The Frozen Heart (44 page)

‘Excuse me, mister . . . Do you understand this stuff?’ She gestured around her at the exhibits. I nodded. ‘Could you explain something to me? There’s something I don’t understand . . .’

I walked with the girl to the exhibit demonstrating the Coriolis effect while she explained that she’d come with her school, all her friends were in the shop and her teacher was no use because she only taught maths and was never very good at science. ‘What I don’t get is, when I look at it, it looks weird, and I know that something weird is happening, but I can’t work out what it is.’ I was amused by the way she talked, her forcefulness, the brusque way she interrupted me in mid-sentence before I’d finished explaining the effect.

‘Of course, that’s it,’ she yelped, ‘the water isn’t flowing the right way, it’s going down the drain the wrong way . . .’

‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘so do you understand it now? That’s why, when you turn on a tap in the southern hemisphere, the water drains in the opposite direction to what we expect in the northern hemisphere.’

‘I get it now.’ She nodded emphatically, as though someone had wound her up.

‘Actually,’ I said, ‘what I’ve just explained is written on the sign. I should know, I wrote it. Next time, even if it seems a bit long, it’s best to read right to the end before asking questions.’

‘I know,’ she started to blush, ‘but I was listening to you telling her stuff, and she wasn’t reading the signs either . . .’ She pointed over my shoulder to Raquel, who was now standing next to me. ‘Anyway, sorry . . .’

‘No, don’t be sorry, it’s not a problem. It’s just that I’m not always here.’

She thanked me again and ran off.

‘Clever girl, isn’t she?’ I said to Raquel. ‘That’s the best thing about working here.’

She gave me a strange look, though not as strange as the words she said next.

‘I think I was wrong about you, Álvaro.’

‘What do you mean?’

Raquel Fernández Perea couldn’t have known about the documents I’d found in my father’s study, nor what had happened the previous day. She couldn’t possibly have known about the existence of the little leather folder with the flimsy lock, she couldn’t have read my grandmother’s letter, though she might have seen the photos of her lover wearing his Spanish uniform, his German uniform, and some night when she was foolish enough to complain about the cold, she almost certainly would have heard him talk about the weather in Russia and Poland. I was fairly sure she couldn’t know anything more, it wasn’t logical, it made no sense that Julio Carrión González would brag to some young girl about a past he did not want even his children to know about. And yet, as we walked slowly towards the exit, her words hit me like a volley of sharp, judiciously aimed arrows.

‘Because you’re not like your father.’

‘That’s what you said the other night.’

‘I know, but . . . then it was just a hunch. Now, it’s a certainty.’

I stopped and looked at her, her serious, almost solemn expression belied by her tender, half-closed eyes.

‘Is this about the girl . . .?’ I wondered aloud, and she nodded. ‘I was happy to talk to her, explain things, because then I know I’m not wasting my time . . .’ She nodded again and I slipped into the warmth of memory. ‘Papá would have criticised me for wasting my time on things like this. He did it often enough - my mother still does. The only time she ever came here she said it was more like a children’s playroom than a museum. It wouldn’t even have occurred to my father to come, but if he had he would have agreed with Mamá. Neither of them ever really understood what it is that I do, they’ve never really tried . . .’ Raquel Fernández Perea was still staring at me with the same solemn expression, the same tender eyes. ‘My father was handsome, rich, powerful and ignorant, the way only rich and powerful men can be ignorant: not because they don’t know much - my father knew a lot of things - but because they behave as though whatever it is they don’t know about doesn’t exist, as though it’s trivial or worthless. You know that, or at least you must have suspected it. I mean, you knew him, and yet . . .’

‘And yet I slept with him,’ she finished the sentence for me, ‘that’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ I was afraid I’d done something stupid, but she didn’t seem offended or angry with me. ‘Sorry.’

‘What for?’ She smiled again. ‘Don’t worry. It’s just I don’t feel like talking about your father.’

‘Me neither. Fancy going for a drink?’

‘Don’t tell me there’s a bar here too?’

‘Oh yes, and you’re even allowed to smoke in it.’

‘You know what?’ She took my arm, pressed against me for an instant, but it was enough to dispel the awkwardness of the conversation, the insinuations. ‘I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anybody. It’s stupid, but, I don’t know, I just thought of it . . . In my final year at secondary school, they gave me a test, like an IQ test - I’m sure you know the kind of thing.’

‘No, I went to the Marist brothers’ school . . .’

‘What, and everyone there was clever ?’ I shrugged my shoulders and she laughed. ‘Well, anyway, we all had to do them. There was a rumour that a lot of the questions were trick questions, and you had to read every question twice so as not to fall for them, and it was true. In the maths test, there was data missing in the problem, and in the language test some of the answers were identical. Then later, on a different sheet, there were two almost identical drawings of a housewife hoovering. They looked the same, with headscarves and pleated aprons and faces like something out of a 1950s advertisement, but one of them was hunched over more than the other because, although they both had their left hand on the handle, the first woman had her right hand halfway down the extension, while the other woman had hers much farther up, near the handle. Do you see what I’m saying?’

‘Yes,’ I smiled, ‘I’ve seen that sort of drawing.’

‘I’m sure you have. So, the question was “Which of these women will end up feeling more tired and why?” So, there I was, I’d always got good marks, was one of the best in the class, and I put neither of them because the vacuum cleaner engine does all the work . . . Can you believe it, I was the only one who got it wrong? The only one, honestly, the teachers couldn’t understand it. Even my friend Marga, a moron who got herself suspended from school at least three times a year, got it right. And she said, “Have you never used the vacuum cleaner at home?” so I said, “Of course I have, lots of times” and she said, “How could you get it wrong, then?” I didn’t know what to say. Afterwards it occurred to me to argue that it was outrageous, in a girls’ school, to have a picture of a woman pushing a vacuum cleaner as an intelligence test designed to assess your aptitude for university, it was sexist, and that that was why I’d answered the way I had.’

‘Very clever,’ I admitted.

‘Maybe, but I still didn’t get the marks. That damn Hoover lowered my average in science. In the final examination they recommended I study humanities . . . And that’s not the worst of it . . . The worst thing is I still don’t understand.’

‘Well, I can explain it to you if you like.’

‘OK.’

She grinned and went on smiling as though walking through the cafeteria, the light, the commotion, the catcalls of the children pressed against the railing had changed something until we found ourselves somewhere else, somewhere unfamiliar yet comfortable, not simply because Julio Carrión González had disappeared but because the intimacy Raquel had instigated when she took my arm had been reinforced by a flurry of little gestures. It fascinated me to watch her movements, analyse and interpret them every time she leaned forward and brought her face close to mine, every time she brushed my fingers with hers then quickly pulled them away, every time she folded her arms on the table and leaned on them, carelessly or deliberately, pushing her breasts together, but what I found even more compelling was the lightness of her voice, weaving a commonplace story and yet one which was strange to her and precious to me.

‘Well, I think I should phone Marga and tell her I finally know the answer to the vacuum cleaner question.’

‘Do you still see her ?’

‘Not much, but I still see her from time to time. She was my best friend in secondary school and when we started university, but she studied to be a teacher, then she gave it up, got married, had a kid, then I got married, both our husbands were arseholes, I got divorced, she didn’t, she had a daughter, I didn’t, and now . . . We just don’t see much of each other . . . I love her, but I can’t understand how she can live like that. Obviously she thinks exactly the same thing about me, but anyway, she’s not nearly as stunning as Berta, so you got a good deal.’

‘I didn’t think Berta was all that stunning,’ I objected.

‘That’s because you haven’t seen her naked.’ She raised one eyebrow and laughed. ‘It’s not that big a deal - it’s obvious you don’t go to the theatre much! Directors are always getting her to take her clothes off . . .’

I’d never heard her talk like this. I was so caught up listening to this ordinary, funny, ironic, intelligent, bitchy woman I had just discovered that I didn’t notice the waiter arrive.

‘Álvaro,
darling
, it’s a quarter to nine,’ the waiter said, and I realised then that we were the only customers left in the bar. ‘It’s not that we’re closing up - we should have closed fifteen minutes ago.’

‘Sorry, Pierre,’ I said, putting some money on the table. ‘I didn’t realise.’

Pierre was tall, heavyset, muscular with sideburns like a bandit’s and a long thin moustache which seemed entirely incompatible with his style.

‘No problem, honey, it’s just that today is Friday,’ he said as he headed towards the cash register. ‘And you know what happens on Fridays.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ Raquel protested, ‘what does happen on Fridays?’

‘His boyfriend comes home,’ I explained, ‘he’s in the army, or rather he’s a professional in the armed forces, as he says. You should see him on Mondays, he spends all day sighing and complaining about how he aches all over.’

‘Why do you call him Pierre? Is he French?’

‘No, he’s from Talavera de la Reina. It’s just that he thinks Pablo sounds too butch.’ Raquel was laughing so hard, enjoying herself so much, that only then did I think of something that I should have thought of earlier. ‘Do you want to hang on here for the change? There’s something I forgot to do. I’ll meet you at the front door in a couple of minutes . . .’

The shop was closed, but one of the assistants came over and opened the door, tapping his watch as he did so. When I came out, Raquel didn’t ask why I’d kept her waiting or what was in the plastic bag. The motorway was clear and we were back in Madrid before we realised it. At the first light on the Paseo de la Castellana I turned to look at her.

‘What are you looking at me like that for?’ she said, nipping her lower lip with her teeth.

‘Where are we going?’

‘I don’t know.’ She shrugged her shoulders.

‘Of course you know, Raquel, you always know everything. You always have done.’

‘Which would you prefer, a plan including dinner or not including dinner ?’

‘Depends what the alternative to dinner is.’ She laughed, but quickly recovered herself.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ she shrugged again, ‘how about another drink?’

‘Where?’

‘What do I know?’ She smiled, then turned to the window for a moment, as though she needed time to think, but I wasn’t going to let her off that easily. ‘That way, I suppose.’

‘In that case, I’d prefer to eat first.’

She’d reserved a table at a restaurant close to where she lived and where everyone seemed to know her, just as they had in the first restaurant she’d taken me to, but this time I didn’t need her to explain the menu to me.

‘Here.’ I took a gift-wrapped box out of the plastic bag and put it on the table.

‘For me?’ She picked it up, brought it to her ear and shook it. ‘Is it a present?’

‘Yes, but it’s not a present
for
you . . . It is you, it’s like a metaphor, something that defines you.’

She frowned at me, carefully took off the wrapping paper and took out a cardboard box. She seemed disappointed.

‘This is me?’ she said. ‘A board game?’

‘It’s not a board game,’ I said, taking the box, ‘don’t go all economist on me, Raquel.’

I took out the contents of the box. I set the base - a black plastic circle with two grooves in it - on the table and slotted the two transparent side pieces into the grooves. Then I took out the most important piece. The external pendulum was crossed vertically by an oval piece of metal which held the inner pendulum - a rod with two plastic balls attached, one red, one black, that spun freely. A couple of small horizontal rods stuck out from both sides of the metal oval a few centimetres beneath its centre of gravity. I slotted them into the perspex walls so they would support the double pendulum, which now swung in the air.

‘This device, which you so disparagingly dismissed as an executive toy, has two pendulums - see?’ I said, holding them tightly so as to give nothing away. ‘The outer one is an ordinary pendulum, it swings over and back, over and back, over and back, always the same. But the internal rod is a chaos pendulum, it’s like you.’ I set the first pendulum in motion, waited a few moments and then the second began to swing wildly. ‘It’s impossible to predict which way it will swing at any point - see? It speeds up, slows down, stops, starts, changes direction, changes its mind, seems to be mocking us . . . It’s unpredictable, unknowable, fascinating, but it’s never the same, because it moves according to a mysterious force, but you’d never guess that if I hadn’t told you. It’s funny, brilliant, strange ... just like you.’

She stopped the pendulum and set it going again. Then she looked deep into my eyes.

‘I’m all those things?’