The Frozen Heart (19 page)

At first glance, the bedroom shed no further light. The domed room was like an apse, making the king-size bed seem like some pagan altar, an effect reinforced by the two alcoves above the bedside tables. The tables themselves were beautiful, simple lines, slightly curving, like the matching chest of drawers against one of the side walls. There was an enormous, flat-screen television on the far wall and underneath, on a metal TV stand, was a DVD player and a neatly arranged pile of films.

‘You’ll see, Álvaro,’ I said as I looked through them, ‘you’ll see.’

I sat down on the bed and felt an absurd wave of delight when I noticed that it wasn’t a water bed, but a common sprung mattress. Rich people have no taste, I thought to myself, though it seemed unnecessary given that the room screamed the fact aloud. I wondered which side my father would have slept on and thought that logically he would sleep on the same side as he did in his conjugal bed. I checked, and there were two remote controls on the table on the right-hand side. I looked through the drawers of the other nightstand but found nothing but an instruction manual for the digital clock radio that sat next to the bedside lamp.

The clock was accurate. Out of curiosity, I pressed the button and discovered that the alarm was set for 7 a.m. So she must have slept here sometimes, afterwards, I thought, and this simple image, the image of a young woman waking up to go to work, in a bed she used to share with a man old enough to be her father - to be her grandfather - seemed monstrous, until I quickly remembered that Raquel Fernández Perea was not some poor defenceless orphan, she was a smart girl earning a fat salary. Whatever reason she might have had for getting involved with one of her clients, it didn’t include penury.

In the top drawer of the right-hand nightstand there were three things. The smallest was a rectangular silver pillbox, the lid badly scratched, which was similar, if not identical, to the one that my father took with him everywhere. The same was true of the simple, elegant stainless-steel propelling pencil which could be seen in his pocket in every photograph of him I could remember. The third thing was a purple rubber dildo which looked as if it was filled with some kind of gel and smelled of soap and plastic.

‘Fucking hell, Papá . . .’

Raquel Fernández Perea, who is much more beautiful than she seems, lying naked on a pile of pillows, her stunning legs spread wide, offering a strange, pornographic view of her slightly disproportioned body. Her perfect skin. ‘Please, take a seat. I’m sorry, I should have offered you a drink.’ Her belly trembles slightly, though less than the hands of the old man holding the purple cylinder that slowly disappears inside her, as she smiles gratefully, showing the gap between her front teeth.

Blood was pounding in my temples as though the veins were about to burst. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint you. It’s a boring story. At the end of the day people are boring and predictable.’ And she was right, we are, because I turned on the television, then the DVD player, and saw exactly what I had expected to see. The woman was dark skinned, she was wearing a red-and-black basque that left her breasts exposed, the men - because there were two of them - were wearing dark suits and ties, but both of them had their flies open and their cocks out. I didn’t see any more. I turned off the TV and the DVD to spare myself the harsh, clinical sordidness of what was to come. I couldn’t help making a joke. ‘The executive model, Papá,’ I thought, remembering his displeasure at my unwillingness to wear a tie. It was a joke, but I didn’t find it funny.

I didn’t want to be there any longer, prying into the private world of this old man who now seemed as weak, fragile and scrawny as a stray dog, a poor man who was dead, who was alone, who was nowhere. For the first time in my life I felt responsible for my father, more grown up than he was, able to make decisions, shelter and protect him as he had protected me when I was a child. You had to die, Papá, I thought, before you needed me. And this stark realisation shocked me.

In the pillbox there was one small white tablet, some larger round pills, and two blue ones I had never seen before. I put one of them in my pocket, then returned the pillbox to the drawer of the nightstand. I realised that I would have to come back soon, because this was not a secret I could tell my brothers, much less my mother. At the end of the day, it was lucky Mamá had sent me, the wrong son, to a meeting with her husband’s last lover. It was then that I remembered the meeting that was to take place the following Thursday, the reading of the will, and I realised that I would have to sort the flat out sooner rather than later, get rid of the DVDs, the dildo, the candles, the make-up in the bathroom. It seemed like an ugly job, and as I crossed the threshold I felt a wrenching sadness. I wondered when he had last crossed this threshold and how he had felt, how much time he had left before he died.

Jesus, Papá, why did you have to go and die like that when you had a thirty-five-year-old lover and still so much life in you? Outside, the air was balmy but it could not warm the frozen layer of grief.

 

‘Miguelito!’

My son scampered along the corridor, hurtling towards me with the astonished delight of a bull noticing an open gate. It was true, he was a little rowdy, and it was also true that I liked him that way.

‘Were you a good boy today?’ I asked, sweeping him up in my arms and covering him with kisses. ‘Were you?’ He nodded solemnly. ‘Mamá said your teacher told her that you work hard in class but you’re always hitting people.’

‘No I don’t . . .’ He shook his head, even more solemn now. ‘Adrian does, and so does Tito, pow, pow . . .’

‘They hit you and you hit them back, is that it?’ I asked. He smiled at me. ‘In that case, I think maybe you deserve a reward for working so hard in class . . . What do you think?’

Mai was in the kitchen, stirring the contents of a saucepan with a wooden spoon.

‘Álvaro, you’re home early!’

‘Yes.’ I closed the door behind me.

‘Miguel is . . .’

‘Miguel is watching
Peter Pan
,’ I interrupted her, pressing myself against her back. ‘I just put it on. You know it’s his favourite, and I don’t think there’s any harm in it, they’re
friendly
pirates.’

‘But I thought you’d hidden the DVD? Álvaro . . .’ She gave a nervous little laugh. ‘Álvaro, what are you doing?’

‘Nothing.’ I slipped my right hand under her bra and my left hand under her skirt and kissed her neck slowly. ‘Well, maybe this . . .’ I moved my fingers. ‘I decided to give the poor child a suspended sentence.’

‘Why?’

‘What do you mean why?’ I mimicked her, pressing against her. ‘What do you think?’

‘Álvaro, I’m making
croquetas
for dinner . . . The béchamel is going to go all lumpy . . .’

We had a family-size pizza for dinner, with free garlic bread, and I realised that my son thought that this was part of the reward that, in an inexplicable burst of generosity, I had bestowed on him. He ate everything on his plate and went to bed without complaining about his capricious father.

When I came back into the living room, Mai was watching a film. I poured two glasses of wine and sat next to her; she snuggled up to me as she always did and I managed to retain my composure for ten minutes.

‘Álvaro!’ Her T-shirt was up around her armpits, her bra was unhooked and her skirt rucked up to the waist. From her voice - pitched somewhere between pleasure and shock - I could tell that she was happy but a little frightened. ‘What’s with you today? You’re impossible, really . . .’

‘I don’t know . . .’ I said as I pulled her on to my lap. ‘It must be the spring.’

But it wasn’t the spring. And when I was finished, I was no calmer than I had been when I arrived home.

 

The whole can be greater or less than the sum of its parts, depending on the relationship established between the parts. Think carefully about that statement, because it’s important, both in itself and because it leads to a second statement: we can only say with certainty that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts when the parts do not interact.

This is what I used to tell my students and they would eagerly write it down, smiling somewhat sceptically, wondering what I was getting at with all these boring lectures - fuck, it wasn’t like they’d signed up for philosophy . . . But by midway through the course, the more intelligent ones had realised that physics is also a system of thought with its own rules, rules that cannot be immediately deduced from arithmetic principles. Because two plus two does not necessarily make four, not always, not in all circumstances. When you understand that, I told them, you’re ready to understand a whole lot more. Yet I also understood that with a lifetime of finding that two plus two does equal four, the notion became so ingrained it was difficult to dismiss, so I tried not to be too hard on them. Just as I tried not to be too hard on myself when I went back to my father’s love nest and felt that it was all a sham, a set-up.

I had spent two and a half days working myself into a state of near-collapse, deliberately, because it felt good, not just because since the day I’d met Raquel I had done nothing but invent inaccurate theories, and because, after spending the afternoon at the museum talking with the workers and supervising the installation of the exhibition, I would get home late and so tired that Mai would have nothing to worry about. My own sense of calm was nothing more than physical exhaustion and, perhaps, the relief of knowing a little more.

‘I’ve been thinking of asking your wife for some advice,’ I took advantage of the break between my first and second lectures to call my brother-in-law Adolfo, ‘but I think maybe it’s better if I talk to you.’

‘Man to man?’

‘Um . . . yes, I suppose so.’

‘I’ll do my best . . .’ His sarcastic tone made me smile. ‘But nothing too difficult. Or too manly, if possible.’

‘Well, I’m afraid it’s very manly . . . Look, last week, when it was raining, I went over to pick up the post for my mother at La Moraleja. I was only wearing a jumper and got soaked so Lisette lent me Papá’s raincoat. There was a silver pillbox in the pocket, with a small white pill in it . . .’

‘Cafinitrina, a sublingual nitroglycerin tablet, your father always had to have one with him because he’d had one serious heart attack and a couple of minor ones,’ he interrupted, not realising he wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know.

‘OK. There were a couple of other white pills I didn’t recognise, they were bigger and oval.’

‘I’ve no idea.’ Adolfo laughed. ‘Could be anything. If they’re oval, then they’re probably some kind of statin for his cholesterol. Your father suffered from high cholesterol - nothing too serious, but he had to be careful.’

‘And . . . and there were a couple of other tablets. They’re sky blue.’ I looked at the tablet I was holding between my fingers and tried to be specific. ‘Well, not sky blue exactly . . .’

‘And they’re sort of diamond shaped?’

‘Yes.’

‘Viagra.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m not a chemist, but if that’s what they look like, I’m pretty sure . . .’

‘But wouldn’t that be dangerous?’

‘Look . . .’ He hesitated for a minute, considering the question. ‘It’s like anything, it depends. Obviously, a man in his condition wouldn’t exactly be the ideal target market for Viagra . . . But your father was a strong man, Álvaro, and though it might sound strange, given he died of a heart attack, he was in better shape than most people with heart conditions - he didn’t have high blood pressure, he wasn’t diabetic . . . Clinics are up to their ears in men your father’s age with heart conditions
and
high blood pressure
and
diabetes who take Viagra all the time, although their doctors would never prescribe it for them. If they didn’t take Viagra is it possible that they would live a little longer? Yes, of course. Would they feel less tired, have less risk of cardiac arrhythmia? Sure. Would they have a better quality of life? Not necessarily. It depends on what you mean by quality of life. If you’re asking me, I’d have to side with the old guys, and when I’m their age, I’m sure I’ll take it too. You live as long as you live.’

‘Wow . . . I’ve never even thought about it,’ I admitted when I finally stopped laughing.

‘That’s because you’re ten years younger than me. But seriously, Álvaro. The first - let’s say private - conversation I ever had with your father was about this. I’d just started going out with your sister, and he brought it up. It was two years before he turned eighty, he was in good health, and he was curious, so it made sense. Well, I thought it did anyway. He didn’t ask me if it would be OK for him to take it, but I thought that was what he might be getting at so I pre-empted him. If you want to try it, Julio, go ahead, I told him, just let me know beforehand. It’s not going to do you any harm, but you have to get the dose right, and at your age, it’s best to be careful. Of course, he said. He never got in touch with me about it, but that’s understandable. I was his daughter’s boyfriend, then her husband, and if he didn’t want people knowing, he must have had his reasons.’

‘Yes,’ I admitted, ‘I understand all that, but . . . can’t Viagra cause a heart attack?’

‘Viagra doesn’t cause heart attacks, Alvaro. It’s true that strenuous physical effort can put too much strain on the heart, but honestly, I don’t think that’s what happened in your father’s case . . .’ But he paused nonetheless as though he wanted to weigh his words carefully. ‘He had the heart attack on the Friday afternoon, but he’d been fine that morning, and had gone to work. He was sitting quietly in his office when he started feeling pain, but nothing had happened in the meantime . . . anyway, he had time to get home, put himself to bed, then your mother arrived . . . I don’t know, Alvaro, but don’t beat yourself up over this. Any strenuous physical effort, something completely innocent, could have caused his heart to give out - mowing the lawn, playing with his grandchildren, getting angry suddenly, being worried. And even if he’d decided not to take it, his death wouldn’t have been any easier, any purer, or better. Death is shit, Álvaro, your father’s death and everyone else’s. If he was taking Viagra at the time, it’s no one’s business, it was his life, his risk.’