The Frozen Heart

by Almudena Grandes

  ‘You’ve been there?’ I said. He nodded.

  ‘Many times. And I went to the well. I saw where it had happened, I even took flowers, there are always flowers there, some dried and withered, others fresh, piled on top of the well cover.’

  ‘That’s terrifying. What an appalling story,’ I said at length.

  ‘Yes, it is appalling,’ Adolfo agreed. ‘Because he was a Spanish communist, not a Polish Jew, my father wasn’t lucky enough to be sent to the gas chambers by the Nazis.’

  ‘I know it’s a terrible thing, and it must be terrible to have to live with such a story, but I have to say the whole thing gives me the creeps,’ said Mai after my sister and her boyfriend had left, ‘to still be dwelling on it all these years later . . .’

  ‘If we’d dealt with these things earlier, we wouldn’t need to do it now . . .’ I said, though at the time I didn’t really know what I was saying, I didn’t fully realise the significance until that morning at the hall of records in Torrelodones as I looked into the eyes of the strange boy who was trying to prepare me for the worst.

  ‘If we’d dealt with these things earlier, we wouldn’t need to do it now,’ this was what I had said, but at the time I didn’t know what it was to imagine the terror, the suffering, the desperation, the fear and the pain which might contort a face - the face of a man, a woman - that a child has seen every day of his life, smiling out of a photograph on the sideboard, hanging in the hallway of the house where he grew up. ‘Your grandfather, your grandmother, my mother’, just a name and a face and if you’re lucky a sentence or two, maybe some beautiful or valuable object that had once belonged to them, but nothing more, no living memory to connect you to the frozen smile of the past. Then the darkness comes, the ground opens up, a lock slides home, a firing squad assembles or the barrel of a gun is pressed to the nape of a neck, and then we sense what we have never seen: the terror, the suffering, the desperation, the fear and the pain; we feel this body we have never held, the hands we have never touched, the tears that the photograph can never shed, and the acrid taste of lead in our mouths.

  I felt these things as I imagined Teresa González Puerto tumbling into a well, collapsing in a ditch, dying in a mass grave, her eyes slowly closing as she waited for death. ‘Your grandmother was a good woman, she loved her husband and she loved to play the piano . . .’ I felt all these things and my face distorted with rage. ‘I go to Arucas from time to time, I don’t know why, but I feel I need to go, it makes me feel better. I look at the well, I take flowers, that’s all, it sounds stupid, but I need to do it . . .’ Adolfo had told me that night. Yet there are others - the grandchildren of the rebels, of the fascists, of the Arucas butchers - whose version of the story would be different, whose rage and tears would be different from Adolfo’s, from Fernando’s or my own. I thought about this, but my grandmother’s name had been Teresa González Puerto, and she had lost the war but had never lost her reason, she deserved me to win on her behalf.

  ‘I’m really sorry.’ The boy had looked at me, his face concerned, almost afraid. ‘I shouldn’t have said that, I’ve got no reason to think . . . I’m really sorry.’

  ‘You’ve nothing to be sorry for, just the opposite.’ I forced myself to remain calm, took his hand, and he shook it firmly. ‘I’m very grateful to you.’

  I took the official version of my grandmother’s life, three meagre sheets of paper, and walked towards the main square. The café terraces were almost empty, it was early, it was Monday. I picked a table in the sunshine and ordered a beer from a short, engaging, dark-haired waitress who looked like she might be from Ecuador or maybe Peru. I drank the beer and ordered another as I read and reread the documents, the summary printed in ten-point Arial at the top of the photocopy. Then I paid the bill, left a generous tip and went into the bar.

  ‘Excuse me, I don’t know if you can help me, I’m looking for someone . . .’ It was the appearance of the woman behind the bar - fifty-something, sturdy, self-possessed - which persuaded me to talk to her. ‘Are you from here?’

  ‘No, but I’ve been living here for thirty years,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘I see . . .’ I smiled back. ‘It’s, well . . . I’m looking for some friends of my father, he was born here in Torrelodones but he left for Madrid when he was young. I thought maybe you might know them . . . One of them is called Anselmo, he’d be quite old, the same age as my father was when he died at eighty-three . . .’

  ‘No . . .’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know anyone called Anselmo.’

  ‘And a woman everybody always called Encarnita?’

  ‘A tall woman with short grey curly hair, very tall and old . . .’

  It was her. Not only did the woman know Encarnita, she knew where she lived. I got lost more than once, taking the wrong turning at ridiculous roundabouts that looked as though they had been deliberately designed to disorient drivers who weren’t local, before finally finding the place, a stone cottage set in an overgrown garden with tall trees surrounded by a hedge of rose-laurel. Next to the gate there was an entryphone. I pushed the button and said I had come to see Encarnita. Someone buzzed me in. A blonde woman of about thirty with short hair and pale white skin stood at the door waiting for me.

  ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Good morning,’ she replied, and from her accent I realised that she was foreign.

  ‘My name is Álvaro Carrión, I’m the son of an old friend of Encarnita,’ I articulated slowly, ‘I’d like to talk to her for a minute, if that’s all right.’

  ‘La señora no here.’

  ‘What time will she be back?’ The woman didn’t answer. ‘I don’t mind waiting.’

  ‘Señora Encarnita here, Señora Encarna no here.’

  ‘OK, but ...’ The coincidence of the names made me wonder. ‘I don’t know . . . I’m looking for the older lady.’

  ‘Ay!’

  That was all she said, her nervous expression looking almost like grief. She disappeared, leaving the door open. Some minutes later she came back with a young girl wearing tight jeans, a cropped T-shirt and a blue stud in her belly button.

  ‘Hi,’ she stuffed her hands into her pockets and smiled, ‘Jovanka said something about my grandmother, but I didn’t really understand what she was saying. She’s from Croatia.’

  ‘That’s probably why she didn’t understand me. The thing is . . .’

  I introduced myself, explained who my father was, told her I had seen her grandmother at the funeral and that I wanted to talk to her because I thought she might have known my grandmother.

  ‘Oh, O K ... I’m sure she’d love to, she loves talking to people, but she gets tired easily . . .’ Just then, we heard a car and she craned her neck to look. ‘Look, there’s my mother now.’

  I repeated my story for the third time to a graceful, friendly woman a little older than me, who listened and nodded until she felt she didn’t need to hear any more.

  ‘Come with me.’ She stepped into the hall, then turned to her daughter. ‘Cecilia, go and tell Jolanka your father phoned to say he won’t have time to come back for lunch . . .’

  ‘OK, but after that I’m coming back to listen.’

  Her mother smiled and walked down the hall to a glass door through which the sun streamed. There, in a semicircular living room that opened on to a back porch which revealed how old the house truly was, Encarnita was sitting in front of the television, ramrod straight in a wicker chair stuffed with cushions. She did not seem particularly interested in the programme because she turned and looked at us, then switched off the television.

  ‘Hello, Mamá . . .’ Her daughter bent down, kissed her forehead and stroked the woman’s cheek. ‘How are you feeling? Look, you’ve a visitor. This young man is . . .’

  ‘I know,’ Encarnita cut her daughter short, looking at me, ‘I recognise you.’

  ‘Yes, we met recently at my father’s funeral,’ I said, ‘my name is . . .’

  ‘Julio Carrión.’
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br />   ‘No,’ I smiled, ‘that was my father’s name, and I have a brother named Julio, but my name is Álvaro. Álvaro Carrión.’

  She was a little taken aback, and I realised she had mistaken me for my father. Her daughter asked whether we would like something to drink then headed towards the kitchen. The teenager with the pierced belly button showed up and sat next to her grandmother, who gazed at her for a moment, as though she didn’t recognise the girl.

  ‘Of course . . .’ she said after a moment, ‘you’re Julio’s son. So you’re Benigno’s grandson, then . . .’

  ‘That’s right.’ I nodded, smiling, trying hard to mask my disappointment, but it was as if she could tell what I was thinking.

  ‘I’ve still got all my marbles, you know, but sometimes I forget, I get lost in the past and it takes me a minute to get my bearings. Apparently it has something to do with my circulation, at least that’s what the doctor tells me, but once I get my bearings, I’m fine.’ She smiled and turned to her granddaughter. ‘Isn’t that right, Cecilia?’

  ‘You’re in great form,’ Cecilia took the woman’s hand and squeezed it, ‘I wish my memory was as good.’

  ‘The thing is, the reason I’ve come . . .’ But after what she had said, I felt it would be insulting to beat around the bush. ‘Encarnita, did you know my grandmother, Teresa?’

  ‘Your grandmother?’ She opened her eyes wide. ‘Of course I knew her ! Everyone in the village knew your grandmother. And not just this village - she was well known in these parts, your grandma . . .’

  ‘And do you remember . . . Do you remember if she was a socialist?’

  ‘A socialist?’ Encarnita burst out laughing, then slapped her thighs and looked at me as though this was the stupidest thing anyone had ever asked her. ‘Of course she was! Although saying she was a socialist is putting it mildly, she was more than that . . . your grandmother all but invented socialism in these parts. No one in the village had ever heard of socialism until your grandmother got it into her head to get involved in politics . . .’ She raised her finger, suddenly serious.

  ‘Now let me tell you something. She might have been a socialist, in fact she was a dyed-in-the-wool Red, but she was a good woman, I’ll say that for her. She was intelligent and she was brave. Maybe too brave, but I never met a better woman. I was very fond of your grandmother, because Teresita . . . she’d be your aunt, wouldn’t she?’ I nodded at the name of this woman I had never seen, even in photos. ‘Well now, Teresita and me, we were the same age and the best of friends, so I’d go round to your grandparents’ house nearly every day, for tea, or to play with Teresita, and of course she’d come over to my house too . . . Later, my parents forbade me from going to her house, after your grandmother became a teacher, but I still saw her at school every day.’

  ‘Why exactly did your parents forbid you from going to my grandparents’ house?’

  ‘On account of your grandmother, of course. She was a militant, she was very active politically - you can’t imagine - and my family were monarchists, one of my mother’s brothers had been executed by communists in Madrid. Now here was your grandmother, holding rallies in the street . . . as you can imagine, they didn’t approve.’

  ‘But my grandfather was right-wing?’

  ‘Your grandfather was . . . I suppose he was right-wing. More than anything he was a Holy Joe, but he was never very comfortable at home because . . .’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but your grandfather was spineless, and that’s the truth, he was always a weak man, even my mother said it, and his wife was worth ten of him. I think that worried my own father, you know? Because my mother . . . Well, she was a nationalist, I’m not saying she wasn’t, but back then, women suddenly had a lot more freedom, they could come and go as they pleased, they had the vote, they had the right to get married without their parents’ consent, they could divorce and keep custody of their children, they could go out to work, live on their own, they could be leaders of political parties, they could be elected, become ministers . . . Just imagine it!’

  She looked at me as though waiting for me to draw my own conclusions.

  ‘And your mother was happy about that?’

  ‘Of course she was happy! Why wouldn’t she be?’ Encarnita laughed. ‘I was only a little girl back then, I didn’t understand, but looking back on it now, well . . . I think my mother was very fond of your grandmother, if only because she felt grateful for what she had done for women. And my father couldn’t bear that, he couldn’t stomach all this talk of women’s rights. I was the one he took it out on, because I was terribly fond of Teresita . . . Not that I did as I was told, of course. I didn’t go to your grandparents’ house any more, but I still played with your aunt at school, or out in the street, or down by the river. That’s the way things were back then. I could only have been eleven or twelve at the time, but I defied my father. Some of your grandmother must have rubbed off on me . . .’

  She smiled again, and I smiled too as the ghost of Teresa González hovered over us like a good fairy, a gentle, munificent presence untroubled by the arrival of a lanky teenage boy, his face scarred with acne. His name was Jorge, and as he sat eating all the crisps his mother had brought, I realised that there was a question I would have to ask sooner or later.

  ‘Encarnita . . . do you know how my grandmother died ?’

  ‘Well, I . . .’ She looked at me, as though realising how strange the question was. ‘Surely you know . . . I mean, your father must know?’

  ‘I don’t.’ I clasped my hands together, squeezing them hard, suddenly ashamed of the extent of my ignorance. ‘I suppose he must have known, but I don’t. He never talked to us about his mother. Never. A couple of days ago, among his papers, I found the letter she wrote to him when she left. It wasn’t until then that I found out she was a socialist, that she’d left her husband, and that she had a daughter. Before I read that letter, I believed my father was an only child and that my grandmother had died of tuberculosis in 1937.’

  ‘God preserve us!’ Encarnita shook her head. ‘That’s . . . it’s shameful !’

  ‘Yes.’ I looked her in the eye, I couldn’t turn away. ‘It is.’

  ‘I mean, I can understand . . . in those days, it was difficult being the child of certain people, it could even be dangerous . . . But afterwards . . . for him to say nothing to you, her grandchildren.’

  She allowed a long pause. ‘I don’t know, maybe . . . In any case, your grandmother did not die of tuberculosis. He was the one with the disease.’

  ‘Her lover?’

  ‘I wouldn’t call him her lover . . .’ She took a moment to consider the word before rejecting it. ‘The man she lived with.’

  ‘Manuel,’ I said.

  ‘That’s right, Manuel Castro. He was a teacher, too, and a socialist, he was a good man. He was a great orator, from what people said. Your grandmother was a fine public speaker, but he . . . I was only a child, but even I could tell, because back then a politician needed to be imposing. They were statesmen, you understand? Not like the politicians nowadays, changing their minds every other day, they were leaders, and they knew what they were talking about. Don Manuel was held in high regard in the party, like your grandmother in her own way, she was one of the leading lights too . . . Anyway, they were made for each other, truly they were. He was the one who had had tuberculosis, but by the time he came to Torrelodones, he was cured. He was tall and slim, but he was a strapping man. All the children loved him, because he was a magician.’

  ‘He was a magician?’ Suddenly my heart was pounding. ‘You mean he did magic tricks?’

  ‘Of course. He was the one who taught your father.’ I nodded. ‘If we were well behaved in school, and we’d done all our homework, Don Manuel would make things appear out of his pockets, from behind his ears, and then make them disappear again.’ Her eyes lit up. ‘It was marvellous . . . and what with that, and the fact that he lived with your grandparents, on account of he’d been
evacuated from Las Rozas, well, anyway . . . What happened, happened. Now I’m going to tell you something else . . .’ She raised her index finger again. ‘It was an awful scandal, everyone was shocked because, you see, he was married too, he even had children, but they weren’t thinking about that, they didn’t worry about such things. Your grandmother didn’t hide herself away, she wasn’t ashamed - quite the opposite, she looked radiant, it did your heart good to see her, because she was convinced that she had every right to do what she was doing. That’s how she was, and I have to say, I think she was right, I envy her, because I . . .’

  She stopped suddenly, as though she’d bitten her tongue, and shot me a look of panic that I didn’t know how to interpret.

  ‘Well now, where was I?’ she said quickly. ‘They left the village, taking Teresita with them, or maybe Teresita decided she wanted to go. Your father, he didn’t want to leave, so he stayed with your grandfather. It’s strange because Julito adored Don Manuel, they were always together, Julio was even his assistant when he did magic shows for the soldiers. Afterwards, they were both put in prison, separately, of course. Don Manuel was released years later, I know that much, even if I can’t remember now who told me . . .’