The Frozen Heart (73 page)

‘She’s to blame for everything, it’s all your mother’s fault.’

The old man made no attempt to explain himself. Julio closed his eyes because he did not want to remember, because he had promised himself he would never cry again. He refused to remember that odious letter he had ripped to shreds before he had finished reading it, his father’s words, ‘I’m not sorry for her, she had it coming. I don’t know where your sister is and I don’t want to know . . .’ Julio remembered the terrible loneliness that had kept him awake that night in Grafenwöhr, the feeling that he was an orphan. But that was in the past, he quickly reminded himself.

‘Where is my money, Father ?’

‘What about my things?’ Benigno looked at him again, his eyes vacant. ‘Where are all my things? Can’t you see, they’ve stolen everything I had.’

‘There was nothing here, Father, only rubbish. I threw out everything that was broken. I’ll replace it all for you, but to do that, I’ll need my money. Where is it?’ Benigno frowned and grinned. ‘The money, Father. The money that was sent to you, my salary for the time I was in Russia - both salaries, the Spanish and the German. Where is the money, Father?’

‘What did you think?’ Benigno reacted at last, shooting Julio a lopsided smile and pointing to the chest of drawers. ‘You think I spent it?’

That night, back in Madrid, the city seemed more beautiful to Julio, the lights brighter, the women more beautiful.

He was rich. Only a fraction as rich as he planned to be, but he was rich. He had more than enough to live the life of a gentleman for several months, which was more than enough time for him to make contacts, finalise his plan and set to work. The money soothed him, it was enough to draw a line through time, rub out the past, rub out the fear and the fatigue of the garage on the Calle de la Montera, erase the cold and the mud and the lice in Russia, the grey routine of an expatriate labourer first in Toulouse, then in Paris, erase his mother and Paloma. In the morning, he took the train to Torrelodones, but for the return journey he hired the only taxi in the village. ‘I just want to say, Julio . . .’ Evangelina had been staring at him since he had accepted her conditions without argument, ‘I was very sorry to hear about your mother’s death, it broke my heart, really it did. Everyone loved her. She was a wonderful woman, intelligent, generous, brave, she was the best person I have ever known . . .’ Even this he forgot as soon as he stepped into the taxi to Madrid, which took him back to his fine hotel on the Gran Vía, with its vases filled with fresh roses and the burnished wood.

His body was eager for pleasure, and for a day and a half he yielded to its demands. In this, at least, Madrid was unchanged, even if Franco, like his father, was holier-than-thou. The oldest bar in the city, La Villa Rosa, was still open for business, and lurking at the bottom of the narrow stairwell next to the kitchen of Los Gabrieles on the Calle Echegaray was the city’s finest brothel. It was a meticulous reproduction of a place where young bulls were tested out in
Plaza de tientas
, where once Primo de Rivera, the old dictator, had liked to play the bullfighter with his favourite whores. Romualdo, who liked to boast that he had been there many times, had told Julio about the place when they were in Russia, and Julio had been impressed by his tales.

He needed little time to recuperate and so, after forty-eight hours of dissipation and twelve hours of sleep, he got up two days later, showered, shaved, dressed and went down to the dining room for breakfast. He picked up a newspaper and, leafing through it, asked for a telephone directory, hoping to find Eugenio’s number. He assumed that his old friend would be delighted to hear from him, and when he called, the two men arranged to meet at 2.30 p.m.

Eugenio Sánchez Delgado lived at the Retiro end of the Calle Castelló, in a nice, bright apartment, with his wife Blanca, who was four months pregnant, though they had been married barely six months. As he made his way there, Julio’s senses, still fogged from an excess of subterranean pleasures, were met by a wholesomeness, a crispness, like the scent of freshly laundered sheets in this neighbourhood filled with the comfortable well-heeled middle class. He felt the same sensation as he stepped into Eugenio’s apartment, and as he kissed Eugenio’s wife. She smelled of eau de cologne and she was plain: an ordinary girl, too broad hipped for her age, she had a homely face, and her lips bore a permanent expression of calm.

‘You’re in fine form, Eugenio!’ Julio said honestly, hugging his friend. Eugenio slipped an arm around his wife’s shoulders before responding. ‘It’s true, I’ve never been better, but Blanca deserves all the credit.’

Oh, so that’s how it is, thought Julio, giving his hostess a smile so charming that it made her nervous. Matrimonial bliss . . . It was true that Eugenio looked well, he seemed more confident, more mature, no longer a gangling youth, but a slender, well-built man. Yet, when his wife went back to the kitchen and left them alone together, Julio thought he detected a flicker of sadness in Eugenio’s eyes.

‘So, how are things?’ Eugenio took him by the arm and led him into the living room. ‘Tell me . . . where’ve you been all this time?’

‘Well, it’s a long story . . . I stayed in Riga, you remember Colonel Arenas asked me to?’

His friend nodded. ‘Romualdo said something . . .’

‘Well, that’s where I’ve been . . . Arenas asked me to act as a liaison of sorts between the Blue Legion, the Wehrmacht and his head office back in Madrid, so I stayed on until the end. When the Germans had to retreat, I settled in Berlin. I had no official standing with the embassy, but in theory I had the support of the Spanish Army, although as you can imagine, given the way the war was going by then, that wasn’t worth much. I should have come back, but I ended up getting involved with a woman - Gertrude her name was, she was blonde and as tall as I am, with green eyes . . .’

‘Well, at least you got to learn German!’

‘You’d think. I learned about three words. She and I spoke French to each other, but I didn’t care because . . . what can I tell you, I fell for her. The night I met her, she looked right through me, I felt like a fool, you can’t imagine, by the next morning I barely knew my own name.’ Eugenio laughed. ‘I was head over heels and, well, by the time the Allies turned up, I couldn’t come back. Apart from the fact that most of them had already done a runner, it would have been more dangerous to go looking for a Spanish diplomat in Berlin than to sit tight, so I hid out with Gertrude, until eventually she went back to her village and starvation forced me out, and the American troops arrested me.’

‘Just as well,’ Eugenio was not laughing now, ‘because if the Russians had got you . . .’

‘I know . . . it took me more than a year to convince the Americans that I hadn’t done anything . . . In the end, they let me go with only the clothes I stood up in. I had no money and no way of making any. Things were tough for a while, I lived in a bombed-out hovel and depended on handouts for food, on the Red Cross, until they offered me a place on a refugee train to Paris. I got there last June. Things were easier in Paris because the place is full of Spaniards - republicans - they all help each other out. Of course, I had to pretend I was one of them, that way I could earn enough money to get by . . .’

‘What about the embassy?’ Eugenio looked at him, surprised. ‘They should have helped you. I mean . . .’

Julio cut him off. ‘They don’t trust anyone at the embassy, nobody. I went and talked to them, I went again and again, I told them to call Madrid, to call Arenas. But it did me no good, it turned out he was dead, they said my safe conduct was a forgery, and there was no one else I could turn to - in Riga, I’d been undercover, in Berlin too. I suppose they didn’t want to take the risk . . . I was terrified that the French would just deport me, so I disappeared for a while . . . Shit, back then I was furious, but now I understand . . .’ Eugenio nodded, though Julio could not read the expression on his face. ‘Anyway, I don’t know what happened after that, but about a month ago they gave me a passport. I didn’t ask questions, I just went straight to Torrelodones so I could see my father, so I could eat well for once . . . And here I am.’

It all came out in a single breath, his tone cheery, casual, just someone recounting an adventure that was over, a pirouette with no more grace than its inevitable whirling, and yet not one word of what he had said had been left to chance, not one was spontaneous.

‘Wouldn’t it be funny,’ he had said to Huertas when the man had met him to give him his passport, ‘if, now that the hard part is done, everything went wrong and the deal fell through?’

‘Why should it go wrong? You said you had contacts, didn’t you? I’ve told you where you can find Sánchez Delgado, I’ve done my part.’

‘Yes,’ Julio said, ‘and I’m grateful. But suppose I see Colonel Arenas strolling down the street. What do I do? He’s a soldier of the old school, an honourable man . . .’

‘Yes, yes . . .’ Huertas interrupted. ‘Maybe Colonel Arenas was all those things, but he’s not any more; he’s dead. Died of a heart attack eighteen months ago. You think I’m a fool, Carrión? Arenas was a good friend of my father’s, you think if he was still alive I would have anything to do with this scheme of yours? And in Madrid these days, the sort of people we’re interested in aren’t going to go asking a guy like you any questions. Take my word for it.’

At that moment, Julio Carrión dared to meet Ernesto Huertas’s gaze, man to man, and the commander did not blink. This man who, for two years, had known everything there was to know about the Spanish communists living in exile in Paris must have known that Julio moved in the circles Huertas was investigating. When he went to meet him, Julio knew Huertas was from Córdoba, knew he came from a military family, and was married to a woman with a lineage as notable as it was decadent. Though she too was from Córdoba, she had not gone with him to Paris, preferring to stay in Madrid with the five children they had had in the space of seven years. Julio knew all this; he knew, too, that in spite of his unfailing allegiance to the cause, Huertas had a French mistress and considerable expenses. It was rumoured that he trafficked in passports - Julio held proof of that fact in his hands - and that he would intervene in judicial proceedings to have a prisoner released, a sentence quashed, even have the death penalty commuted. In Paris, Julio sensed, he was much too shrewd to take such risks, in Madrid he was not so sure, but as he looked Huertas in the eye, he was in no doubt as to the man’s greed.

‘I’m going to tell you a story, Commander, let’s see how believable you think it is . . .’ Huertas listened attentively, offered suggestions, genuine details; it was he who suggested the bombed-out building, suggested Julio mention the Red Cross. It was Huertas who told Julio to say he had arrived in Paris on a refugee train.

‘Don’t be a fool, Carrión, how could you possibly have made it from Germany on foot?’ Julio had accepted Huertas’s amendments, committed every detail to memory, but the person on whom he had chosen to try out his story for the first time demanded no details.

‘Poor Julio,’ he said simply, looking at him with genuine compassion. ‘What rotten luck.’

His guest lit a cigarette: ‘I suppose, but all’s well that ends well. Some people have had it worse.’

‘Of course. Pablo, for one . . . You know Stalin sent him to a labour camp, the same camp where the prisoners from the Blue Division are being held.’

‘Really?’ Julio’s eyes widened.

‘Boys!’ Blanca popped her head round the door. ‘Lunch is served.’

‘I’ll tell you about it later,’ Eugenio murmured as they got to their feet, ‘my wife doesn’t know anything about it.’

Señora Sánchez Delgado was a fine cook and an attentive and generous hostess. She doted on Eugenio, always made his favourite meals, was proud to watch him put on weight. ‘My mother-in-law doesn’t approve,’ she said to Julio with a smile, ‘she thinks I spoil him . . .’

‘It’s true,’ Eugenio said, ‘but I’m happy for you to spoil me . . .’ They held hands across the dinner table, were always kissing, had pet names for each other. Julio felt awkward, and Eugenio noticed.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, his tone cheerful.

‘Nothing . . .’ he said. ‘It’s just that I can still picture you back in the trench, with your rifle and your uniform, and suddenly seeing you here, in your own home with a wife and a baby on the way . . . I can’t take it in.’

‘I know.’

Eugenio and Blanca smiled at him, then she glanced at the clock and leapt to her feet.

‘It’s a quarter past four, I’ll just change then I have to go.’

She excused herself, explaining to Julio that every afternoon she went to visit her parents, who lived nearby. ‘I’m an only child, and they miss having me around. Of course, I won’t be able to go after the baby’s born . . .’ Julio realised that Eugenio thought this entirely reasonable. That’s how he is, Julio thought, if he’s decided to be happy, he’ll be the happiest man alive. And yet, he noticed, without Blanca nearby to put a twinkle in them, his friend’s eyes no longer blazed as they used to do; as he followed Eugenio back into the living room, warming a glass of cognac between his hands, he wondered what had happened.

‘I don’t want to hold you up, Eugenio, but . . . I don’t know, I have so many questions . . .’

‘Ask away . . .’ Eugenio said, sinking into an armchair. ‘I’ve been looking forward to seeing you, and these days I only work mornings.’

‘Jesus, you civil servants have it easy!’

‘I’m not a civil servant, Julio.’

‘No?’ Julio raised an eyebrow in surprise; this was the first point on which Huertas has been mistaken. ‘I thought you had some job at the ministry?’

‘I was in the Department of Public Works, but I left just before Christmas. Nowadays, I work for a private construction company from eight to two and I spend the afternoons studying. I want to finish university.’