The Frozen Heart (81 page)

Carrión had been clever, so clever that, by the time Ignacio began to realise something was wrong, it was too late. Initially, until the end of 1947, Julio wrote more often than necessary, talking about how slow the process was, the bureaucratic difficulties they could not have foreseen. The letters became more infrequent in 1948, but Ignacio remembered his own wedding, remembered Anita’s panic when the parish priest and the mayor of her village refused to respond, the simple birth certificate which even now had not arrived. Besides, in the spring, Julio had sent some money, a paltry sum in itself, but important because it was the proceeds of the sale of the first of the olive groves. But they received no more money, and by the beginning of 1949 Julio had stopped writing altogether.

Ignacio had waited for two months, it was two months before he began to worry, and it took him some time to find a lawyer in Madrid he could trust; after that everything happened quickly. By the time his new agent had made enquiries, not one of the properties still belonged to the Fernández Muñoz family. Paloma was the one who suffered most, but her brother would have suffered as badly had his father not intervened.

‘Listen to me, Ignacio.’ It was a Sunday morning, the women were cooking lunch and the two men walked to a nearby café where Ignacio’s father chose a small table by the window in the sun. ‘Nothing has changed, understand ? We had nothing before, and we have nothing now. It’s no different than if they’d commandeered everything ten years ago, or if your cousin had robbed us of everything rather than this bastard. It’s not your fault.’

‘But it is, Papá.’ Ignacio would never be in any doubt about this fact.

‘No.’ His father raised his voice. ‘No. It doesn’t matter that you met him and brought him home, it doesn’t matter that it was your idea to sell the property. It was a good idea, it might have occurred to any of us. Yes, he swindled us, but what could we do about it? We were all taken in by him, not because we’re stupid, but because it’s easy to deceive honest people. That’s all there is to it.’ Mateo Fernández Gómez de la Riva paused, looked at his son with all the wisdom of his sixty-two years, and a flash of his former authority. ‘I need you, Ignacio, and in the state you’re in now, you’re no use to me. I need you to be strong, to look after the others. You’re the head of this family now, understand? You, not me, especially now that María has decided to stay in Toulouse. She’s a strong woman, but she’s not here, and I’m an old man, Ignacio. I’m old and I’m tired, and I can’t take much more. So let that be an end to it, I don’t want to hear the name Julio Carrión ever again, understood?’

‘Yes, Papá.’

‘Promise me.’

‘I promise, Papá.’

You saved my life too, Ignacio thought that night, so many people saved my life so many times that I should have done something remarkable with it, something other than simply survive and finish my studies, fall in love, get married and have children. ‘But you’ve helped so many people,’ Anita would say to him when she found him in this mood, and perhaps it was true, but it was not remarkable or important, it was not enough to justify the effort that so many people had invested in him. And now, when the benevolence or the cruelty of the times made it possible for him to leave work at the same time as his colleagues, when there was not always one more confused old man sitting in his waiting room, no woman gazing vacantly at her brown dress, her hands clutching the hands of two children, now that he had all but forgotten their gestures, their problems, the words with which they told their very different stories, especially now, he wished them the worst, the cousins, brothers, parents of the Spanish exiles he had counselled, helped and defended for free. And all this because his son had decided to go back to Spain on a school trip.

‘Well, then, don’t let him go.’

When the alarm clock rang a few hours after his mind finally allowed him to sleep, he found Anita sitting up in bed, her arms folded. This was how she was, quarrels made her tired, but she always woke to them again.

‘What?’ he muttered.

‘He doesn’t have to go back. We can exchange it for something else, he can go to Greece with a friend.’

‘No.’ He looked up at Anita; her expression was more worried than confused. ‘We can’t do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, I don’t know . . .’

‘Thanks . . .’ Anita got up and stood staring at him for a moment before storming off to the bathroom. ‘A lot of good you are to me, Ignacio, “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know”. Sometimes I think you don’t know how to say anything else.’

Neither of them could have imagined that their son also did not like the idea of the trip. Ignacio Fernández Salgado would have preferred to go to Greece, or Italy, or Holland, to any of the places they had voted on until there was only one option left.

To him, Spain was not a country, it was an accident, an anomaly that mutated according to time and circumstance like a hereditary illness, capable of erupting and disappearing by itself. Ignacio Fernández Salgado, who had never been to Spain, was sick to death of
tortilla de patatas
and dancing
sevillanas
, of Spanish Christmas carols and Spanish proverbs, of Cervantes and Lorca, of Spanish shawls and guitars, of the siege of Madrid and the Fifth Regiment, of eating ‘The Twelve Grapes’ as midnight struck on 31 December and raising a glass of champagne only to hear the same words every year, ‘
next year, we’ll be home
’.

It had nothing to do with the fact that his parents were foreign. Paris was full of foreigners, that was bearable. What was unbearable was to be the son of Spanish exiles, to have been born, grown up, to have become a man in this dense, impenetrable exile constantly tormented by a border which was so close and yet unreachable, like a plate of sweets a centimetre beyond the reach of a starving child. Exile was a terrible thing, this curious exile he had been forced to live out as his own, because he had been born, not into a country, but into a tribe, a clan, that fed on its own misery, a society of ingrates unable to appreciate what they had, for there was always something they did not have, who lived half-heartedly, constantly miserable, constantly shut away inside their portable country, a ghostly, posthumous presence they called Spain, which did not exist, it did not exist.

It was probably different for those who had gone to South America, since they were separated from home by a vast ocean, by thousands of miles, different accents, the same language. Ignacio Fernández Salgado would have been happier had his parents met over there, in one of those hot countries, a country where Christmas came in summer. Over there, the refrain ‘Next year, we’ll be home’ would be an idle boast, made with a smile, shorn of the solemnity which hovered above the dining-room table each year. You’re such fools, thought Ignacio, what home do you have but this one? Then he would look at his mother, his father, his grandparents, the insubstantial phantom of his Aunt Paloma, and regret having thought it, but he knew that a year later, he would think the same thing again.

Though his parents did not realise it, Ignacio Fernández Salgado was acutely conscious that he was not going back to Spain. He could not go back because he had never been there. And so he did not understand their frowns, the brooding air, the weariness that came over them at Christmas and New Year, an expression that greeted him again that morning over the breakfast table.

‘Tell me,
hijo
, do you really want to go?’ His mother took the initiative.

‘Go where?’

‘To Spain, where do you think?’

‘I’d rather go to Greece, but I’m happy to go because all my friends are going and I suppose it’ll be fun. It’s just that . . .’ He paused, careful not to choose words that might offend or upset them. ‘I’d prefer to have gone somewhere else, because it’s like I already know Spain, even though I’ve never been.’

‘But you don’t know it.’ His father’s tone was unfathomable. ‘You have no idea what it’s really like, deep down.’

‘You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. You can go somewhere else instead, we’ll pay,’ Anita added.

‘But . . .’ Ignacio could not believe what he was hearing. ‘I don’t understand. You spend your whole life talking about Spain, comparing everything here to what it was like back there - like that thing about the aubergines, Mamá. Spain is like an illness with you two and now . . . You don’t want me to go? Why not?’ They looked at him, but neither wanted to answer. ‘You don’t even let us speak French at home. We have to stop as soon as we’re inside the door ... I don’t get it, I just don’t get it ...’

‘It’s not that I don’t want you to go,’ his father said, ‘but it’s true I don’t like the idea. It’s complicated.’

‘It’s dangerous.’ His mother was more honest, and dealt calmly with the mounting astonishment in her son’s eyes. ‘Don’t look at me like that. It is dangerous. Not for your friends, but for you. I’m not saying something would happen, but your father is right. You don’t understand,
hijo
, you were brought up in a democratic country, a country where the police are officials who represent the government, where there are laws and people respect those laws, but Spain is not like that, not any more . . .’

‘Do me a favour, Mamá . . .’ Olga, who was four years younger than her brother, and had been quietly dunking biscuits in her coffee, heaved a sigh: ‘Don’t start, please . . .’

‘Oh, I will,’ Anita got to her feet, raising her voice, ‘I will start, because I know what I’m talking about and you don’t have the first idea, either of you.’

‘I won’t go looking for trouble, Mamá, I promise. Nothing’s going to happen to me, I haven’t done anything, and I’m not
going
to do anything.’

‘That’s what my father said when they came and arrested him.’

‘Come off it, Mamá,’ her son exploded, getting to his feet and heading for the door. ‘It’s always the same old story . . .’

‘Of course it’s the same old story . . .’ she shouted after him. ‘Because that is what my father said, I can still hear him, “nothing’s going to happen to me, I haven’t done anything”. And they shot him, understand ? He was thirty-six, he had four children, and . . .’ Her whole body was trembling. ‘And I’m the only one left, the only one of my family who survived . . .’

Ignacio Fernández Muñoz went to his wife, took her in his arms and whispered her name: ‘Anita.’

‘What?’ She did not look at him.

‘Let it go . . .’ She struggled and glared at him, but he calmed her. ‘Let it go, please . . . Think about it. He’s not going to war, he’s just a tourist . . .’

That night, when she came home from work, Anita Salgado apologised to her son, who was sitting in the living room waiting to apologise to her. It was not easy for either of them. She felt the same cold chill she had felt when her father had pressed the freshly washed apricot he was about to eat into her hand and said, ‘Don’t cry, silly, nothing’s going to happen to me, I haven’t done anything.’ He had leaned down to kiss her, but before he could the Guardia Civil gripping his right arm had dragged him out of the house.

It had been twenty-eight years since Anita Salgado ate that apricot, but she still hadn’t digested it. She did not eat apricots any more, but she could remember the taste. She wished she had kept the pit, which she had bitten and sucked until the last thread of pulp was gone so that she could slip it into the pocket of her apron without knowing why she was doing it. She did not need it to remember her father, and so that she could still be with him, she had slipped it into the pocket of his shirt when she next saw him, stiff, bloodstained, his eyes closed, on the day they buried him. Then, as though she were an adult rather than a girl of twelve, she had gone to a fountain, soaked her handkerchief, and cleaned the bloody face and neck of the corpse. After that, she passed out. A neighbour took her home, sat her in an armchair, gave her a glass of water, and talked and talked, desperate to distract her from the funeral. She was sorry not to have been at that brief, pitiful ceremony, but she was sorrier still that she had not kept the apricot pit so that she might slip it now into the pocket of her son.

He knew the story of the apricot pit by heart, but he also knew that almost thirty years had passed since then. Almost thirty years according to the clocks, according to historians, but not according to his mother. That was what was so unbearable, agonising and grotesque about his situation. And now he was going to Spain with friends who would expect him to play a role he would have given anything to avoid: that of translator, interpreter, expert in this absurd country which even the Spanish did not understand.

Laurent had already spent the summer in Spain twice, once in Majorca and once in Torremolinos, and what he had told Ignacio on his return bore no relation to the descriptions he had heard at home. To Laurent, who was one of his best friends, Spain was a charming, inexpensive country, the people were friendly, a little strange, but welcoming. True, there were a lot of police in the streets, the women in the villages always wore black, everyone went to mass on Sunday, and it was very difficult to pick up girls, not because the girls didn’t like the idea, but because they were constantly being watched. Normal girls were not allowed out at night, nor were they allowed to talk to strangers. At the beach, during the daytime, things were different, but the girls always insisted on immediately introducing any boy they met to their mothers. So, in spite of the killjoys constantly dressed in mourning and the heavily guarded girls, Laurent thought Spain was great, he liked the music, the cooking, the bars and the insatiable Spanish compulsion to have a good time. His sister thought so too; in fact, she had signed up to go with them.

‘Book another place,’ his father asked him early in March when he finally seemed to have come to terms with the idea.

‘Why?’ Ignacio looked at Olga, who was sitting next to him on the sofa watching television. ‘Are you coming?’