The Return (18 page)

Otherwise, everyday life, as they say, was easy enough.
Buba had just
arrived and he still hadn’t played a game with the first team.
The club had a
surplus of players at the time but there’s no point going into that.
In addition
to the Spaniards, including four players from the national team, there was
Antoine García the French sweeper, Delève the Belgian forward, Neuhuys the Dutch
center-back, Jovanovic the Yugoslavian forward, plus the Argentinean
Percutti and the Uruguayan Buzatti, who were midfielders.
But things were going
badly for us: after ten disastrous matches we were in the middle of the rankings
and it looked like we were heading down.
To tell the truth, I don’t know why
they signed Buba.
I guess they did it to appease the fans, who were complaining
more and more bitterly, but on the face of it, at least, they’d screwed up
completely.
Everyone was hoping they’d sign an emergency replacement for me, a
winger, that is, not a midfielder, because we already had Percutti, but managers
everywhere tend to be pretty stupid: they jumped at the first opportunity and
that’s how Buba ended up with us.
Lots of people thought the plan was to get him
to do a stint with the second team, which was way down in the second division B
at the time, but Buba’s agent said no way, the contract was perfectly clear:
either Buba played with the first team or he didn’t play at all.
So there we
were, the two of us, in our apartment near the training ground, him on the bench
every Sunday, and me still recovering from the injury and sunk in that awful
depression.
And we were the two youngest players, like I told you already, and
if I didn’t I’m telling you now, although there was some speculation about that
too for a while.
I was twenty-two at the time, no doubt there.
People said
Buba was nineteen, though he looked more like he was twenty-nine, and
naturally some smartass journalist claimed that our managers had been duped: in
Buba’s country birth certificates were issued à la carte, he said; Buba not only
looked older but was older; in short, the deal had been a rip-off.

I didn’t know what to think, really.
In any case, living with Buba day
by day wasn’t hard at all.
Sometimes he shut himself in his bedroom at night and
put on his shouting and groaning music, but you get used to anything.
Anyway I
liked to watch TV with the sound up loud till the early hours of the morning,
and as far as I know Buba never complained about that.
At the start we had
trouble communicating, because we didn’t share a language, so we talked mainly
with gestures.
But then Buba learned some Spanish and some mornings at breakfast
we even talked about movies, always a favorite topic of mine, though to tell the
truth Buba wasn’t very talkative, or very interested in movies, for that matter.
In fact, now that I think of it, Buba was pretty quiet.
It’s not that he was shy
or scared of putting his foot in it; Herrera, who could speak English, once told
me it was just that he didn’t have anything to say.
Crazy Herrera.
He was such a
great guy.
A good friend, too.
We used to go out a lot, Herrera, Pepito Vila,
who had come up from the juniors too, Buba and me.
But Buba was always quiet,
watching it all as if he was only half there, and although Herrera sometimes
went out of his way to speak to him in English, and he spoke fluent English,
Herrera, Buba would always go off on a tangent, as if he couldn’t be bothered
explaining stuff about his childhood and his country, and especially not about
his family, to the point where Herrera was convinced that something bad must
have happened to him when he was a kid, because he kept refusing to give away
anything personal at all; it’s like his village was razed, said Herrera, who was
left-wing and still is, it’s like he saw his parents and brothers and
sisters killed right in front of him, and he’s been trying to erase it from his
mind all these years, which would have made sense if Herrera’s assumptions had
been correct, but in fact, and this is something I always knew or sensed,
Herrera was wrong; the reason Buba didn’t talk much was just that he wasn’t very
talkative, irrespective of whether his childhood and teenage years had been
happy or traumatic: Buba’s life was surrounded by mystery because that’s how
Buba was, simple as that.

But there was one thing we knew for sure: the team was in a bad way.
Herrera and Buba looked like they’d be stuck on the bench till the end of the
season, I was injured, and any provincial team could come and beat us on our
home ground.
Then, when it seemed like we’d hit rock bottom and nothing more
could go wrong, Percutti got injured and the boss had no choice but to select
Buba.
I remember it like it was yesterday.
We had to play on a Saturday, and at
the Thursday training session, Percutti fucked up his knee in an accidental
collision with the center back, Palau.
So our trainer got Buba to take his place
at Friday training and it was obvious to Herrera and me that he’d be selected
for the Saturday match.

When we told him that afternoon, in the hotel where they were keeping
us together (although we were playing at home against a theoretically weak
opponent, the club had decided that every match was vital), Buba looked at us as
if he was sizing us up for the first time, and then he came up with some excuse
and went and shut himself in the bathroom.
Herrera and I watched TV for a while
and worked out when we’d go join the card game that Buzatti was organizing in
his room.
Naturally we weren’t expecting Buba to come.

After a little while we heard this wild music coming from the
bathroom.
I’d already told Herrera about Buba’s taste in music and the way he
shut himself in his bedroom with that damned cassette player, but he’d never
heard it for himself.
We sat there listening to the groans and drums for a
while, then Herrera, who knew a lot about music and the arts and stuff, said it
was by Mango something or other, from Sierra Leone or Liberia, one of the stars
of world music anyway, and we left it at that.
Then the door opened and Buba
came out of the bathroom, sat down beside us, quietly, as if he was interested
in the TV show too, and I noticed a slightly odd smell, like the smell of sweat,
but it wasn’t sweat, a rancid smell, but not exactly rancid either.
He smelled
of moisture, of mushrooms or toadstools.
He smelled strange.
It made me nervous,
I have to admit, and I know it made Herrera nervous too, both of us were
nervous, we both wanted to get out of there, to run to Buzatti’s room, where we
were sure to find six or seven friends playing cards, stud poker or eleven, a
civilized game.
But the fact is that neither of us moved, as if Buba’s odor and
his presence beside us had robbed us of all initiative.
It wasn’t fear.
It had
nothing to do with fear.
It was something much faster.
As if the air surrounding
us had condensed and we had turned to liquid.
Well, that’s what I felt, anyway.
And then Buba started talking and told us he needed blood.
Herrera’s blood and
mine.

I think Herrera laughed, not a lot, just a bit.
Then one of us
switched the TV off, I can’t remember who, maybe Herrera, maybe me.
And Buba
said he could do it, as long as we gave him the drops of blood and kept our
mouths shut.
What can you do?
asked Herrera.
Make sure we win the match, I said.
I don’t know how I knew, but the fact is I had known from the very first moment.
Yes, make sure we win the match, said Buba.
And then Herrera and I laughed and
maybe we looked at each other; Herrera was sitting in an armchair, I was sitting
at the foot of my bed, and Buba was sitting at the head of his, waiting
deferentially.
I think Herrera asked some questions.
I asked a question too.
Buba replied with numbers.
He raised his left hand and showed us his middle,
ring and little fingers.
He said we had nothing to lose.
His thumb and index
finger were crossed as if they were forming a lasso or a noose in which a tiny
animal was choking.
He predicted that Herrera would play.
He talked about
responsibility to the colors of the shirt and about opportunity.
His Spanish was
still shaky.

The next thing I remember is that Buba went back into the bathroom and
when he came out he was carrying a glass and his straight-edge razor.
We’re
not cutting ourselves with that, said Herrera.
The razor is good, said Buba.
Not
with your razor, said Herrera.
Why not?
said Buba.
Because we don’t fucking feel
like it, said Herrera.
Am I right?
He was looking at me.
Yes, I said: I’ll cut
myself with my own razor.
I remember that when I got up to go to the bathroom,
my legs were shaking.
I couldn’t find my little razor, I’d probably left it at
the apartment, so I grabbed the one provided by the hotel.
When I came back in,
Herrera was still gone and Buba seemed to be asleep, sitting at the head of his
bed, though when I closed the door behind me, he raised his head and looked at
me, without saying a word.
We said nothing until someone knocked at the door.
I
went to open it.
It was Herrera.
The two of us sat down on my bed, Buba sat
opposite on his and held the glass between the two beds.
Then, with a rapid
movement, he lifted one of the fingers on the hand that was holding the glass
and made a clean cut in it.
Now you, he said to Herrera, who performed the task
with a little tiepin, the only sharp thing he’d been able to find.
Then it was
my turn.
When we tried to go to the bathroom to wash our hands, Buba beat us to
it.
Let me in, Buba, I shouted through the door.
All we got by way of reply was
the music that Herrera had described a few minutes earlier, somewhat hastily (or
that’s what I was thinking at least), as world music.

I stayed up late that night.
I spent a while in Buzatti’s room, then I
went to the hotel bar, but there weren’t any players left there.
I ordered a
whiskey and drank it at a table with a good, clear view of the city lights.
After a while I sensed that someone was sitting down beside me.
I started.
It
was the trainer, who couldn’t sleep either.
He asked me what I was doing awake
at that hour of the night.
I told him I was nervous.
But you’re not even playing
tomorrow, Acevedo, he said.
That makes it worse, I said.
The trainer looked out
at the city, nodding, and rubbed his hands.
What are you drinking?
he asked.
The
same as you, I said.
Well, he said, it’s good for the nerves.
Then he started
talking about his son and his family, who lived in England, but mostly about his
son, and finally we both got up and put our empty glasses on the bar.
When I got
back to the room, Buba was sleeping quietly in his bed.
Normally I wouldn’t have
switched on the light, but this time I did.
Buba didn’t even move.
I went to the
bathroom: all clean and tidy.
I put on my pajamas and got into bed and switched
off the light.
I listened to Buba’s regular breathing for a few minutes.
I can’t
remember how long it took me to fall asleep.

The next day we won three-nil.
Herrera scored the first goal.
That was his first for the season.
Buba scored the other two.
The journalists
made some cautious remarks about a substantial change in our game and
highlighted Buba’s excellent performance.
I watched the match.
I know what
really happened.
Actually, Buba didn’t play well.
Herrera did, and Delève and
Buzatti.
The backbone of the team.
Actually, for quite a lot of the match, it
was like Buba was somewhere else.
But he scored two goals and that was
enough.

Maybe I should say something about his goals.
The first (which was the
second goal of the match) came after a corner kick from Palau.
In the confusion,
Buba swung his leg, connected, and scored.
The second one was strange: the other
team had already accepted defeat, we were in the 85th minute, all the players were
tired, ours especially I think, they were clearly playing it safe, and then
someone passed the ball to Buba, expecting him to pass it back, I guess, or just
slow the game down, but Buba went running down the sideline, fast, moving much
faster than he had all match, and when he got to about four meters from the
penalty area, and everyone was expecting him to send it back to the center, he
took a shot that surprised the two defenders in front of him and the goalkeeper,
a shot with a spin on it like I’d never seen before, the sort of diabolical shot
the Brazilians seem to have a monopoly on, which snuck into the top
right-hand corner of the goal mouth and sent the crowd wild.