The Frozen Heart (54 page)

‘You’re in great form,’ Cecilia took the woman’s hand and squeezed it, ‘I wish my memory was as good.’

‘The thing is, the reason I’ve come . . .’ But after what she had said, I felt it would be insulting to beat around the bush. ‘Encarnita, did you know my grandmother, Teresa?’

‘Your grandmother?’ She opened her eyes wide. ‘Of course I knew her ! Everyone in the village knew your grandmother. And not just this village - she was well known in these parts, your grandma . . .’

‘And do you remember . . . Do you remember if she was a socialist?’

‘A socialist?’ Encarnita burst out laughing, then slapped her thighs and looked at me as though this was the stupidest thing anyone had ever asked her. ‘Of course she was! Although saying she was a socialist is putting it mildly, she was more than that . . . your grandmother all but invented socialism in these parts. No one in the village had ever heard of socialism until your grandmother got it into her head to get involved in politics . . .’ She raised her finger, suddenly serious.

‘Now let me tell you something. She might have been a socialist, in fact she was a dyed-in-the-wool Red, but she was a good woman, I’ll say that for her. She was intelligent and she was brave. Maybe too brave, but I never met a better woman. I was very fond of your grandmother, because Teresita . . . she’d be your aunt, wouldn’t she?’ I nodded at the name of this woman I had never seen, even in photos. ‘Well now, Teresita and me, we were the same age and the best of friends, so I’d go round to your grandparents’ house nearly every day, for tea, or to play with Teresita, and of course she’d come over to my house too . . . Later, my parents forbade me from going to her house, after your grandmother became a teacher, but I still saw her at school every day.’

‘Why exactly did your parents forbid you from going to my grandparents’ house?’

‘On account of your grandmother, of course. She was a militant, she was very active politically - you can’t imagine - and my family were monarchists, one of my mother’s brothers had been executed by communists in Madrid. Now here was your grandmother, holding rallies in the street . . . as you can imagine, they didn’t approve.’

‘But my grandfather was right-wing?’

‘Your grandfather was . . . I suppose he was right-wing. More than anything he was a Holy Joe, but he was never very comfortable at home because . . .’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but your grandfather was spineless, and that’s the truth, he was always a weak man, even my mother said it, and his wife was worth ten of him. I think that worried my own father, you know? Because my mother . . . Well, she was a nationalist, I’m not saying she wasn’t, but back then, women suddenly had a lot more freedom, they could come and go as they pleased, they had the vote, they had the right to get married without their parents’ consent, they could divorce and keep custody of their children, they could go out to work, live on their own, they could be leaders of political parties, they could be elected, become ministers . . . Just imagine it!’

She looked at me as though waiting for me to draw my own conclusions.

‘And your mother was happy about that?’

‘Of course she was happy! Why wouldn’t she be?’ Encarnita laughed. ‘I was only a little girl back then, I didn’t understand, but looking back on it now, well . . . I think my mother was very fond of your grandmother, if only because she felt grateful for what she had done for women. And my father couldn’t bear that, he couldn’t stomach all this talk of women’s rights. I was the one he took it out on, because I was terribly fond of Teresita . . . Not that I did as I was told, of course. I didn’t go to your grandparents’ house any more, but I still played with your aunt at school, or out in the street, or down by the river. That’s the way things were back then. I could only have been eleven or twelve at the time, but I defied my father. Some of your grandmother must have rubbed off on me . . .’

She smiled again, and I smiled too as the ghost of Teresa González hovered over us like a good fairy, a gentle, munificent presence untroubled by the arrival of a lanky teenage boy, his face scarred with acne. His name was Jorge, and as he sat eating all the crisps his mother had brought, I realised that there was a question I would have to ask sooner or later.

‘Encarnita . . . do you know how my grandmother died ?’

‘Well, I . . .’ She looked at me, as though realising how strange the question was. ‘Surely you know . . . I mean, your father must know?’

‘I don’t.’ I clasped my hands together, squeezing them hard, suddenly ashamed of the extent of my ignorance. ‘I suppose he must have known, but I don’t. He never talked to us about his mother. Never. A couple of days ago, among his papers, I found the letter she wrote to him when she left. It wasn’t until then that I found out she was a socialist, that she’d left her husband, and that she had a daughter. Before I read that letter, I believed my father was an only child and that my grandmother had died of tuberculosis in 1937.’

‘God preserve us!’ Encarnita shook her head. ‘That’s . . . it’s shameful !’

‘Yes.’ I looked her in the eye, I couldn’t turn away. ‘It is.’

‘I mean, I can understand . . . in those days, it was difficult being the child of certain people, it could even be dangerous . . . But afterwards . . . for him to say nothing to you, her grandchildren.’

She allowed a long pause. ‘I don’t know, maybe . . . In any case, your grandmother did not die of tuberculosis.
He
was the one with the disease.’

‘Her lover?’

‘I wouldn’t call him her lover . . .’ She took a moment to consider the word before rejecting it. ‘The man she lived with.’

‘Manuel,’ I said.

‘That’s right, Manuel Castro. He was a teacher, too, and a socialist, he was a good man. He was a great orator, from what people said. Your grandmother was a fine public speaker, but he . . . I was only a child, but even I could tell, because back then a politician needed to be imposing. They were statesmen, you understand? Not like the politicians nowadays, changing their minds every other day, they were leaders, and they knew what they were talking about. Don Manuel was held in high regard in the party, like your grandmother in her own way, she was one of the leading lights too . . . Anyway, they were made for each other, truly they were. He was the one who had had tuberculosis, but by the time he came to Torrelodones, he was cured. He was tall and slim, but he was a strapping man. All the children loved him, because he was a magician.’

‘He was a magician?’ Suddenly my heart was pounding. ‘You mean he did magic tricks?’

‘Of course. He was the one who taught your father.’ I nodded. ‘If we were well behaved in school, and we’d done all our homework, Don Manuel would make things appear out of his pockets, from behind his ears, and then make them disappear again.’ Her eyes lit up. ‘It was marvellous . . . and what with that, and the fact that he lived with your grandparents, on account of he’d been evacuated from Las Rozas, well, anyway . . . What happened, happened. Now I’m going to tell you something else . . .’ She raised her index finger again. ‘It was an awful scandal, everyone was shocked because, you see, he was married too, he even had children, but they weren’t thinking about that, they didn’t worry about such things. Your grandmother didn’t hide herself away, she wasn’t ashamed - quite the opposite, she looked radiant, it did your heart good to see her, because she was convinced that she had every right to do what she was doing. That’s how she was, and I have to say, I think she was right, I envy her, because I . . .’

She stopped suddenly, as though she’d bitten her tongue, and shot me a look of panic that I didn’t know how to interpret.

‘Well now, where was I?’ she said quickly. ‘They left the village, taking Teresita with them, or maybe Teresita decided she wanted to go. Your father, he didn’t want to leave, so he stayed with your grandfather. It’s strange because Julito adored Don Manuel, they were always together, Julio was even his assistant when he did magic shows for the soldiers. Afterwards, they were both put in prison, separately, of course. Don Manuel was released years later, I know that much, even if I can’t remember now who told me . . .’

‘What about my grandmother ?’

‘Your grandmother . . . Yes . . .’ She looked me in the eye. ‘Your grandmother died in prison somewhere, but I don’t remember where. There were a lot more prisons back then, but it was one of the famous ones . . . All I know is that, like all the other teachers, she was given a long sentence. But she died soon afterwards, two or three years later, I think. It might have been tuberculosis, but I don’t remember now . . . The only thing I remember is that your grandfather mentioned it to my father, and that’s how I know.’

I felt a great wave of relief and a surge of grief at the cruel way things had turned out. It was a relief to know that she had not been executed, that she had not left home alone, but it was terrible to know that like so many others she had not survived. It was a comfort to know she hadn’t been tossed into a well, that she hadn’t been dragged from her bed at dawn and shot dead by the side of a road, but it was horrifying to think of where and how she might have died. It was better that she had not lived to see what her enemies had done to this country and terrible that she had not lived despite what her enemies had done to this country.

Encarnita stared at me as I chided myself for my naivety, for my weakness in thinking that somehow Teresa might have survived. Many people had survived, but in my heart I had always known that she was not one of them, because had she still been alive, her son would not have been able to erase her so completely.

‘She was a strong-willed woman, Julio.’

‘Álvaro . . .’ I reminded her gently.

‘Yes, yes . . .’ she was deep in thought, ‘a strong-willed woman. Too strong-willed, perhaps.’

She was a strong-willed woman, I thought, Teresa González Puerto, a good woman, a very good woman, a fact worth mentioning since to be a good mother is not a given when a woman is strong, intelligent and brave in a land where the laws of gravity do not apply. Teresa González Puerto had married the wrong man, had tried to be a meek middle-class wife but could not bear it. She had believed in the dream of her own freedom, had risked everything only to lose everything, even her life. And so, although it grieved me to see my grandmother’s smile, the memory of her urged me on to another strong woman.

‘What about this photograph?’ I handed it to Encarnita and she brought it close to her face. ‘Do you know who this woman is?’

‘She’s extraordinarily beautiful,’ she said with a smile.

‘Extraordinarily beautiful,’ I agreed.

‘But I’m afraid I don’t know who she is. If I’d seen her, I would remember.’ She paused for a moment then peered at the photo again. ‘The man is your father, of course, it would have been around the time he came back.’

‘The photo was taken in 1947,’ I said, ‘there’s an inscription on the back.’

She turned it over and thought for a moment: ‘Paloma, Paloma . . . I don’t know. There are so many girls called Paloma. But he didn’t bring her back here, that much I can tell you. Nineteen forty-seven, that’s right . . . He’d been gone for years by then, I never thought he’d come back, there were three of them from Torrelodones who shipped out to Russia, one of them was killed, and the other one came home three or four years before your father.’

‘What did he do?’ I asked, suspicious now of everything I thought I knew. ‘Did he go back to live with my grandfather ?’

‘Certainly not! Your father never liked the village . . .’ She laughed, before going on to confirm what we as his family had always known. ‘Or to be precise, he liked to come here to be seen, to strut around and boast, and that he did, because he came back a gentleman, with money and fine clothes, not at all like your grandfather, who was always a country bumpkin . . . Your father was a real ladykiller, he had a way with women. I never saw it myself, but there was many a girl in the village who made cow-eyes at him, and then of course there was Señorita María.’ ‘Señorita María?’ The name meant nothing to me.

‘Mariana, her name was, she was the niece of Don Mateo Fernández, who owned the Casa Rosa,’ she said, taking it for granted that I knew what she was talking about.

‘It’s a big mansion up on the hill,’ her daughter interrupted. ‘You can get there from a path at the end of the street. You can’t really see it from here, but it’s a beautiful old house, with ivy on the walls. You should take a look at it before you leave . . . Nowadays, there are several modern houses around it, three of them, I think, but back then it was all part of the Casa Rosa gardens.’

‘So what did my father have to do with the house?’

‘Well . . .’ Encarnita frowned. ‘To be honest, no one ever quite knew. Your father would come back, and obviously everyone in the village knew him, but apart from visiting your grandfather, he would go up to see Señorita Mariana. I can still see him walking up that hill . . . People used to say they were having an affair, but who knows? People like to talk and more often than not, they haven’t the first idea. And besides, aside from the fact that Señorita Mariana was quite a bit older than your father, she always struck me as a cold, serious, rather bitter woman, maybe because her husband died early on, leaving her with a little girl - a pretty little thing, with blue eyes and blonde hair . . . I have to say, blonde hair did run in the family - most of the Fernándezes were blonde and blue eyed. I don’t remember the little girl’s name. Her mother didn’t allow her to come down to the village, they never had any dealings with us, you know the kind . . . thought they were better than us. They’d turn up every June in a taxi, and we wouldn’t see hide nor hair of them, except at mass on Sundays, until a taxi came to collect them in September. Fermina, who used to be Don Mateo’s housekeeper, would do their shopping for them, but apart from her and her husband and kids, your father was the only one Señorita Mariana ever talked to. But she wasn’t the kind of woman to have an affair with a man like him.’