Learning to Lose (46 page)

Ariel played badly. It was nearly impossible for him to break through the German defenders. They played behind the ball, leaving very little space to work between the lines, convinced that a scoreless tie was an excellent result for an away game. A dry cold had settled over the field, I wouldn’t be surprised if it snowed, said a veteran when their bus arrived at the stadium. They took Ariel out when there were still twenty minutes left and the stadium whistled as he trotted to the touchline. Good luck, he whispered to the player replacing him. But he didn’t have any. The Germans packed their goal area, allowing them to counter with a fast attacker, who overwhelmed the only center back left in a defensive position and scored a goal before Ariel’s team had time to react.

Ariel got a hard blow to the knee near the end of the game. The next day he barely practiced. He lay down on a gurney and the top masseur on the team smeared the affected area with magic ointments. He rubbed him with hard hands. Ariel had always been treated by the masseur’s assistants up until then, even though Amílcar always told him, don’t let any of the young guys touch you, the old man is a wizard.

He talked a lot, but it was relaxing to listen to him. He had stories from every period. He had been with the club for almost thirty years, he was an institution. In his youth he studied with a
Galician masseur who made his own concoctions of herbs, oils, and roots. He still used some of them. Life treating you well? he asked Ariel suddenly. That’s the most important thing, the game doesn’t work if life’s not working. Are you happy here? Have you adapted well? Does it hurt when I press here? He didn’t seem to be expecting answers to his questions. You have good ankles, that’s important, forwards’ ankles take a lot of abuse. Have you ever calculated, for example, the number of kicks in the ankles you can get in a ten-year career? About twenty thousand. Now imagine you got them all at once, twenty thousand kicks in the ankles. A lot of trampoline work, that’s what you have to do, but the man is scared you’ll get injured jumping and the press would have a field day. Do you have a girl? Are you with a Spanish girl?

Bah, I don’t know, evaded Ariel. There is somebody but we’re giving it a rest, we’re taking it slow.

Women are trouble. But you need someone who loves you, who can talk to you, help you bear the loneliness. It’s strange, but when you have sixty thousand people watching you every evening, it’s really easy to feel alone, ignored. Shit, it’s like poison. You have to be strong. Fuck, I’ve heard some stories here on this gurney, let me tell you. I’ve seen kids grow up and become men here and lose their way, too, there are plenty who lose their way and some of them from good stock. Those boos and whistles you got yesterday, they hurt, they cause damage, too, I can tell you that. Don’t be afraid to admit it, that’d fuck anybody up, but that’s the law. You gotta keep your head held high, defiantly, don’t let it get you down now.

Yeah, it fucking hurts, yeah.

Look, this soccer stuff is like riding a train. You got a great seat by the window, all comfy, watching the landscape go by
and you never get bored. Until you get to the station, they take you off, and put somebody else in your seat. It all goes real quick. Have you been to the bullfights yet? You have to go see the bulls. You can learn a lot about soccer there. It’s just the same. We’ve had a number of Argentinians here. I don’t remember their names, I’m not good with names. They ask me, what was so-and-so like? And I don’t remember. Because I do my work here, but I don’t deal with soccer players, I deal with people.

Ariel left with his knee loosened up by the massage. He felt consoled, wrapped in the torrent of words. It had been a while since anyone had talked to him for such a long time, in that curt Spanish tone. He called Sylvia from the car, but she didn’t answer. It was during school. I’m sure she’s mad. If I left Spain right now, he thought, all I would have is the memory of her. Sylvia sitting on her side of the car, driving back into the city some night. That tired, clean smile.

He ate at Amílcar’s house. He found the conversation in that filleted Portuguese-accented Spanish sweet, with the strong
r
’s and
j’s
taken out. He told himself that Amílcar had been lucky to find Fernanda and he forced them to tell him how they met. He had called her insistently after getting her number from a friend, but she was resistant. I invited her out to dinner, to lunch, to the movies, to concerts, but she never wanted to come. I was about to throw in the towel, explained Amílcar. Until one day I called her and I said, listen, take my number down and let’s just do it this way, I’m never going to call you again, but when you feel like it you can call me. I don’t care if it’s tomorrow, next month, next year, or thirty years from now, I swear I’ll be waiting. It sounded nice, said Fernanda, interrupting him. I should have
waited thirty years to see if it was true. Unfortunately, I called him a week later. A week. Can you believe it? I was going nuts, he admitted. She smiled flirtatiously. He tricked me, Fernanda said in her defense, like you all do, putting on your best face. He showed me his good side and then, boy, what it takes to find it again. Sometimes you even think you’re with a different person, that they pulled the old switcheroo.

That night, alone at home, amid music and movies, he couldn’t concentrate. Ariel knew he would call Sylvia. He did it even though it was late and she answered with a sleepy voice. Tomorrow I’m going to the Prado. I have school, she answered. Damn. What’s up, you turned into an intellectual since I saw you last? No, I haven’t seen you in a while and I need to look at some art. The things you say always come out so pretty, she said without smiling.

Leaving practice the next day, he confessed to Osorio that he was going to the Prado. Where? You Argentinians are some big flaming faggots. Ariel laughed as he got into the car.

Ariel strolled aimlessly through the rooms of the museum. He spent a long time studying
The Garden of Earthly Delights
, by Bosch, at the end of the main corridor. Then he approached a school group to listen to the docent. The “faithful likeness” was the epitome of the portrait in that period. Most of the great painters worked on salary for their lords and had to make portraits of the nobility and the ladies of the court with their best technique. But Velázquez went beyond that to give free rein to his incredible talent. For example, look at this portrait of the jester Pablo de Valladolid. He led the children to a nearby painting, Ariel following a few steps behind. Spanish art, in all its aspects, heard Ariel, stands out for its ability to depict the disabled, the
crazy, the eccentric. The representation of a country based on its darkest, most disastrous side is a deeply Spanish invention.

In the Goya room, Ariel finally saw the originals of paintings he had seen so many times in reproduction.
Saturn Devours His Son, Fight with Cudgels
, and
Dog Buried in Sand
. Then he discovered a painting called
Witches’ Coven
and he spent a long time looking at it, as if it were a
Guernica
painted more than a hundred years earlier. He doesn’t know why, but it’s similar to the way he sometimes sees the stands, it reminds him of the crowd. The group of students surround him again, accompanied by the guide’s explanations, and now we arrive at the most accurate perspective on our country, nourished on Velázquez and El Greco, at the hands of the Aragonese painter Francisco de Goya.

The students began to lose interest. A group of them noticed Ariel and encircled him with their notebooks open. There were students with pimples, others obese, some with their smiles and faces deformed by growth spurts. What are you doing here? Don’t you have practice today? The teacher approached them and got them to disperse efficiently, but without clout. That’s enough, can’t you see this is a private place? When are you going to learn to respect people? I’m sorry. Ariel thanked him with a nod of the head. It’s understandable, it’s a bit absurd to run into a soccer player in a museum.

Ariel was about to ask if he could accompany them on the rest of their tour, but the henlike laughter of the kids grew and he decided to head off the other way. In front of the curls of Our Lady of Santa Cruz, before her naked white flesh, caressed by the light and transported to the canvas by desire, before her thighs outlined in marvelous harmony beneath the gauzy fabric, Ariel thought of Sylvia.

Suddenly there was a commotion. The kids seemed to be running wild. Ariel peeked into the adjacent room. One of the girls had fainted; several of the others were putting her on one of the benches. The teacher was repeating, give her room, give her room. A woman who identified herself as a doctor approached. Seeing that Ariel had taken an interest, a couple of boys came over to him. No, it’s nothing, she’s just anorexic.

When he left, he called Sylvia again. He made a date to pick her up three hours later near her house. Along the wide avenue, the slight wind pushed his hair back as he walked and seemed to be pleasantly caressing him. He had to avoid the gaze of people who recognized him because once you give one autograph you have to give more. The first one was essential to avoiding the rest.

He bought the Argentinian newspaper
Clarín
at a stand near Cibeles. He went up to a restaurant near the Retiro and ate alone at his table. A young Argentinian player on an English team had been robbed at his house in a posh London neighborhood at gunpoint, and they had threatened his family. A cartoonist referred to it in a strip: “Can you believe I come all this way for this … when in my own country the robbers are first-rate.” Ariel smiled. Then he read the depressing op-eds about the state of the country. When he went to pay, they refused to charge him, it’s on the house, it’s an honor, come back whenever you like. He walked back to the parking garage. He reclined the seat and in the darkness tried to take a short nap with the music playing softly.

He picked up Sylvia at the spot they had agreed on. At first it was a bit chilly between them, and they didn’t greet each other with a kiss. My father could come out at any minute. She smiled and he started the car. They talked for a while about his
trip to the museum. He told her about the girl fainting. Sylvia shrugged, at school Mai and I always go to the boys’ bathroom because the girls’ is full of vomit, there are a ton of anorexics and bulimics, it’s a plague. Ariel drives aimlessly. I think we’ve been past this street already, she said. Where do you want to go? asked Ariel. That was when he suggested going to the apartment. She hid any trace of enthusiasm. The traffic was slow and dense at that hour.

Even though it was cold and the wood floor doubled the freezing atmosphere of the empty house, Sylvia’s bare skin was scalding hot. She undressed messily. Her curls brushed Ariel’s chest. They made love among the coats and other clothes piled up. It was like baptizing the new house. Their naked legs intertwined. Sylvia puts on his sweater. Now they embrace and the lack of a home around them doesn’t seem to matter much. They’ve created their own nest. In a little while, they’ll feel the cold again.

The snow falls without sticking along the promenade beside the river. The clock on the enormous building on the opposite shore marks almost five. Sylvia can make out the slanted roof of a small building, almost like a Tyrolean house. Ariel has just laced his fingers through hers. Yesterday you were wearing gloves, Sylvia says. You looked funny, with your wool gloves, like a little old lady. It was incredibly cold. Halfway through the game, Ariel took them off and threw them to the bench,
remembering something Dragon used to say when they were kids, a cat with gloves catches no mice.

Sylvia had come to Munich the evening before. She took a taxi to the InterContinental Hotel and at the desk they handed her the key to the double room. An employee insisted on taking up her tiny travel bag and she found herself forced to share the elevator with him. He rewarded her with a friendly smile for having broken the record for lightest luggage in the history of the hotel. She tried to hide her nervousness beneath an indifferent face. She didn’t tip the porter, who was slow in leaving, showing her the obvious working mechanisms of the room. Next he’s going to show me how to flick the light switch, thought Sylvia. The room was well lit, lined with wood, with a double bed with two feather comforters, one for each half. The Germans had solved the problem of couples stealing the covers from each other at night. She took a long hot bath, with her headphones on, wrapped in steam, her eyes closed. Ariel called to see if everything had gone well. She gave him the room number. Five-twelve. I’ll wait for you here, I’m not going out. Where are you? In the bus, on the way to the stadium.

Sylvia watched the game on television. Ariel seemed contaminated by the cold until well into the play. Sylvia, lying on the bed, watched him. She ordered a sandwich during halftime. The waiter who brought it to her room delivered it with some brochures that suggested a raft trip down the Isar River. He explained something to her in English. She said, isn’t it too cold? and he explained, there’ll be beer and bratwurst.

She called her father. She had already told him she wouldn’t be sleeping at home that night. Are you watching the game? Yes, he said. And how are they doing? Scoreless, but if we push
it we’ll beat them. Sylvia, from what she had seen, found that a pretty optimistic report. Good luck, said Sylvia before saying good-bye.

Ariel had taken care of everything. The electronic ticket in her name at the airport, the hotel reservation. If you want I can send a driver to pick you up with a sign that has your name on it. I’d rather take a taxi. The official version she gave her father was that she was staying at Mai’s house to study for an important test. No boyfriends? No, no, I just don’t feel like coming home so late, that’s all. Mai, on the other hand, had demanded more explanations than her father.

It was the Germans who pushed it in the second half. They crashed a ball so hard into the goal’s crossbeam that it looked like it was going to break. In five minutes they shot seven corner kicks into the penalty area. In one of their rebounds, the ball was sent over to Ariel, the target as the only forward. He set off racing; his long run didn’t end when the first fullback hit the ground trying to knock the ball off Ariel’s foot, since Ariel was able to get around him. Sylvia hugged the pillow tightly. Come on, she shouted, keeping her voice down so she wouldn’t alarm the neighboring rooms. Come on, come on. The ball got a bit ahead of Ariel in the dribble, which encouraged the goalie to come out of his box. But Ariel was faster and managed to get the ball just out of the keeper’s reach. The goalie didn’t hesitate, he knocked Ariel down brutally hard, sending his entire body into his standing leg. Ariel plunged almost into a somersault before hitting the field. Sylvia chewed a lock of hair between her lips.