‘I didn’t,’ Angelica said
‘Neither did I.’ Rafa walked back to his chair, but the confidence was gone from his voice. ‘I suppose it’s not really that strange. Papá just changed his mind, that’s all.’
‘Of course he did, that was something else he was really good at. He was so attached to having more than one opinion that he never gave up on any of them, he just shifted from one to the other, careful never to get rid of his membership cards in case they would prove useful in the future. He kept them both all his life. I found them in a little velvet pouch. They were with his mother’s letter and a photo of Papá taken in Paris in 1947 with a beautiful woman, Paloma Fernández Muñoz, another relative, she was Grandma Mariana’s second cousin and the great-aunt of the woman I’m seeing, because I’m sure Julio has told you that the woman I’m having a relationship with is our cousin.’
‘But ...’ Rafa was still worried about what I’d said first, ‘Papá never spent any time in ...’
‘... in Paris? Of course he spent time in Paris. He lived there for over two years, from late 1944 until April 1947. When he realised the Germans were going to lose the war, he deserted and, instead of coming back to Spain, he stayed in France. He thought the Allies would invade Spain, topple Franco and restore democracy, everyone thought so at the time. It seemed logical, it was what should have happened. So Papá dusted off his old JSU card, that way he could fit in with the Spanish exiles and go back with them in triumph.’
I stopped and looked from Rafa to Angelica; both were pale and struck dumb.
‘That’s how he met the Fernández family. They were from Madrid, and before the war they spent their summers in Torrelodones. The only surviving son in the family was a communist, but his brother and his brother-in-law - who were both shot near here, at the Cementerio del Este — had both been socialists and had been friends with Grandma Teresa. Ignacio Fernández had known her too, and one night in Paris, he recognised Papá in a café. He brought him home, and the family protected him, fed him, helped him get a job. When Papá decided to go back to Spain in 1947, they asked him whether he would oversee the sale of their lands and properties, because back in Spain they had been rich, but they had had to leave everything behind, when they crossed the border into France. So he agreed to help them, the way they had helped him, and he came back to Spain with powers of attorney signed by them. Then he robbed them of everything they had. Everything.’ I stared at my brother and he held my gaze. ‘They were difficult times, I grant you, but I think we are allowed to judge, Rafa, I think we do have the right to an opinion even if we didn’t live through those times.’
‘Shut up.’ The first time he said it, it was barely a whisper.
‘I don’t feel like shutting up,’ I said, ‘and I don’t think it would be good for you if I did, because there are a lot of things you need to know, and there are things I need to know too. For example, what did Papá tell you about the day Ignacio Fernández came round to our house in May 1977, with his granddaughter Raquel. And how do you think Papá met Grandma Mariana, and Mamá?’
‘Well ...’
‘Shut up, Angelica!’
‘I won’t shut up, Rafa.’ My sister staunchly met his gaze, then turned back to me. ‘Why do you ask? He didn’t really say much about it. He told us he met Grandma Mariana in Torrelodones because she used to spend the summer there, he said he helped her to sell off some of her property that belonged to her family and they split the profits. Then, later on, when she was older, Mamá went to him for help. Grandma Mariana wanted her to stay at home but she wanted a job, and he hired her as his secretary, they started going out together and ... But you know all this, don’t you?’ She was right, I did know this. ‘That’s what he told us. He said that when her family went to France, they left everything to Grandma Mariana, and now they wanted it all back, but they had no right...’
‘Of course,’ I murmured, ‘of course.’
I paused again, and for a moment I wondered whether all this was worth it, whether it would do any good. I was tired and I felt disgusted with myself, sickened by my father, his life, my family, everything. A lot of time had passed, and I had not even known these people. I was about to stop, to get up and say that none of it mattered. I needed to get out of this office, to breathe something other than this stifling air, to go back to Raquel and be with her. And I might have done it if I hadn’t seen my brother’s face, seen the way he was looking at me.
I went on, now, dispassionately.
‘That’s not how it was. Grandma Mariana kept everything for herself because she was the only one of the Fernández family who didn’t leave. When the war started, she was living in an apartment in Arguelles, but the building was destroyed in an explosion. Her uncle suggested she come and live with them near the Glorieta de Bilbao, and she stayed there even after they left. She kept a low profile, made sure that no one tried to take the place from her. A few months before Franco’s troops marched into Madrid, Carlos, her cousin Paloma’s husband, showed up around midnight. He was twenty-eight and a lieutenant in the Republican Army. He walked with a limp, and his right arm was paralysed, he’d been badly injured at the front in late 1936. All he wanted was somewhere to stay, somewhere he could get some sleep, have something to eat. He wasn’t armed, and there was no one else he could turn to, so he asked Mariana if he could stay the night. The next morning, she turned him in. The Falangists showed up and found him in bed, they dragged him out in his pyjamas, and put him in prison. He was charged with military insurrection, sentenced to death and executed — that way Grandma Mariana managed to ingratiate herself with the fascists, so that no one would bother her, and she could keep all these things that had never belonged to her.’ I turned to my sister. ‘So you see, it wasn’t Grandma Teresa who informed on people, it was Grandma Mariana. She thought she was so clever. But she hadn’t reckoned on Papá, Julio Carrion González, who was on his way to becoming a self-made man.’
‘Don’t say things like that, Alvaro ...’ Angelica clicked her tongue irritably. ‘The way you tell the story, you make it sound ... OK, the republicans had property confiscated, but it wasn’t theft, there were laws, judges, courts ... it was ... Well, it was one of the consequences of the war, the circumstances were exceptional. I mean, they weren’t there, they’d left everything behind, they’d given up their property ...’
‘No, Angelica, they hadn’t abandoned their property, they ran for their lives — and they were right to go. The only two men in the family who stayed were put up against a wall and shot.’
‘OK, but ... You can’t just talk as if it happened yesterday ...’ Her expression changed, as though she had finally found the line of reasoning she had been seeking. ‘If what you’ve said is true, what Grandma Mariana did was horrible, that poor man ... But what Papá did was different. He wasn’t a thief, Alvaro, everything he did was legal.’
‘Legal?’
I should have left as soon as I said this, because all the blood in my body had rushed to my face, I felt my ears burning, my throat was dry, my tongue was parched, and everything seemed tinged with orange — this office, the furniture, my brother, my sister, the whole world was on fire.
‘This whole fucking country was illegal, Angelica! Every single thing about it was unlawful, don’t you get that? The laws, the judges, the courts, the whole fucking thing.’
I felt a sudden blow to my back. I turned and saw Rafa, saw in his eyes the flames that were devouring me. ‘Shut up!’ He grabbed the collar of my shirt and I could feel his spittle on my face, his face pressed so close to me that it was as if he was going to kiss me. ‘Shut up, shut up, you fucking bastard, shut up right now.’
‘Get your hands off me.’ I struggled free of him and, perhaps unconsciously, I realised that, although he was bigger than me, I was stronger than him.
He stepped back, but he was still too close, and I could still feel this nameless heat, the flames dazzling now, they seemed to envelop everything, flaring hi
gher, reaching an intensity I could not have imagined.
‘I’m sick of you,’ Rafa went on screaming insults flecked with spittle, ‘I’ve had it up to the back teeth with the spoiled little boy, the brains of the family, Mamá’s little fucking scientist. What the fuck do you know about the real world, Alvarito? What would you know about the price of anything? Fuck all, that’s what. You’re like a parasite, forever sponging off Papá, you were happy to spend his money, and now you come here with all this shit ...’ He paused for a moment and gave a bitter laugh, his face a rictus of contempt. ‘And the worst of it is he did more for you than he did for any of us, you were always his favourite, Papá’s little boy. “Álvaro is the brains of the family,” he used to say, “Álvaro is the best of you, he’s the only one like me.” You ungrateful bastard! Don’t you get it? Papá didn’t want you to suffer the things he suffered ... He didn’t want you to have to grow up penniless, and Jesus Christ, he knew what it was to be poor. You have no idea, Alvaro ... Did you ever wonder how much rent Papá shelled out for your apartment in Boston? I was the one who had to go to the bank to set up the standing order you got every month. Because poor little Alvaro couldn’t get a job like everyone else after university, oh no, he had to do a doctoral thesis, and then another one, because he got a grant so it was really important. Only proper scientists get to go there. But he couldn’t live in halls like everyone else. Oh no, poor Alvarito had to have his own apartment, and Papá had to pay for it...’
My blood was pumping so fast it felt as if my veins were about to collapse.
‘That’s not true, Rafa. I did my first thesis with a scholarship from the university, and by the time I went to Boston, I was a professor and I’d been earning a salary for four years.’
‘Oh yes, your salary! I’m sorry, I forgot.’ He laughed again. ‘You get a state subsidy, Alvaro, as if you were a motorway ... You’d prefer to think it was that instead of thinking it was Papá’s money. That way you can be pure and good and enlightened, that way Alvaro can concentrate on important things and all the little immigrant kids from San Sebastián de los Reyes get to enjoy the fruits of capitalism once a month pissing about in your fucking museum: “Why does the ramp thing go down? Why does that light go out? Why is it moving more slowly now?’”
‘Shut up, Rafa!’ I launched myself at him, grabbed the lapel of his jacket in both hands. ‘You should be ashamed, talking like that, I’m ashamed to listen to you. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Oh, look,’ still mimicking a high-pitched voice, his eyes wide in feigned astonishment, ‘the earth is going round and round.’
‘Shut the fuck up.’ Then suddenly I found myself saying what I had long thought. ‘You’re the lowest of the low, do you know that? You’re contemptible, Rafa. You disgust me. You’re proud of being what you are, an animal. You’re ignorant and you’re happy knowing nothing, you wish everyone was like you, you want people to live without ever wondering why things happen ... You’re worse than Papá.’
‘Get your hands off me, Alvaro.’
‘Much worse, you’re harder, more cynical ... And it’s different for you, because you had the choice.’ I relaxed my grip. ‘You represent everything I despise in this world, you and people like you ...’
‘Let go of me!’
I let go, and he punched me. He swung hard and hit my right eye, but I didn’t feel anything, because by now my body was filled with violence, power, anger. I took the blow and ran at him like an enraged bull. He fell and I hurled myself on top of him, lashing out with both fists, so focused that there was nothing he could do to defend himself. He covered his face with his hands but I went on hitting him, one two, one two, his head juddering from side to side as the blows rained down, and I felt the sinister thrill of my strength, his weakness, the insatiable desire to keep hitting him and never stop.
‘Álvaro, please ... for God’s sake.’
My sister’s voice brought me back from that distant place. I heard Angelica screaming, saw her fall to her knees beside me. She was crying now, tugging at my sleeve, I could hear her, feel the pressure of her fingers, but I didn’t look at her. I couldn’t, because I could not take my eyes from Rafa, lying there under me, his face covered in blood, his arms lying lifeless by his sides. There was blood on my hands, I could feel an ache in my knuckles, but there was nothing more. Suddenly all the confusion, the anger, the emotion vanished and I found myself alone with my own version of horror. It had been more than twenty years since I’d been in a fight, and I had never hit anyone the way I hit Rafa.
‘I knew it.’
Then I heard someone come up behind me, grip me under the arms, and haul me off Rafa.
‘I told you, Alvaro, I knew this would happen, I know him a lot better than you do ...’
It was Julio. As soon as we had started yelling, the secretary had opened the door and was so terrified by what she saw that she had rushed off to find him. Now here he was, his arm still holding me in a bear hug. Rafa struggled to sit up, brought his hands to his face and howled in pain. ‘You’ve broken my fucking nose, you bastard!’ His voice was thick and slurred.
‘Let me have a look ...’ Angelica touched his face gingerly, ignoring his protests. ‘No ... I don’t think it’s broken, but it’s very swollen. We’ll have to put something on it. Come on, get up, here, let me help you.’ She tried but she could not move him. ‘Julio, give me a hand.’
They each took one arm and pulled Rafa to his feet. I watched, like an innocent bystander looking at the pain someone else had caused.
‘I’m taking you to the hospital, Rafa, you need to be checked over. That cut on your lip is going to need stitches, and your eyebrow too, but it’s nothing serious, there are no broken bones, so there’s no need to worry ...’ For the first time in my life, I was grateful for my sister’s punctilious, overbearing character. ‘But first I need to clean up your face, let’s go to the bathroom, Julio, you come with us ...’ Then she turned to me. ‘Don’t go anywhere, Alvaro, please ... I want to talk to you.’
Julio turned to me as though he’d forgotten I was still there and before I could follow them, he came over, put his hand on my head and kissed me on the cheek. He didn’t say anything, he just walked away, leaving me alone in this vast office where it had all started, Papá and Raquel, truth and lies. My sister quickly reappeared.
‘Alvaro ...’
I was expecting her to read me the Riot Act and I was prepared to accept it, because I deserved it. Rafa had hit me first, but I didn’t just hit him back, I had lost control. As she said my name, however, wiping her hands on a paper towel, I sensed in her voice a nervous tremor of confession.
‘Álvaro, I just wanted to say ...’ She twisted the paper towel in her hands, staring at it as though it demanded all her attention, but then she had a better idea. ‘Here, let me take a look at that eye first.’
She came over to me and wiped my face with a clean corner of a tissue, then touched it gently.
‘It’s fine,’ she said, ‘you’ll have a black eye, but there’s no bleeding ... Álvaro, I want to ask you a favour, all those things you told us about Papá, about Grandma ... well, I realise how important it is to you, honestly, I do, but ... Maybe you don’t understand, I know he wouldn’t understand but I’d really rather Adolfo didn’t find out, I’d be grateful if you didn’t say anything, because ...’ By now the paper tissue was a sodden mass and she balled it into her fist. ‘A lot of time has passed and Adolfo, well, he still thinks about his grandfather a lot, he’s obsessed with him, and it wouldn’t do him any good to know ...’
She finally looked at me, and what she saw in my eyes spurred her on. A moment earlier, I had felt no more solid than the paper towel she had just ripped to shreds, but now I could feel a warmth coursing through my body and a sudden, mysterious serenity.
‘Go to hell, Angelica.’
I said it calmly, without raising my voice, then I turned and walked out.
When Mariv
í buzzed through to say someone had arrived to discuss the letter she had sent to Julio Carrión’s widow, Raquel Fernández Perea was so nervous she felt sick, but she composed herself quickly, as though her visitor was already sitting on the other side of the desk. She picked up the phone and quickly dialled an extension number.
‘Aunt Angelica is here. She’s here.’
‘But,’ Paco Molinero hesitated only for a second, ‘surely she should have phoned to make an appointment?’
‘She should have, but she’s clearly decided just to show up. It can’t be a good sign.’
‘Why do you think that? Don’t worry, Raquel, I’m sure everything will be fine.’
But it was Alvaro Carrion Otero and not his mother who was knocking on the door of her office.
‘She’s here. I’ve got to go ...’
‘Good luck.’
When she had left the solicitor’s office, the proud owner of a luxury apartment she had no intention of ever living in, Raquel had already sensed that Julio Carrion would not survive his heart attack. She knew that there was a good chance her second visit had been the death of this man, but although she found it hard to believe, she didn’t care. If he had spent fifty years without feeling so much as a shred of guilt, she was not about to start feeling guilty now. On the contrary, it would have been a fitting, even a happy, ending to her grandfather’s story were it not for the fact that Carrión’s death would put paid to her plans.
Dead dogs don’t bite. As the man who should have been her victim lay dying, Raquel often thought of this expression, which she had heard so often in Paris in every Spanish accent possible after Franco died, as her family dragged her to visit hundreds of friends, and each time there would be a glass of champagne, a slice of tortilla, and always the same toast: ‘Muerto el perro, se acabó la rabia’. But it was not true, and she felt a rage well within her at the thought that Julio Carrion was going to win again, though it would cost him his life. Just the thought of it made her angry, but her anger provided the solution. When she realised that the anger she felt was not her, but a passion she had inherited from her grandfather, it reminded her that while neither sin nor blame can be inherited, debts can be. Working as she did for a bank, it was something she knew better than anyone.
The Frozen Heart Page 89