The Frozen Heart (72 page)

‘Well, what do you know, I’ll even get to fuck you for free, my little Paloma.’ Julio had expected a clean, uncomplicated negotiation. ‘You toss my bitch of a cousin out on the street and I’ll pay you in advance.’ ‘Fine,’ he’d said to himself, ‘but pay me now and afterwards, we’ll see . . .’ But it had not just been a fuck, and it had not been free. Paloma Fernández Muñoz would never know it, but Julio Carrión González would spend the rest of his life trying to obliterate that night from his memory. For the rest of his life, he would compare every woman to Paloma, and where other men have a heart, Julio would have a hard, dry scar that could still soften, still throb on long wet afternoons. But even the most intelligent people can be fools when confronted with someone more intelligent than they are. And Paloma was more intelligent than he was.

‘You can’t imagine how much I loved him,’ and what sounded like an end was the beginning of something new.

She was naked, exhausted, sprawled across his bed, and the dim light of his tiny room in his cheap boarding house shimmered, gilding her body with the light of a hundred candles. She gazed up at him, her face still flushed, pushing away the sheets, shameless and conscious of her beauty. He could not resist the power in her eyes, could do nothing but gaze at her, listen to her, inhale the perfume of her sex, which pervaded the whole room, and begin to commit her to memory. And just as he thought that she had no more to give him, his skin weary of responding to the limitless offer of a woman prepared to show him everything she was capable of, Paloma said: ‘You can’t imagine how much I loved him,’ and it all began again.

‘Carlos loved me so much, gave me so much . . .’ Her eyes glittered, but her voice was calm, gentle, sweet. ‘He was so much in love with me that no one noticed how much I loved him. Now they do, now they finally understand. He was a better person than me. He would not have nursed a grudge, or constantly waited for revenge. But he’s dead, and I’m alive. I’m dead but I’m alive. Every day for seven years I have been a living corpse, until tonight.’ She shifted slightly, pressed her body against Julio. ‘I am not as good a person as Carlos was, but I survived, and the only thing that gets me through the day is the love I have for him and the hatred for those who took him away from me. I am not as good as my husband was because I want revenge. I don’t care that it’s immoral, or pointless, I want revenge. It’s the only thing that matters to me. Avenge me, Julio, and you’ll never regret it. I won’t lie to you. I don’t think I could ever love anyone the way I loved Carlos, but if you avenge me, I can begin to forget and maybe I can start to live again.’

This is what she said, then she straddled him, claimed him with unspoken words that only he could hear, words that he would never forget, that seemed to say: ‘This is me, Julio Carrión, and you are my champion. This is me and all this will be yours if you champion my cause, if you fight for me, because you are the only man who can bring me back to life, the only man who can make me happy.’

‘I won’t lie to you,’ she had said to him, and she did not lie. Julio knew that, knew she was not putting on an act to draw him in. Paloma had treated him as she had every other man, with the same cordial detachment, until he had set himself apart, had subtly offered himself to her. Only then had the beautiful, grief-stricken widow noticed him, only then had she decided to bring him into her plans and offer herself so completely. ‘Do you like that? Wait, don’t be so impatient, let me . . .’

What a pity, he thought afterwards, what a pity, Paloma. And yet, their last embrace moved him, bound him to her more than he could know when he left her standing in the entrance. That last, fierce, desperate, hopeful kiss did not stop him from writing to Huertas the letter he would never send - ‘I screwed her, you son of a bitch’ - but it travelled with him on the journey back as though stitched to his lips.

Afterwards, though he could hardly believe it, he did have doubts, he even went so far as to make a decision only to change his mind and change it back again. There was still time. The passport that permitted him to cross the border at Irún as though the past three years of his life had never happened had cost him little compared to what he had to gain. Paloma’s father would not frown on him if he came back to Paris with Don Mateo’s fortune to claim his prize, to worship his goddess, to win the heart of his fair lady. There were moments when Paloma seemed more important to him than his greed, than the thought of the sheep that had been his father’s whole life and which he had vowed would not be his. But he had plotted his future, he had promised himself that never again would Julio Carrión González be on the losing side, and that promise freed him from all other considerations. He wasted no time wondering who was worse and who was better, who was right and who was wrong, he cared only about winning, and yet, afterwards, though he could hardly believe it, there were moments during his long journey back when winning meant Paloma Fernández Muñoz, when his prize would mean a different life.

Until he arrived in Madrid. On 4 April 1947, Julio Carrión González stepped off a train in the Estación del Norte to a warm, bright spring day. He glanced around him, gave thanks for the sun’s warmth, breathed in a familiar scent and reminded himself that the world was full of women; other women. There were several of them right here on the station platform, and one of them, in a red dress, was walking slowly, swaying on her heels. As he watched her, he could feel Paloma stinging his eyes, a parched dryness in his throat, pins and needles in his sides. He decided to ignore it, and remembered that one night in Paris he had participated in a frivolous but entertaining discussion between those who defended Freud’s theory that sex makes the world go round and the Marxists, who maintained that money makes the world go round. He smiled. Maybe, he thought, I’m a Marxist after all.

He chose a good hotel on the Gran Vía, he appreciated the burnished furniture, the roses in a cut-glass vase, the vast, soft bed. This is the life for me, he thought. At that moment, the pain faded away, but when he brought his hands up to his face, still, above the scent of soap and water, he could smell Paloma. To shake her off, he went out for a walk, strolled along the boulevards, glanced into the shop windows, went into a tailor’s and bought a new suit, sat on a café terrace and watched the world pass by, listening to fragments of conversation; he realised that what the Spanish expatriates in Paris had said was true: Madrid was utterly different and yet completely the same.

Whereas in 1941 there had been rage and hostility in the voices now there was only fear. Where in 1941 there had been fear, there was now something else. The people of Madrid might not notice it, but he had been away for six years and he had returned to a city that had been beaten into submission, a city inhabited by stiff bodies and silence, where a wide corridor opened up before any uniform even on the most crowded pavements, because the moment they saw a policeman or a soldier, civilians - of whom there were more women than men - stepped back as though they had received an electric shock. Here in the centre of the city, he could see no sign of poverty, but, like the fear, he could smell it in the distance. This was his country, and yet it reminded him of a different, far-off country. Here, mingled with the smells of his childhood and his heady, passionate youth, Julio Carrión González could smell Riga, and he realised that his country was not calm, it was caged, it was an occupied territory where there were no victors, only masters. Others might have pondered this, but Julio did not need to - he realised that he found himself in a paradise for impostors, usurers and opportunists. A place where he might thrive.

Jesus, Madrid is expensive, he thought as he paid for his coffee. He did not have much money left, the trip to the tailor’s had eaten up almost half his final pay packet, but it did not matter. Tomorrow, he would go to Torrelodones and he wanted everyone to notice him, to see that he was back. He felt a sudden urge to head for the Calle de la Montera and say hello to Señor Turégano, but he resisted.

At dinner time, he headed back to the hotel, went into the bar on the ground floor, and ordered a Martini. Almost immediately, a woman with bleached-blonde hair and too much make-up came over and asked him for a light, but Julio was not interested in her. She sat next to him, smoking, but realising that he had no desire to talk to her, she stubbed out the half-finished cigarette and slipped it back into her packet. Her place was quickly filled by a skinny young girl who also realised he was not interested and did not even bother asking him for a light. As she got up, Julio noticed another woman, about thirty - the age he preferred - with dark hair pulled up into a chignon, large eyes and a pretty mouth; she looked completely ordinary, married probably, but in a fix. At that moment, he saw Paloma Fernández Muñoz at the bottom of his glass, perched on the empty stool beside him, and he signalled to her.

‘Hi,’ he said, ‘can I get you a drink?’

‘Yes,’ the woman’s conversational skills were no better than his own, ‘a chocolate milkshake, please.’

‘What’s your name?’ he asked, after he had recovered from his astonishment at her nutritious request.

‘Julia,’ she said, smiling.

‘Really? Mine’s Julio!’

‘Call me María if you like,’ she said, drinking down half the milkshake in a single gulp. ‘I don’t mind.’

When he suggested that they might spend a little time together, she indicated a price, pressing the fingers of her right hand against the palm of her left, and he quickly asked for the bill. ‘Jesus, Madrid is cheap,’ he muttered to himself as he signed the bill. The woman turned to him: ‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing, it was nothing . . .’

Stepping into his room, she took off her old, moth-eaten gloves and put them in her handbag, then laid out the ground rules:

‘I don’t kiss. I’ll do anything else, but not that.’

‘Even if I pay extra?’ Julio asked, out of curiosity.

‘Even if you pay extra.’ She picked up her bag, took out her gloves. She’s probably thinking at least she got something to eat, thought Julio.

‘No, it’s OK. We don’t have to kiss, I don’t mind.’ Watching her as she undressed in a diffident, emotionless manner that indicated she was no professional, Julio asked: ‘Are you married?’

‘None of your business.’

She’s married, or she’s a widow - no, she’s married but on her own, he thought. She’s young, pretty, she has a good body, her husband must be off somewhere, in France maybe, I might even have met him. Maybe he’s in prison here, or in a labour camp, working off his sentence, thinking about his wife, waiting for her letters so he can write back by return post. So what? When he gets out, she’ll give up all this, and go back to being a polite housewife . . .

After they had finished, the woman got up without saying anything, dressed quickly, and was gone. Then, Julio Carrión González, who two nights previously had been the chosen one, the most powerful man in Paris, found himself alone with his poverty, and he realised in spite of himself the true price of a kiss. Fine, he thought, better now than later. But he could think of nothing else, and suddenly the memory of Paloma’s kisses stung his eyes, parched his throat, sent pins and needles stabbing through his sides. ‘It’s all right, Paloma, I’m done with tears,’ he said aloud, as though she were lying next to him. And it was true. Julio Carrión González had a long life ahead of him, but never again would he succumb to the urge to weep.

No tears troubled him when he came face to face with the ruin that was his father, the shambles that had been his home; in fact he felt a profound sense of relief, after having ordered the most expensive meal possible in the bar on the village square and bought a cognac - the good stuff - for those acquaintances who stopped by his table to say hello. Evangelina, who did not have the looks to tout herself around the hotels on the Gran Vía, had worked quickly and well. The room that took up most of the ground floor, what they had always called the dining room, was as immaculate as if Teresa González had never left. At one end, sitting at the table, his hair combed, wearing a jacket over the shirt he had always worn, Benigno stared vacantly in front of him.

‘Julio,’ Evangelina clattered down the stairs when she heard the sound of the door, ‘I’ve finished downstairs, though I only gave the kitchen a quick once-over. You can’t imagine the state it was in.’

‘Oh, I can imagine, Evangelina.’

‘I made your father a couple of fried eggs, there was nothing else in the cupboards. The bread was a bit stale, but he ate it anyway. There’s still a lot to do, so we’re going to need more time - two or three days if we’re going to launder everything, all his clothes and so on . . .’

‘That’s fine. Don’t worry about it . . .’ He looked at the woman and smiled again. ‘Take all the time you need. All I want is for the place to be clean. And I’d like you to come in regularly - to clean, do the laundry, the shopping and the cooking, because I can’t stay, I have to get back to Madrid. We’ll talk about it before I leave, all right?’

‘Of course.’ Julio was far from sure that a woman like Evangelina would want to take care of a man like his father, but she looked at him as though he had saved her life, which, he realised, was probably the case. He had not wanted to agree a price with her because he was not yet sure how much money he had. This was the detail he had not thought about in Paris. Now, the state of his father cast a shadow over his carefully laid plans, so he forced himself to behave like a repentant prodigal son.

‘Father!’ He hugged Benigno, and sat down next to him.

‘Julio . . . So it is you . . . you’ve come back,’ his father said, staring at him as though he could not believe his eyes.

‘Yes, I’m here now.’

‘Your mother died in prison, the penitentiary in Ocaña, the little whore.’ His eyes flared, suddenly alive. ‘Did you know that?’

‘Yes, Father. You wrote and told me.’