The Frozen Heart (112 page)

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.

‘Could I get a ticket for the fifteen thirty screening?’

‘Which screen?’

‘It doesn’t matter, I don’t know, Screen Two ...’

Love cannot abolish itself for as long as it exists. No matter how inconvenient, how unwelcome, however terrible it is. It had been hot out in the street, in the cinema it was cold, but my father’s smile lit up the screen and I could hear his comforting voice:
You’re very brave, Álvaro,
my own voice hoarse with emotion,
I really love you, Papá,
and his voice again,
Me too,
hijo. Nothing that had happened, nothing that would ever happen in the future, could blot out that face, or silence that voice. My leg was hurting so much that I had curled into a ball, my eyes were stinging with all the tears I had choked back since that summer, since that night when I had felt happy, proud to be the son of Julio Carrion González. Almost thirty years had passed and I had never stopped being proud, it was one of the few things that would never change, though recently, as the whole world collapsed around me, I had managed to forget that I loved him. And here, in an air-conditioned cinema showing some film I would never remember, I realised the meaning of this love that had conquered everything, withstood everything, which would not give in to head or heart, because it was part of me, like Raquel, like my body, like my name.

‘Excuse me, I was supposed to meet my brother Rafa, but he’s not in his office ...’

‘That’s not his office, he’s taken over Don Julio’s office, I mean your father’s office.’

‘I see ... and Julio?’

I had had to learn to love Raquel in spite of my father’s love and now I would have to go on loving my father alongside my love for Raquel. And nothing would be as difficult and strange as adapting to this love I did not want but could not stop myself from feeling, no matter how much I despised this man, no matter how ashamed I was of him, no matter how much his life, his greed, humiliated me. He did not deserve the love of a son like me, but he was my father and that explained everything, ruined everything. He was my father. I realised it at that moment, just as I was about to squeeze the trigger, light the fuse, push the detonator that would explode Julio Carrion González once and for all. The most charming man in the world, the inveterate seducer, the snake-charmer, the wizard, the brilliant autodidact, the undefeated champion was about to vanish from his family’s life, at least for a few hours, and even the wilful blindness of his children would not bring him back safe and sound, unsullied, the man on the piece of gilded card his wife had pasted alongside our smiling faces.

‘Julio is still in his old office. Well, you know yourself, he’s not bothered about things like that ... would you like me to show you through?’

‘No, that’s all right, thanks.’

Julio had warned me not to call Rafa, and I knew why. That was why I’d called him. If I hadn’t arranged to meet Rafa and Angelica nothing would have happened. Julio would never have mentioned we’d had the conversation, and after a while he’d probably forget since it was the sort of thing that didn’t really interest him. In that respect, he was a lot like Clara, but not like me, not like Rafa. But I knew what I intended to do and why. Rafa and Angelica would later question my reasons. They would think I was trying to get back at Papá through them, that I had suddenly gone mad, that I was lashing out, that I had been motivated by hatred or some fanatical ideology, or driven to it by this sexual obsession that was going to ruin my life. They would think all these things, but I was completely calm, I knew what I was doing and I knew why I was doing it. I wanted to talk, I wanted to listen. Just that, nothing more. I wanted to tell aloud this story that no one had ever told me and hear them say aloud what I had never heard. I wanted them to know what I thought, how I felt, and wanted to know what they thought, how they felt, when they had discovered these things about the man who had been their father. It didn’t seem like much, but it was a lot, because a lot of time had passed and the silence intended to cover up the truth had, over time, displaced it. I was about to break that silence.

‘Hi, I have a meeting with my brother Rafa ...’

‘Of course. Go on in, he’s expecting you.’

‘What about Angelica? Is she here?’

Rafa’s secretary nodded, and as I pushed open the door I remembered my birthday, it must have been my seventh or eight birthday. I had asked my parents for a table football game, but none of the toyshops had one in stock so when I got home from school that afternoon I got a consolation prize, a magic set, a predictable present all of my siblings had received at least once. I was so disappointed that I started whining even before I’d finished taking off the paper and my mother became angry with me. My father said nothing, but the next morning he showed up with a huge box. ‘One magician in the family is more than enough,’ I heard him say as he opened it. Then, years later, he gave me the table football game again, though I hadn’t even realised he’d kept it. It was just after Miguelito was born, he showed up at the hospital with it. ‘I thought ... seeing as it’s a boy,’ he muttered as we kissed him.

‘Hi.’

Rafa, sitting in Papá’s chair, made no attempt to get up, nor did Angelica, who was sitting in one of the two chairs reserved for guests, but I insisted on greeting them, Rafa first, then Angelica, and they both kissed me, but with a stiffness, a coldness, that made me think they already knew why I had asked to meet them.

Rafa immediately confirmed the fact, toying with a slim, elegant mechanical pencil identical to the one Papá used.

‘Listen, Alvaro ... I know you’ve had a lot of serious stuff going on in your life, so it’s hardly surprising you’re worked up ... But when you said you’d already spoken to Julio that surprised me, so I had a chat with him ... The first thing he told me was that he’d warned you not to call me, and, to be honest, you should have listened to him ...’

He paused and looked at Angelica, but she said nothing. He went on in the same slow, considerate tone, though it already held more than a trace of disdain.

‘There’s nothing you can tell us that we don’t already know. What happened is ancient history, and after all this time it has no importance whatsoever. We shouldn’t judge, because we can’t. Not you, or me, or anyone who didn’t live through those times, anyone who didn’t have to make decisions in circumstances that were so appalling we can’t even begin to imagine them. So before you start, let me tell you two things. The first is: nothing you can say will change the way I feel about Papá. And the second ...’ he gave me a sardonic smile ‘ ... Julio told me the whole thing about finding the phone number on some note in a folder, but I don’t believe a word of it, Alvaro. Let me tell you right now, there’s something not right about this girl. I’m sure she was the one who came looking for you and I’m even more sure that all she’s out for is your money.’

He spoke with such assurance, such gravitas, that I laughed.

‘Would you like to tell me what you’re laughing at?’ Rafa asked, irritated by my reaction.

I didn’t want to rush him so I asked him a question. ‘Tell me, since you know everything, did you know that Papá’s mother Teresa died of pneumonia on 14 June 1941 while imprisoned in the detention centre in Ocaña?’

‘That’s not true!’ Angelica finally spoke.

‘Grandma Teresa died during the war,’ Rafa said, ‘the summer of’ 37, I think, and she didn’t die of pneumonia, she died of tuberculosis. You know that perfectly well, Alvaro, we all do.’

‘No, Rafa. All we know is what Papá told us, what he wanted us to believe, but it’s not the truth. In June 1937, Grandma Teresa walked out on her husband, but she was very much alive. She wrote a goodbye letter to her son, because he refused to go with her. I have the letter. It was in his office at La Moraleja, in the blue folder you seem to think I’ve made up. I applied for a copy of her death certificate, I can show it to you whenever you like. Grandma Teresa died in Ocaña, a prisoner. She was tried in 1939 and sentenced to death for aiding and abetting the revolution, but the sentence was later commuted to thirty years.’

My brother did not flinch but his face was white. Angelica had no political nous and simply got angry.

‘I don’t understand ... What do you mean, prison?’ she asked, shifting nervously in her chair. ‘What did she do?’

‘Do? She didn’t do anything. They put her in prison for what she was. A socialist. And a republican, obviously.’

‘What the hell are you talking about, Alvaro?’ She gave a nervous laugh. ‘That’s impossible ... Grandma, a socialist?’

‘Yes, socialist.’ I smiled to see that the working-class left-wing values my sister had acquired through marriage were so weak you did not even have to scratch the surface to watch them disappear. ‘She was a militant activist in the Socialist Workers’ Party, the Torrelodones chapel. Like your husband’s grandfather, the one they shot and dumped in a well in the Canaries, because he was a socialist too, wasn’t he?’

She refused to admit this, but I didn’t care, because I knew. I turned to my brother and noted that his colour had returned, and his cheeks were flushed.

‘What right do you have to go snooping around, taking things out of Papá’s study?’ He leaned over the desk, fists clenched.

But he didn’t scare me, and he knew it.

‘The same right as you have, Rafa. When I got there, there were a lot of gaps on the walls. Lisette told me you’d taken some of the pictures, and Julio had taking the photo of Mamá and Papá in the silver frame. I thought it was a free-for-all.’

‘That’s not the same.’

‘You’re right, it’s not the same. You didn’t have the simple curiosity to look for anything, and I did. That’s why I was the one who found the folder, though as you can see, I never planned on keeping the contents to myself. I’ll tell you everything that was in it, I’ll even make photocopies of the documents if you like. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in there.’

‘Don’t go to any trouble on my account.’ Rafa sat back in his chair, trying once more to seek refuge in arrogance. ‘So, Grandma Teresa was a socialist? Big deal. It happens in the best of families, everyone knows that. So they put her in prison after the war? Hardly surprising — I mean, that was why they won the war. If it had been the other way round the Reds would have done the same. What else?’

‘Oh, there’s lots more, but I’d rather take things slowly. You have to admit that I’ve already told you at least one thing you didn’t know. Two, actually. First: who our grandmother was. Second: who Papá was. A man capable of denying his own mother, burying her alive, lying about her to his own children ...’

‘No!’ Angelica interrupted me with sudden vehemence. ‘That’s not true, Alvaro, it can’t be true. Papá must have had his reasons. Why are you siding with her against him? We knew Papá, we didn’t know her. We don’t know the first thing about her, we have no idea what sort of person she was ...’ She turned away from me, seeking consolation in Rafa. ‘Back then, everyone did horrible things, even women ... Maybe she was ... I don’t know. If they sentenced her to death, she must have murdered someone, or turned someone in.’

I looked at my sister, at my brother, and I took a deep breath.

‘Grandma Teresa was a teacher. She taught infants in Torrelodones. She was very militant, and was a senior figure in the local branch of the Communist Party. She was also a liberated woman, and very brave. She spoke at meetings, chaired committees, helped refugees ... Franco and his cronies sentenced lots of people like her to death, leaders of left-wing parties who had done nothing, and they always used the same excuse: incitement to rebellion, although obviously they were the ones who had rebelled. They presided over a systematic, ordered reign of terror which had nothing to do with actual crimes committed in the republican areas. I’m sorry, Angelica,’ I smiled at my sister, ‘but your grandmother never murdered, never tortured, never informed on anybody. Everyone in the village loved her.’

Rafa was not prepared to put up with my smile.