The Frozen Heart

by Almudena Grandes

  She had been so sure that this was what would happen that she had actually wanted it to. As she paid for the pills she worked out that she hadn’t slept with anyone since 31 December when Berta had taken her to a party where’d she’d met an actor who she’d fancied at the time, though not afterwards. Since then, her campaign of resistance, the negotiations with Sebastián López Parra, meeting Julio Carrion González again, her grandmother’s secrets, her visits to the Grupo Carrion and everything had kept her too busy for sex. Even so, Paco’s lack of interest was a nudge from fate, because if she had spent the night with him, she would not have been able to get rid of him until Monday morning, and she preferred to work alone. Now that the fear and the worry were over, she trusted her own abilities more than she trusted anyone else. She did what she needed to do and she did it well. She did not need to call on anyone’s help, except for her brother Ignacio, who explained to her the following day that the small white pills you put under your tongue were called Sustac, and were to prevent heart attacks, and that the big white ones were probably statins for lowering cholesterol.

  ‘Do you want to see them?’ her grandmother asked, taking a pillbox out of her bag. ‘You can keep them if you want, I’ve got a whole pharmacy back at the house, but I don’t know what you’d want them for ...’

  ‘Nothing, I was just curious,’ she said, slipping the box back into her grandmother’s bag, having pocketed three pills.

  The following morning, she bought a small silver pillbox with a scuffed lid similar to the one she had seen Julio Carrion tip out on the desk at their last meeting and a silver retracting pencil like the one she had seen in the pocket of his jacket. She also went on the most extravagant spending spree of her life, buying expensive cheese, foie gras, olives and crackers, chocolates, a bottle of whisky and a bottle of gin, Coke, tonic water, napkins ... She had toiletries at the apartment on the Calle Jorge Juan but she took them home with her, since it would be more convincing to keep the new stuff and put her old half-used ones in the apartment. Her only concession to thrift was to stop by the Chinese supermarket on the corner, where she bought some glasses, some plates and cutlery more cheaply than she could in Salamanca. She bought a DVD player there too, since Operation Bachelor Pad was already costing her a fortune, although she knew that sooner or later she would sell the apartment and make her money back. She also happened on votive candles in plastic containers that seemed ready made to place around the Jacuzzi.

  On Sunday afternoon, with all the white goods working, ice in the fridge, the bed made and the ashtrays dirtied, she poured herself a drink, undressed, ran a bath, placed the candles around it, then slipped into the water with the dildo. ‘If you’re not planning on using it, you’ll need to wash it a couple of times to get rid of the new smell,’ Paco had advised her. She didn’t use it, but she let it soak for half an hour, until the candles had burned down halfway, then she blew them out one by one as if it were her birthday, and congratulated herself. She was certain she had made no mistakes, but she checked everything one last time before she left.

  The following morning, Paco Molinero dropped by.

  How are you?’

  ‘Good,’ she assured him, but seeing his face she corrected herself. ‘Not as good as you, but quite good. I’m a bit nervous.’

  ‘Do you want to have lunch?’ He did not give her an update on his weekend.

  ‘I can’t, I’m having lunch with Alvaro Carrion.’

  He looked surprised. ‘I didn’t know you’d be having lunch together.’

  ‘Nor does he,’ she laughed, ‘but I thought it would be a nice touch. I can hardly tell him I was his father’s mistress just like that, and besides, if we have lunch I might be able to get some information out of him.’

  ‘OK, well, call me and let me know how it goes.’

  That morning, she had tried on half her wardrobe before settling on a dress. She did her make-up just before leaving, and did not bother to wonder why she had not got back to Sebastián, who had phoned on Saturday. When she saw Alvaro, still wearing jeans, on the far side of the glass door, she smiled without having to think about it, and everything else flowed just as easily. She hadn’t planned on calling him by his first name, but as she walked up to him, she decided she could hardly call him Señor Carrion. This was the last conscious decision she made before taking the key to the Calle Jorge Juan apartment from her bag and placing it on the table.

  Leaving the restaurant, she should have realised that it had been years since she had been so attracted to a man, but she was no longer thinking straight. She was worried that her legs would not carry her home; when she got there, she shut herself in the bedroom, closed the blinds, threw herself on the bed and laughed. She wanted to laugh, she didn’t want to think about what had happened. She did nothing else until the phone rang.

  ‘What happened?’ Paco sounded panicked. It was 6.15 p.m. ‘You didn’t call me.’

  ‘No ... I just forgot.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Very bad. And very good.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Raquel sat down, took a deep breath and attempted to adopt a serious tone.

  ‘Álvaro Carrion is a physicist.’

  ‘A physicist?’ Paco sounded confused. ‘You mean his father’s a multimillionaire, and he’s a scientist?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.’

  ‘I know.’ Raquel understood her colleague’s reaction. ‘His older brothers both work for their father’s company, all very dynastic, but not him. He’s a professor at the university. He has nothing to do with the family business, so I couldn’t get any information out of him. And he didn’t take it badly when I told him his father and I were lovers, actually he didn’t react at all. And he seems to be a bit of a liberal. I was pretty lucky on that score.’

  ‘And on the other?’

  ‘What other?’ She was confused now.

  ‘What do you think? The money?’

  ‘Oh, that ... I’ve no idea. I’ll have to play it cool, see what side he’s on. For the moment, he doesn’t seem upset or offended, he didn’t call me a slut or accuse me of lying. He kept the key, so I’m fairly sure he’ll go round to the flat.’

  ‘I hope so, that’s what we’re counting on. But I don’t understand ... Why didn’t you just tell me it went well?’

  ‘Um ... because it was fun, a lot of fun.’

  ‘Jesus, Raquel,’ Paco’s surprise quickly turned to impatience, ‘you didn’t go to lunch with the guy to have fun.’

  ‘No, you’re right, but what can you do? I had fun.’

  She could not think of any other way of explaining it and she spent the rest of the evening imagining Alvaro Carrion falling into the traps she had set for him, a pastime that both amused and excited her. She had thought she was completely in control, but forty-eight hours later, she was already lost.

  Rafael Carrion Otero called her on Wednesday, 6 April, to inform her that Alvaro was not president of the Grupo Carrion. Before she had time to digest this news, he told her that he was taking over responsibility for the investments, that he was very busy and that he would like to meet with her the following morning, because in the afternoon all of the heirs were getting together, he would therefore be grateful if she would put together all the necessary documents because he intended to liquidate all the stocks and investments at his mother’s request.

  ‘Nothing you can say is going to change my mind,’ he said in conclusion, so Raquel did not even try. Goodbye, investments, she thought, good riddance. Paco Molinero agreed with her.

  She did not much care for Álvaro’s older brother. He was so unlike Alvaro that she made no attempt to keep him any longer than was absolutely necessary. He was tall and thin, but had a beer belly, his shoulders were stooped, and his blond hair was so thin and sparse that he would have been better getting rid of it altogether. Otherwise, he was arrogant, condescending and so abrasive it was as thoug
h he intended to be rude.

  ‘I thought that some young man was dealing with my father’s investments — Aguado,’ he said as he was about to sign.

  ‘He was. But he’s been working on a rather delicate project these past few months, so he asked me to take care of ...’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’ He signed before Raquel had even finished speaking.

  As he said goodbye, Raquel realised that he was looking at her as though she were a piece of furniture. At the time, she did not think about it, but she was reminded of his expression a week later when she compared it to the focused, smiling, slightly worried face of his brother as he sat across the table from her in the Japanese restaurant.

  She had been expecting Álvaro to call her to return the key, but aside from buying a short dress with a plunging neckline and a pink jacket which admirably highlighted what it appeared to conceal, she had prepared no strategy, no new offensive for their next meeting.

  If someone had shown her the scene two weeks earlier, if she had been able to see herself, hear what she was saying, she would have laughed and said, ‘It’s ridiculous, he’s the last man in the world I’d consider sleeping with.’ But Alvaro Carrion Otero knew how to look at her, he was funny, he was charming as he struggled to find the right words so as not to hurt her, he was touching when he told her he had packed up all the stuff in the apartment so his brothers and his mother wouldn’t find out, and he was disarming when he lowered his voice to a whisper and stared into her eyes and asked her whether she had loved his father. It had been years since she had felt such electricity in her body, and he could set it off so easily that, by dessert, she was already thinking about the worst possible plan the world had to offer.

  He was thinking the same thing, she could tell, and that evening, this gave her pause. But even as she glanced at her watch, pretending to be worried about how late it was, muttering about some early morning meeting, already she was no longer sure of anything. That evening, Alvaro Carrion Otero had been himself, not a ghost, not the shadow of his father, and Raquel Fernández Perea could no longer use her Aunt Paloma’s fragility to mask her own vulnerability. She had managed to brush him off, gently, wordlessly, burning no bridges, and she was certain she had done the right thing. She didn’t want to think about the fact that never in her life had she wanted to sleep with someone as much as she did with him. When she got home, she was so depressed that she did not even have the energy to lay into herself for being such a fool.

  As she fell sleep, she tried to absolve herself of her sins. It doesn’t matter, I’ll get over it. When she got up the next day, she consoled herself with the same words. But it did matter, and she did not get over it. The days passed, and her conviction that she would get over it began to dissolve in the acid of her unsatisfied desire, to which she offered an antidote.

  So what? So I sleep with him? I’m not about to tell him anything and it’s not like anyone in my family will ever find out ... This first small dose was so exhilarating that she began to take the antidote by the spoonful: It would only be a one-off, anyway, he’s married, it would just be an affair ... until she realised it was easiest to drink straight from the bottle. It’s not as if I’m going to get addicted, is it? I’m past that stage ... I mean, it should just be a quick fuck, and that’s it done, it’s not like it would happen again ... Actually, it’s much better to sleep with him and get it out of my system instead of mooning round for the rest of my life thinking he might have been the one, I mean, obviously he’s not, how could he be, I mean, what are the chances that one of Carrión’s sons would turn out to be The One? It’s ridiculous ... I don’t know anything about him, about his life, I can’t just ... The easiest thing would be if he knocked me back, that way it would be over and done with ... I’ll call him, tell him I have a couple of thing belonging to his father, though he might ask me to send them by courier, I mean, that’s what they’re there for ...

  Raquel Fernández Perea would never know that on 4 April 1947, as he stepped off the train at the Gare du Nord in Paris, Julio Carrion González had had a similar conversation with himself, although the outcome had been very different. And yet she realised that, whatever else might happen, Alvaro had saved her, because it was only after that dinner, when he had begun to be himself, that Raquel had realised she was dealing with a man, a delicate, defenceless creature of flesh and blood as innocent of the guilt of the ghost he resembled as Paloma had been the moment Julio betrayed her. Álvaro’s words, his smiles, his looks convinced her that she was not dealing with his father, but with him. And the more she thought, the more she shuddered, and things began to fall apart, her plans, her ambitions, her desire for revenge.

  ‘I didn’t say anything about the money.’ The morning after her dinner with Alvaro, Paco Molinero reacted to her news with a stunned silence. ‘It just wasn’t the right moment. Anyway ... It doesn’t matter, I don’t care any more, I honestly don’t care. I’m starting to think the whole thing was a mistake. I think a lot about my grandfather, you know? I think he would have wanted it this way, and I’m starting to understand him, to understand his reasons ...’

  Paco was unconvinced.

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t care about a million euros, Raquel? It’s impossible, nobody just loses interest in a million euros.

  At that moment, Raquel realised they were no longer a team, more like two radio stations on different frequencies. It was her fault, because she had not told him the truth. This was why Paco didn’t understand, he couldn’t.

  ‘You’re hiding something,’ he said a couple of days later. ‘There’s something going on. What did I just say to you?’

  ‘Um?’ He can tell, Raquel thought, he can see it, this is terrible because it means we won’t be able to work together. ‘I don’t know, I didn’t catch it. Something about the cement works?’

  ‘You see?’

  ‘There’s nothing going on ... I’m just a bit preoccupied ...’

  A chaos pendulum had appeared in her life.

  A week after they had sushi together, Raquel Fernández Perea called Álvaro Carrion Otero and suggested they meet the following day. He did not say no, but Raquel had forgotten that she was supposed to be spending the afternoon with Berta.

  ‘I thought you said Jaime was an insufferable egotist who never talked about anything except himself.’ Berta rattled this off before she even said hello.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Raquel was surprised to see her friend show up at her place at 5.50 p.m.

  ‘You’re wearing your lucky skirt.’

  Raquel looked down and saw that she was wearing the skirt with the small yellow flowers, her favourite, the one she called her lucky skirt because it suited her. But that did not explain why Berta was here or why she was talking about some actor Raquel had slept with on New Year’s Eve.

  ‘So, I’m wearing my favourite skirt ... That doesn’t mean ...’ Then she remembered. ‘Oh God, we’re supposed to be going to the theatre to see Jaime tonight.’ She clapped both hands to her face. ‘Jesus, Berta!’

  ‘You forgot?’

  ‘Yes ... I don’t know, lately I’ve been all over the place.’

  ‘You’re meeting someone.’

  ‘Yes.’ Raquel looked at Berta and laughed. ‘Listen, I’m meeting him at a quarter past six, why don’t you come down with me and I’ll introduce you. We’re going to an exhibition about black holes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Black holes,’ Raquel laughed again, ‘outer space, you know ... He’s a physicist — science, levers, pulleys, forces, all that ... He’s the one organising the exhibition.’

  Now it was Berta’s turn to laugh.

  ‘And you fancy him?’

  ‘Something rotten ...’

  Later, fate, in the form of an ugly little girl who couldn’t work out some contraption with water jets and levers, provided Raquel with a moment to think. As Álvaro was explaining the machine to the girl, Raquel felt two intense but contradictory urges.
Either I kiss him right now, she thought, or I get the hell out of here. There was a third possibility — she could tell him the whole story — but she immediately discarded this one. Nor did she want to run away, so she decided to trust the intuition that had so dazzled her the last time she had seen him. Álvaro was not upset to be told that he was nothing like his father, and he agreed with her that it was probably best if they didn’t talk about him. This would have been the moment to show her cards, to tell him some part of the truth. ‘The first thing my Grandfather Ignacio did after he slept with my grandmother Anita was to teach her how to read and write.’ She composed this sentence in her head, but she knew that Alvaro was Spanish too, he was well used to mysteries and silences, and she wasn’t lying to him any more. It was true that at school there had been a science test in which they were shown two almost identical drawings of housewives hoovering and that one of them was holding the handle much higher than the other, that she had made a mistake which had cost her a good mark in science. Álvaro knew the right answer, of course, he was a good teacher and she genuinely liked him, liked him so much she wanted to sleep with him, after all, it was just a fuck, an affair, nothing important. But inside the gift-wrapped box he placed on the table before dinner were two pendulums, a classic, ordinary pendulum that swung predictably over and back, over and back, and a second pendulum that was chaotic, unpredictable, yet they moved in harmony, and in all eternity, even with an infinite number of decimal places, it would have been impossible to predict what happened to Raquel Fernandez Perea that night.

  ‘Are you mad?’ Berta looked at her, astonished.

  By the time Raquel told Berta, but only Berta, the whole truth, she was already in so deep she did not even know what madness might mean.

  She had told nobody until now, she did not even want to think about it, did not want to gauge the dimensions of this trap in which she felt so comfortable, so happy. When she was alone, she preferred to imagine a different scenario, a Saturday morning, light spilling in through the balcony widows, Álvaro in the kitchen in his pyjamas as she came back from the market carrying bunches of flowers that she arranged in crystal vases. This was what she preferred to imagine, but the night before, the three of them had had dinner and Raquel had pretended to feel ill in order to stop Alvaro and Berta talking. But she knew that Berta had not been fooled. She could have phoned her, made something up, she could have said she and Alvaro had had a row before they came out or that the story he was telling was so touching it had made her cry. She could have told Berta anything, but time had passed, barely three months in ordinary time, but to her they felt like a lifetime. The night before, when he was talking about himself, Alvaro had been talking about her too, because it was bound to happen some day, and some day she would have to tell somebody the truth. She had decided to start with Berta.