The Frozen Heart (90 page)

‘The only thing I love is you, Álvaro.’

‘And I love you,’ I felt a rush of tenderness, a sharp pain like a knife wound, ‘I love you so much . . .’

‘There’s something I need to tell you.’

‘Not now.’ I hugged her again, kissed her. ‘Please, not now, I don’t need to know now, I don’t care, Raquel . . .’

When I’d arrived, I knew I was going to kiss her and the mere knowledge had moved me. Later, as we lay together naked in that unfamiliar bed, I was more conscious than ever of beauty, of pleasure, of joy, of the existence of all living things, for the whole world was suspended on Raquel’s lips.

I was risking everything on those lips.

I was aware of it again when she moved away from me.

‘I never slept with your father, Álvaro.’

This is what she said.

She told me that she had never slept with my father and suddenly I felt a terrible urge to laugh and cry at the same time.

O
n Saturday, 5 May 1956, Don Julio Carrión González, thirty-four, was joined in holy matrimony to Señorita Angélica Otero Fernández, twenty-one, at the church of Santa Bárbara in Madrid. The bride, the great-granddaughter of the Conde de la Riva, wore a white silk dress designed by Cristóbal Balenciaga and a veil of Mechlin lace, a family heirloom. The witnesses to the marriage were the father of the groom, Don Benigno Carrión Moreno, and the mother of the bride, Doña Mariana Fernández Viu. After the ceremony, the newlyweds celebrated with a dinner for two hundred guests in the state rooms of the Palace Hotel.

‘Listen, Julio, you may be rich, but you’re not respectable.’ Angélica turned on him those liquid, piercingly blue eyes that both captivated and unsettled him. ‘Until now, that didn’t really matter. In Spain we’ve always believed it’s good for young men to sow their wild oats, but you’re over thirty and no respectable man is still single at that age. Not in this country. How much longer do you think you can get away with being single, showing up with dark circles under your eyes to receptions full of bishops and generals’ wives? It can’t last, Julio, and you know it, unless you settle down quickly with a pretty little virgin from a good family and give her two or three children. That’s what you need, but it’s not an easy thing to come by, no matter how rich you are. There’s only one woman in the world who would make a suitable match for you, and that’s me. First, because my surname is Fernández, and that might be useful later, in certain situations. Franco can’t live for ever. But mostly because I know who you are and what you are, Julio . . . You’re a thief, an impostor, a liar and a scoundrel with a taste for whores. I know all that, but I still love you. I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you.’ Her voice as she spoke was so calm, so cold, that it was clearly a speech she had rehearsed many times. ‘Think about it, Julio.’

He smiled almost shyly and said nothing. They were sitting on the Rosales terrace, enjoying a warm September evening; the autumn sun was fading but was still bright enough to dupe the trees, which had not yet shed their first leaves. It was not cold, but when Angélica, feeling the silence drag on, picked up a cigarette and tried to light it, she found that her fingers were trembling. Julio smiled more broadly and felt a vague, diffuse warmth course through him, fuelled by his vanity and his utter admiration for this woman.

‘You’re nervous,’ he ventured.

‘Yes,’ once again Angélica proved to him that there were different ways of being brave, ‘I’m very nervous.’

Julio Carrión González had always been attracted to Angélica Otero Fernández. From the very beginning, in spite of her insolence, the almost suicidal arrogance that erupted into daily tantrums, making her his most troublesome employee. When she stared him down, chin held a little too high, nostrils flared, he found Angélica unbearable, irritating, stupid, but even then he found himself attracted to her. He had played with her often when she was a young girl, and he sometimes felt that this was why she had come back from Galicia, so they could go on playing.

‘Do that Russian trick for me, Julio . . .’

Even as a child, when she spoke to him, there was a tremor in her voice that troubled him, a wisp of precocious, ambiguous promise that cloaked those innocent words, for they had to be innocent, even if at times there seemed to be an unconscious sexual undercurrent. Maybe even conscious, he had sometimes thought, even if it’s tentative and vague. This was why he had enjoyed flirting with her when she was twelve, thirteen, fourteen, looking at her body, which was mature beyond her years, as she posed like a vamp, showing the scabs on her knees, the smooth pink of her girlish cheeks. She would make faces at him and toss her head.

‘Do it, Julio . . .’ she would say in an affectionate little voice, pretending to be coy. ‘Go on, do it for me.’

He could not suppress a smile as he remembered how many other women had said that same thing to him, in the same tone of voice.

‘OK, you wait here, I’ll just go to the kitchen to get a cup and a glass.’

Back then - from the summer of 1947 to the summer of 1949 - it had been one of his favourite tricks. It was such a hit, particularly with women, that he always kept a piece of sponge in his pocket. When he got to the kitchen, he pressed the sponge into the bottom of an opaque glass, took a pick and, from one of the blocks of ice they used to keep meat and fish cool, chipped off a sliver and placed it on top of the sponge. Then he went back into the living room with the cup in one hand and a small glass of water in the other.

‘I had a girlfriend in Russia,’ he would say, looking at Angélica, who clapped and smiled, craning forward. ‘Her name was Nadia, and I loved her very, very much. I loved her so much that when I had to leave I cried. I kept my tears in this glass and sent them to her in the post.’ With a theatrical flourish he had learned from Manuel Castro, he tipped the glass into the cup, where the sponge immediately absorbed the water. ‘And she sent me her tears, but it was so cold in Russia that they froze before I got them.’ He tipped up the cup and, instead of water, a sliver of ice dropped into his palm. He handed it to Angélica and while she was staring at it, open mouthed, he used his thumb to retrieve the sponge from the cup, wringing out the water on to the carpet, and placed the cup down next to the glass.

‘That’s amazing! How did you do it?’

‘I can’t tell you that. A magician never reveals his secrets.’

But, although he was convinced that she would do so some day, Angélica never asked to be his apprentice. She did not want to be like him; she wanted to be with him.

‘I’d never make you cry like that Russian girl,’ she would say whenever her mother was out of earshot.

‘Go to your room, Angélica.’ Because whenever Mariana appeared, the magic between them was over.

Julio often thought that he would not have found the girl so amusing were it not for the fact that she was so unlike her mother. The only thing they had in common was that both looked older than their age. Mariana was only two years older than her cousin Paloma, who was almost six years older than Julio, but everything about Mariana belied those years. When they first met, Angélica’s mother had just turned thirty-three, only a little older than Julio liked his women. Even so, she tried to seduce him.

In the beginning, when she knew nothing about the true intentions of this charming young man, Mariana had thought that the best possible solution to the problems his sudden appearance might create was to marry him. Julio would call her twice a month to tell her that he would like to come to lunch or to dinner, and he was so skilful that when she hung up she was never quite sure whether she had invited him or he had invited himself. At first she did not mind his visits, in fact she enjoyed them. He was invariably punctual and never came empty handed. He would send flowers, or bring dessert, cakes or chocolate, and when the previous bottle was almost empty, he would bring a bottle of Pedro Ximénez because, though she was fond of food, his hostess was even more fond of dessert wine.

‘Oh, Julio, you shouldn’t have.’ Mariana always accepted his gifts with evident pleasure and the same polite protest. ‘It’s no trouble at all,’ Julio would reply with his most charming smile. ‘You’re always so generous, and I . . .’ she would turn her head in a coy gesture that was wasted on her guest ‘. . . I have nothing to repay your kindness, I’m only a poor woman . . .’

. . . and fat
, he added to himself as he stared at the folds of flesh that spilled out over a corset as stiff as armour plating.
. . . and clumsy
, he thought, noting that she couldn’t put on lipstick without getting it on her teeth.
. . . and stupid
, he thought, since only a complete idiot would think she had any hope with him.
. . . and a whore
,
you’re worse than a whore
, because for all the years she had spent going to mass every day, she would still have been happy to spread her legs if he’d asked. This was what Julio Carrión González really thought about Mariana Fernández Viu, but he was careful not to tell her until the right moment.

‘Please, Mariana,’ he would say, ‘I’m the one who should be grateful.’

‘Don’t be silly, you’re like one of the family now. Come in.’

Then, as she disappeared down the hall, pretending to blush and trying unsuccessfully to get the wrinkles out of her dress, Julio turned and there, leaning against the wall or in the doorway, one hip thrust out, would be Angélica in her school uniform.

‘What about me?’ Angélica would feign anger with an instinctive grace, a charm that Mariana would never possess. ‘Didn’t you bring anything for me?’

He crept towards her, slowly, sure-footedly, as noiselessly as a cat. ‘Let me think . . . I’m not really sure . . . Although, maybe . . . Hey, what have you got . . .?’ He stretched out an open hand towards her and closed it into a fist next to her ear. ‘What’s this? Have you been growing chocolates in your ears?’

Delight transformed Angélica, turning her into the little girl she was; she was suddenly impetuous, uncoordinated, leaping up and throwing her arms around his neck. Julio let her hug him, inhaled the child’s perfume she wore, thinking that it was a good thing she was so young, because if she were to proposition him the way Mariana did, he might very well succumb. Then the mistress of the house reappeared with aperitifs for two, delicately laid out on a tray filled with linen napkins and crackers, and as she poured the vermouth, ignoring her daughter’s existence, she marshalled all her meagre talents as an inept seductress. These were the moments Julio genuinely enjoyed, because every time her mother leaned a little too close to her guest or touched his arm for no apparent reason, he could see Angélica scowling, puffing out her cheeks, shaking her head or closing her eyes in horrified embarrassment. Then, all three of them would eat together, but Mariana did not speak to her daughter until Matilde appeared with the coffees.

‘Go to your room, Angélica.’

It was over coffee that her guest chose to deliver his blows, but he played his part with calm and cunning. He would wait until Mariana had completely recovered from their previous quarrel before persuading her to take one more step towards her downfall. Julio generally believed that the first of those to expropriate the fortunes of the Fernández Muñoz family was not a clever woman, and she had little foresight, since she seemed incapable of divining her guest’s true plans. From time to time she would thank him profusely for everything he was doing for her family in exile, but now and then a flash of lucidity in her eyes would make him doubt his assessment of her. He reminded himself it did not matter: there was nothing Mariana could do, he held all the cards.

‘Don’t you ever feel lonely, Julio? A young man like you with no one to look after him? I don’t know, there are nights when I think even I might . . .’

‘Don’t worry about me, Mariana, I’ve always been a loner.’

This was the pattern of most of their meals together: he would arrive, give them presents, there would be a little conversation, unproductive at first, though gradually Mariana had shifted from anxiety to a point where she was all but frantic. Julio, smiling and gracious, allowed himself to be admired. He tried not to discourage Mariana too much since her present attitude seemed much better than declaring hostilities before it was time. In fact, Julio did toy with the idea of bedding her. He could have done so easily, but beneath her make-up and tight-fitting clothes, Mariana Fernández Viu was still abrasive and her executioner was in no hurry.

‘My husband was a good man, hard working and serious, but his health was always very delicate, he fell ill when he was young and never really recovered. I’ve never known what it was to have a real man, a man with drive and ambition . . .’

‘You’re still a young woman, Mariana,’
don’t get any ideas, it’s never going to happen
,
‘
you’ll find a man, someone who deserves you.’

Nineteen forty-eight was Julio Carrión González’s first good year since 1933, when his mother had decided to go into politics. He spent the spring selling off the last of María Muñoz’s olive groves and in late summer he sold the farm for considerably more money that he had expected. He had already begun reinvesting his money as he made it - on drinks and whores and private rooms - but also on building permits in a Madrid that had been razed to the ground by bombers and was inhabited by a dark mass of fearful souls whose single preoccupation was finding somewhere to live. Construction companies proliferated in a climate of frenzied speculation that would make fortunes for charming, intelligent, gifted men like him. He had more than enough of such qualities to know that he did not need to hurry, to draw attention to himself, to get rich too quickly and arouse the suspicions of the gilded elite to whom he would always be a parvenu. Julio Carrión González had not forgotten that even the cleverest men can be fools when confronted with someone cleverer than they are. And so he proceeded cautiously, never flaunting his new-found wealth nor saying any more than was necessary. His frequent visits to Mariana Fernández Viu were merely parts of a perfectly regulated machine.