged as he attempted to persuade them that they had no legal recourse. He did not dare explicitly offer them money, but his every word obliquely hinted at the lustre of corruption. When he had finished, he surveyed them and stopped when he came to Raquel, as though he realised that she was the principal stumbling block.

  ‘Well, if you’ve finished, I’d like to say a word or two ...’ She gave him her most charming smile before putting forward a figure to which he responded with an even broader smile.

  ‘Señora, please ... I thought this was a serious negoti
ation!’

  ‘Oh, I’m deadly serious, believe me.’ She paused and her smile faded. ‘I’m an investments adviser working in asset management, I’ve been in this business for years and I know a lot of people. I’ve consulted a number of them and — as I’m sure you already know — their estimate is a lot closer to our figure than it is to yours. If you’re not prepared to take this offer seriously, we can stop now and start looking for another buyer. I’m sure yours is not the only company interested. The fact that you already own the building on either side is your problem rather than ours. We may be forced to sell our apartments, but we’re not compelled to sell them to Promociones del Noreste.’

  Sebastián López Parra smiled again, took off his glasses, cleaned them with his tie, then put them back on and looked at Raquel.

  ‘You do realise,’ he said serenely, ‘that if you fail to negotiate a deal with us or with some other company before the ruling is passed, your property will be expropriated, at which point you will lose considerably more ...’

  ‘Of course,’ Raquel was as calm as he was, ‘but, as I’m sure you’re aware, this is not Prohibition Chicago, so I am not aware of any legal recourse you have to prevent us from selling to another buyer. And if we should lose, as you say, then in all probability your company will lose considerably more.’

  ‘Very well.’ Sebastián López Parra’s glasses were shining, but he cleaned them again with the same care and attention before getting to his feet. ‘We will, of course, have to give the matter some thought.’

  ‘Of course.’Raquel stood up.

  ‘I’m still inclined to think that the price you are asking is excessive, and does not reflect the current state of the market, but I would ask that you do not talk to other potential buyers while we consider a new offer. I believe it is in all our interests to reach an agreement.’ He shook hands with Mateo, Sergio and Sergio’s girlfriend, and walked with Raquel to the door.