The Frozen Heart (59 page)

Ignacio had never recovered from the shock of realising what Mateo’s studied indifference had meant that morning in Alicante, when Mateo’s eyes met his, and he shook his head almost imperceptibly: ‘Don’t look at me, don’t speak to me, don’t say goodbye, don’t tell anyone that you’re my brother, save yourself.’ Now Ignacio Fernández Muñoz was reeling from the shock of what had happened, a fate that might just as easily have been his. He was thinking of José María Heredero, too, about that night in March, when there was still time to save the only man he had ever killed. José María Heredero, a professor of criminal law, the son and grandson of right-wing lawyers, the black sheep of the family, was safe, he could have hidden him, he would have known what to do . . . Ignacio was still thinking that the best thing to do would be to find him when he reached Vistillas, even when he was looking for a truck, watching the driver. If he hadn’t done this, it was not because he was afraid of the fascists, but because he was afraid of his own people. But he was fit and healthy, he had had two legs that would carry him wherever he wanted to go. Carlos didn’t.

‘Casilda found out he was in prison and went to see him, she pretended to be his wife. She took him a parcel and smuggled out a letter for Paloma in her bra. Since she was heavily pregnant at the time, and had milk stains on her dress, they didn’t really search her when she was leaving. She forwarded the letter to us, I don’t know how she did it because it had a French stamp, but she promised Carlos she would get it to us, and she did, even though it took two months. That’s why we don’t know if he’s still alive . . . He was all on his own in Madrid when it happened, nobody warned him, but he hadn’t been involved in the coup so maybe . . . Well, I hardly need to tell you.’ María looked at him bitterly. ‘He remembered José María Heredero, he thought if anyone could help him, he could. They’d been best friends ever since university . . . He went to his apartment on the Calle Torrijos but there was no one there. He set off for Aranjuez on foot, the poor thing, limping, with his gammy leg, God knows how long it took or what state he was in when he arrived. But he knew José’s parents had a house there, and he found it, and there was José, spending the spring in the country, wearing tennis whites and carrying a racket, the bastard - this is the same man who used to argue with Carlos because he wore a hat, the guy who bought workman’s overalls in the summer of ’36 and didn’t even take them off when he went to bed . . .’

Don’t say any more, María, Ignacio wanted to beg her, please, don’t tell me any more, I don’t want to know . . . This was what Ignacio thought, and what he could not bring himself to say because the most important thing was not what he wanted but what he needed, and he needed to know the truth, he needed to grieve for Carlos Rodríguez Arce, his teacher, his brother-in-law, his saviour, his friend.

‘“Carlitos, what brings you here?” José said when he saw him, the . . . I can’t think of a name for him. Anyway, he invited him into the kitchen, gave him coffee and biscuits, and told him to stay there. Carlos didn’t know what to do, so . . . You know who helped him in the end ? José María’s sister.’

‘She was always in love with him.’ Ignacio remembered the brash, shameless girl who used to wait for his brother-in-law outside the classroom door even after he and Paloma were engaged.

‘No, not her.’ María smiled. ‘Not Mercedes, she ended up marrying one of them. No, it was Isabelita, the youngest, you remember, the one who was always so holier-than-thou . . . Anyway, she came into the kitchen and said, “Get out of here, Rodríguez, it’s not safe.” “But I’m waiting for your brother,” Carlos said. “I know, that’s why I’m saying you should go, as quickly as possible . . . ” She even gave him money for the train back to Madrid. You see, Mamá was right, you never know who to trust, your friends or your enemies. So Carlos went back to Madrid, but where could he go? He could go home, obviously, but he had a key to our place and he was exhausted, so he waited until it was dark and headed for our apartment on the Glorieta de Bilbao. And who do you think he ran into?’

‘The Toad, of course,’ said Ignacio.

‘Of course. And what do you think she told him?’ María raised her eyebrows, waiting for the answer Ignacio did not dare give. ‘She told him he had no right to be there. Can you believe it? It’s . . .’ María pressed her lips together, her face a rictus of anger. ‘The nerve of that cow! Papá took her in when she was about to be thrown out on the street . . . So, when she said that, Carlos laughed, you know what he was like. “I’ve got more right to be here than you, Mariana, but let’s not argue,” he said, “I need somewhere to spend the night, I need to sleep, and I need something to eat. After that, I’ll be on my way, don’t worry. I’ve no intention of staying in this shitty country.” “All right,” The Toad said, “on one condition. I get to sleep in my uncle and aunt’s room.” ’

Now it was Ignacio’s turn to clench his fists, press his lips together, a fleeting, hopeless look of anger that flashed across his face at his sister’s words.

‘We should have killed her, I mean it, I thought about it more than once, when she used to come up from Dorita’s apartment, we should have grabbed her and . . . Carlos would still be here with us now.’

Ignacio felt tears sting his eyes and let them trickle down; María too was weeping.

‘Anyway,’ she dried her eyes with two deft swipes, ‘she gave him some bread and a bit of cheese and Papá’s bottle of brandy . . . Carlos slept in Paloma’s room. He’d already decided to leave the next morning, he didn’t trust The Toad, but he was exhausted. At eight o’clock, a Falangist brigade dragged him out of bed. She stood there, calmly watching the whole thing, she even waved the soldiers goodbye. “Your cousin was right,” Carlos spat at her, “You’re nothing but a toad.” She slapped him, on top of everything else . . .’

They went on crying, on either side of the barbed-wire fence, united by heartache and by everything they had lost.

María was the first to break the silence.

‘I’ve brought you cigarettes, some croissants, some chocolate and some pencils so you can write to us . . . Stand back, I’ll see if I can throw the packet over the fence.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s easier to push it under the fence, it’s only sand, you dig on your side and I’ll dig on mine. Oh, one more thing . . . I was going to ask the camp commander, but it’s better if I ask you . . . Can you see if you can get copies of the French civil and penal codes, and a copy of the asylum laws, that’s the most important thing. Do you have any way of getting in touch with the man who came to see you? All right, well, give the books to him and he’ll try to get them to Donato, the guy from Lugo, remember his name.’

After María’s visit, Ignacio Fernández Muñoz’s life at the Barcarès camp changed. The grubby, well-thumbed books arrived, notes scribbled in the margins of every page, and he began to study, happy to have something to do to relieve the crippling boredom of the days. The books allowed him to prepare for the difficult times ahead. The autumn of 1939 was hard and the winter of 1940 harder still. The last days of summer took with them the innocent joy of those who believed they were no longer destined to be victims and the first rains washed away the last traces of optimistic excitement with the knowledge that only their location had changed. They were no longer in a Spanish prison, but a French prison camp. They could no longer lie in the sun, play football, go swimming without catching pneumonia or even pose for the photographers, who no longer came. The rain filtered through the roofs of the huts, the tides rose higher, the beach shrank, everything was wet and miserable, every night colder, every day shorter.

All the while, Ignacio Fernández Muñoz studied. Ignacio, who, as a soldier, had despised the pedantic nitpicking of the republican authorities, now took a refined, almost morbid pleasure in enumerating for Lieutenant Huguet every article, principle, doctrine and provision of French law which was breached by his incarceration.

‘What do you want me to do, Ignacio? You think I want to be here?’ Huguet said defensively.

Ignacio did not answer, but went on studying. Every morning, he reopened his books so he would not have to see, so he would not have to hear, and yet he knew, just as he had in Alicante when he had stared out to sea. Men as tall as towers wept like children, waded into the sea until they disappeared from view. There were those who took off their clothes and lay on the freezing sand; those who ceased to speak, eat, move, and those who would get up all of a sudden and say: ‘Goodbye. I’m going home now.’ Some madder than others, but for the most part they did go back, because they were too young, too strong, had too much life left ahead of them to remain here, incarcerated for no reason, with their bellies full of sand.

Sometimes, the whole day long, loudspeakers would repeat: ‘People of Spain, go back to your own country. Your families, your people, your homes are waiting for you. Your country needs you if it is to recover. Those of you who have committed no crime have nothing to fear from Franco. No one believes the wild stories about repression any more . . .’ Huguet introduced Ignacio to the owner of one of these voices one afternoon, though he did not mention the man’s name, nor Ignacio’s.

‘The is The Lawyer, one of the prisoners’ spokesmen. He is highly respected by everyone here and has considerable authority, especially over the communists,’ he said by way of introduction.

The plump, well-groomed, one-armed man stepped confidently towards him.

‘I used to be one of you. I fought with the Reds against the nationalists.’ He held out his remaining hand.

‘Fuck off, you bastard,’ said Ignacio, stuffing his hand into his pocket.

Huguet never quite believed Ignacio’s interpretation of this encounter, and Ignacio could understand why, because the carelessness of Franco’s men, who did not even bother to learn the terminology of those they pretended to be, was unbelievable. What was more shocking still was that they succeeded in duping some of the prisoners.

Some men decided to go home, although they realised it was a trap, that they would be doing forced labour, and every day the gendarmes brought in more undocumented men who had crossed the border without the least idea of what awaited them. The newcomers upset him most, because in their vulnerability they were a mirror image of Roque, of himself. ‘Have you got any money?’ the old hands would ask them with a mocking smile. ‘Of course,’ they would say, ‘we didn’t have time to spend it,’ and for an instant, hope would dance in their eyes. ‘Why? Can we change it here?’ ‘Of course, you can change anything here. We use republican pesetas to wipe our arses, and yours will come in handy because we haven’t a peseta left . . .’ And everyone would laugh, everyone except the newcomers, who would glance around them with a look of utter despair.

Every day, new recruits joined this desolate army, and all the while Ignacio Fernández Muñoz went on studying. Things in the camp were going from bad to worse, even for the communists, the only prisoners who, from the moment they arrived, had set about organising things and had managed to create a stable, efficient infrastructure connected to their French comrades. Only this had made it possible for them to survive the humiliating blow Stalin had dealt them in his perverse alliance with Hitler.

For those who were free, it was terrible; for those in prison, it was a catastrophe. For Ignacio Fernández Muñoz, newly arrived in Barcarès and still the butt of jokes by the camp veterans, it was a bitter starting point, one more sign of his infinite misfortune. Betrayal is the rule, he thought, betrayal is our fate, it is the norm in our lives. I live, I survive, I breathe only to be betrayed, in Spain and beyond, by friends and by enemies, to my face and behind my back. Betrayal is the one constant in my life, he thought.

‘This war is not our war, it is an imperial war between capitalist powers, it does not concern us.’ This was the opinion of their leaders, announced with the serenity of someone enjoying life in Paris with false identity papers, someone living in a dacha on the outskirts of Moscow with his wife and children, who slept in a warm bed every night, and ate well every day. This they proclaimed with a joy born of prosperity, and the French and the English - the supreme traitors to the Spanish cause - deserved nothing more. Ignacio agreed with them on this last point, though not on the rest, and he loudly said as much. He had just arrived in Barcarès and had not yet met Lieutenant Huguet, he had not yet been given his
nom de guerre
, but he dared to speak out because he had nothing to lose. This was why he spoke out, why he said that for him the Nazis were and would always be the real enemy.

Had he been free, he might have been expelled from the party, but he was imprisoned and so were those he spoke to. These men did not sleep in warm beds at night, did not enjoy several meals a day, they were far from Paris, and this was what they wanted to hear. They needed to hear something like this from someone like him, someone who had been raised in a prosperous family, who had studied, who had been trained to lead, but who found himself here, just as fucked as everyone else. Outside, he might have been expelled from the party; in here he quickly rose through the ranks. He never asked questions, never asked to see any identification from those prisoners who came to him and asked whether he was the guy from Madrid, the one they called ‘The Lawyer’, and this helped to restore a tacit reconciliation between his comrades and the other republicans in the camp, although it did not make him feel any happier.

In his eighteen months of clandestine politics, the only thing that comforted Ignacio Fernández Muñoz were the escapes. He had no personal ambition, and never thought about his future since he was utterly convinced that he did not have one. For him, the word future extended only to the next twenty-four hours, but if one day he were able to choose a life for himself, he knew he it would not be in politics. Only two or three years earlier, it had occurred to him that he might stay in the army, become a professional soldier after the republicans won the war. Now, although all was lost, he realised that this reflex had become more deeply rooted in him. This was why he revelled in the escapes, organising them, conceiving them. Given the responsibilities he had taken on, he could not escape himself, but he enthusiastically planned every one.