The Frozen Heart (31 page)

‘You’re sure?’ I nodded and he frowned. ‘You’d better not be taking the piss, this’d better not be a wind-up.’

‘It’s not, I swear . . .’

‘Fuck!’ His voice rose until it was almost a howl as he put his face in his hands. ‘Jesus, fuck!’ he took his hands away and burst out laughing. ‘So, what are you planning to do?’

I thought about it for a minute. ‘Nothing. I’ll probably do nothing because I’ll probably never see her again. Everything is sorted out now, we don’t have any unfinished business.’

‘Apart from this.’

‘Yes, but that’s just me.’

‘That’s not true, Álvaro,’ he was thinking about something else now, ‘you can’t know that.’

 

Elena Galván had jet-black hair, jet-black eyes, her nose was too big, her lips were too thin, a sharp, almost tragic face that she was the first to joke about. ‘With a face like mine,’ she would introduce herself, pointing a mocking finger, ‘you’d think they’d have come up with a better name than a Greek statue.’ By the time she had said it, a smile had softened her features so that she seemed like a different person. I never taught her myself, but by the time I came back from the States, her academic record was already legendary. And she went on outshining the other scholarship students because her remarkable intelligence did not stop her from being very clever, something that was not so paradoxical among the brilliant, ambitious young students. In addition she was charming, good natured, funny and friendly. She was a pleasure to work with and was devoted to José Ignacio, so I wasn’t surprised the following term when it became usual for there to be four of us in the bar, in the canteen, going for a drink after class. At first I thought Professor Carmona had decided to take this new chick under his wing, something he had done with students less worthy than Elena, but one day he couldn’t come to lunch with us and when she got up to go to the bathroom I realised I had been wrong. ‘You never told me, you dog,’ I said to Fernando, and he laughed. ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ he said, ‘nothing’s happened yet. But it will,’ he predicted, his fingers crossed.

What happened lasted for two years and it was tremendous. If ever Elena Galván seemed genuinely Greek, it was on the morning she came into my office to say goodbye, her skin stretched taut and pale as parchment, her eyes ringed with dark circles. ‘Don’t feel sorry for me,’ she said, hugging me. ‘Look after your friend, he’s in a worse state than I am and it will only get worse . . .’ She was in love, a woman scorned, but her words had the inexorable ring of prophesy.

‘Go with her,’ I had said to Fernando the night before, one of many such nights, Elena nights, the same bar, the same drinks, the same conversation, the same ratio of doubt to certainty. ‘Go with her,’ I said again after a moment, not that I had forgotten Nieves, who was a little like Mai, since they were cousins, who was nice, affectionate and good in the best sense of the word, a good wife, a good friend. Nieves didn’t deserve this, I had known her for years, we were still in school when she had started going out with Fernando and I’d always liked her. ‘You think I should go with Elena?’ he asked me that night, after I had already told him twice that I thought he should. ‘What the hell’s going on, Álvaro?’ Mai had been asking me the same question every couple of days for some months now. ‘You must know . . .’ While I still could, I told her I didn’t know, that I hadn’t the faintest idea, then afterwards, I told her to stop asking me. ‘Don’t ask me, Mai, don’t ask me to tell you, because you know I can’t.’

We hadn’t been living together for very long, and we weren’t yet married. ‘So your friend is more important than me, is that it?’ she said finally when we had reached breaking point. ‘No, that’s not it, think about it.’ ‘I don’t want to think about it.’ ‘Well, that’s your problem . . .’

‘You think I should go with her, Álvaro?’ Fernando asked me again, that last night, the same bar, the same drinks, the same conversation. Elena doesn’t deserve this, I thought, and neither does he, it’s two against one, and I knew that Nieves wouldn’t win, that Fernando and Elena would either win or lose together, and yet I didn’t dare tell him to go with her again. ‘What do I know?’ I said. ‘If you’re really not sure . . . Honestly, I don’t know’. But I did know.

From that moment, Fernando Cisneros began to believe that the biggest mistake of his life was not leaving with Elena Galván. ‘That’s not true. You can’t know that.’ It was a speech I repeated so often I knew it by heart. ‘You can’t possibly know how things would be if you were living with Elena, you could just as easily be chucking saucepans at each other every night. The reason you think not going with her was the biggest mistake you’ve ever made is
because
you’ll never know.’ He would listen to me patiently, nodding all the time, and when I was finished he’d repeat that not going off with Elena Galván was the biggest mistake of his life and eventually I didn’t have the energy to keep arguing, although I never said I told you so.

From the first, Elena’s prophesy was fulfilled, and continued to be fulfilled with each passing day. I saw her again many years later, on the Calle Preciados one afternoon in December. I’d taken Miguelito to see the Christmas lights, she was shopping with her husband, a good-looking man about her own age who was carrying a one-year-old girl. It was Elena who spotted me, and at first I barely recognised her because she’d put on weight, cut her hair and looked much better, prettier, with none of the dramatic tension about her, the bloodlessness that had characterised her last months with Fernando. I remembered José Ignacio on the morning she came to say goodbye, barging into my office screaming and shouting, ‘What the hell is going on round here? Has everyone gone mad?’ ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said; I didn’t have the stomach for rhetorical questions. ‘Elena Galván has just told me she’s leaving,’ he said, ‘she said she’s accepted an offer from the Universidad de Castilla la Mancha. I don’t get it . . . You think this department can afford to watch someone as exceptional as that walk away? We have to do something, offer her a contract, find her a permanent post, whatever it takes . . .’ ‘That’s not what this is about, José Ignacio,’ I interrupted him, ‘it has nothing to do with that. Elena and Fernando have been having an affair for the past two years. It wasn’t a couple of one-night stands, it was serious. He couldn’t bring himself to leave his wife so she’s decided to go. She won’t stay, no matter what you offer her.’ José Ignacio stared at me as though I’d just told him they were aliens. ‘But what about me? How come I didn’t know about this? I’m going to tell you something, for what it’s worth . . .’ ‘No, don’t say it,’ I pleaded. ‘Don’t say it?’ ‘No . . . please . . .’ ‘We’ll still have to take that fucking idiot to lunch.’

For what it’s worth, why doesn’t he leave and let Elena stay here with us . . . This is what José Ignacio would have said if I had let him, and afterwards he would have regretted it, would have wanted to rip his tongue out by the root. I knew him too well, though not as well as I knew Fernando, who was remembering this very same event during the pause in my confession. It had been almost seven years since I had last seen her, almost six since he had last talked about her, except to put her at the top of the list of the mistakes he had made in his life. He and Nieves got on as well as they always had done, and since then he had not been unfaithful to her as far as I knew, but Elena Galván was still part of his consciousness and always would be.

‘I’m hardly the best person to give advice on this stuff, Alvaro, you know that.’

‘Nobody is . . .’ I said.

‘In any case . . .’ He thought for a moment, then smacked his lips. ‘You were talking about what you might have done, weren’t you - not even that, you were talking about something you felt might happen, but nothing did. And if it had? So what? It’s not like it would be incest or anything, it would be . . . a peccadillo . . .’ His definition made me smile. ‘An exotic interlude in your biography which, until now, has been pretty tame. The fact she slept with your father has something to do with it, you know . . .’

‘No, Fernando, it’s not that . . .’ I interrupted him, ‘I’m not morbid. It’s just the opposite. When I’m with her I feel . . .’

He interrupted me, like a judge about to pronounce sentence. ‘Look, this whole thing sounds pretty weird, Álvaro - not just the stuff about the woman, everything, the funeral, the letter, the meeting at the bank . . . I don’t know how to explain it but . . . don’t get involved. It doesn’t fit with who you are, it’s weird and you don’t do weird. You’re a guy who never does anything without planning it down to the last detail, you’re always in control, we’ve talked about this before. OK, there are some things we can’t control - falling in love, falling out of love, losing your wife, your parents, your job - these are twists of fate, but there are so many coincidences, all with you slap bang in the middle. If it were happening to someone else - someone less level headed, someone weaker, more unpredictable . . . I wouldn’t find it as strange if it were happening to me. Jesus, every other week I’m sick to fucking death of my home, my wife, my job, my whole fucking life. But you? Don’t get involved, do you see what I’m saying?’

‘Yes, and you’re right, nothing ever happens to me.’

‘But this did.’ He nodded and smiled. ‘Is it good?’

‘The best.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Raquel.’

‘Really . . .’ In a split second his whole manner changed, his expression, his posture; he raised his voice, and leaned towards me. ‘So anyway, I said to Raquel, don’t even think about it, the guy’s a fascist and the last thing we need is to wind up electing someone from Opus Dei to head of deanship!’

‘So what did she say?’ I didn’t want to turn round, but I knew my wife was coming up behind me and that he had seen her coming.

‘Raquel ? Well . . .’

‘What’s this?’ I heard Mai’s voice. ‘It’s late and you’re still plotting? ’

‘What do you expect,’ Fernando shrugged, ‘it’s who I am, you know that.’

‘Álvaro, your mother called.’ My wife slipped her arm round my waist. ‘Clara’s gone into labour. Curro took her to the hospital and the kids are fretting. She doesn’t want to miss the birth so she asked if they could sleep over at our place. I said they could, obviously.’

‘But I can’t leave yet,’ I said, ‘I’m supposed to be taking some people to dinner.’

‘I know.’ She kissed me on the cheek. ‘I’ll go ahead, but I have to take the car. Is the dinner in Madrid ?’

‘I’ll drop him home, Mai,’ said Fernando, ‘don’t you worry.’

That night, when I got home, everything seemed much clearer. It had felt good to tell someone my secret, and not just because I felt more relaxed now that I had told someone - and not just anyone, someone I trusted to take my side - but also because, as I talked to Fernando, every incident that had been so hard to believe had suddenly felt more real, more solid. As I talked, I realised that words did not seem enough to describe how I felt, yet I carried on creating a narrative which - after his initial shock - Fernando had no trouble in accepting, perhaps because our own upheavals are never as upsetting to others, or perhaps because to him, my father’s role was simply a taster, a backdrop against which the real drama played out - the anxiety of lust unfulfilled, the woman who had made me lose my self-control.

‘The stuff about your father isn’t so surprising, Álvaro. I know you don’t think so,’ he said as he was driving me home after dinner, ‘but every family has a closet stuffed full of skeletons.’

His words reminded me of Raquel’s - ‘human beings are boring and predictable, our lives are pretty much the same’ - two different ways of saying the same thing. But that night I had to accept that what I felt had opened up a new chapter, maybe a completely different story to the one that had been played out in that apartment on the Calle Jorge Juan.

Clara’s labour went so smoothly that by Saturday afternoon, when we visited her, we found her sitting, smiling serenely, with the baby asleep in her arms. Íñigo and Fran, her other children, who had coped much better than Mai and I had expected, hurled themselves at her the moment they saw her, which gave my mother, a little annoyed that she had no great tales of woe to relate, the opportunity to make herself useful. But before she took the children to get something to eat, she beckoned me over.

‘Listen, your brother Julio is completely tied up sorting out the death duties on the estate,’ she explained, ‘so he won’t have time to check on the house at La Moraleja next week, and since your blasted exhibition has opened now, I told him that you wouldn’t mind swapping.’

‘No problem.’ I smiled at my mother’s display of authority.

‘OK. Here, I’ve brought you the money and so on . . .’ She slipped a hand into her handbag and fished out the usual sealed envelopes tied with an elastic band. ‘Call Lisette and tell her when you’ll be over - any time except Wednesday afternoon, because she’s started ballroom dancing lessons. She asked me if she could, obviously, and I told her of course, since she’s out there on her own, the poor thing is bound to get bored . . . I’m thinking of going back there at the end of May, but I can’t leave Clara at the moment.’

As she went on to tell me how happy she was to have a granddaughter named Angélica after her, I decided to go to La Moraleja on Wednesday afternoon. I’d intended to go through my father’s study the next time I was there anyway, and with Lisette out of the house I would have free range. So I phoned Lisette and told her I would come over on Tuesday, then phoned her on Tuesday afternoon to say I had an important meeting. I asked her not to mention it to Mamá since she would be furious, and said I would have to come over on Wednesday. ‘I’m up to my eyes on Thursday and Friday, Lisette, but don’t worry, just put the post in my father’s office and I’ll pick it up and leave the money there for you, OK?’ ‘But I get out of class at seven,’ she said, ‘I can be home by half past.’ ‘Fine,’ I agreed, ‘let’s say half seven, it’s a bit late for me, but never mind . . . What time does your class start?’ ‘At five,’ she said, ‘but if you want, I don’t have to go to class . . . It’s just, leaving all that money in the office with me not there . . .’ ‘Don’t worry,’ I reassured her, ‘you go to your class and I’ll see you at half seven.’