That Saturday, Raquel booked a table at one of the best Chinese restaurants in the city before going to collect her grandmother. Anita was waiting downstairs, and gave Raquel a smile so radiant that her granddaughter felt guilty that she was about to ruin it. She kissed her granddaughter on both cheeks, loud, quick kisses like machine-gun fire, then took Raquel’s arm and they walked out to the car. The weight problem that so concerned the third Ignacio Fernández in the family had not limited her mobility until recently.
‘Hija mía, I’m so happy!’ she said, contriving to slide into the passenger seat unaided while Raquel held the door open.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Of course, why wouldn’t I be?’ Her grandmother looked at her as though surprised. ‘What are you waiting for?’ Not until Raquel was sitting next to her, and the engine was running, did she decide to explain the reason for her happiness. ‘So, I talked to everyone about the apartment. I talked to Jacques, but he’s got his head in the clouds as usual, he didn’t even know what I was talking about. “But I’m going to Milan, Grandma,” he says to me, “why would I want an apartment in Madrid?” So he’s fine ... And Annette seems happy with the idea. “That’s cool, Grandma,” she said, “that way when I come to Madrid I can stay with Raquel, she’ll have tons of space, I’m sure she won’t mind ...”’
‘Of course not, Grandma, I love Annette, you know that, we’re great friends.’
‘Anyway, then I had a word with your brothers, they were the ones I was really worried about, because Mateo is always saying that your parents spoil you and I spoil you and that’s why I gave you your grandmother María’s bracelet.’
‘Grandma, he’s only teasing you.’ Raquel parked the car, got out and opened the passenger door as Anita extricated herself.
‘Anyway, I had a word with him, just in case ... I said: “Mateo, now tell me honestly, if you want the apartment, if you’d rather I didn’t sell it to your sister, please tell me.” But Ignacio’s reaction was priceless, he said: “Listen, Grandma, what I think you should do is sell the apartment and split the money with me on the sly, then the two of us can go off to Las Vegas for the weekend and blow the lot!” He’s such a funny boy. He wears me out talking about diets all the time, but I’ll have to admit he does make me laugh. He doesn’t really like the idea of living in the city, nobody really wants to live in the city apart from you. You’re like your grandfather ... That’s why I think it’s best if you keep the apartment because ... It’s what he would have wanted ... He really loved you, you know, you were always his little girl.’
Raquel saw her grandmother waver.
‘We’re not going to cry, are we?’ Raquel said, blinking back tears herself.
‘No, no ...’ But it was too late for Anita, who was already wiping a tear from her eye. ‘I’m so glad we came here. Isn’t this the place where they do that sticky rice I like?’
‘That’s right...’
Anita smiled broadly, then squeezed her granddaughter’s arm as the waiter showed them to their table. Raquel looked at the menu and picked an excellent red wine, which her grandmother refused to taste until they had made a toast.
‘To your apartment.’
‘To your apartment,’ Raquel countered, and they both laughed.
‘So, what did you want to talk to me about?’ Anita asked.
‘Well, the thing is ...’ I’m about to ruin your lunch, Grandma, Raquel thought. ‘Oh, let’s talk about that later. Why don’t you tell me about the play you saw yesterday?’
In doing so, they rescued the main course — the prawns, the noodles, the rice, the Peking duck with pancakes — but as they were about to order dessert, Anita Salgado looked at her granddaughter the way she used to when she was a little girl.
‘Thank you, that was lovely. Now, are you going to tell me why you’re so jumpy?’
‘I’m not jumpy, Grandma.’
‘Oh yes you are.’ Anita smiled. ‘Maybe I’m an old woman, maybe I have trouble chewing, I’m half deaf and there are times when my memory’s not so good, but I’m no fool.’
‘No, you’re right.’
‘So?’
‘The company that’s trying to buy my apartment is called Promociones del Noreste, does that name mean anything to you?’ Her grandmother shook her head. ‘The man who owns it is called Julio Carrion González.’
‘It can’t be ...’ Anita shook her head vehemently, as though she could somehow erase this name from every conversation present and future. ‘It must be someone else, I mean, there’s even a wine called ...’
‘I know,’ her granddaughter interrupted, ‘I thought about that too. But I looked it up on the internet and ...’
‘Oh, the internet ...’ Anita pulled a face. ‘You can’t trust anything you read on the internet ...’
‘Grandma.’ Raquel’s expression was serious and Anita fell silent. ‘It’s him. I visited the company’s website. Julio Carrion González, born in Torrelodones in 1922, founded his first construction company in 1947. Take my word for it. It’s him.’
‘Nineteen twenty-two ...’ Anita was no longer looking at her, she was murmuring to herself as she brushed imaginary bread-crumbs from the tablecloth. ‘That would be right, he came between Ignacio and me. I was born in 1924.’
‘It’s him, Grandma,’ Raquel took her grandmother’s hand, ‘there was a photo on the website. I recognised him.’
Anita’s dark eyes widened in astonishment. ‘How could you know what he looked like, hija, you’ve never even met him? I suppose you might have seen a photo of him back in Paris, but you couldn’t know for sure ...’
‘I could, Grandma, because I have seen him, I met him. It was much later, in 1977, Grandad took me to their house one Saturday. He told me he was visiting a friend.’
‘Grandad?’ Anita Salgado, who was two months from her eightieth birthday, was astounded. ‘My husband Ignacio went to visit Carrion ...? In 1977? The year we came back?’
Raquel nodded. The ensuing silence was so long, so impenetrable, that it was as though the shouts of children, the conversation and laughter of the other diners, existed only to underscore the anguish of this old woman, who had pressed her hands to her face as if she were trying to shut out the world. And yet all around her the world went on existing.
‘He promised me ... over and over he promised me. I told him I wouldn’t go back unless he swore he wouldn’t go and see him, that he wouldn’t look for him ... On your children’s lives, I said, and he said, “I swear on my children’s lives,” and then he goes ... And he took you with him ... he was so pig-headed. He was the most pig-headed, most reckless man I ever met, he always had to be the strongest.’
Rage turned into grief and Anita began to sob. It pained Raquel so see her there, so small, so alone, in so much pain, so she got up and sat next to her grandmother, and hugged her.
‘I’m sorry, Grandma, please forgive me ... I’m so sorry.’
‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, hija. You haven’t done anything wrong.’ She took Raquel’s hand and breathed deeply as though to steel herself. ‘And what happened? He didn’t take a gun, did he?’
‘A gun?’ Raquel, still upset at having made her grandmother cry, did not know what scared her more, the word itself or the casual way Anita said it. ‘No, of course he didn’t ... what are you talking about?’
‘No, I suppose not, not in 1977.’ Anita’s almost gentle tone shocked Raquel even more. ‘But then, why go to see him?’
‘Well ...’ Raquel had to think. Unbelievably, she had never asked herself this question before now. ‘I don’t know, I really don’t know, Grandma. He had an old leather briefcase with him full of papers. Carrión’s wife took me into the kitchen to have a snack with her children and afterwards we played for a bit. I only saw Carrion himself for a minute or two, but I really liked him. He did a magic trick for me, he ...’
‘... he made sweets magically appear out of your ears?’
‘Something li
ke that ...’ Raquel said, and Anita nodded bitterly. ‘Lollies. Then his wife came to get him and he went off, he talked to Grandad for quite a while, but I didn’t see him afterwards. When we left, Grandad ...’ Raquel looked at Anita and thought she had suffered enough. ‘He asked me not to say anything to you about it, he said it was an old story that I wouldn’t understand, and that I didn’t need to understand it because I was going to be living here now and to live here there are some things it’s better not to know.’
‘Just as well.’ Ignacio Fernández Muñoz’s widow finally smiled.
‘I suppose ... But I need to know, Grandma, I need you to tell me what happened, even if it is all in the past. I’m not eight years old any more.’
‘But why?’ Anita looked at her in genuine amazement. ‘What good would it do?’
Raquel had prepared some questions of her own.
‘What good does it do me to know my own name, Grandma, or your name, or my parents’ names, or why you don’t eat apricots any more? What good does it do me that I’ve never once heard you mention the name of the village you come from? What good does any of it do? None, I suppose, but it helps me to understand who I am. Isn’t that enough?’
Anita Salgado Pérez looked at her granddaughter and could think of no answer. She brought a trembling hand to Raquel’s face and stroked it gently.
‘Let’s go,’ she said, ‘this is not the place to talk about such things ...’
Raquel asked for the bill and settled up.
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘Take me home.’ Before Raquel could protest, Anita explained. ‘Olga’s not there at the moment, she and your mother have gone out to the sales.’
The two of them walked back to the car in silence, then they drove through the deserted early afternoon streets of Madrid until they were almost halfway home.
‘I’ll tell you the whole story. I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do, but I’ll only tell you if you promise me two things ...’
‘Not to talk about it to anyone?’ Raquel smiled.
‘Yes. That’s the first thing. Why are you laughing?’
‘I’m laughing because it’s always the same story — every time Julio Carrión’s name comes up, someone asks me to promise never to talk about it. First Grandad, now you ...’
‘But you promise?’
‘I promise. And the second thing?’
‘The second thing is I don’t want you to do anything stupid after I’ve told you. So Carrion wants to buy your apartment? Fine, it’s a small world, what can you do? Sell him your apartment and move into our old one and then we’ll never have to mention his name again, agreed?’ Raquel simply nodded, but it was enough. ‘It’s unbelievable ... But I’ll tell you something, it’s a good thing your grandfather is dead. I never thought I’d hear myself say those words, but if he was still alive I don’t know what he would have done ...’
‘Would you like me to make some coffee?’ Raquel asked when they arrived back at Carillejas.
‘We’ve just had coffee. Why don’t you get out the bottle of cherry brandy instead ? You know where it is.’
Anita sat in one of the armchairs by the window and didn’t speak again until her granddaughter had poured the brandy. Raquel sat on the small stool she’d always sat on as a little girl, when the two of them watched old films while Ignacio had his siesta.
‘You know what happened, don’t you? Carrion robbed us. Well, he didn’t rob me, I didn’t have anything to steal, but he stole from Ignacio’s family.’
‘I know that much,’ Raquel admitted, ‘but that’s all. I don’t know how he did it or who he was or how you knew him.’
Anita Salgado raised a hand as though to say ‘not so fast’.
‘Your grandfather never really got over it ... He blamed himself, he thought that it was his fault, though we told him it wasn’t. We all told him, his parents, his sisters, I must have told him a thousand times that it wasn’t his fault, that the only person to blame was the crook who had swindled us ... but Ignacio ... He didn’t care about the money, well, maybe a little, but that wasn’t what really hurt him. What he couldn’t bear was the fact that Julio had fooled us, that he had lied to us so that he could rob us, that’s what really hurt. If it had been ... I don’t know ... If it had been a stranger, some lawyer we’d hired in Paris or some friend of a friend, he would have thought it was a dirty trick ... but that Julio could do something like this, after we’d been so good to him, we were like a family to him, he was always round our house ...’
‘Of course.’ Raquel suddenly realised who Carrion was. ‘That’s why you said I might have seen photos of him in Paris, Carrion is the one in the white shirt in those photos of you posing with a big birthday cake — it was Papá’s birthday, I think, or Olga’s ...’
‘It was Aída’s birthday, María’s daughter, but yes, that’s him.’
‘Of course, but you never said anything ...’
‘Why would we? We certainly wouldn’t have talked about him ... As I said, your grandfather never really got over it, so, at some point, we just stopped mentioning him, we pretended that we’d forgotten all about it and in the end, mercifully, we did forget, although I don’t think it changed anything ... I’m sure Ignacio went to his grave still feeling he was to blame. I remember the first days after it happened, the first nights. He didn’t let it show in front of his family, he felt he had to be strong. His parents — and they were the ones who had lost everything, who owned the properties — they took it calmly. “Franco could have taken it all in ’39,” his father said, “it would have been just the same.”’
‘Yes,’ Raquel interrupted gravely, ‘but it’s not the same.’
‘Of course not, but what can you do?’ Her grandmother smiled sadly. ‘Their son had been killed, their son-in-law had been murdered, they had a grandson in Madrid they had never even seen, so what difference did money make? Ignacio understood, he agreed with them, but at night, when we were in bed ... “Another betrayal,” he’d say, “another traitor. I can’t bear it any more, Anita. Why am I even alive? I’m alive so that I can be betrayed again and again and again and I can’t go on like this, I’d rather be dead ...” That’s what he said to me, the poor man, and I’d say, “I don’t want you to die, Ignacio, please don’t die ...” because I didn’t know what else to say, how to comfort him. “Why does this always happen to us, why is it always the same story? We’re the wretched of the earth, Anita, the wretched of the earth ...” He said it over and over again, and he was right, because everyone had abandoned us, nothing was going right, we were more and more isolated, there were fewer of us and Franco was becoming increasingly powerful, and now Julio, one of our own, had betrayed us ...’
Anita fell silent as she saw her own grief reflected in her granddaughter’s eyes. She knew it would take time for Raquel to digest what she had heard, and this was only the beginning.
Quietly, almost fearfully, Raquel asked: ‘Was Carrion a member of the party, Grandma?’ Anita looked at her as though she didn’t understand. ‘Was he a socialist, an anarchist, was he ...?’
‘What do I know?’ her grandmother interrupted her, then she shrugged her shoulders. ‘Of course he was. That’s what he said, anyway, and I believed him, we all believed him. He definitely had a JSU card, I saw it with my own eyes, it had been issued in Madrid during the war. But I don’t know who Julio Carrion really was ... What I do know is that he was an opportunist, a user, a cynic. He was an evil man.’
Raquel could not find the words to express her confusion. ‘I don’t understand. How could he have ...? Nobody ever suspected anything?’
‘Nobody.’ Anita smiled. ‘We never thought there was anything strange about him. Julio’s mother was a socialist, one of those republican teachers everyone admired. Your grandfather met her and he always said that she was a wonderful woman, a brave, dedicated communist. She was from Torrelodones and my parents-in-law had a house there, they used to go there every summer, s
o when Ignacio met her son in a café in Paris, and realised he was lost, alone, living in exile, he brought him home. His mother had been friends with Mateo and Carlos, she’d been sent to prison for thirty years, and had died there. Back then, that was enough. Why would we have been suspicious?’
Some months later, Raquel Fernández Perea would discover that this woman was Teresa González Puerto, and she would hear her speak through her grandson, a dark-haired man who was the spitting image of the traitor she remembered. She would also discover that Julio Carrión’s capacity for betrayal was boundless, and the love that had performed the miracle of bringing this dead woman back to life moved her all the more. Teresa González Puerto was alive again in the man Raquel loved, in the lips that spoke her name, and this new life would be good. When it happened, Raquel would realise why she had fallen in love with this woman’s grandson, why she had never loved another man as she loved him, why her need to fuse her body with his was as elemental as the need to drink when she was thirsty, and sleep when she was tired. When it happened, she would also realise that her sleep was damned, that there would be no sunny Saturday mornings, no coming back from the market with a huge bunch of fresh flowers.
Anita Salgado had promised to tell her granddaughter what had happened, and she kept her promise. She talked for three hours, sometimes relating incidents chronologically, sometimes as they came to her. She confessed that she had forgotten certain names, and certain dates, but she gave a coherent, detailed and comprehensive account. Through her eyes, Raquel could see Julio Carrion as he had been at twenty-five, the most charming man in the world, brilliant, intelligent, a man so irresistible he managed to overcome Paloma Fernández Muñoz’s resistance. Her grandmother insisted that everyone had liked Julio Carrion, but although he had an easy rapport with men and children adored him, it was women who found him the most attractive. It was this, she believed, that had led her sister-in-law to give in to him, something she would not have done with any other man. Using Carrion to avenge her husband had not been a motive, merely a pretext for the attraction Paloma might not even have recognised and would certainly never have admitted to. But Anita was sure that Paloma had been attracted to him, and in the end, she told Raquel, it was Paloma that she felt sorriest for.
The Frozen Heart Page 83