The Frozen Heart (100 page)

‘Hello?’

‘Hi, Mai, it’s Álvaro ...’

‘I do still recognise your voice.’

‘How’s Miguel?’

‘He’s fine, he’s been asking for you.’

‘I’d like to see him.’

‘OK, we’ll talk about it...’

‘Of course, but I was thinking ...’

Until then, everything was fine. Until then, I had managed to accomplish what I’d set out to do: to accept the harshness in her voice calmly, speak in short sentences, avoid any aggression or intimacy that might be misunderstood. Until then, everything had gone well, but I was a lot drunker than I thought I was, I got bogged down, and Mai took advantage of my hesitation.

‘Well, don’t think, Alvaro. You didn’t think when you walked out on us, so don’t start now. You’ll get to see Miguelito when the judge decides you can.’

‘I don’t think it needs to come to that, Mai ...’ I heard my voice, it was slurred and thick, so I made an effort to speak more clearly. ‘We should be able to deal with this like ...’

 

‘... like civilised people? Fuck you, Álvaro!’

I thought she had hung up, but I could hear her breathing on the other end of the line, agitated at first, like an echo of her anger, her bitterness, and I nearly said I was sorry, and it would have been true. I was sorry I had hurt her, she was one more body I had to carry on my shoulders. I almost said I was sorry, but she exploded just in time, sparing me the insults my compassion would have deserved.

‘I don’t want to be civilised, do you hear me? You’ve destroyed me. You’re a bastard and a liar and I don’t deserve this, Alvaro, I don’t deserve this. I loved you, Alvaro. Now all I want is for you to die, I want you to rot in hell with that fucking b ...’ I heard her sobs begin, then end, silence. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’ve spent my whole life criticising women who ... I’m sorry, honestly. I’m in a bad way.’

‘It’s OK.’ I preferred the slight moral superiority conferred on me by her insults, but I made no attempt to take advantage of this ceasefire, I couldn’t do it, I was too drunk, and in too much pain. ‘I need to come over, Mai. I need to get some things.’

‘OK. But I’d rather not see you, so ... Tomorrow morning first thing, when Miguelito wakes up, we’re going to the mountains for the weekend. You can come by any time after eleven. The sooner you take away all your things the better.’

‘I’ll call you on Monday, to see how Miguelito is ...’

‘OK.’

The conversation hadn’t lasted more than two or three minutes, but by the time I finished I was exhausted. I finished my drink, not thinking of the consequences, then went to the bathroom to splash water on my face. When I emerged I bumped into the wall, but that didn’t hurt nearly as much as the look I got from Raquel, who was sitting on an armchair, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees.

The love of my life was looking at me like a convict hoping for parole. It pained me, Her anguish pained me, and I was struck by the discrepancy between this scene and the scene as Mai must have imagined it: violins and plump blonde cherubs with fake wings, flowers falling from the ceiling and a faint, coloured spotlight picking out a couple dancing and whirling and smiling and kissing. This was probably what Mai was imagining, and it was the dream I should have been living, the most saccharine, pathetic love story, the best moment of my life. I still remembered when I was happy, when the sun split the stones from pure pleasure when Raquel laughed, the smiles that were an intimation of some small private joy, the way she told me she was happy to be with me, of celebrating my presence in her life. She was still the same woman, but her presence was not enough any more for me to be that man.

‘Does it hurt?’ Raquel indicated her own eye and I made a vague face, as though I didn’t care. ‘Do you want to take something? I think I’ve got some ibuprofen somewhere.’

‘No.’ I almost told her I was grateful for the pain, because it kept me conscious.

I collapsed on the sofa and tried to work out how long my hangover would last, the depth of the quagmire of silence we were trapped in. Raquel tiptoed around me with every word, every look, every caress. She had known things would turn out like this, she’d known from the very beginning.

‘Come over here, beside me ...’ I said.

There were no violins, no flowers raining down from the ceiling, no chubby blonde cherubs fluttering around our heads. The only light came from three sixty-watt bulbs, but still Raquel came and sat beside me, took me in her arms, pressed her face into my neck, and I kissed her the way I usually kissed my son.

‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t feel up to it, Raquel, I don’t want to talk about it ... I’d rather wait and tell you everything together when it’s all over.’

‘What do you mean, Alvaro?’ There was a tremor in her voice.

‘It’s not you ...’ I said. ‘What I mean is ... I’m here, I’m with you, Raquel, I’ve had too much to drink and I just want a bit of peace. I’ve had it up to here with meaningful conversations, do you understand what I’m saying? I’m tired of secrets and guilt and tears. I can’t stand it any more, I can’t keep doing this ...’

‘All right,’ she said in a whisper.

‘Do you want to go out?’ she suggested after a long silence; all our silences seemed to be long now. ‘We could go to the cinema. It might take your mind off things.’

‘I’ve already been.’

‘Really?’ She looked at me, surprised. ‘When?’

‘Three o’clock, something like that, I’m not sure ... When I left Julio, I wasn’t hungry. It was hot out, I had two hours to kill before meeting Rafa and I didn’t know where to go, so I went to the cinema.’

‘What did you see?’

‘I don’t know ...’ This was true. ‘I don’t remember. I left before the end.’

‘You didn’t have any lunch?’ I shook my head. ‘Well, let me make you some dinner.’

I could almost hear the bells ringing out, celebrating her relief, my relief, that one of us had finally found something to do. Raquel was a good cook, though she always made too much, but tonight I was glad of the excess. I needed to eat, more than that I needed the domestic warmth of this scene, needed to hear her talk about spinach, fish, potatoes.

‘It doesn’t look as if it was frozen, does it? The sea bass, I mean ...’ I nodded and went on eating. ‘It’s because of the mayonnaise, the mayonnaise you buy in supermarkets ruins everything, it gives everything this artificial flavour, like it somehow manages to transfer all the artificial flavourings and preservatives to the fish or the vegetables. It only takes a few minutes to make fresh mayonnaise and there’s no comparison. I can kind of understand instant mashed potato, because ...’ She fell silent, looked at me, and bit her lower lip. ‘I’m burbling ...’

‘No. Go on ... what were you going to say about instant mashed potato?’

‘Are you really interested?’

‘No, but I like listening to you.’

‘Like rain ...’

‘Yes, I love listening to the rain too ...’

And it went on raining, it rained for a long time, it rained all night about mashed potato and artichokes, about tortillas with potatoes that were too hard and potatoes that were too soft, with or without onion, about the advantages and disadvantages of cook-books ancient and modern, the miraculous status of chocolate, the disaster that was Raquel Fernández Perea’s first dessert, when she was seventeen, and her
Sachertorte,
which was better than any you could buy in Vienna.

Raquel’s voice trickled like warm, gentle rain, over truths and uncertainties. It rained all night, this strange night when all our secrets were used up, our guilt, and our tears, and all that remained was silence, the subtle but implacable force of its blade. I was drunk but Raquel went on talking, her voice raining over me, over the aspirin she brought me before collapsing into bed next to me, raining over my eyelids, my body, her body, it rained on into our long, deep sleep. It rained, and then a sunny Saturday dawned, a morning that seemed made for sex and indolence. The sheets were warm, the blinds half open, and Raquel was naked, her skin golden, soft, there were no flaws on the soft skin of her belly, her magnificent breasts, her hips that were capable of driving the planet from its orbit.

‘I have to go,’ I said eventually.

‘Where?’

‘To see my mother.’

‘Don’t go, Alvaro.’

She clutched my hand, squeezed it as though determined not to let go.

‘Don’t go,’ she said again, still gripping my hand. ‘What good will it do? You already know all there is to know, and it’s true, I swear, everything I told you is true. Leave it, Alvaro, please, I’ve already made enough mistakes for both of us ...’

I shifted closer to her, kissed her on the lips, then freed my hand from hers, and started to get dressed.

That morning I went to see my mother for me, but for her too, so I could buy her the sun of other Saturdays, so I could see her come through the door with shopping bags and flowers, so I could buy her crystal vases to put them in. So that she could live with me, I could live with her, and not just pretend to live.

I walked to the Calle Hortaleza and got there at about 10.40 a.m., but I buzzed first to make sure no one was home. Mai had tidied the house before she left, but as I stepped into the bedroom, I tripped on a little yellow cement mixer with plastic wheels hidden in the doorway. I put it back where it belonged and went inside, and saw the large suitcase on the bed.

A closed suitcase can be as heartbreaking as a dream that has died, stripped of the hope it contains when it lies open on the bed. I opened the suitcase and looked at the impeccable geometry of my neatly folded shirts, incongruous in their perfection, Mai’s hands folding them, always the same way, a hundred times, Mai’s hands folding them last night or maybe even this morning, a single image with diametrically different meanings. I had prepared myself for this, I had steeled myself to face it because happiness is priceless. As is grief. And as I looked through them, carefully lifting each one so as not to disturb their perfect order, I realised that what I needed was not in here.

My one grey suit, the one I wore to my viva examination, to conferences, was still hanging in the empty wardrobe, together with a white shirt, the tie I usually wore tucked into the breast pocket. I hadn’t worn it for more than a year. ‘Álvaro,
hijo,
you could have worn a tie ...’ The day we buried my father, the day we met with the lawyer, and before that banquets, commemorations, birthdays: ‘Álvaro,
hijo,
you could have worn a tie ...’ ‘I know, but I forgot ... didn’t think of it, you’re right, sorry, Mamá ...’

I’ll wear a tie today, Mamá. As I stepped out of the shower, I wondered whether it was worth it, but it didn’t matter any more. Methodically, reluctantly, I put on my suit, the way I used to when I was nine, ten, eleven and had to go up on stage at school to collect my prize for mental arithmetic. That Saturday morning, looking at myself in the mirror, my right eye already purple, I thought about Julio, Rafa, Angelica, just as I had the night before. We’d never resembled each other less.

 

‘For fuck’s sake, Alvaro, you could have warned me! All hell is breaking loose, and of course everyone assumes I knew all along ...’

My brother Julio came up to me, smiling, but before he finished the sentence, he frowned and took me by the shoulders.

‘You look like shit,’ he whispered. ‘What’s going on?’

When Raquel told me that she had never slept with my father, I hadn’t thought about the rest of them. It was not just that this truth was brutal, squalid, bitter; it was my truth. It was my love at stake, my life. It had been an implosion, a subdued, silent blast detonated by men and women who were long dead, leaving everything in ruins, like a building suddenly disappearing in a cloud of dust. This was how I saw things, and it concerned only me, it had only ever concerned me, from the moment my mother sent her good son to that meeting where it had all begun. It was pure coincidence, a chain of trivial, insignificant events, a series of accidents utterly unrelated to each other except for the unfortunate fact that I was always present. Raquel had nothing to do with anyone but me, she was mine and mine alone.

When she told me she’d never slept with my father, I didn’t think about the rest of them. The truth had scorched the earth around me, razed it like a spring frost, leaving me alone, with no one behind me, only the faint form of Raquel, curled into a ball, somewhere on the distant horizon, And yet, beyond this shadow, they had still been there, my mother, my brothers and sisters, those cut-out faces on the family tree that hung in the living room at La Moraleja. My mother had been obsessed with arts and crafts, something that, at one point, had taken up all her free time. There was restoring old furniture, then needlepoint, paintings, napkins, towels and baby blankets, carefully embroidered with her grandchildren’s names. My son’s bedroom was filled with the fruits of his grandmother’s hobbies. At one point, she had become interested in genealogy and had drawn up dozens of family trees, for her children, her sons- and daughters-in-laws, her friends. The largest of them she had kept, painting the branches and the leaves with the skill of a miniaturist in special metallic paint. There we all were, our little heads carefully cut out, forming an intricate design. The tree was moderately leafy at the crown, choked in the middle, with a profusion of lower branches, a gap here, a gap there, then suddenly the Carrion Otero family, my parents, my brothers and sisters, each detail mapping out the highs and lows of marriage, births, more births, then at last a death which would never remove the embarrassing smile from the board it was stuck to.

That morning, Raquel had gone to work, leaving me alone on the threshold of what would be the rest of my life. I sat at the kitchen table and had a coffee, and another, and another, smoking like a trooper. I thought about my father, about weighty subjects and trivial things, until I remembered the family tree, the green leaves, the smiling faces, the empty spaces my mother had left for the future marriages her children might have, the little comments that sounded like warnings addressed to no one in particular, though when she made them she was always looking at Julio. You
can leave me in peace, because I have no intention of redoing it ... Anyone who doesn’t fit in there now will just have to be left off it ...