The Last Season (27 page)

“They do not understand what it is you have said. He told her he thought you were calling for help. He believed the ice was breaking.”

“To hell with them!
I — love — you!!!”

God, it feels good to shout this. Kristiina dips down for some snow, pushes it into my face and walks away laughing. I hurry to catch her and my feet slip in the glaze of the ski track. When I catch her is as much for support as explanation, but when I get my balance I see she is still only amused, not moved.

“What do you feel about me?” I ask. I hate to beg but am forced: again, talk has set my own ambush. It is too late to act as I should have, by shutting up. The solution is talk, but the problem is also talk. I have yet to learn that the only reliable answer is not to begin.

Kristiina leans forward and kisses my cheek. Her lips are cold, making me suddenly aware of how much blood has flooded my face.

“I care for you very much, Bats,” she says.

“But you don't love me?”

“I'm thirty-two years old. I'm not sure what love is.”

For Christ's sake — we're starting to sound like a movie again. “Well, I'm sure,” I say. “I love you and that's that.”

“How do you know?”

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus — what the fuck is going on here. What did Ali McGraw say to Ryan O'Neal? Why didn't I pay attention then?

“I don't know,” I say, trying to sound philosophical, as if I've given it a lot of thought. “It's just something you feel inside. You know it's there.”

“Then I must not feel it,” she says, turning away, “because I don't know what it is I'm supposed to feel.”

Talk!
Goddamn piss-cutting shit asshole
talk
! If they want to play with me let them put on skates! Batterinski was not made to talk but to act!
Don't they see that?
Do I have to beat her head against the ice to get my point across?

I stomp away, moving faster so she must run to catch up. I hear her slip and fall but do not turn to help; nor, however, do I take the advantage. I slow down near the summer ferry docks and let her catch me. She grabs my arm from behind and pulls back, shouting:

“Bats! What is wrong with you?”

I turn and simply stare, making my first point properly, wordlessly.

“I have hurt you, yes?” she says.

I say nothing, saying everything.

“But I do like you, very much. Please understand that.”

I cannot do as I should; I talk: “Why?”

“I like being with you.”

“Why?” I repeat.

“You're fun.”

“Amusing, you mean.”

“Fun.”

“You laugh at me.”

“Of course not.”

“You think it's a great joke being around the Canadian animal, don't you?”

“Don't be silly, Bats.”

“I'm not being silly. Look at you. You're a goddamn architect. I'm a washed-up player who hasn't got enough schooling to pump gas. You have all these highbrow friends like that Jorma asshole and you sit around and write your fucking letters to this International thing, whatever it's called, and I wouldn't even know what postage to put on, let alone what to say. We don't talk. We just screw. When we do talk we just get worse off. So what is it, eh? What?”

“You're different.”

“
Different
— well, that's just fine. Like something from the zoo, is that it?” I feel anger akin to hockey anger rising and it frightens me. Her I must not hit, no matter what. But is
that
what it is? I'm
different
— like something she might collect. Is that all that attracts her: surely to God....

“No, silly. Different in a nice way. The men I know here in Helsinki are all so predictable. Like Jorma. There are no surprises in him. I know what he thinks, what he will say, I know what books he reads, where he has been, even precisely when he will start rooting around in that foolish pipe he smokes. You should not worry about Jorma — he's nothing to me. But you mean a great deal. I care very much for you, Batterinski.”

A reprieve! I have never come so far in such a conversation and saved anything. I look down at her and there are tears in her eyes, clear beads hanging but not dropping from the blue; her pupils are as smalls and stabbing as pins, and they have caught me completely.

She sees what I am looking at.

“The wind,” she says, brushing the tears away with her mitt.

I say nothing. This I cannot destroy with more words. I take her mitt and we walk away, back toward the hotel. I feel her hand in mine, no longer accepting but taking, and the tightening grip feels as fine as any victory I have ever known. I must hang on to it with silence.

“Are you still mad at me?” she asks in a small voice, as we board the tram for the ride back.

I shake my head, no, and she misinterprets my silence to mean I am in fact still angry. And perhaps she is right. Not angry, but hurt by the fact that I have fully committed myself while she has not. A cardinal sin in hockey and, I fear, as bad or worse in love.

We arrive back at the Inter-Continental with me still silent, talking only through the pressure of my fingers. There is a message shoved in under the door for me to call some radio show called “As It Happens” back in Toronto, and I immediately crumple it and throw it in the waste can. Let them get someone else to tell the world how a crooked agent can dupe dumb hockey players.

I go into the bathroom for no more than a minute and when I come out Kristiina is lying on the bed, naked. There is something pathetic about all of this, but I cannot help myself: my sulk has become a magic wand. I do not smile or even speak. I lie down on the bed with my hands behind my head and stare at the ceiling while lovely Kristiina unbuttons my shirt and then my belt and pulls down my zipper. It is like I have become separated from my own body, my head lying there sad, feeling sorry for itself, sulking, while below my body leaps up like a volunteering soldier, a keener.
My assignment, sir? Yes sir! Right away, sir!

There is something sick about this. Only Batterinski could lie in bed with a naked, incredibly, exquisitely beautiful Scandinavian blonde and still feel like the most hard-done-by creature on God's earth.

But so be it. I have never before had all things working in synch, so why now?

I can't be that stupid. Anyway, I know that I think on a higher level than most hockey players simply because I can prove I have had some thoughts. Even one would put you in hockey's Mensa, Torchy used to say. I was much too hard on myself out there on the harbour ice. Besides, by dawn when she got up to head back to her apartment to get ready for work, we were carrying on as always, as if there had been neither hurt nor healing, as if there was nothing but what had always been: pure raw passion.

The phone is ringing. The line is distant, crackling, the voice slightly echoed.

“Felix Batterinski, please.”

“Yes, speaking.”

“Mr. Batterinski — is that you?”

“Yes.”

“Could you speak up, please?”

“It is me, yes.”

“Good, great. My name is Matt Keening, Mr. Batterinski. I'm with the
Canada Magazine
.”

“A reporter?” Not bad news, please.

“I'm sports editor.” The connection fades, then clicks into a higher range. “… the magazine insert, you know, the one that comes out with the papers. We've got the largest circulation in Canada.”

“Oh, yeah. What's up?”

“I guess you know your picture turned up over here.”

“No. What picture?”

A giggle. “You and the Swedish fan.”

“Oh, no — how?”

“Reuters picked it up. The
Globe
ran it front page — with an editorial. I won't read that to you. Montreal had it. Ottawa. Others probably. It's big talk over here. ‘As It Happens' did a number on you last night. They said they were going to get you on but never did. Harold Ballard was the only guy who defended you —”

“Ballard? Good on him. The Swede spit first, you know. Anybody report that?”

“No. That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Nobody got your side of the story.”

“Well, tell them that, then. The Swede spit first. It was self-defence.”

“And put the score in too. We won 6–5; they had us 3–0 at the end of the first.”

“Much more than that too. I think there's a much larger story here. We're talking at
Canada Magazine
about a full cover takeout, with you having your full say inside. The works, eh?”

“He spit first. I spit back. That's all there is to it.”

“But people don't see it that simply. They can't see it the way it was. You've become a symbol overnight for what's wrong with Canadian hockey. Some New Democrat even tried to push a motion of censure through Parliament, did you know that?”

“Did he?”

“It got shouted down. But you were debated in Question Period. It's a bit unfair, I'd say, you not having a chance to explain —”

“You're goddamn right it's unfair!”

“That's why I think we should do something about it. We're the best forum, by far.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“A full-length article. We take the picture and all the crap it's raised and then I do a full-length sympathetic treatment of just who Felix Batterinski is and what he's about and by the time I'm done they'll be standing up in Parliament to award you the Order of Canada, mark my words. Now what do you say?”

“To what?”

“Me getting together with you.”

“How?”

“I'll come over. Hang in with you. You know, do it right.”

“It costs a fortune.”

“Don't sweat it. Magazine pays. We'll have a few top meals. Expenses, eh? I'd even like to take in a road trip.”

I recoil instinctively. “I don't know.”

“Listen, Bats, I'm a fan. You gotta have your say or they'll lynch you, you understand?”

“Yeah, well. I still don't know.”

“You wouldn't regret it. I promise you that. You set the ground rules. I come when you say, listen when you say, get lost when you say. You want to go off the record, that's fine, anything — it's your show.”

“Well. I can't say right now.”

“Take a couple of days. Think it over. I'll call back on, say, Wednesday, okay?”

“I guess.”

“Good. Remember, this is your chance to stick those bastards back, eh? It's perfect.”

“Ummm.”

“Okay, Bats. I'll call Wednesday. Take care now.”

“Yeah.”

There is a letter from Poppa at the front desk, a letter so thick they couldn't fit it in my slot. I take it, pleased he has written before hearing about the spitting incident. Most of Pomerania would be proud; Poppa, I know without asking, would be disgusted. Perhaps I should let this guy do the story on me, for Poppa's sake.

January 5, 1982

My dear son,

Well, here it is, another year. January is always the most unfamiliar month to me, what with the cheques and the taxes and the like, and you find yourself writing down wrong numbers or else some number you can't believe you've lived so long to see. I'm turning seventy-seven this year, son. If it shocks you, you ought to be in these shoes. That number I put down for my age is some dried-up old geezer, sure as hell ain't me.
(That I'll vouch for — Marie.)
I feel forty, you know. You're damned near forty yourself, you know, and not even married.

Batcha just got back from a four-day stay in Renfrew Hospital where they did all kinds of tests on here, so we've got a better idea. She still has none herself, poor dear. At least not officially. But she knows, the way Batcha always knows everything, and that I don't have to explain to you.
(Nor me! — Marie.)
She hated it there. Your Uncle Jan and Aunt Sophia and Aunt Jozefa visited every day and I came twice but she wouldn't even speak to us and us her own flesh and blood! The doctors found leukemia, that's a blood cancer, and this young dark doctor
(he's Pakistani and very good, I hear — Marie)
he says it's a matter of months is all. Anyways, I'll keep you posted.

Going down to 45 below
Celsius
tonight, whatever the hell that means. Damn radio won't give out the real temperatures at all anymore, since the New Year. But the thermometer on the bait shed darned near disappeared last night and that's 50 below Fahrenheit, so you have some idea what kind of spell we're up against. There's even frost on the north wallpaper and poor Marie's sitting here in her ski jacket taking notes.
(It's not so bad — Marie.)
My secretary, ha, ha.
(My boss, ha, ha — Marie.)

Transport made it in through the Park from Vernon the other day. Jazda's got a new chesterfield from Eaton's and Marie remembered you were asking for any news about your old coach, so I'll let her fill you in, okay?
(Felix, he's apparently been in hospital since before Christmas with pneumonia. Mr. Cryderman, the driver, he said he thought your Mr. Bowles was improving. Said he'd been in to see him and asked about you. But Mr. Cryderman didn't seem too hopeful. — Marie.)

Cryderman
? Does she mean Bucky? Old Bucky with his old man's Edsel that we picked up that Maureen slut in? Is that what he's doing now? Riding transport? Jesus H. Christ. He's probably married and feeding six brats, living out on the town line with a Ski-doo, a gun rack, a belly like a tractor tire and no hair. I bet he can't even skate anymore. Poor old Bucky — he always wanted to be me, the poor bugger. I wouldn't trade him for a second.

Anyways, we've been going pretty well steady on Jaja's boxes. Nothing else to do. I must say son, I do love this. I'm learning things about our family I'm almost too old to appreciate. Old Jaja used to tell me these things but we'd be working and maybe I didn't pay too much attention, eh? But now it's all written down permanent. Like a history book they could study, kind of. And that's why I'm shipping so much of it off to you, so you'll have it at an age when it matters to you. You'll see just how important it is to you to continue Jaja's good name. Look at your Uncle Jan, just one girl, and you know yourself she took off last year and her only sixteen. Some thanks. She ever comes home she'll probably marry a Kulas or Betz or Hatoski and our name will be lost forever. It's like thinning coal oil, eh? — eventually you can't even get it to light. Now you've done all us Batterinskis damn proud, son. Stanley Cup — nothing'll ever beat that, getting our name put on there with Howe and Apps and Believeau and Armstrong and all them other class gentlemen. But please, don't let it stop there.

That's why I was tickled pink to hear about your Kristiina there. Some might call her a D.P. over here, but we were all D.P.'s once. She sounds to me like a very fine person and, knowing you, I'm sure she is. You probably forgot, but you didn't say whether she was Roman Catholic or not, son. If she isn't though, it's not the end of the world as far as I'm concerned. She can always convert.

One thing about your Poppa. I'm not of the old school, eh? Not like Batcha and old Dombrowski and poor dead Father Kulas (
prosie zdróvas
). There's a list of old Polish proverbs in Jaja's notes and one of them says, “A woman must be constantly reminded that she is incapable of ever having any wise or important thoughts or opinions.” He just wrote it down. I doubt he believed in it. But that's still the way the old fuddies like Dombrowski think, eh?
(And — excuse me, please, Felix — old fuddies like your Poppa, eh? — Marie.)

Anyway, enough of that. You'll mind we left off your grandfather's memoirs with the tragic death of your great-grandfather in Warsaw on February 27, 1861, killed by the cursed Russians. After that, Jaja wrote 468 pages of history before he once got back to the family proper. I'm not going to bother you much with that, but Marie and I have worked through it steadily, but it's all here for the day you
or your
children
want to know what it was the Batterinskis experienced.

Your Jaja went into incredible detail, page after page after page on the martial law the Russians forced their phoney Polish government to impose in October, the hanging of Romkuald Traugutt on August 5, 1864. (Traugutt was young, like Lech Walesa, and had the same following — God forbid the same fate awaits Walesa, eh?) Jaja even gives a full chapter to the Polish philosophy of Positivism, which managed to bore even your old Poppa.

That reminds me of something Hatoski was saying down at the barber shop Friday, son. He says the only country in Europe where they aren't marching against nuclear weapons is Poland. Hatkoski's convinced there they pray for such a war. It's the only sure way they can see of clearing out the Russians. In a way, I guess, that's Positivism.

You know what the so-called great “friend” of the Poles, Tsar Alexander II, said in 1865, son?
“Pas de rêveries.”

No more dreaming, according to Jaja's translation.

He said that 118 years ago and look what's happening right now in Poland, eh? We are truly either God's chosen people or else the biggest bunch of fools the earth has ever seen. What do you think?

That's about it, Felix. Marie is including some of Jaja's work here and it's all stuff you should be interested in, I hope.

One last thing. There's talk on the television that this Gretzky could score one hundred goals this season. Can you imagine that? What does it mean for the NHL? Is he that good or has it gotten that bad? Do take care and remember that we love you and pray for you.

Your father,

Poppa
.