The Frozen Heart

by Almudena Grandes

  The place didn’t smell of anything. The books were well thumbed, the ashtray had been used, the toothbrushes were worn, the candles half-burned, but the apartment didn’t smell of anything, it had the nondescript smell of places that have never been lived in. And it was true, no one had lived here, but then Raquel didn’t live in her office, and yet when I went there I hadn’t had this strange sensation. I couldn’t remember what Raquel Fernández Perea’s office had smelled of - probably coffee, printer toner and her perfume - but I was sure her office had had a smell. This realisation so amazed me that I sat on the bed for the longest time, trying to think of something that might refute it.

  I looked at my watch, which now read 4.25 p.m. I didn’t have much more time. As I dashed about, filling three large bags with the surprising number of things this seemingly empty apartment contained, I could still feel the same sensation of impropriety, of a carefully concealed pretence, but I also felt that I didn’t care any more, that the frantic series of secrets and coincidences that had had me reeling for the past week would all soon be over, everything would be in its place, and once I was back in the little patch of garden I called my life, these details would gradually fade away, until they became just one of the routine little mysteries of an ordinary life. My father had had a lover. OK. At eighty-three. OK. I had met her. Fine. I liked her, actually I liked her a lot, but my father liked my wife, so that just meant we had similar tastes. So what? I had been to the apartment where they had met, had got rid of all trace of him, given her back her belongings, end of story. When I finally left at a quarter to six, I felt as if all I’d done was return the apartment to its rightful state.

  I really believed that it was over, but the apartment was not on the inventory of my father’s assets I found on the vast boardroom table as I sat in the chair Julio and Clara had saved for me. On the opposite side sat Rafa, Angélica and my mother.

  ‘Sorry I’m late, Mamá,’ I said as I came in, ‘I couldn’t get away.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Álvaro,’ she said, ‘we haven’t started yet. But you could at least have worn a suit and a tie, hijo . . .’

  ‘It’s just . . .’ I smiled. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I was only ten minutes late - I’d quickly dumped one bag in the bin, stuffed the other two in the boot of the car and set off to walk to the address on Príncipe de Vergara, which I could have sworn was much closer. I’d stopped at a bakery and bought a couple of croissants which I ate as I walked, and with every bite I savoured the relief of knowing that the key I had in my pocket was about to disappear, only to reappear in the real world, spotless and innocent, as just another key that opened the door to another apartment, one of the many my father had owned. I’d slip it into a drawer the next time my mother sent me to pick up the post at La Moraleja and eventually someone would find it - hey, here’s another one we hadn’t noticed. I smiled at the thought, but I didn’t know then that to everyone in my family, except me, this apartment would never exist.

  ‘This can’t be happening . . .’ I murmured when I first read through the inventory.

  I read it again, more slowly this time, ticking off everything with a pencil, but still it wasn’t there. This can’t be happening. Fuck. It was supposed to be over, it should all have been over by now . . . And yet there I sat, growing increasingly irritated, increasingly agitated. Don’t fuck me around, Papá, I swore silently, I’ve got problems of my own, my son’s getting into fights at school, the workmen are setting the exhibition panels upside down, this can’t be happening . . . I was so angry, so nervous and tired, that without realising, I said this last phrase aloud.

  ‘What can’t be happening, Álvaro?’ Not only was my sister Angélica suspicious, nit-picking and bossy, she could also hear a pin drop when it suited her.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, ignoring her frown. I turned to my brother. ‘Hey, Rafa, didn’t Papá own one of those apartments you showed me? You know, the ones . . .’

  ‘On Calle Jorge Juan,’ he finished the sentence. ‘Yes. He bought one of the bigger ones, but he sold it.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Really, Álvaro!’ my sister butted in. ‘This is the limit. What’s the matter with you . . .?’

  ‘Listen, Angélica!’ I shouted, a surge of hot rage erupting from me. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m not running a temperature, I don’t have so much as a toothache, so just shut up and stop breaking my balls!’

  ‘Álvaro!’ My mother seemed more surprised than angry. ‘Don’t talk to your sister like that!’

  In the silence that followed, Julio put his hand on my shoulder, Rafa stared at me as though he couldn’t believe his eyes, only Clara dared to defend me.

  ‘It’s no big deal, Mamá, come on . . .’

  ‘It is a big deal, Clara,’ my mother cut her off, turning back to me. ‘I will not have you making a scene, Álvaro. I don’t know what’s got into you, hijo, but I don’t like it. You’re a different person.’

  ‘Maybe I am.’ I was fed up, tired of carrying my father around. ‘Maybe I am a different person, Mamá, and I’m sorry, but for God’s sake, can’t I even ask Rafa a simple question without Angélica sticking her nose in?’

  She took her time before answering, but then she nodded.

  ‘In that - and only in that, mind - you’re right. You did the right thing.’ She looked at each of us in turn. ‘This is the moment to ask about anything you want to know.’

  ‘Good. I’m sorry, Angélica, really I am. I’ve been on edge recently, stressed, even I have trouble putting up with me. Forgive me?’ Only when she nodded did I go on. ‘So when did Papá sell the apartment, Rafa?’

  ‘I don’t remember exactly, but not long ago, I don’t know, maybe two or three months? He wouldn’t tell me how much he got for it, but I’m sure he made a packet.’ He thought for a moment, remembering something that clearly upset him. ‘I still own one of them, so if . . .’

  His words gave me back my true father, as he had always been, a wily old man, hard headed, authoritative, and more extraordinary than we, his children, would ever be. You were right, Papá, I thought, you were always right, and this thought not only calmed me, it immediately led me to a more agreeable and less thorny conclusion. If the apartment didn’t belong to us, it must belong to Raquel, he must have given it to her, bequeathed it to her, after a fashion. There was no other explanation, and this knowledge stirred two conflicting feelings in me - relief that my father’s secret would remain hidden, and annoyance that I could have spared myself the visits to the apartment and the ugly, dirty work I had spent that afternoon doing. My mother took a small notebook from her purse, flicked through it and called us to order, seeming more alive than she had done since my father’s death.

  ‘Right, you’ve all had time to read through the inventory. If there are no more questions, I’ll tell you what I was thinking of doing. As you’ve seen, I inherit two-thirds, but I’m going to share out more than half of that between you. I’m going to sell off all of Papá’s investments - the bonds, the shares, though obviously I’m not going to touch the businesses - and I’m going to divide the money equally between you. I’m going to keep the properties for the moment because it’s much more difficult to divide them up and I don’t want you falling out. If you’re going to fight among yourselves, I’d rather you did it after I’m dead. Álvaro, I’ll give you the money Papá was setting aside for you now, along with the rest of it. I really don’t think you need to be saving any more.’ I nodded and smiled at her. ‘One more thing, the money you owe, Rafa . . . If your brothers and sisters don’t object, I’ve decided to split it in half. I’ll take half from your share now and then you can owe me the other half, and you’ll pay me back the same way you would have paid your father, agreed ?’

  ‘Thanks, Mamá.’ My older brother leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘Don’t mention it, hijo.’ She kissed him and smiled. ‘Well, if that all seems fair, we can explain everything to the solicitor .
. .’

  I’d never imagined that my father had so much money. Clearly, I was the only one of his children who hadn’t, since no one else so much as batted an eyelid as the solicitor gave the official reading of the will, tossing out random numbers that were so large I couldn’t even remember them. It was all happening too fast for my well-ordered brain, and when the meeting was over, I still had no real idea of how much I stood to inherit. I knew it was more than I had been expecting, but that wasn’t the most pressing thing on my mind.

  When we left the building, I said goodbye to my mother, kissed her on both cheeks and hugged her hard. I was surprised to find that everything I’d discovered in the past week had not changed my relationship with her, as though the worry, the pity and the vague guilt I felt at having become her husband’s posthumous co-conspirator, albeit reluctantly, were not strong enough to come between us, or change the mother/son relationship we had spent forty years perfecting. Since I knew she was hoping we might celebrate her generosity, I apologised again, and whispered a thank-you in her ear. As I watched her walk away between Rafa and Clara, suddenly so small, so delicate, it seemed impossible that she could have had anything to do with the apartment on Jorge Juan, the blue tablets, the candles by the Jacuzzi and the deep-rooted fear of the man who had slept in the same bed with her for forty-nine years.

  ‘You in a hurry?’ I asked my brother Julio, after we had said goodbye to Angélica.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, I just don’t fancy going home . . .’ This was true. ‘Do you want to go for a drink?’

  ‘Good idea. Maybe two.’ He put his arm round my shoulder as if he were trying to calm me, or at least to let me know he was on my side. Some part of the secret was clearly showing. ‘If you like, afterwards we can go and visit some whores and burn Madrid to the ground. We’re rich.’

  ‘No.’ I smiled. ‘I think it’s better if we leave Madrid as it is.’

  ‘OK.’ He smiled too. ‘But never let it be said that I’m chicken.’

  In the end, we didn’t just have two drinks, we had quite a few.

  ‘Hey, Julio . . .’ I said as soon as the waiter had taken our order, skipping over the introduction I couldn’t think of, ‘do you think Papá had mistresses?’

  ‘What is this?’ And although it was obvious what I was about to say, he looked at me a little suspiciously. ‘Am I supposed to be the expert in the family?’

  ‘No, but you’re the only one I can talk to, it’s not the same thing.’

  I hadn’t intended to say anything to anyone in the family, but as we had all sat with my mother in the solicitor’s office, I had realised that every one of them would have a different take on my father and might be able to shed some light on different aspects, things I would never have noticed.

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ He was silent for a moment, then continued, ‘I’ve often thought about it, believe me. I mean, on the one hand . . . well, it would be like him. What I mean is, rich men - men of his generation, especially - used to keep mistresses, lovers in the old sense, they bought apartments for them, that kind of thing. It was traditional, and anyway, it would fit with his personality, the way he behaved . . . He liked to flaunt his power, you know that, and he wasn’t religious, he wasn’t much bothered by scruples, but still . . . I don’t know. On the other hand, he was such a stickler . . .’

  ‘Yes, but he was a ladies’ man,’ I said. My brother nodded slowly as though it wasn’t easy for him to admit that I was right. ‘And he was happy to admit it whenever the subject came up. Remember on Saturday nights he’d joke around with us, giving the dancers on TV marks out of ten.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s true. I’m not saying he didn’t like women, it’s just . . . on the other hand it wasn’t like him at all, he didn’t like to complicate his life. Though I suppose we knew him when he was older, by the time Clara was born he was nearly fifty. I suppose he must have done something at some stage? I mean, everyone has an affair at some point. In any case, we’ll never know now. Papá could always run rings around us. He was smarter than the whole lot of us put together. If he had mistresses, I’m sure he’d never have let himself be caught.’

  ‘Not alive, maybe . . .’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Papá was taking Viagra, Julio.’

  His mouth dropped open, as though he couldn’t process what he had just heard. Then he leaned forward and looked me straight in the eye.

  ‘Papá?’ he said. ‘Viagra?’

  ‘Papá,’ I confirmed.

  ‘Fuck!’ He was staring at some fixed point behind me. ‘Stop, I don’t want to know. How did you find out?’

  I told him the same story I’d told Adolfo, told him what Adolfo had said about the risks of taking the stuff, and that Papá had had a conversation with him about it over six years ago.

  ‘He didn’t think there was anything strange about it,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I do.’

  ‘Me too,’ I admitted, ‘but maybe Adolfo sees things more clearly than we do, because he’s not as close.’

  ‘Right . . .’ Julio looked at me and nodded slowly, ‘so that’s why you went off on one, because you thought . . .’

  ‘Exactly.’ I confirmed his suspicions, because neither of us wanted to go there.

  ‘You know what it’s like, Álvaro? It’s like Papá was a lot of different men, not just one man, because . . . I don’t know, every time I talk to Rafa about him - and obviously we’ve been talking a lot recently - we remember different things, sometimes contradictory things . . . Verónica says it’s normal, she says it always happens when someone dies, but I don’t agree with her. I’m sure that if Mamá died, for example, our memories of her wouldn’t be so different . . .’

  ‘But Rafa’s view of Papá was always distorted, wasn’t it?’ I ventured. ‘To Rafa, Papá was like Superman, his idol . . .’

  ‘That’s true. But it’s not just that . . .’ He stopped for a minute and thought. ‘Well, maybe it does have something to do with that. Rafa couldn’t stand the fact that after a lifetime of doing his best, you were still Papá’s favourite, not him.’

  ‘Me? What are you talking about? I didn’t study what he wanted me to study, I left when he wanted me to stay, I got married in a register office . . .’

  ‘So what?’ Julio interrupted. ‘I’ve spent my whole life listening to him talking about you - Álvaro is like me, Alvaro is the brightest, Álvaro is the only one I don’t have to worry about . . . You were his favourite . . . You and the girls, especially Angélica, though it seems strange given what a cold fish she is, but he liked her more than Clara, don’t ask me why . . . He couldn’t stand me because we were too much alike, we were always fighting, but it was mutual, believe me, and anyway, I was always Mamá’s little boy so I didn’t care, I don’t think Clara did either, at the end of the day. But Rafa didn’t take it well, seriously.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I protested as much to myself as to him, ‘really, I don’t, and if you want to know the truth, it never even crossed my mind . . .’

  ‘You see? That’s what I mean when I say this whole thing with Papá is weird ?’

  ‘But . . . Rafa was his right-hand man, wasn’t he? The one who knew everything, the one who was closest to him?’

  Just then, my uncertainty began to crumble, to give way under the pressure of something which a moment ago had seemed incredible and now seemed within the realms of possibility.

  My father liked to dance with my sister Angélica. They danced so well together that they looked like a couple of professional dancers, but I had only ever seen him dance with Clara once, at her wedding reception. ‘Your brother Julio thinks with his prick, I’m sick to death of your brother Rafa . . .’ He’d never said anything like this to me. ‘You’re the brightest of the lot, Álvaro.’ But he’d never given me any sign that he had favourites, he’d never taken me aside to talk to me. We didn’t argue, we didn’t fight, and of cours
e, we loved each other. I loved him, he was my father; he loved me, I was his son. We got that far and not one step farther, but I never thought that it was different for the others, or for his eldest son at least.

  ‘Anyway . . .’ I started again, ‘Rafa did business with Papá, didn’t he? You heard what Mamá said earlier.’

  ‘Business?’ Julio raised his eyebrows and laughed. ‘The only business Rafa had with Papá was debts. Debts, Álvaro, he was always asking Papá for money. Papá didn’t given him a quarter of what he asked for, which is just as well, because Rafa was always going too far, but in the end . . . well, you know what happened, the straw that broke the camel’s back. Earlier, when Mamá said “if the others have no objection”, I wanted to say something. Because he’ll go on doing it, you know that. He’ll do it all the more, because Mamá is easier to convince, she’s much more indulgent than Papá ever was, and no matter how much Rafa has inherited, he’ll try to get his hands on more, I was about to say it . . . But then I thought, what good will it do me, fucking things up for Rafa, I’m not going to be any happier just because I have more in the bank . . . Did you ever ask Papá for money, Álvaro?’

  ‘No. I thought about it when we were buying the house, but the mortgage was tax deductible, and I didn’t have much in the way of outgoings, so in the end I didn’t need to.’

  He looked at me, finished his drink, and signalled to the waiter for another. He seemed to be meditating on something, as if he was about to make a decision.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I asked him for money once,’ he held up his right index finger so there could be no doubt, ‘just once. And he wouldn’t give it to me.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.