The Frozen Heart by Almudena Grandes

The Frozen Heart by Almudena Grandes

Author:Almudena Grandes [Grandes, Almudena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780297855866
Google: kp9Ld7bcnX4C
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2010-03-24T18:30:00+00:00


Ignacio was in the basement of a barracks, in a makeshift cell, and he was reasonably happy, for everything had gone according to plan. He had made his way back to the tyre factory without incident, checked that his work detail was still there, he even had time to hug Amadeo, the Asturian labourer he had entrusted his political responsibilities to, before turning himself in to the manager.

‘Where the hell have you been, macho?’ Amadeo asked in his sing-song voice. ‘You look like you’ve spent two years in a spa . . .’

‘I’ll tell you later.’ Ignacio smiled. ‘How are things here?’

‘Obviously not as good as wherever you’ve been, but they’re much the same as ever.’ Amadeo laughed.

This meant that the boss was still the same commandant who was prepared to do anything for a quiet life and who, although he was part of the regime, felt no undue affinity with the policies of the Vichy government. This, perhaps, was why he had never sent a prisoner in his charge to almost certain death in the German concentration camps, and Ignacio proved no exception. ‘Ah, the Spanish!’ he marvelled, having heard Ignacio out. ‘What did the French ever do to deserve such neighbours?’ Ignacio could have answered the question, but did not, and was rewarded for his silence by being sent to the makeshift cell in the basement. And here, where once he had felt helpless, he realised that Anita was still with him, and never again would he feel as lonely as before.

He had an advantage over her in that he knew her daily routine, could picture her in specific places surrounded by faces he knew. He knew the cup she always used at breakfast, the order in which she took off her clothes, the foods she liked, the way she washed her hair in the kitchen sink. Each day in the cell was the same for him, but he would wake up and think of Anita waking up, before he fell asleep he imagined Anita sleeping, and this image gave his time purpose and meaning.

Had he been able to see Anita, Ignacio would have been happier still, and intensely proud of her. She flushed the toxin of self-pity from her system so quickly that the day after Ignacio’s departure, she got out her exercise books, sat at the kitchen table and announced: ‘I’m doing my homework.’ Then she drew a box around the last sentence he had written, and in the space remaining she copied out five times ‘Before p and b there is always an m . . .’, then, on the facing page, she copied out the words: ‘empire’, ‘combat’, ‘embolism’, ‘compass’, ‘camp’, ‘tombs’, ‘sombre’. ‘Before p and b there is always an m . . . I love you, Anita.’ This was the first sentence that she wrote when she finally reached the blank pages at the back of the exercise book, before copying out the simple sentences he had written to help her learn



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