The Frozen Heart

by Almudena Grandes

  ‘Rafa?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hi, it’s Alvaro.’

  Four years later my father built a house in La Moraleja where we could live all year round, with a garden so big we never really used all of it and a swimming pool three or four times the size of the one we had had in Navacerrada. His family was no longer part of the middle classes so he sold the summer house. Nobody seemed to miss it apart from me. My older brothers were too old now to enjoy the monotony of summers in the mountains and Clara hadn’t yet discovered the bicycle, but I had always been happy there, and I still have a scar on my left leg to remind me.

  ‘I’ve been expecting you to call.’

  ‘Are you at the office? I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Not now, Alvaro, it’s nearly half past two ...’

  That afternoon, a few of us had taken our bikes down to the dam. We had been expressly forbidden to go there, which is why we went. To get there, you had to cycle along a busy road and then cross it to get to the finish line — the bridge over the reservoir. The fishermen didn’t even look round at us when we arrived, but we felt proud, a feeling that quickly dissipated when we realised there was nothing to do there but look at the water. We left our bikes by the path and lay down on the grass on the far bank of the reservoir, reminding each other that we were now in Becerril rather than Navacerrada, and thinking about the ride home, which was much steeper than the route we had taken to get here.

  ‘OK, then. Why don’t we have lunch?’

  ‘No, I can’t, I’ve got a meeting with someone from the Castilla — La Mancha Department of Public Works.’

  ‘What time will you be back in the office?’

  Until one of us realised that there were a lot of different ways to race. The idea probably came from the stages of the Tour de France or the Vuelta a España which we would watch on television in the afternoons, each day in a different house, scrupulously following a specific order so that nobody’s mother got angry, and avoiding houses that had a swimming pool as much as possible so that we could continue to go swimming in the mornings. We didn’t have stopwatches, but we always synchronised the second hands of our watches and raced against the clock along the last street of the development, although to celebrate the finals, we always went to the bridge over the reservoir.

  ‘About five o’clock ... I don’t know, Alvaro, I don’t think there’s much point us meeting today, do you? I already know you’ve left Mai, I know that you’ve left her for another woman, and I’m not having a go, I have to assume you know what you’re doing. Isabel and I have no intention of getting involved, so ...’

  ‘But there are other things I need to talk to you about.’

  ‘Really? OK, then...’

  That week, I hadn’t come in the top three, but I sprinted on to the bridge, standing on the pedals, the bike wobbling all over the place. Maybe I just wanted to prove to myself and anyone watching that just because I’d had a bad day, it didn’t mean I wasn’t still up there with the best of them, the quickest. I was probably never faster than I was that afternoon, because my tyre only had to brush the edge of the bridge and suddenly the bike tipped up and I was thrown over the handlebars. I landed on one of the pedals of a bike being wheeled along by another boy, knocking it and him over. It was one of those old bikes with open spokes and one of them went into the calf of my left leg like a piece of shrapnel.

  ‘I’ll see you at five o’clock, OK? Oh, one more thing, do you mind if I ask Angelica along?’

  ‘I don’t mind, but I’m surprised. She’s livid with you. You know she’s the first person Mai called when you left?’

  ‘I know, Julio told me. I’ve just had a drink with him. But I have to speak to Angelica one way or the other, I have to talk to all of you.’

  When I first tried to move my leg, the whole bicycle came with it. The metal spike was too deeply embedded and my friends had to help me. When they pulled it away, I howled in pain, but the pain didn’t impress me as much as the river of blood spurting from the wound. I had cut myself badly and here I was, eleven years old with a group of other eleven-year-olds, miles from my house, miles from the village, on the bridge over the reservoir. My arch-rival - the only other boy in the gang who cycled as fast as me — had already set off to tell my parents, but the blood was still pouring out, and I thought of the pictures in Exploits of War, and the films about the war in the Pacific that Papá, Julio and I used to watch on Saturday nights. I’d seen this kind of thing lots of times and I knew exactly what to do; I took off my T-shirt and ripped it along the seam, wrapped it like a tourniquet just above the wound and tightened it using a stick. When I got up, the pain was so bad I thought I was going to pass out, but I didn’t cry because I was more worried about the telling-off I was going to get. Even back then, I never cried, almost never, but I knew my parents would be at the house, and I knew Papá would be the one to come and get me because Mamá didn’t drive.

  ‘Fine. I’ll see you at five o’clock ... Actually, can we make it half five?’

  ‘Half five it is.’

  ‘I’ve got to go, I’m running late ...’

  It was Papá who showed up, and he showed up quickly. When his car pulled on to the bridge, I could hardly breathe, but I saw his face before he got out, and realised he wasn’t angry. He closed the door but didn’t lock it and almost ran over to me, frantic with worry but also compassionate, like Mamá. It was an expression I had never seen on him, nor had I ever heard this quaver in his voice. ‘What happened, hijo?’ He slipped his arm around my shoulder, and kissed me on the forehead. ‘I fell and hurt my leg,’ I said, and in a second he was on his knees examining the wound. ‘What’s this?’ He gestured to my T-shirt. ‘It was bleeding a lot, so I made a tourniquet.’ He stood up and looked at me, smiling. ‘You’re a brave boy, Alvaro,’ he said, and took me in his arms, and suddenly I felt so happy, so proud to be a Carrion, to be his son.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, Angelica, it’s Alvaro.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve been wanting to talk to you. I hope you’re happy!’

  He supported me with his right arm and told me not to put any weight on my leg as we walked back to the car. My friends moved aside to let us pass, all of them looking sympathetically, almost admiringly, at this grown-up who still knew how to behave as if he were one of us, as if we were equals. Having turned fifty-four that winter, my father wasn’t much younger than some of my friends’ grandparents, but he didn’t look his age, and when I told them how old he was it inspired a respect almost akin to fear. They all found it easier to deal with my mother, who was the same age as their mothers and who was very blonde and seemed very gentle. That afternoon, they discovered that Julio Carrion was an extraordinary man, more extraordinary than they might ever have guessed, as he eased me on to the back seat of the car, then climbed into the front and thanked them all for helping his son. After that, they would have walked over hot coals for him.

  ‘Listen, Angelica, I don’t want to argue with you.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid you don’t have much choice, because I can’t think of a word for what you’ve done. Have you any idea the state Mai is in? You’ve destroyed her ... And your son? Did you even stop to think about Miguelito? Honestly, I don’t know how you could ...’

  ‘Remind me, Angelica, weren’t you already sleeping with Adolfo before you left Nacho?’

  As we left the bridge, I asked him where we were going. ‘We’ll go home first,’ he said calmly, ‘let Mamá know you’re all right and get you some clean clothes ... Then we’ll take you to Madrid so we can get that leg stitched up.’ ‘But why don’t we go to the doctor in the village?’ I suggested, eager to minimise my culpability, but he shook his head. ‘No, I don’t trust him. I’d rather take you to a hospital, you’ve only got two legs the last time I checked, and it’s no bother ...’ When we arrived back at the house, my mother rushed out to the car, pulled open the door and showered me with kisses. Then she looked at the wound and started
screaming. ‘Jesus Christ, Angelica!’ My mother was the only person my father scolded that afternoon. ‘Are you trying to scare the lad to death? Go and get him a clean T-shirt and put pyjamas and toothbrushes for both of us in a bag in case we need to spend the night in Madrid.’

  ‘Yes, but Nacho had already left me before, if you remember, he had an affair with that nurse. He walked out and didn’t come back for three months and when he came back ... Oh, it doesn’t matter. It’s not the same, Alvaro.’

  ‘It’s a little bit the same.’

  ‘It’s not remotely the same. My marriage was a fuck-up, it had been over for years and you know it ...’

  He was like that, able to reassure, to inspire confidence. It was almost impossible to get him to change his mind and, that day, Mamá didn’t even try. So I stopped feeling guilty and started to consider what was happening as a kind of adventure, which it was. On the drive to Madrid he only asked me twice if my leg hurt and I lied. ‘Not really,’ I said, and he told me an exciting story, one I’d never heard before and would never hear again, a story that sounded like something out of a film, about Romualdo Sanchez Delgado, who’d played football with us only a couple of weeks ago, in a coma with terrible frostbite, and Papá and his friend Eugenio, both of them waving guns, screaming in Spanish at this German doctor, saying they’d put a bullet in him if he so much as thought about amputating Romualdo’s leg. ‘So you see,’ he said as the tower of the Hospital La Paz came into view, ‘I’m something of an expert in saving people’s legs, and this time, I don’t think I’ll even need to pull a gun.’ I laughed and told him again that it didn’t hurt much, and I was happy, I was proud of him, proud to be his son.

  ‘OK, Angelica. But that doesn’t change the fact that you fell in love with another man and I’ve fallen in love with another woman. Back then it was your life, this time it’s mine. We all make our own decisions.’

  ‘It’s not the same, Alvaro.’

  ‘Maybe not, but I have to say it looks the same to me.’

  ‘He made the tourniquet himself, Doctor, with his T-shirt and a stick he found lying on the ground. What do you think?’ The young doctor smiled at my father then examined the wound. ‘You’re very brave, Alvaro,’ I heard this for the second time that afternoon, ‘it must have hurt a lot.’ I didn’t answer and the doctor turned back to my father. ‘We’ll just give him a little local anaesthetic before I stitch it. He’ll have a scar, but as long as it heals well, he shouldn’t have any problems ...’ My father nodded, still smiling. He wasn’t afraid and that was enough for me not to be afraid. When he’d finished putting on the spectacular bandage, the doctor looked at me gravely and told me that the most important thing was not to put any weight on my leg. ‘I know it’s boring having to lie around during the summer holidays, but it’s the only way.’ After that, Papá taught me how to walk with crutches and I quickly got the hang of it so by the time we went out to the car, I was sure he was going to take me back to Navacerrada. Instead he drove in the opposite direction. We went to a seafood restaurant on the Calle Fuencarral near the Glorieta de Bilbao. I’d only been there once, for my parents’ wedding anniversary, but clearly he went there regularly because the few waiters who weren’t on holiday came over to speak to him. ‘It’s a pleasure to have you back, Don Julio.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, I know so. Anyway, I’m nothing like Julio, it’s not like I used to cheat on Mai, I didn’t go running around after every woman I met. I’m sure you know that because I know she does.’

  ‘Yes. That’s why she’s prepared to forgive you, she wants you to come home. Think about it, Alvaro. Don’t throw your whole life away on a whim.’

  ‘I’m sure you can come up with something for this cycling hero here,’ Papá said when the maître d‘hotel appeared. ‘Certainly,’ said the man, and the dinner we had was magnificent, but although I loved the langoustines, the barnacles, the spider crab, what I loved most about it was being there with my father, eating together as if we were friends. I had never spent so much time alone with him, and I had never thought it would be so easy, that we would find so much to talk about, that we would laugh so much. It was one of the most beautiful nights of my life, certainly the best up to that point, or at least the best I can remember now. It was very late by the time we left the restaurant, and the only light came from the street lamps, but I could see a warm golden glow envelop my father, an impossible halo picking him out against the trees and the buildings, the cars and the passers-by, and this glow enveloped me too, isolating the two of us in a world of our own. I can’t remember it any other way, my father and me, shining together in the deserted city the summer I turned eleven.

  ‘It’s not a whim, and I’m not going back.’

  ‘Well, you’re making a terrible mistake. Because you have a wonderful wife, a wonderful life, Alvaro. You and Mai have always been happy, it was great just seeing the two of you together, and now ...’

  ‘Listen, Angelica, I don’t want to talk about this any more. You don’t know anything about my life and I’m not about to tell you. But I do need to talk to you. It’s about Papá. That’s why I phoned.’

  I’ve never forgotten that glow, which followed us home to the Calle Argensola and sustained me as I waited in the doorway while Papá parked the car. My father helped me put on my pyjamas, tucked me in as though I were still a baby, kissed me goodnight, and slept in the bed next to me just in case the sleeping pills didn’t work and I woke up in the night. The glow did not even disappear as we lay there in the darkness, and suddenly I realised that I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep until I said something: ‘I really love you, Papá.’ ‘Me too, hijo.’ That’s what he said, and happiness stung my eyes, brave boy that I was, but I didn’t cry that night, even then I never cried, I hardly ever cried.

  ‘About Papá? What exactly?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. I’m meeting Rafa at his office at half five, could you come along?’

  ‘OK. But only if you promise to think about what I said.’

  The next morning we were in a good mood. We went out for breakfast, not saying much. We listened to the radio all the way back in the car, and I remember the sun, the wind whipping in through the window, the summer songs we hummed as he drove. When we got back, Mamá took me in her arms and kissed me a million times. Then she put a wicker chair out on the porch with a stool for me to rest my leg on and asked whether I wanted to read or listen to music, was I hungry, was I thirsty, suggested she could play board games with me. I let her spoil me, but returned a smile for every smile her husband gave me, commenting on all this fussing. Two weeks later, Mamá insisted on coming with us to Madrid. She screamed when she saw the scar, a ‘Z’ in the middle of my left calf. Papá laughed. ’Angélica, please, he’s not a little girl. Anyway, when he gets hair on his legs, you won’t even see it.‘ On this point, too, he was right. I was the only one of his sons who looked like him and shortly afterwards my legs were covered with dark downy hair which could hide anything, anything except who I am: the son of Julio Carrion González.

  ‘Angélica, please ... I’m forty years old.’

  ‘Exactly. The age at which everyone makes this kind of mistake.’

  ‘OK, that’s it. I can’t promise anything, but if you want to come, I’ll see you there at half past five.’

  As I hung up, I could feel my leg throbbing. I could feel the scar, its form, the pattern it traced on my skin, the fear, the courage and the old pain, the shrapnel deep inside. I hadn’t thought about it for years. I hadn’t wanted to think about it today, but still my leg throbbed; I could see the glow lighting my way as though it had never dimmed, as though nothing would ever be over. Sitting alone in a bar on the Paseo de la Habana at a table made of some dark wood that Mai could have named without batting an eyelid, I could still see my father sitting opposite me, the huge seafood platter between us, his big smile, his handsome face. I saw my father as he had been that summer
evening, his face framed by a golden halo, and I could see myself as I had been, short and brave, happy to be there with him, to be the son of this extraordinary man. I had not chosen this memory, I hadn’t wanted to dig it out, but I couldn’t take my eyes from his. My memory had chosen to give me back this pain, this love, so real, so powerful that nothing and no one could ever defeat it.

  ‘Can I get another whisky, please? And something to nibble?’

  ‘I’ll bring you the menu.’

  ‘No, I don’t want to eat, just some nachos or something.’

  I loved my father. I loved him, I admired him, I needed him. I hadn’t forgotten him, but I had managed not to think of him when I read my grandmother’s letter, and later, when Raquel talked to me about Julio Carrion González, young and effortlessly charming in victory and defeat, even in the final, calamitous disaster. A liar, a swindler, a traitor, a thief, a conman, an opportunist, a man devoid of morals, emotions or scruples, an evil man. That had been easy, it had been easy to listen, take in each new piece of information, fleshing out the profile of a fictional character, a stranger with a familiar name who was my father, true, and the father of my brothers, my sisters, my mother’s husband, but nothing more. For as long as my love for him was absent, those words, ‘my father’, were simply a label, a meaningless title. Julio Carrion González had been my father, I was his son, his heir, but not his accomplice. Until my memory betrayed me, and words took on their meanings once more.

  ‘Can I get the bill, please?’

  I had learned to love Raquel Fernández Perea in spite of my father’s love. Now I would have to learn to love her in the knowledge of this love and all these lies. Meanwhile, I had begun to break up inside, slowly at first, a small crack in my conscience, the blunders of my imagination, the rage with which I decided to obliterate them. It hadn’t been easy, but it had not been too complicated, until the truth latched on to my arms, and my legs and began to gallop away in every direction. Determined to put myself back together as best I could, I had to accept that my limbs would never be the same again, that my bones would never knit at the same angles and my body would forever drag behind it the consequences of this process, amputated limbs of unequal length, a slight limp, an unending ache, on overcast mornings. Love is capable of anything, and when forced to choose between being left with something or with nothing, everyone would choose something.