The Frozen Heart (45 page)

‘And more . . .’ I said, captivated. ‘I forgot to mention that watching it is addictive. Like the sea. You never tire of looking at it.’

Raquel Fernández Perea closed her eyes, covered them with her hands, smiled and sat motionless for a moment. Then she began to shake her head.

‘This is madness . . .’ she whispered before picking up the menu and saying at a more normal volume, ‘Would you like to share something?’

‘Yes,’ I paused, waiting until she looked up at me questioningly, ‘madness.’

She closed her eyes again and blushed.

‘Apart from that?’ Maybe she’d been telling the truth, maybe she was a lousy actress, because her voice was shaking.

‘Apart from that, I don’t care, so why don’t you order for us both? I mean, that’s what you would have done anyway . . .’

And yet she gave me the option of staying sane.

Dinner was hurried, awkward and confused. Raquel didn’t eat much and I didn’t eat anything, but we both drank a fair bit. The wine she chose soothed my palate without eliminating the tingling sensation I could feel on my tongue. It was fear, but it was delicious, the thrill of being overwhelmed by her every gesture, by every movement of her body as it tensed, relaxed, shifted.

I tried to anticipate how she would feel, the taste, the smell of her, everything I might sense through my hands, my fingers, my lips. I wanted her so much that I didn’t even remember that I had forbidden myself from thinking about my father.

She had decided to behave as though nothing was happening, offered me a way out when we both simultaneously said ‘no’ to dessert.

‘Shall we go?’

‘Please.’ I choked on the word as though I really was drowning.

Leaving the restaurant, we walked at some distance from each other in the direction she had chosen, as men and women do on the brink of their first time. We came to the doorway of an old house. The façade had recently been painted a daring blue, which contrasted with the creamy white of the antique mouldings. She leaned against the wall and from her bag she took the stainless-steel propelling pencil and the silver pillbox I had found in the bedroom she had shared with my father. She placed both in the palm of one hand and looked at me. She didn’t say anything, she didn’t need to. She was offering me a way out and I rejected it, kept it in my pocket with the final excuse, the final pretext. Then I kissed her, and as I was kissing her, for the first time in my life I was perfectly aware of the earth turning on itself, wheeling about the sun, just beneath my feet.

O
n 25 April 1944 a young, silent, dark-skinned man, with a military crop but civilian clothes, stepped off the Berlin train at Orléans. In the inside pocket of his jacket he carried a card issued in Madrid in 1937 by the Unified Socialist Youth and bearing the name Julio Carrión González. In the right-hand pocket of the same jacket, he had another card, issued in 1941, also in Madrid, also in the name of Julio Carrión González, this one for the Falange Española de las JONS. Somewhere in his bag, carefully folded, were a German uniform, a Spanish uniform and between them his military record and a safe conduct in the name of Julio Carrión González issued in Riga some four months earlier by the commander-in-chief of the Spanische Freiwilligendivision, or the Blue Division.

The man should not have been on this train. Members of the Blue Division had been repatriated in autumn 1943, except for some three thousand volunteers who elected to serve under German command. But even these men - the Blue Legion - returned to Spain in April 1944 as Hitler’s armies were preparing to retreat from the Eastern Front. There was no reason why Julio Carrión should have been in this place on this date, and yet all of his documents were authentic.

The soldier with multiple identities was travelling alone, carrying only one light bag, but ten minutes before the train was due to arrive at the next station he would take it from the luggage compartment, put on his scarf and his hat and nod goodbye to the other passengers, with whom he had not exchanged a single word. If any of them remembered him, they would only remember him leaving the train, just as, when he climbed into the next compartment, the passengers seeing him struggling to put his bag into the luggage rack, before taking off his scarf and hat, would assume he had just boarded the train.

As they came into Orléans station, he repeated the same obvious, exaggerated actions as he had at every other station. And as before, he stood away from the carriage door, his hat tilted forward, hiding his face, politely allowing ladies, old men, couples with children and - especially - German soldiers on first, always taking the last place. In Orléans too he waited until all the passengers joining the train had boarded, but he did not follow them into the carriage itself. Instead he stood by the door until the train started to move and as the engine slowly pulled out of the station, he jumped down, ending up far down the platform, a long way from the other passengers who had just disembarked and were greeting people who had come to meet them, or dragging their suitcases towards the exit. He began to walk towards them quickly, purposefully, fingers crossed, as though he had nothing to hide. As he turned the first corner he pulled off his tie and tossed it into a rubbish bin, and as he rounded the second corner, he took off his hat.

This young, silent, dark-skinned man who had genuine documents of every sort was in fact Spanish, but he had no desire to go back to Spain because he was convinced that Hitler was going to lose the war. This was why he had just deserted.

The choice of Orléans had not been an accident. At the beginning of the campaign, he, like everyone else, had been surprised that the train taking them to Germany, which had stopped at every station until they reached the border at Irún, was scheduled to go from one end of France to the other without stopping. As they crossed the border, the volunteers in this glorious European campaign to wipe Russian barbarism from the face of the earth were wreathed in honours. In every Spanish city, large or small, there had been celebrations, banquets, receptions, girls laden with flowers. It seemed strange that nothing similar was happening in France, nor did logic help him to work out the origin of the harsh, sharp, metallic sounds he heard two or three times as the train slowed down to go through the first station.

‘What was that?’ Eugenio, who had not taken his head out of his book since they left Madrid, looked up at Julio, puzzled.

‘I don’t know . . .’ Julio, who was sitting by the window, looked out and saw a figure in the distance, his arm raised.

‘They’re throwing stones!’ someone shouted. ‘The French bastards are throwing stones at us!’

At first no one know who they were or why they were doing it, but it quickly became apparent. As the train passed through the next station, Eugenio and Julio ran out into the corridor and carefully slid open the window.

‘They’re yelling “sons of bitches”,’ Eugenio glanced at Julio, ‘in Spanish.’

‘They don’t have an accent.’

‘They’re not French, then.’

‘No, I’d say they’re Spanish.’

‘Jesus.’ Eugenio closed the window, shaking his head slowly.

‘What did you expect?’ Julio thought. It was not the first time Eugenio’s reactions had surprised him, but he said nothing, because he had not yet dared broach the subject of politics with him. He was too afraid of putting his foot in it, of not getting the terms, the vocabulary, right, of saying something suspicious, though he knew he was being overly cautious since his friend had a prodigious ability to hear only what he wanted to hear. Eugenio went about as though he were floating a couple of metres above the ground. He had his own version of the world, he didn’t notice what was going on around him, and he took ingenuousness to new heights with a unique combination of naivety and fanaticism which denied any reality that refused to bend to the fierce will of his gaze. It was not simply that Eugenio Sánchez Delgado was convinced that he was right, it was unthinkable to him that anyone could possibly make the mistake of believing the contrary.

‘It’s incredible,’ he said after a moment. ‘After all the effort we’ve put in, all the deaths, the blood, now that we’re finally rebuilding a free country, they come and start throwing stones at us. At
us
! Does anyone here understand?’

His glasses would slowly slide down his nose, underscoring the theatrical fervour of these diatribes, until they were perched on the tip and he would push them back up with his forefinger. The first time Julio had heard him talk like this he had been surprised at his fervour, at such an utter lack of cynicism; in vain he waited for a wink, a nudge, to which he might respond with a loud complicit chuckle. It took him some time to comprehend that his friend was utterly serious. Now, when he spoke, Julio did not doubt his sincerity, though he still thought that what Eugenio had said bordered on perversity or stupidity.

‘
Hombre
,’ he ventured to suggest, ‘they lost the war.’

‘So what?’ Eugenio turned brusquely, his glasses already halfway down his nose. ‘We could have lost it, couldn’t we? And you think if we had done we’d be in France attacking out own countrymen? No, sir. We’d be in Spain helping to rebuild the country, we’d be doing our duty as Spanish men.’

Eugenio Sánchez Delgado was unique, or at least Julio had never met another Falangist as pure, stupid, honourable, idealistic or as innocent as he was. At Orléans station, his friend was on the verge of tears at the sight of a small gang of rabid, republican Spanish exiles who, when they ran out of stones to throw, slashed their thumbs symbolically across their throats.

‘It looks as if they’re . . .’
organised
was what Julio had been about to say, but he changed his mind ‘. . . worse in Orléans than anywhere else.’

‘It’s a shame . . .’ Eugenio shook his head, not really listening, as the whistle sounded and the train pulled away.

‘There was this guy, Casimiro, from Seville.’ Romualdo, Eugenio’s brother, came to let them know what had happened. ‘He told the captain that some communist told him to go fuck his mother, but that’s a lie. I was there and what happened was that the communist does this . . .’ Romualdo drew his thumb across his throat ‘. . . and shouted, “Go on! Run away! Cousin Pepe will slit your throats for you,
hijos de puta
!” ’

‘Cousin Pepe?’ Eugenio looked at them both, surprised. ‘Who’s Cousin Pepe?’

‘Stalin.’ Julio, who had been careful to think about every word he spoke since leaving Madrid, didn’t stop to think before he said this.

‘And how do you know that?’ Romualdo shot him a malicious smile.

‘I just worked it out.’ Julio looked at the brothers, and adopted a cheery, offhand tone. ‘It’s common sense, isn’t it?

‘Really?’ The elder of the Sánchez Delgado brothers laughed. ‘And what would you know about common sense, Julito?’

Romualdo was like a broader, taller, more muscular version of his brother. Dark haired, pale skinned, with a hooked nose and thin lips, they looked like two loaves from the same oven, one with too much yeast, one with too little. This was why, when Julio saw Romualdo in the sea of blue shirts he had been trying to escape from until fate had turned up in the form of a weak, wounded Falangist, he recognised the perfect image of danger.

‘Where have you been, you little fool?’ Romualdo greeted his brother, not bothering to look at the boy’s ankle. ‘And who’s this?’ he asked, pointing to Julio.

‘He helped me get here. I sprained my ankle - I’m limping, in case you didn’t notice . . .’

‘Honestly! You’re the cross I have to bear . . .’

Then, without saying another word, he turned his back on them and looked up at the balcony where Serrano Súñer, Franco’s brother-in-law, was due to appear.

‘Right, well, I should go,’ Julio said, his voice tremulous and shy. ‘I’m working in a garage on the Calle Montero, and I only came out to get some change. I can’t hang around, my boss . . .’

‘Of course . . .’ Eugenio smiled and clapped him on the back. ‘Thanks for everything, Julio. See you around.’

‘Sure,’ mumbled Julio, ‘see you around.’ And off he dashed.

Julio didn’t take another breath until he was safely away from the crowd, and then he broke into a run, he ran up the Calle de Alcalá, crossed the street and went into the bank, where he found he was the only customer. The stone-faced tellers were all seated at their windows, not even pretending to be busy, and Señor Gutiérrez, usually so talkative and happy to waste time, served him so quickly that he barely opened his mouth to say hello and goodbye. Julio realised that he still didn’t know what this demonstration was about. It was 24 June 1941 and in Madrid the only thing that was certain was that it was better not to know, not to know anything or anyone.

‘What happened to you?’ Señor Turégano didn’t reprimand him when he got back. ‘You look very pale, Julio. Are you sick or something?

‘No, it’s not that . . . It’s just . . . there was a Falangist march at Alcalá and Gran Vía, there were thousands of them, and a lot of them were carrying guns, so a lot of the shops closed for a while, and so did the bank, I had to wait until they opened again.’ As he spoke he took the deposit slip and the change out of his pocket, then he remembered something else. ‘With all that going on, I forgot to buy the beers. If you like I can go for them now.’

‘No, no . . . don’t worry about it, I think the best thing to do today is stay inside.’

Julio had always assumed that his boss had celebrated Franco’s victory two years earlier but his assumption was based on nothing more than Señor Turégano’s current circumstances. In Madrid at that time republicans owned nothing. Not even their own future. But although the period between spring 1936 and spring 1939 never came up in the conversations at the garage, it was likely that some of his co-workers had just as dangerous a past as he had. This was why no one ever dared to ask, and that day, everyone in the garage worked harder and more diligently than ever, as though being shut off from the outside world in this cool, foul-smelling basement was a blessing, a privilege worth working hard for. There were no visitors that day, no one came by to drop off or pick up a car, no one came in to ask for a quote, until finally, at nightfall, as they were closing up, Eugenio Sánchez Delgado appeared and asked for Julio.