The Frozen Heart

by Almudena Grandes

  ‘That’s worse, Álvaro.’ He came over and squeezed my shoulder. ‘Or better, depending how you look at it . . .’

  The conversation left a bad taste in my mouth. I had never wanted to be like my father, nor did I want to be like my brother Julio, and yet I was starting to understand him. I thought about him when I was with Miguelito, I found I was more attentive to my son, and enjoyed my time with him more. Miguelito hadn’t yet turned five, and by the time he grew up, he would have only the vaguest memory of this summer, but I did my best to make sure my unconditional love was a part of that memory because sometimes, when I looked at him, I would unintentionally imagine myself with other children, mine and Raquel’s, and suddenly I felt a surge of pain and guilt, all the feelings Mai could not stir in me. This was why, when I arrived at La Moraleja, the first thing I did was crouch down, arms wide, and wait for him to throw himself at me.

  There we stood on the porch, my whole family - or what I thought of as my whole family - my mother, my brothers, my sisters and their wives, their husbands, all happy to see me. And then I suddenly remembered what I knew and what I did not want to know, what I had wanted to forget and should not have forgotten, what Fernando Cisneros had noticed and what I had suspected. Raquel’s voice when she said I looked at her the way my father did. And I realised that the best thing, perhaps the only thing, would be if I never found out what had brought together my father and the woman I loved.

  Then my mother kissed me, my wife kissed me, my brothers kissed me and we missed him, we would always miss him, our grief was a part of us, as I settled into telling them how well my life was going. ‘You must be thrilled, Mamá, having a son who might be a professor . . .’ Clara said. My mother looked at me and nodded, but I knew it did not matter to her. What was surprising was that it no longer mattered to me, because Raquel Fernández Perea had come into my life, as fate or death might come into your life.

  And yet I sensed my father’s ghost more strongly in his house than anywhere else, a place I could be sure Raquel had never been, where she was his mistress, not mine. My grandparents’ wedding photo still hung in the same place, Teresa, young and confident, smiling broadly for the camera; the photo of my grandmother Mariana, who had not a whit of mystery about her, hugging my older brothers and sisters. I had never really looked at it before. I studied their faces, looked carefully at Mai and at my mother, and suddenly I saw Raquel, young, naked, slipping into the arms of an old man in a Jacuzzi surrounded by candles, and the image was so shocking, so unbearable, that I could not reconcile it with my memories. I started to choke, I felt as though I was suffocating, so I went to find Miguelito, to take him to buy sweets, to play football at the bottom of the garden, anything to get as far away as possible from this porch.

  I thought that was enough, but one afternoon Lisette came down to the pool to talk to me. She was wearing one of those Brazilian bikinis that all but gave Julio a heart attack, and she was carrying Clara’s baby. She did not say anything until Miguelito was in the water, out of earshot.

  ‘Álvaro, baby, what’s the matter ? I can tell something’s up.’ Her smile was mischievous, almost malicious.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘what kind of thing?’

  ‘You don’t look at me any more.’

  ‘I’m looking at you right now, Lisette.’

  ‘I know, but you don’t look at me the way you used to.’

  ‘Oh, I see . . .’ I smiled back at her. ‘Well, I’ll try and do better in future . . .’

  It was a Wednesday, one of my nephew’s birthdays, which was why I had come down to La Moraleja. I had been thinking of staying the night - so I would not have to stay on Saturday night - but Lisette’s comments had unsettled me and I couldn’t find the energy to make love to Mai before I left.

  ‘Jesus, this is a complete bitch.’ Staring at my mobile, I wandered over to Mai just as the strains of ‘Happy Birthday’ died away. ‘This is going to sound stupid, but I have to get back to Madrid tonight. I’ve just remembered that I’ve got a meeting with the director of the museum at half eight tomorrow morning.’

  ‘In July?’ My wife’s expression was less surprised than sardonic.

  ‘It’s a planning meeting for next term’s courses,’ I came back coolly.

  ‘But surely you can go straight from here,’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s not much farther than it is from our place.’

  ‘I know, but the meeting is at the headquarters of the bank.’ I could see that she wasn’t convinced. ‘José Ignacio just sent me a text to remind me.’

  Mai did not say anything, but she gave me a cold look, the first, and I thought this was bound to happen sooner or later. This was why I hadn’t blamed my quick getaway on the pressures of work or my nervousness at my fictitious but hugely useful application for professorship. I never forgot important meetings, as my wife knew only too well, having lived with me for almost ten years. I didn’t want to say any more, but I grabbed a phone and a sandwich and went into the bathroom to call José Ignacio before I left, because I knew that Mai would call him as soon as I was out of sight.

  ‘Put a sock in it, Álvaro,’ he said before I’d even had time to explain.

  ‘Please, José Ignacio, just this once. I’ve never asked you to do anything like this before.’

  ‘I don’t like the idea.’

  ‘I know, but I’m not asking you to lie, or to make something up ... all you have to do is say yes. A simple answer to a simple question, that’s all. I’m not even sure that Mai will phone you.’

  He agreed, half-heartedly, and I felt a surge of joy entirely disproportionate to the favour he was doing for me, an intense feeling of euphoria so powerful that when I turned to leave the toilet and caught my reflection in the mirror, the man staring back was younger, brighter and more handsome than I was. I did not try to understand the phenomenon, nor the unexpected transcendence I felt at the prospect of an encounter which, if I had postponed it by less than twenty-four hours, would have spared me asking any favours and arousing my wife’s suspicion. But need cannot be explained, and I needed to see Raquel, although I had had lunch with her that day, although we had gone to bed together afterwards, although it had been barely three hours and forty-five minutes since I had left her.

  Coming out of the toilet, I grabbed another sandwich, said a general goodbye to everyone, and kissed Mai on the cheek, since she would not turn her face towards me.

  Lisette walked me to the door, and her smile reminded me what had triggered this pointless, extraordinary panic. So although I took no pleasure in doing so, I gazed at Lisette for a long minute, and then asked: ‘Better?’

  ‘No.’ She laughed.

  She was still shaking her head as I climbed into the car. I thought about phoning Raquel before I hit the motorway to tell her about my change of plans, but José Ignacio phoned before I could.

  ‘How long since you left the house?’ I couldn’t tell him precisely, only that I was still stuck in traffic outside La Moraleja.

  ‘I don’t know, four minutes, maybe five, I’m not sure . . .’

  ‘OK, well, I’ve just got off the phone with Mai ...’

  ‘Really?’ I was shocked. ‘So, how are things . . .’

  ‘What do you mean, how are things?’ José Ignacio was whispering so that his own wife wouldn’t hear, but I could tell he was angry. ‘They’re shit, Álvaro, completely shit, OK? Because I lied to her, I lied because you asked me to, but I’m not happy about it ... Apart from anything else, I’m a terrible liar. So listen to me, this was a one-off. Next time . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry, José Ignacio,’ I cut him off, ‘there won’t be a next time.’

  In the silence that followed I realised that not only had he heard what I had said, he had understood.

  ‘You’re moving out?’ he asked, his tone neutral.

  ‘No, not yet,’ I reassured him, before casually blurting out a decision I was not sure I had yet made, ‘but I don’t think I’ll last the summer
.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Álvaro.’

  He asked me to promise not to do anything stupid and I promised. I didn’t bother to remind him that he had been married three times, that his first wife had left him for another man, and that he had left his second wife to live with his third; I just thanked him and hung up.

  ‘I’ve just come from my mother’s house, and I haven’t fucked anyone. Smell me if you like . . .’ Raquel was waiting for me at the door.

  ‘No,’ she smiled, ‘I don’t need to. The thing about the smell is just a metaphor, Álvaro.’

  When I arrived, she was eating caramel ice cream and drinking whisky on the rocks. ‘It’s a great combination,’ she said, offering me some. I accepted and told her about Lisette, I told her what Julio had said the first time he saw her and how right he had been, I described how Lisette greeted me when my mother or my wife was around and how different she was when it was just the two of us. I told her about that summer day two years earlier when something would have happened between us if Clara hadn’t wandered into the kitchen just as Lisette was showing me how to make mayonnaise, our right hands on the whisk as she held my other hand to show me how to drizzle the oil.

  ‘And did you learn?’ Raquel laughed.

  ‘No, she’s not a very good teacher. She was too interested in what was going on behind her back.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I was happy to let it drop. Anyway, this afternoon, Lisette complained to me that I don’t look at her the same way any more.’

  ‘Really?’ Raquel sounded surprised.

  ‘Yes. I thought it was some sort of bluff so when she walked me to the door, I stared at her, but she just said no, it wasn’t the same.’

  She didn’t say anything, but she came back to the sofa, took my head in her hands, pressed it back against the cushion and kissed me slowly, languidly, with such attentiveness that it was as if time rolled backwards and she was twenty again, a fresh and tender peach, still ripening on the bough. And that’s when it happened. That’s when I remembered that I could never leave this woman, nor could I ever imagine allowing some other imbecile into her life. All I wanted was to grow old with her, to see her face every morning when I woke up and every night before I fell asleep. These were not just words to me any more, clichés drained of meaning through centuries of use by other men and women. But I could no longer think this because thought is the enemy of action, and I couldn’t think any more.

  ‘Maybe we should do something?’ I said, as she drew back. ‘We can’t go on like this for ever, Raquel.’

  ‘Are you asking me to run away with you?’

  ‘Well . . .’ I said, smiling, ‘I don’t know about running away . . . I like Madrid.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘But I’d like it even more if we were living together.’

  That’s it, I’ve done it, I thought, as she kissed me again and I responded to her kisses. I’ve done it! I surrendered to her tender kisses, to an emotion that stung my eyes, and I kept thinking, I’ve done it!

  I had done it. I didn’t care about anything else. I didn’t care that my decision had been triggered by a trivial event, or that it would turn my life upside down, the only thing that mattered was the explosion, the cataclysm; I needed to smell the gunpowder that would explode my world. I needed to feel in my flesh the teeth marks of that joy that pronounced it dead. Nothing else mattered, as long as I could feel Raquel’s lips on mine, feel her fingers caress me, her arms hold me as though fusing her body with mine. This was what I felt, and it seemed so reasonable, so fair, as to quash the doubts, and fears, the callous self-justifications of men who were not like me. Because at that moment I dared everything, I knew everything, I was master of everything.

  I was master of everything until Raquel drew back so she could look at me, and I realised that what I had seen in her eyes was not the glow of unconditional joy I had imagined, but of real tears.

  ‘Say something,’ I begged her, though I already knew that it was bad.

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘Say yes.’

  ‘You want me to tell you that I love you, Álvaro?’ She smiled. ‘That I want to live with you, that I’m in love with you, that I can’t bear the thought of you being with another woman? Is that what you want me to say?’

  ‘For example . . .’ I stroked her face with my fingertips.

  ‘Well then, I’ve said it. Because it’s true, Álvaro, everything I’ve said is true.’

  ‘Well, then, that’s it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let’s go away together, Raquel, let’s leave now, as soon as you can get time off, we’ll go wherever you want to go. I’m rich, remember ?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’ She fell silent. ‘I’m just surprised, because ... We’ve never talked about it. We were together here this afternoon, you were right here, and you never said anything and now suddenly, you come out with all this . . .’

  ‘I know, but it makes sense, doesn’t it?’ I realised that it was not in my interests to lose my cool. ‘We’ve never talked about it, but we both knew it was coming, Raquel, we knew it was bound to happen some day.’

  ‘Yes, but not so quickly . . . we’ve only been seeing each other for three months, and I thought . . . I thought we’d carry on like this, the way things are now, for much longer.’ ‘What do you mean, the way things are now?’ and I was surprised to hear my voice had grown hard. ‘Sleeping together every night, like we do now, or meeting up in the afternoons like we did a month ago, or seeing each other occasionally the way we did at the beginning? How exactly did you think we would carry on?’ She did not look at me as I spoke and this made me angry. ‘Or do you want something else, Raquel? You want me to set you up in an apartment so I can come round after lunch on Wednesdays to fuck you? Is that what . . .’ ‘No!’ she screamed, throwing herself at me, her voice almost a howl. ‘That’s not what I want, I want to live with you, Álvaro, I love you, but I can’t . . . not right now . . . I need time, I need a bit more time.’ ‘Time for what?’ I put my hands on her shoulders and looked into her face. ‘I’m the one who’s got something to lose, Raquel. I’m the one who’s married, who has to deal with the fights, the arguments, the lawyers . . . Me, not you.’ She felt weak and limp in my arms. ‘I don’t understand you . . . I always thought that women were supposed to be brave.’ ‘Really? What gave you that idea?’ She had slipped her arms around me again, pressed her face against mine.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, smiling. Suddenly, the whole thing felt ridiculous. ‘Magazines, television, women writers . . .’

  ‘The sort of writers who claim married men never leave their wives.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Well, they’re wrong.’ Her kisses had a poisonous tenderness. ‘They’re wrong about you.’

  ‘No, I’m the one who’s wrong. I was wrong about you.’

  ‘That’s not true, Álvaro. I swear it’s not true,’ she said, pouting like a little girl.

  ‘Really? Then let’s go away!’ I don’t know where I found this last gasp of hope. ‘Let’s go away and never come back, Raquel. Why not? I don’t understand. Things are easy for you, but I can’t go on like this - you don’t have to lie, you don’t have to go away on holiday with someone you don’t love any more, you don’t have to explain yourself to anybody.’

  ‘I had to explain myself to you.’

  Slowly, she got up, but though my legs were numb, I could still feel the weight of her body against them like a premonition. I watched her wander across the bedroom, heard the sound of ice clinking and watched her come back, a pale shadow of herself, weak, ashen.

  ‘I’m still waiting . . .’ I said, as she sat in an armchair facing me.

  ‘For what?’ she said, after draining half the glass in a single mouthful.

  ‘For your reasons.’

  She began to cry softly, silently,
tears like those I had seen her cry one night as we walked along the Calle Carranza together.

  ‘I love you, Álvaro. It’s true. It’s one of the few things I know for certain, I love you so much that I couldn’t bear the thought of you . . . hating me, or despising me, I couldn’t bear for you to feel miserable or humiliated because of me. That’s why I need time to make sense of things, of . . .’ She didn’t finish the sentence, but looked at me almost fearfully, as though she sensed the cataclysm that would be triggered by her words, the very words that she had refused to utter since we first discovered that the earth turned beneath our feet. ‘I was your father’s lover, Álvaro.’

  ‘Leave my father out of this, Raquel!’ I was so angry that I jumped up. ‘My father is dead. Dead and buried. He’s dead, and I’m alive. I don’t give a fuck about my father, got that? I don’t give a fuck what you and he you got up to with that dildo I found while you were watching your carefully catalogued porn films . . .’

  She did not react, she did not speak, and I felt so alone, so abandoned, that I barely knew who I was any more. I knew the best thing to do would be to shut up. I knew it, but it didn’t matter because she wouldn’t even look at me. Don’t do that, Raquel, don’t, please. I had offered her everything and she had rejected it, so I succumbed to self-pity. I wanted to ask her why she had dragged me away from the humble, passionless patch of garden that was my life, why she had taken me to such heights only to drop me. I longed to ask her, but I couldn’t bring myself to, so I said things I should never have said, things that I had tried to blot from my mind.

  ‘You want to know the truth? You want me to play truth or dare with you? OK, well, let me tell you something, Raquel, the fact that you slept with my father does bother me, it fucking kills me. It kills me to think you could fuck that geriatric millionaire in that bath surrounded by little candles. I feel disgusted and ashamed just thinking about that tasteless apartment, I feel disgusted just thinking about you and my father and that fucking dildo, it’s pathetic, Raquel, it’s completely repulsive. Do you take me for an idiot? Well I am an idiot, because I fell in love with you, and I just decided to accept it . . .’