The Frozen Heart (55 page)

‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘If he was such a ladykiller . . .’

‘Ladykiller he might have been, but back then things weren’t the same as they are now. People were very correct, Señorita Mariana was a lady and he was . . . well, he was no one, even if . . . I don’t know, you can never tell. But there was some link between them, that much I do know, because every time he came to Torrelodones, he’d go up to see her. And later, when the house was sold, she wrote to the mayor, to her lawyer, she even wrote to the Guardia Civil saying he was the one who had put her out on the street, that he’d stolen the place from her even though that house had never really belonged to her. To Señorita Mariana, I mean . . . It belonged to her Uncle Mateo, though I’ll grant you that before that it had belonged to her grandfather, her father’s father. But it was Don Mateo who inherited it when the estate was divided up. Don Mateo got the house, and Señorita Mariana’s father, Mateo’s older brother, must have got something else. The family had a lot of money.’

‘But then . . .’ I was completely lost by now. ‘Why was she living in the house if it wasn’t hers and she had money of her own? And how could my father have been responsible for putting her out on the street?’

‘Ah,
hijo
, that I don’t know . . . Nobody knows, or at least nobody in the village does, it was always a curious business. Señorita Mariana spent the summers at the house because the people who owned it weren’t here, in Spain, I mean. I think they moved to France after the war.’

‘So they were republicans?’

‘Pah!’ She smiled, waving her hands emphatically. ‘Atheists, that’s what they were, wouldn’t let me near the house, wouldn’t even let me up the hill . . . The children - though they weren’t really children, you understand, the youngest of them would have been ten years older than me - well, the children never made their communion, they weren’t even baptised. Their parents wouldn’t give my parents the time of day by then, whereas before the war, they had all got on well together. But that wasn’t unusual in those days . . . After the war, they left and went to France and they left the keys to the house and to their place in Madrid with their niece Señorita Mariana, she was the only one who stayed behind.’

‘And she got to keep everything?’ I guessed, and Encarnita nodded vehemently. ‘Because if she stayed here in Spain, she must have been in with the new regime.’

‘That’s what everyone round here thought . . . No one was surprised and it wasn’t a time to grumble or ask awkward questions . . . Don Mateo didn’t come here for three summers during the war, it wouldn’t have been possible, not with the front at Moncloa. And then one day his niece shows up as lady of the manor - she liked to put on airs, and was prickly with it, because she was flat broke. I don’t know what her father had done with all his money, but it was gone. After that, well, I expect it’s as you say . . .’ She shook her head sadly. ‘When her family left, she must have thought she’d won the lottery and was set up for life. Then one day your father shows up in the village and he’s a Falangist. About a year later, the house was sold and we never saw Señorita Mariana or the little girl again, it was as if the ground had opened up and swallowed them. It was almost the same with your father, it was a long, long time before he came back to the village - ten years, I think. Well, he’d come to see your grandfather, but he’d park the car right outside the front door, and he’d leave without saying a word to anyone. By the time I next talked to him, he’d married a foreign girl and they had two or three children - you’re a big family, aren’t you?’

‘There are five of us. But my mother isn’t foreign.’

‘I know, I know,’ she smiled, ‘but we always called her that because she looked a bit foreign, and because your father had been all over the world . . . she turned up here one day, slim and elegant and wearing sunglasses that covered half her face, and she was always so quiet, it was as if she didn’t understand what was being said. Someone said, “She must be foreign,” and that’s what we all thought. Later on . . . well, I never did talk to her much, but when she stopped and said hello I realised she wasn’t foreign.’

The whole story sounded so bizarre that I was convinced there had to be a simple explanation. ‘But maybe my father was working for an estate agent who wanted to buy the property, and maybe they did the deal directly with the owners. As far as I know, he always worked in the property business, and he started out buying places that were falling down, doing them up and selling them on.’

‘That would make sense,’ Encarnita’s daughter said.

‘Maybe, I don’t know . . .’ Encarnita was clearly not convinced. ‘As I said, it was all very mysterious.’

She handed me back the photograph and I slipped it into my wallet, checked my watch and realised it was half past two. I took Encarnita’s hands in mine, and apologised for taking up so much of her time.

‘You can’t imagine how grateful I am for everything you’ve told me about my grandmother. Honestly, I can’t thank you enough.’

‘Are you leaving already?’ she said, clearly surprised.

‘Mamá,’ her daughter said gently, ‘I’m sure he wants to have his lunch, and we should be having ours.’

‘All right, but first . . . Can someone bring me the photo from the dressing table in my room?’ Her granddaughter got to her feet. ‘I want you to see this before you go.’

It was an ordinary class photograph, fifty pupils - boys and girls - lined up by age and height on the steps of a large building. There were four adults in the picture - three men and a woman - two on the bottom step, flanking the children in the front row, the other two standing together one step higher than the back row. The woman looked like a younger, sultry, stylised version of my grandmother, her hair loose, her eyes shining. Next to her was a thin, dark-haired man, his long face seen in profile, and he was gazing at her, smiling, as though they were alone.

‘That’s my grandmother, isn’t it?’ Encarnita nodded at my redundant question. ‘And that must be Manuel.’

‘Yes. See the way he’s looking at her ? That’s why there was such a scandal when it all came out . . . That little girl there, that’s Teresita. And there, that’s me, and that girl there is Amada . . .’

Teresa Carrión González looked like her mother and her brother. She was dark haired with dark eyes, her hair parted in the middle and braided into two pigtails, each tied with a ribbon. Her nose was smaller than my father’s had been, but her mouth, with its thick lips, could have been my own. Posing stiffly but happily, wearing a clean smock, her hands tucked into the pockets, her chin tilted upwards just like her mother. I gazed at her for a long time.

‘Would you mind lending it to me? I’d like to have a copy made . . .’

‘No!’ She snatched the photograph away with a strength I would not have suspected. ‘It’s out of the question.’

‘But Mamá . . .’ By the time her daughter intervened, she was clutching the frame to her chest. ‘He’s not going to keep it, he just wants to have a copy made and then he’ll bring it back. Surely you don’t mind . . .’

‘Well, I do mind ! I mind very much.’

‘But it’s his grandmother, Mamá! How can it hurt . . .’

‘It can hurt! It hurts me . . .’ Now Encarnita had lost her composure, she was wailing like a little girl; and I suddenly felt sorry that I had upset her. Then she said something which was even more surprising. ‘To me, it’s a photograph of your mother, and I don’t want him having it, I don’t want him borrowing it. It’s mine and I want to keep it.’

‘All right, Mamá . . .’ Encarna put her arms around the old woman. ‘It’s all right, you don’t have to give him the photo. He doesn’t mind, do you?’ She glanced at me, signalling that we would talk about it later.

‘No, of course not,’ I said quickly, ‘I’m terribly sorry I upset you.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Encarna reassured me, ‘it’s all right. Cecilia, take Grandma back to her room. Go on, she can put the photo back in its place and then we’ll have lunch.’

She transferred her mother into the arms of her daughter and waited for them to leave.

‘She’s eighty years old, you know.’ She smiled. ‘She’s in good health, as you can see, but she gets these little turns from time to time. I’ll have a copy made for you. I’ll take the photo down to the village some afternoon and tell her I want one to hang in the chemist where I work. I’ve already got one, but I’m sure she won’t remember. Give me your address, that way I can send it to you . . .’

Encarna showed me to the door and pointed up the hill to the house we had talked about earlier, then waited at the door, but I was only halfway down the steps when she called me back.

‘Álvaro!’ As I turned back, she came down the steps to where I was standing. ‘I was thinking . . . There’s something I want to tell you. I’m not really Encarnita’s daughter . . . Well, I am, she is my mother, but not my biological mother.’

She looked at me for a moment as though giving me permission to ask the question.

‘My mother’s name was Amada,’ she continued, ‘the other little girl you saw in the photo. She died three years ago. She and Encarnita lived together for more than fifty years, they were only ever apart for two years. Amada was younger than Encarnita, and she was never strong. When she was twenty-one she panicked and confessed, she was so terrified she ran away to Madrid to work as a maid. She had a boyfriend while she was there, he was doing his military service, he got her pregnant and then he disappeared. So she came back to the village, alone, and more frightened than ever. Her father was in the Guardia Civil and her parents didn’t welcome her back with open arms. But Encarnita forgave her for leaving. Her father, who owned the village chemist’s shop - it’s mine now - had just died. Encarnita was an only child, and she was well off so she took my mother in. I was born and grew up in this house . . . And I live here now with my husband and my children. Encarnita’s mother, the only grandmother I ever had, set up a room for herself on the ground floor, and as to what went on in the rest of the house, she preferred not to know. My mothers slept in the master bedroom upstairs. They always swore they weren’t lesbians. They were friends. They slept together, they were jealous, they were unfaithful, they’d have knock-down fights in the kitchen, but they weren’t lesbians.’

‘Maybe they didn’t know . . .’ I suggested, trying to be pleasant, though I didn’t quite know why she was telling me this story.

‘Of course they knew! How could they not know? They knew perfectly well, they just refused to admit it . . . The only time I ever dared talk to them about it, they were furious, wanted to know how I could say such things.’ She smiled and I smiled with her. ‘And they went on going to mass arm in arm every Sunday, they even went to confession, but they didn’t mention what they got up to in bed. Encarnita managed to convince my mother that this was something friends did, and that it’s only a sin if you do it with a man. And they went right on gossiping about other people, telling me not to trust boys because they’re only after one thing. They were very much in love with each other and I think they were happy together, but it was never mentioned. I just wanted to tell you because you came here to ask about your grandmother, nobody had told you anything and I just thought . . . well, it’s not so rare - in this country at least.’

‘Thank you, Encarna.’ She shook her head, smiling still. ‘Thank you for telling me.’

I kissed her on both cheeks and said goodbye. As I got into the car, I felt the gentle, benevolent presence of my grandmother Teresa still hovering over me, protecting me. I was glad to have learned so much, although I felt incapable of evaluating all the new information swirling round my mind - the image of my grandmother, so pretty, so young, so proud, this little miracle of history which had brought her to life, then killed her. There was something heroic and yet familiar, something small yet exemplary, something larger than life yet real, something Spanish yet universal about Teresa González Puerto, and all of those qualities converged on a single point. Me.

I would have fallen in love with you, Grandmother. Had I been your age, had I known you in 1936, had I not been your grandson. And this thought made me happy, because it was a wonderful thought and because it freed me of the suspicion of being unfair to this love, which at any other time would have been enough to give meaning to my name, and which had come to me only now that I was no longer free, when I no longer wanted to be free.

So, at 4 p.m., I closed my eyes and pressed the button on Raquel’s entryphone.

‘Yes?’

‘Hi, it’s me.’

‘Álvaro.’ It was not a question but a statement.

‘Yes, it’s just . . . I went down to Torrelodones to sort out some of my father’s papers and . . .’

‘. . . and you just happened to be in the area.’

‘No, I came specially.’

‘Come up.’

When I got a taste for jumping off the huge mound of damp, compacted sand which had appeared overnight in the corner of the school playground, I still thought the first time had been the best, but it lacked the excitement of the second, the third, of the fourth, because something new was added to the experience every time. Slipping into Raquel’s bed for the second time, I was more moved than I had been the first time; it was a good thing, because the amazement of the first time settled into something more certain and more amazing, and the only worthwhile miracles are those which can be repeated. Therefore, as I looked at her, as I watched the regular rhythm of her breathing, I found I was able to speak, to do more than just babble.

‘I’m going to tell you a story.’ I turned towards her, kissed her and took her in my arms. ‘I hope you’ll like it . . .’

I didn’t tell her about my grandmother, I couldn’t bring myself to, I hadn’t even told Fernando Cisneros yet. It was not simply that I liked to think that Teresa belonged to me, nor was it a sense of propriety. There was something else, something hazy and romantic, about my reticence. It was all happening at once, too fast. I needed time to grow accustomed to the memory of my grandmother, to allow this sudden, intense, innocent passion to settle until they became familiar images, old stories. Only then would I be able to tell the truth, this secret, suppressed truth, without seeing myself as an interloper, an opportunist, a second-hand grandson. Teresa González Puerto deserved better than that. So I told Raquel the story of Amada and Encarnita without even mentioning my grandmother, as if I’d run into an old friend of the family in Torrelodones, the local chemist, who had insisted I come back to her house because her mother wanted to offer her condolences over my father’s death, not realising that the glass of wine she’d drunk on an empty stomach would loosen her tongue.