The Frozen Heart

by Almudena Grandes

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Carrión, how could you possibly have made it from Germany on foot?’ Julio had accepted Huertas’s amendments, committed every detail to memory, but the person on whom he had chosen to try out his story for the first time demanded no details.

  ‘Poor Julio,’ he said simply, looking at him with genuine compassion. ‘What rotten luck.’

  His guest lit a cigarette: ‘I suppose, but all’s well that ends well. Some people have had it worse.’

  ‘Of course. Pablo, for one . . . You know Stalin sent him to a labour camp, the same camp where the prisoners from the Blue Division are being held.’

  ‘Really?’ Julio’s eyes widened.

  ‘Boys!’ Blanca popped her head round the door. ‘Lunch is served.’

  ‘I’ll tell you about it later,’ Eugenio murmured as they got to their feet, ‘my wife doesn’t know anything about it.’

  Señora Sánchez Delgado was a fine cook and an attentive and generous hostess. She doted on Eugenio, always made his favourite meals, was proud to watch him put on weight. ‘My mother-in-law doesn’t approve,’ she said to Julio with a smile, ‘she thinks I spoil him . . .’

  ‘It’s true,’ Eugenio said, ‘but I’m happy for you to spoil me . . .’ They held hands across the dinner table, were always kissing, had pet names for each other. Julio felt awkward, and Eugenio noticed.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, his tone cheerful.

  ‘Nothing . . .’ he said. ‘It’s just that I can still picture you back in the trench, with your rifle and your uniform, and suddenly seeing you here, in your own home with a wife and a baby on the way . . . I can’t take it in.’

  ‘I know.’

  Eugenio and Blanca smiled at him, then she glanced at the clock and leapt to her feet.

  ‘It’s a quarter past four, I’ll just change then I have to go.’

  She excused herself, explaining to Julio that every afternoon she went to visit her parents, who lived nearby. ‘I’m an only child, and they miss having me around. Of course, I won’t be able to go after the baby’s born . . .’ Julio realised that Eugenio thought this entirely reasonable. That’s how he is, Julio thought, if he’s decided to be happy, he’ll be the happiest man alive. And yet, he noticed, without Blanca nearby to put a twinkle in them, his friend’s eyes no longer blazed as they used to do; as he followed Eugenio back into the living room, warming a glass of cognac between his hands, he wondered what had happened.

  ‘I don’t want to hold you up, Eugenio, but . . . I don’t know, I have so many questions . . .’

  ‘Ask away . . .’ Eugenio said, sinking into an armchair. ‘I’ve been looking forward to seeing you, and these days I only work mornings.’

  ‘Jesus, you civil servants have it easy!’

  ‘I’m not a civil servant, Julio.’

  ‘No?’ Julio raised an eyebrow in surprise; this was the first point on which Huertas has been mistaken. ‘I thought you had some job at the ministry?’

  ‘I was in the Department of Public Works, but I left just before Christmas. Nowadays, I work for a private construction company from eight to two and I spend the afternoons studying. I want to finish university.’

  ‘University?’ Julio did not know what to think. ‘But when we left for Russia, they said . . . Weren’t they supposed to take your service into account as part of your degree?’

  ‘I know what they said,’ Eugenio cut him off, smiling, ‘and they did. I studied shit and they gave me a degree in shit. In theory I’m a qualified engineer, but in practice I know what I am and what I’m not. That’s why I want to finish my studies, proper studies, like everyone else.’ He sipped his cognac. ‘Are you surprised?’

  ‘Yes,’ Julio said truthfully.

  ‘Things aren’t going well here, Julio. They could be, but they’re not. It was different when I came back, because the Germans were fighting a rearguard action, whereas here, at least on the surface, nothing was happening, nobody was doing anything, just in case ... Of course, Franco betrayed the Germans just in time, and the British paid him well for it. I know it sounds harsh, but it’s the truth. It was the British who put Franco in power, and it’s the British who kept him there. And I’ll tell you something else. I don’t know what would have happened if Roosevelt hadn’t died so soon, but I do know that if Hitler had won the war, Muñoz-Grandes would be sitting in El Pardo today: he was their man, he was the one they trusted. But Hitler lost and Franco won again. Oh, not honourably, he was a turncoat, but he won and that’s all that matters. So a year and a half ago . . . I don’t know . . . I was completely disgusted by the whole thing . . .’

  Eugenio Sánchez Delgado had aged, not just in the way he moved or the way he talked, but in his mind. And yet the faith he had once had was so important to him that he had been prepared to sacrifice everything - power, status, money, even his own happiness - to keep alive a flame that would never again burn with the ardent, youthful passion in which it had been born. Julio knew from the first moment that he had never met anyone like this man, who could be so innocent, so open, occasionally shrewd but more often foolish. But not until that afternoon, when he heard the tremor of indignation in his voice, did Julio realise what it meant. Eugenio had abandoned his innocence, had given up on his theory about the little mistakes made necessary by great causes, so he would not have to give up on his own principles. But Julio was no longer surprised by him, no longer admired him in spite of himself, no longer considered Eugenio a better man than he. He could not even admire his courage, for Julio Carrión González had also aged. And even though he still liked Eugenio, still thought of him as his only friend, the only thing this conversation inspired in him was weariness.

  ‘People are still dying of starvation, and that’s not a figure of speech. I know you’ve only just got back, but you must have seen it?’ Julio acknowledged the fact with a shudder. ‘I know there’s been the war, and the drought, and the economic sanctions . . . In the beginning, maybe, it was understandable, but not now.’

  Eugenio fell silent, he took off his glasses and wiped them with a corner of his shirt-tail.

  ‘Let me give you an example. You remember Ricardo, my brother-in-law?’ Julio nodded, though he had met the man only twice. ‘When my sister Pilar married him, he was only a second lieutenant, but today he’s one of the richest men in Madrid. You’re thinking maybe he’s a government minister, or a banker, maybe his father is a millionaire? But no . . .’ Eugenio paused as though waiting for Julio to say something.

  ‘What is he, then?’

  ‘He’s a clerk in the municipal Department of Supplies.’ He underscored the remark with a bitter smile. ‘Nothing more, nothing less. In any civilised country, he’d be in prison, but Spain isn’t a civilised country any more, Julio. Everything, anything, is permitted. The people who had nothing are starving, those who have lost everything are starving too . . . Last summer, I took my brother Arturo out to a reception at General Camilo Alonso Vega’s villa in El Viso, a big modern house with a nice garden. Ever wonder why El Viso didn’t get bombed during the war ?’

  ‘No.’ Julio did not see what Eugenio was getting at.

  ‘I did . . . I thought it was strange, because Salamanca was on our side, there were no communists there, but El Viso? The socialist Besteiro was living there and half of the members of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, socialists and republicans, I mean, they were the ones who founded it, weren’t they? Anyway, that afternoon, at the general’s reception, I realised why. “You have a lovely house,” I said to his wife. “Yes,” she said to me, “it’s a beautiful setting, isn’t it?” Then, without trying to justify herself, as if it was the most normal thing in the world, she told me that the house used to belong to some man called Ganvinet - a communist living in exile in London - and his wife, who had committed suicide in prison. I wanted to ask her, “But didn’t these people have children, family, or even friends, surely they must have had someone with a better claim to this house than you, s
eñora?”

  Stop busting my balls, Eugenio, thought Julio for the first time, but he did not say it aloud, did not try to fill the silence that now separated him from this stranger, who had once been his oldest friend.

  ‘I nearly asked her, but of course I didn’t. In Spain, no one asks any questions, that’s how people get a job in supplies, in public transport, in public works. “But they were communists.” You don’t need any other excuse, it’s like saying “Open, sesame!” It’s 1947 but we’re still behaving like it’s 1939. All you have to say is “They were communists” and you can get away with anything.’

  ‘It’s not like that, is it?’ said Julio Carrión. He frowned, adopting a concerned tone while he tried to contain his excitement. ‘I mean, it’s legal, there are laws . . .’

  ‘It’s theft, Julio.’ Eugenio stared at him, his eyes shining with something of their former passion. ‘Even if it’s legal, and everyone does it, it’s still theft, and I’ll have nothing to do with it.’

  ‘So that’s why you left the department?’

  ‘Yes. That, and because they put me in charge of the expropriations . . .’

  ‘What about Romualdo?’

  ‘Him? Oh, he’s doing fine, you know him. As far as he’s concerned, things have never been better. He’s one of the gang.’

  ‘And you never talk to him about it?’

  Eugenio refilled Julio’s glass and his own, then sat down, ‘I haven’t spoken to him in months.’

  Or longer, almost a year and a half; ever since Eugenio Sánchez Delgado had become interested in what had become of the members of the Blue Division who had been captured in Russia. He had not stopped being a Falangist. Quite the contrary. The shame and disappointment he felt had left him no other possibility than to redouble his efforts, to become more deeply involved in what he still thought of as his party, the secular, republican fascist party whose emblem appeared on every public building, every train station, every street, on every letterhead, every uniform, a party which, first and foremost, was clerical and reactionary, which over time appeared as a humiliating, endlessly deferred exercise in restoring the monarchy.

  From this moment on, until the day when a policeman would blow a hole in his daughter’s spleen - the daughter who had been born five months after this reunion with Julio Carrión - Eugenio Sánchez Delgado attempted to be true to himself. In order to do so, his only course was to undermine the regime from within, without ever admitting the contradictions in this fundamentally fruitless task, which was doomed before it even began.

  Eugenio Sánchez Delgado maintained this dual aspect of his character until the age of forty-three, until he had no choice. But on the afternoon Julio saw him in his apartment on the Calle Castelló, he still had passion, still had hope.

  ‘I told you that Pancho is in a labour camp in Russia? I found out by accident, because obviously I was expecting any name but his . . . I work with an organisation that looks after the interests of members of the Blue Division who were captured. We work through the Red Cross and the Swedish embassy. We can’t do much, obviously, because it’s not official, and we can’t risk provoking the English and the Americans now that we’re all friends again. That’s why we only recently managed to get a list of prisoners and there it was, Luis Serrano Romero. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought it had to be a mistake, so I wrote to the Swedes and explained and they wrote back and said there was no mistake, that Stalin had incarcerated the deserters in the same camps as the men from the Blue Division . . . I was speechless.’

  ‘It is odd,’ said Julio, making light of the news, little expecting that the shock would transport him back to a German train, an autumn day, en route to Nuremberg.

  ‘Odd?’ Eugenio raised his voice. ‘You think it’s odd? Jesus Christ, it’s grotesque! It’s appalling . . . Pancho Serrano was a hero, he may have been a communist but he was a fucking hero! He was willing to march across Europe with an ID card hidden in his boots and he had enough balls to fight for them and they’ve gone and put him in a prison camp!’ His face softened and took on the dazed expression of a lost child. ‘I just don’t understand. I mean, it would never have happened here in Spain. In our war, Pancho would have got a medal, a promotion, from either side . . . wouldn’t he? I mean, that would be fair. Oh, I don’t know . . .’

  ‘He was looking for trouble,’ Julio said, hoping they could get back to the subject that really interested him.

  ‘No!’ Eugenio said, his eyes flashing, his cheeks flushed with righteous anger. ‘He was not looking for trouble! He was looking for something different, and you know it, you were the one who explained it to me, Julio, and they have no right . . .’ He paused and struggled to regain his composure. ‘Poor Pancho, I often think about him, I wonder how he feels, to have been betrayed by his own kind, by everything that mattered to him. It’s awful. Apparently the Russians trust them, give them power over the other prisoners, they don’t make them work so hard. But he wouldn’t do it. And I can understand. He had the balls to refuse. Poor bastard, I think about him a lot, about that night - “tovarich, spanski tovarich! Don’t shoot, I’m coming over!” - you remember ? And I think, what would we have done, what would the Spanish have done?’

  We are the wretched of the earth, thought Julio Carrión, who could see in Eugenio’s eyes the trembling lips of Ignacio Fernández. He dared not say the words aloud. War and peace had come and gone and they had both grown older; Julio no longer knew what to say, how to act, what to do to ease Eugenio’s suffering, this pain that was not simply inconvenient but possibly dangerous.

  ‘I went to see the real Pancho, you know? His little brother, the one who was actually called Francisco Serrano Romero. I had to go and see him, it was the only way I could get to talk to him. “Those people don’t have a phone,” someone told me when I called at the town hall, “and nobody round here lets them use theirs.” I said, “Couldn’t you go and get him, that way I could talk to him on this phone?” But he said no, said he wasn’t about to get up from his desk for anyone, and certainly not for Pancho. “Thanks for your help,” I said, and hung up . . . So in the end I went there.’

  ‘Why?’ Julio could no longer hide his astonishment. ‘I’m sorry, Eugenio, but I don’t get it.’

  Eugenio did not bother to answer, he just smiled and went on: ‘So, anyway, he lives in a kind of farm, an old ruin he fixed up himself, on the outskirts of town. He’s the only man left in the family. His older brother was killed on the Ebro, his father is part of a prison work detail building a dam in Cuenca, and Pancho - or rather Luis - is in Russia. He and his wife, his mother, his brothers’ wives, and his older sister - she’s not long out of prison in Alcalá, she’s a widow too - they all live in the same house, with a whole crowd of kids. The younger sister has married and moved to Badajoz and she wants nothing to do with them.’

  ‘What were you expecting?’ Julio filled his glass to the brim. ‘They lost the war, didn’t they?’

  ‘Yes. They lost the war. And now here I was telling him that Stalin had his brother banged up in a prison camp. When the real Pancho heard, he went white as a sheet. “What did he do?” he asked me. “Nothing,” I told him, “he didn’t do anything, he went over to the Russian side.” When I said that he went quiet, then he grabbed me and started screaming, “You fucker, you bastard, I’m going to kill you.” ’

  ‘He didn’t believe you.’

  ‘He didn’t want to believe me, but it was the truth, and in the end he accepted it. He backed away and sat down on a stone bench next to the door. Then he said, “I am Pancho.” And I’ll never forget it, the tone of his voice, the expression on his face. He looked like a corpse, Julio, like a dead man, it was terrible. I was sorry I’d come. You’d think he had been through enough, then I show up and fuck up his life a little more . . . But there I was, and I had to tell him. He reeled off two or three names and a stream of kids appeared from the house. He said to the oldest lad, “Go and ask your Aunt Lupe to come here.” �
��She’s Luis’s wife,” he said to me, and he didn’t say another word until his sister-in-law arrived. She was a tall woman, young and slim, dressed in black. She stood there, leaning in the doorway, and she listened to me, saying nothing, though by the end she had her face in her hands. She was crying, but she wouldn’t let me see her cry. When she calmed down, she looked at me, and she said something I’ll never forget, she said, “You know, I thought he’d gone off with another woman, I think I would have preferred that.” ’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Julio stared enquiringly at Eugenio.

  ‘I do . . .’ Eugenio said. ‘And I understand what Pancho said when I was leaving. He said, “It must be some mistake, it can’t be true. I’m not saying you’re a liar, it’s just that I don’t believe it. But if there’s anything you can do for my brother . . . ” I realised that maybe he and I were not so different; both of us believe what we need to believe in order to keep going in this fucked-up world. And I did try to do something for them, not just for Pancho, but for his family. I talked to Romualdo, who’s lining his pockets in the Ministry of Agriculture, I told him the whole story and asked him to do whatever he could to help, to give the family a grant or a subsidy, an advance against the harvest. He’d barely have had to lift a finger. “I’m not asking you to do it for them,” I said, “do it as a favour for me.” But he wouldn’t. You know what he said ? “They can go fuck themselves.” I haven’t spoken to him since.’

  When he left Eugenio’s apartment, Julio Carrión no longer felt that freshness, no longer smelled the clean smell like freshly laundered sheets, which had welcomed him when he arrived. He was annoyed, though he had no reason to be, since what Eugenio had told him confirmed his hopes, but he could not rid himself of a bitter taste, like a scrap of food rotting between his teeth.

  Julio could not understand why he missed the old Eugenio, the happy, enthusiastic, passionate Eugenio, only now that he was gone for good. Madrid seemed depressing, cruel, complicated. Against his better judgement, through his friend’s eyes, he could see the other side: the hardship, the worry, the subdued fury of the desperate. But he stifled this surge of nostalgia, intent on playing his hand as quickly as possible. At the end of the day, Eugenio Sánchez Delgado had always been a queer fish, thought Julio, and most people out there probably didn’t think the way he did. Two days later, he discovered how right he had been.