The Frozen Heart (82 page)

‘Are you out of your mind?’ Olga rolled her eyes and used one of her mother’s favourite expressions. ‘Not if I was drunk as a skunk.’

‘Who then?’

‘It’s for Raquel, isn’t it?’ Anita smiled and her husband nodded before turning to his son. ‘You know Raquel, Aurelio and Rafaela’s daughter . . .’

‘What?’ As he glared at his parents, Ignacio Fernández Salgado kicked himself for being so stupid; he should have known that something like this was coming. ‘There’s no way I’m looking after some kid.’

‘What kid?’ His mother cut him off. ‘She’s older than your sister, she must be . . . nineteen, I think.’ She glanced at her husband again, but this time he did not come to her rescue. ‘Let me think ... I met Rafaela when she was pregnant and that must have been just after we arrived in Paris, at the beginning of 1945, so . . .’

‘I don’t care, Mamá! I don’t care whether she’s nineteen or twenty, I’m not looking after her!’

‘Of course you’re not looking after her, Ignacio,’ his father said in the calm tone he employed when his authority was not to be questioned. ‘She’s a big girl, she can look after herself.’

‘No, Papá, don’t do this to me! It’s always the same, why can’t I be like other kids?’

‘Laurent’s sister is going with you,’ Anita reminded her son.

‘But she’s his sister! Don’t you get it? She’s his sister, so it’s different! He can hardly say no, and anyway . . .’ He knew he was lost, but he tried once more. ‘I don’t even know this girl.’

‘Of course you do.’ His mother laughed. ‘You remember, you used to see her at the party the newspaper
L’Humanité
used to give when you were both little. She always wore a flamenco dress with a flower in her hair, I think she still dances . . .’

‘
L’Humanité
, Jesus. I remember ... “
a galopar, a galopar
”. From the poem “Galope” by Rafael Alberti that became a popular anti-Franco refrain. Please, Mamá, do you have to remind me?’

‘You used to love going to those parties . . .’

‘I loved going?’ It had to come to this, he thought. ‘I did
not
love going, you know very well I never liked going. You made me go, it’s not the same thing . . .’

‘I don’t want to hear any more about it.’ His father brought the discussion to a close. ‘Either Raquel goes to Spain with you or neither of you is going. It’s as simple as that. I’m paying for this trip, so what I say goes.’

‘You see? Marxism in action.’ Anita looked at her son and smiled.

‘Anita, please . . .’ Her husband looked shocked. He turned to look at his son. ‘She may not be your sister, but that girl is part of this family. Her father has been like a brother to me for years.’

‘No, Papá . . .’ Ignacio Fernández Salgado shook his head. ‘That girl is
not
part of this family, because we’re not a family, we’re a tribe!’

‘OK, then ...’ Ignacio Fernández Muñoz smiled at the inventive turn of his son’s anger, ‘maybe we are a tribe, but we’re your tribe. You’re just one more savage, I’m afraid, but that’s the way it is. One more thing, I want you to go and visit your Aunt Casilda, and that’s even less up for discussion. How much free time do you have in Madrid ?’

 

The day in 1964 that Anita referred to as the Friday of Sorrows, Ignacio Fernández Salgado took a taxi to the airport. His parents had offered to drive him, but he had refused their offers, pointing out that they would be at work. Thankfully he would not have to face the embarrassing goodbyes, more scenes, more tears, ‘
a galopar, a galopar
’, so he headed off alone, and found his friends happy and excited at the prospect of the trip and this new girl.

‘Don’t get your hopes up.’ He had not wanted to say more. It would not have made any difference, since when they were young, none of his friends had been forced by their parents to go to the party given by
L’Humanité
. That last argument had brought it all back: the taste of
churros
, the lyrics of the fandangos, the sound of cider trickling into a glass, and the disturbing, almost terrifying sight of the huge, lumpy empanadas they called ‘pregnant buns’. The same greasy paellas, the same women wearing mourning dress, the same men wearing berets, and the shame of having to walk through the streets dressed in an Aragonese peasant outfit, with the same checked scarf his mother forced him to wear every year tied round his head, especially after Olga opted to wear the regional costume of her father’s province.

‘You’re a cheat, Ignacio!’ Anita said to her husband when he first showed up with the tasselled black shawl embroidered with flowers that Casilda, his sister-in-law, had sent him from Madrid.

Even without the shawl, his sister much preferred the long close-fitting white dress with red polka dots, with which she was allowed - like Andalusian women - to wear high heels. Once Olga saw the shawl, there was no going back, and Anita, having painstakingly cut and sewn a skirt, a corsage and a fichu, exacted her revenge on her son.

‘Ah, look at him! Doesn’t he look cute in his scarf?’

It was awful, all the more so because the scarf was called a
cachirulo
; it was completely awful. It was beyond awful.

At first, Olga enjoyed it because Mamá would put her hair up, paint her eyes with eyeliner, put carnations in her hair. She looked pretty in her little dress, but him . . . every year it was the same, a piece of fabric wrapped several times around his waist and his
cachirulo
perched just above his jug ears, making them even more noticeable. And every year, Olga would step out into the street, smiling, hands on hips, and Ignacio would follow, staring at the ground, trying to hide behind his father or his mother so as not to be noticed. But someone always spotted him, some neighbour would always ask, ‘Hey, you, what are you dressed as?’, and there’d be a skinny girl with braces on her teeth waiting for any occasion to stamp her feet,
¡olé! ¡olé!
, lifting her skirt and twisting her lips as though in pain. He could still remember that she had a forest of hair on her legs, could remember that final pose, one leg forward, the other hidden, one arm raised, the fingers stiff as though she were suddenly paralysed down one side, a broad smile, her hair plastered to her forehead with sweat.

‘Are you Ignacio?’

This was why he had said to Laurent and Philippe, who was the sex maniac in the group, not to get their hopes up. This was why he was unable to make sense of the question asked by this pretty French girl, defiantly modern, wearing a white dress, her hips accentuated by a belt in the same fabric, and barely a few inches below, her long, smooth, beautiful legs.

‘Is your name Ignacio Fernández?’ Her French would have been perfect but for the fact that two rival accents, French and Andalusian, clashed with every word.

‘That’s me.’

‘Hi,’ she held out her hand, ‘I’m Raquel Perea. I think you’ve got my ticket?’

‘Yes.’ He was dumbstruck.

‘Well, could you take my suitcase as well and go and check the bags in . . .’ The vicereine of India addressing a servant could not have mustered greater condescension. ‘I’ll be right back, I just have to say goodbye.’

‘Oh . . .’ He picked up the suitcase and immediately put it down again when he realised it was twice as heavy as his own. ‘Wait, I’ll go with you. I’d like to say hello to your parents.’

She turned and looked at him, puzzled, ‘My parents?’, then continued walking until she came to a tall, stocky boy with the loathsome look of someone who had been champion of something or other at school.

Clearly -
¡olé! ¡olé! -
Raquel Perea now had a boyfriend. Ignacio Fernández Salgado noticed as much in the twenty minutes that followed, his friend Laurent noticed, Philippe noticed, as did a number of other passengers who passed the two-headed monster embroiled in a steamy kiss.

‘So who was that?’ he ventured when she condescended to recover her belongings.

‘He’s my boyfriend, who did you think he was? He’s leaving for the Dordogne tomorrow, going to his grandmother’s to eat foie gras. I thought about going with him, but my father was determined to pack me off to Spain with you,’ she paused, jerking her chin upwards, almost defiantly, ‘to eat garlic.’

Her jibe stung him like a mosquito. ‘Look, I didn’t ask you to come.’

‘Just as well. I recognised you by your ears, though they’re not as obvious with your long hair.’

Nice, thought Ignacio, and he almost shot back that he didn’t recognise her without the forest of hair on her legs, but he didn’t because he realised that she would probably take it as a compliment. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, and they did not exchange another word until he found her sitting next to him on the plane.

‘We’re not even going to Málaga.’ She sounded less like a fractious empress than a disappointed child.

‘I know, but we’re going to Seville,’ he said, without asking himself why he was trying to cheer her up. ‘And to Córdoba and Granada . . . It’s still Andalucía, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but it’s not the same. Listen, I’m sorry for that crack about your ears earlier. It was rude, it’s just . . . I didn’t want to come, but my father wouldn’t let me go on holiday with my boyfriend, you know what it’s like, they’re old and they’re square. I said: “I don’t understand, Papá, you won’t let me go on holiday with Jean-Pierre, who you know well, but you’re determined to make me go away with some boy you don’t know from Adam because you haven’t seen him in years.” You know what he said ? He said it wasn’t the same thing, because you’re your father’s son and you’re Spanish. Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous? They’re insufferable, honestly, there’s no talking to them!’

‘You think that’s bad?’ Ignacio smiled. ‘My mother told me she didn’t want me to go because it was dangerous, and when I said nothing was going to happen to me she told me that’s what her father said just before they took him out and shot him.’

‘Really?’ She looked at him, wide eyed. ‘It’s unbelievable they’re still going on about that stuff even now. It’s like they get off on it.’

Only when the air hostess announced that they were beginning their descent did they finally stop criticising their fathers, their mothers and the rest of their tribe. As they landed, Ignacio looked out at the runway of grey tarmac and white paint identical to the one in Paris. There was nothing special about the runway and yet, looking at it, contrary to what he had expected, Ignacio Fernández Salgado felt a hole in the pit of his stomach, a lump in his throat. He also felt pressure on his arm, but was so absorbed by this unforeseen mutiny of his own body that it was a moment before he wondered what the pressure was. When he did, he found Raquel Perea leaning over him, looking at the same unremarkable stretch of Seville airport runway.

‘Spanish soil,’ she murmured in a humble, nervous, almost gentle tone.

‘Yes.’ He discovered he too was whispering.

‘I’m not sure I’m going to like it.’

‘Me neither, but I had to come sooner or later.’

‘I suppose. So you’ve never been before either?’

‘No.’

‘Well,’ she smiled at him, ‘at least this way we’ll get through it together . . .’

‘Like chickenpox.’ Ignacio smiled back and Raquel laughed.

And then Raquel stepped out of the plane with him and did not leave his side until they had collected their bags. They moved at the same pace, serious and silent, not looking at each other, as if they had nothing to do with each other, and nothing to do with the gaggle of noisy French students laughing and chasing each other down the corridors. At first, Ignacio’s only thought was that he could distinctly taste apricots. Then a woman’s voice came over the loudspeakers.

‘Hey!’ Raquel grabbed his arm and squeezed. ‘Listen to the way she talks . . .’

‘She has a nice voice,’ he said after a moment.

‘No, I mean her accent, she talks just like my mother does in Spanish.’

She didn’t let go of his arm, but squeezed it harder as they queued at passport control.

‘The Guardia Civil . . .’

‘Yes,’ said Ignacio, who had just read the sign.

Ignacio Fernández Salgado suddenly felt grateful for his father’s dictatorial contrariness, he was even grateful for the ‘punishment’ that had meant bringing Raquel Perea with him on this trip, because until this moment, Ignacio had simply felt nervous, excited, perhaps a little shaken. Now, as he moved towards that little window, he could taste every apricot he had ever eaten grow rancid in his mouth. With each step, Ignacio Fernández Salgado could feel his palms sweating, chills running up and down his spine, his legs giving way. But with each step, he could hear Raquel’s ragged breathing, could feel her nails digging into his arm, and he knew that she was trembling, he knew it, and that was enough to keep him going. If he was calm and composed, she would be calm and composed. When his turn came, they both stepped up to the window. He pushed his passport over the counter, looked at the man in the green uniform, who returned his stare, and greeted him in Spanish.

‘
Buenos días
.’

‘
Buenas . . .
’ The guard opened the passport, glanced at the photograph, then at Ignacio, then wrote on a piece of paper. ‘Fernández Salgado. So you’re Spanish?’

‘No.’ He reeled off the answer his father had suggested. ‘French. My parents are Spanish.’

‘I see . . .’ The guard flicked through the passport, studying the stamps. ‘This is your first time here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Very well.’ The man pushed the passport back to him with a smile. ‘Welcome.’

God, I’m so stupid, thought Ignacio as he watched the same scene played out again by Raquel: ‘Perea Millán?’ ‘Yes. I’m French, like him. My parents are Spanish.’

‘Could you be any more stupid ? Ignacio thought of his father’s preferred put-down, and he felt obliged to answer ‘No’ with the same rage, the same pig-headedness he felt every year as he watched his grandparents, his parents, his aunts and uncles raise a toast on New Year’s Eve. ‘Very well, welcome.’ That was all there was to it, it had been so simple, so straightforward, that once they were on the other side, Raquel seemed ashamed that she had been trembling.