Learning to Lose Read online

  In the club, there were no more mysteries to be revealed. Ariel knows the staffers who are useful to him. The president was a man who had earned his stripes in the construction business, but he now presided over a true empire of private protection, with more than a hundred thousand employees: a manufacturer of armored cars, trucks for transporting money, alarms, reinforced steel doors. He wasn’t interested in soccer unless he was getting insulted in the stands; then he was irascible, unpredictable, and childish in his reactions. He was unappealing, slightly hunchbacked, with graying hair; the players called him “the mother from Psycho.” In the first training sessions, he had come down to the field to greet the players, and when he shook the hand of the captain, Amílcar, a veteran Brazilian player who had become a nationalized Spaniard, the president said, are you still here? I thought you’d retired by now. Even though he was serious, everyone laughed at the joke. He compared his business success with game philosophy. I want my team to have the best defense in the league, no one should steal the ball from us. During Ariel’s official presentation, before the ridiculous tradition of showing him to the television cameras kicking around the ball alone on the field in his jersey, the president spoke to the journalists. I’m still determined to sign defenders, to have a team as safe as a fort, and they told me the Argentinians are good kickers and they work their tails off on the field. Ariel found himself forced to laugh and joke around with the journalists. They always told me that the best defense is a good offense, without knowing for sure if the club owner was aware that he’d just signed a left winger.

  It was the sports director who was really in charge, a former player for the team, a center back whose mantelpiece, they said, boasted several tibias, quite a few fibulas, and even the femur of some opponents hunted on the playing field. His career in the team’s offices was based on opposite tactics: he was a devious and inscrutable negotiator. They still called him by his nickname as a player, Pujalte, and when Ariel asked what his real name was, he answered, forget about it, everybody calls me Pujalte, it’s simpler.

  The coach, on the other hand, had never been a great player. He had made a name for himself on a modest team that had been promoted to the Second Division. He lowered his head almost imperceptibly around Pujalte, who spoke to him with an almost physical authority, challenging him with his experienced past as a player. His name was José Luis Requero and he practiced laboratory soccer, preferring the chalkboard to the grass. His laptop was filled with statistics, and he always had a delicate, shy young man nearby, some relative of the president, who spent his time recording and editing games in order to correct the team’s errors or prepare for confrontations with rivals. Requero claimed to use group psychology. He gave long tactical talks based on jottings from the notebook he always carried with him, and when some journalist suggested he was starting to be known as “the professor,” he smiled with open pleasure. It was his second season with the club, after a discreet year without titles. The first day of training, he introduced them to his associates, including a physical trainer with two assistants who looked almost exactly like him; the masseurs; the head equipment man with his small troupe; and the goalkeeper coach, a former goalie born in Eibar with pre-Neanderthal features. Then he gave every staff member a copy of the book Shared Success, written by two young American entrepreneurs, which opened with a maxim: “When you celebrate a triumph, don’t forget that you would have never achieved anything without the help of those around you.” Just a few days into the preseason, the book was already the object of widespread mockery in the locker room, particularly because of a sentence pulled from page twenty-six that they claimed was charged with hidden homosexual content: “a man and another man by his side are much more than two men.” Yeah, sure, two big faggots, summed up the fullback Luis Lastra to the delight of his audience.

  Ariel had worked with different coaches since he had been signed, at seventeen, to San Lorenzo. Up until that point, he had been a player with just one teacher, Sinbad Colosio, who ran a soccer school near the old Gasómetro where hundreds of players had trained for a small team that played in the Fifth Division. He had invited Ariel to join them at twelve years old, after seeing him play in a city championship. He always said to Charlie, the only way to get anything out of your brother’s left leg is to keep him away from the professional teams for a while. Save him from this country’s sick obsession with finding a new Maradona. Ariel had him as technical director for five years, and it was with him that he became a soccer player. In Buenos Aires you have to get to the big leagues in a submarine, because here the expectations kill you as fast as a dagger, Ariel heard him say on one occasion.

  Sinbad Colosio had been a second father to Ariel. His own father’s lack of interest in soccer, which he labeled our “homegrown opiate” or “national disgrace” depending on the degree of irritation its ubiquitous presence provoked in him, had handed over young Ariel to the old coach. Colosio was a sad-looking man in a worn sweatsuit, with graying hair, who spoke slowly as he took you by the shoulder. Ariel’s father didn’t want to repeat with his younger son the mistakes he felt he had made with Charlie. His determination to keep him out of sports and off the streets had only meant his older son ended up an unskilled worker in the business of some friends who owed him favors. Charlie married young and at twenty-two already had two kids. During Charlie’s teenage years, their relationship was more like that of two rabid dogs than father and son, so when Ariel’s turn came, his father opted for calm and relaxed, which allowed Ariel to devote most of his time and energy to soccer and not worry too much about his grades.

  They called Colosio “Dragon.” The nickname had stuck from his days as a player. Now sometimes they called him Sleeping Dragon, because he seemed to have mellowed, that is until he exploded with a fierce lash like the irascible dragon he must have been back when, they said, just the sound of his breath made the forwards lose the ball. He came to pick up Ariel in Floresta three times a week, in his white 1980 Torino. By then he had already picked up Macero and Alameda, who lived in Quilmes and Villa Esmeralda, at the bus stop. The three boys sat in the backseat, Ariel gave them his extra trading cards from the championship collection, and they waited for Dragon to tire of his own silence and offer them some soccer anecdote. About soccer from the fifties and sixties, when the young players had to shine the veterans’ shoes, when the balls were sewn, when the only drugs in the locker room were a thermos of strong black coffee and the first amphetamines, when the goalie called you “sir” when asking for the ball, when there was no television and you had to store the crackerjack plays in your own memory and recount them like Fioravanti, when making a living playing soccer was a luxury for only the best. He spoke without nostalgia, without mythologizing the past, and always ended by grumbling, what crappy years, kids, what crappy years.

  Dragon Colosio had taught him to play angry, to not go onto the field looking to make friends, to curse at the fullbacks, to practice for fifteen minutes at the end of each game because if you’re not thinking about the next one you’re not a soccer player, to step on the lime sideline when you forget that you play left wing, to not cry over losses because crying is for tangos. And when Ariel wanted to sign with a pro club at fifteen and Charlie insisted he accept, Colosio told him something that perhaps today, in the Madrid airport, was still valid: Ariel, your brother is your brother and you are you. Then Ariel stayed, as much as Charlie tried to convince him, Dragon is a loser and you can’t let a loser run your career. Now he was alone again and thinking, Charlie is Charlie and I’m me. But who am I?

  Your routine will keep you busy, Charlie was saying to him, you won’t have time to be lonely. Charlie is the last one to board, almost defiant toward the airline employees. He hugs Ariel and whispers into his ear, in a very soft voice, finally referring to the reason for his hasty departure. I fucked up, Ariel, that’s why I don’t deserve to stay by your side. I don’t want to tarnish you. Now you have to fly solo. I hope you’ll make us proud. Deal?r />
  Deal.

  He squeezes Ariel’s back hard, pulling him toward him. Don’t cry, you dope, someone who earns two and half million dollars a year can’t cry. And he disappears into the breezeway that leads to the plane.

  Ariel retraces his steps until he gets to the car parked in front of the terminal. He goes back to the hotel where the team is spending the night before the next day’s game. Pujalte had given him permission to leave the pregame preparation and take his brother to the airport; of course, family comes first.

  When he enters the hotel, he sees some of his teammates chatting in small groups before going up to their rooms. Amílcar waves to him. He is the team’s most veteran player. Beside him is Poggio, the reserve goalie who has been warming the bench for five years straight, which makes me the highest-paid ass in the world after Jennifer Lopez, he declares. There’s also Luis Lastra, a guy from Santander who joined the team the previous season and has a contagious laugh with which he loudly celebrates his own jokes. Standing, resting an immaculate sneaker on a chair, is young Jorge Blai, who readjusts his straight bangs again and again. At the bar, the Ghanaian Matuoko, a compact human refrigerator, surreptitiously drinks a gin and tonic, moving it away from him after every sip as if he wants to make believe the drink isn’t his. There are two or three more players nearby, the group of Brazilians, and the goalie coach who eats olives in bunches and shoots the pits into a distant trash can like a machine gun.

  Ariel returns their greetings, but doesn’t join the group. He walks toward the elevators and someone speaks to him by the reception desk. Did your brother leave already? I would have liked to say good-bye. Ariel turns. He recognizes the sweaty face beneath the red curls and the thick black plastic-framed glasses. He’s a journalist. His name is Raúl, but everybody calls him Husky because he sounds as if he has barbed branches in place of his vocal cords. A regular at practice and press conferences, in his newspaper columns he always wrote favorably about Ariel. They have had dealings on a few different occasions, but Ariel avoids creating any fake intimacy, doesn’t trust journalists. They write about fishing, Dragon used to say about them, when the only fish they’ve ever seen in their life is the one served to them in restaurants. Husky has jotted down his phone number on a hotel business card and holds it out with two fingers. Call me if you need anything.

  Ariel shoots him an appreciative expression. In the elevator mirror, he will check if his eyes are red, if they give away that he’s been crying. Before he heads off, he hears the journalist saying to him, with his raspy, weak voice, good luck tomorrow.

  5

  Sylvia listens to her father go out; he had plans with some friends to go to the soccer stadium. She saw him wrap up a cured pork loin sandwich in tinfoil and take his team scarf off the coatrack in the entryway. Like a kid, she thought. They had eaten in the hospital cafeteria earlier, with her grandfather. Leandro seemed tired after two nights without sleep. They had managed to convince him to let Aunt Esther spend that night in Grandma’s room instead. There couldn’t possibly be two more different women, in Sylvia’s opinion. Grandma Aurora is nimble, with light eyes, gentle, often putting her hand over her mouth, as if she were secretly laughing or yawning or keeping something to herself. Aunt Esther is conventional, expansive. She speaks loudly and when she laughs she shows her pink gums, larger than the enormous teeth that make her mouth look like a front-end loader. She’s married and has five children and seven grandchildren, whose photos she proudly displays when someone shows any interest, and even when they don’t. Sylvia barely sees her cousins, but Aunt Esther shows her their pictures every time they see each other, as if displaying a catalog of products for sale. She remembers one of them well, Miguel; he’s her same age. He broke one of Sylvia’s baby teeth years ago with a racquet slam. Apparently as a sign of love.

  The kitchen clock marks four-thirty. Her father left the radio on, and it floods the late Sunday afternoon with the pregame report, and ads for liquor and cigarettes. Sylvia trembles nervously. She puts on music in her room and turns up the volume. Her right foot swings as if it had its own motor. She sings over the music and tries not to think. Cold chills desire; we light the fire. She’d rather not hear the ring of the intercom that sounds with a short pulse, but she does hear it. She slowly goes toward the door to let Dani in.

  Over the course of the weekend, Sylvia had been tempted several times to cancel. That very morning, she wrote a text message on her cell phone in the hospital hallway—“There’s no birthday party after all, we’ll talk later”—but she hadn’t sent it to Dani. Ever since she had invited him to her fake party, she felt ridiculous. The same childish, almost hysterical, nervousness she had felt last summer when she hung around the beachfront bar or played the video game machine to suss out whether one of the waiters was into her or if, on the other hand, his being twenty-something was an insurmountable gap. The gap between what one desires and what one can get, between what one is and what one wants to be. Just like when she invited Dani to her birthday party even though there was no birthday party.

  That Friday she had walked home peeling apart the cardboard corner of her school folder. She arrived convinced she should call him to cancel the invitation she had made just minutes before. But she found a note from her father next to some toast crumbs. Grandma Aurora was in the hospital. She went there right away and so avoided the temptation of regret.

  Don’t be frightened, was the first thing her grandmother told her. In two hours, they were going to put in a corrective prosthesis, a plastic solution to the aging of her bones, but she seemed calm and in good spirits. Some women put in plastic lips or breasts, well, I’m getting a hip.

  It’s routine, the operation is just routine, repeated her grandfather. Right, Lorenzo? Isn’t that what the doctor told us? But Sylvia’s father didn’t answer; he was pacing around the room, as if in a cage. Lorenzo was sweating and complained about the heat. I found out late this morning, because I’ve been on job interviews and had my cell phone turned off, he justified.

  The doctor was tall and had a face lined with red veins. He spoke to himself, as if he were going over his to-do list instead of discussing her condition with the family. Sylvia noticed a reddish stain on his white coat, but it wasn’t blood; it looked more like chorizo. After the operation, when they brought her back up to the room, Grandma looked weak as a wounded bird. Grandpa insisted that Sylvia and Lorenzo leave, go home. She’s still under the anesthesia, there’s no point in you being here, he told them.

  Sylvia and her father went home. She made some dinner. Lorenzo combed through the news, channel after channel. Call your mother and tell her about it, he said to Sylvia. She called her later, on her cell. She could hear the sound of conversations in the background; she was in a restaurant. Pilar asked for the number of the hospital room and then they talked about spending a weekend together soon. They said good-bye affectionately. Are you okay? her mother asked her. Sylvia said she was.

  Her mother had left her father five months earlier. Sylvia never imagined that would happen. For her, her parents were a unit, two pieces fitted forever. When it all fell apart, she understood that they had shared the remnants, just the remnants, of a marriage, that they only spoke about insignificant day-to-day stuff, that they were barely intimate even though they shared a home. Pilar made the decision one day in March. It was raining in gusts and she confided in her daughter before telling her husband. I’m going to leave your father, Sylvia. They hugged and talked for a long time. Love fades without you even realizing it’s happening, Pilar told her. She explained that she had been able to tolerate the slow desolation, she had gotten used to surviving among the ruins of what was once love, but it became an unbearable weight the day she discovered passion again, for another person. Life becomes unlivable and the lie starts to hurt. I’m forty-two years old, don’t you think I deserve another chance?

  Sylvia didn’t have to struggle to understand her mother, in spite of the unexpectedness of the situation. But
instead of conveying that to her mother, without really knowing why, the first thing she said was, poor Papá. Pilar started crying, very slowly, with her lips clenched. She had fallen in love with the head of her office in Madrid, Santiago. She said his name the way you only say the name of someone you love. Her mother worked in a company devoted to the planning of trade fairs and cultural and social events. In the last couple of months, Pilar’s traveling and after-hours work obligations had increased; now Sylvia understood why. Pilar and Santiago had been having a prudent affair before deciding to take a chance on the new relationship. Then he had been offered a job running the branch office in his city, Saragossa. Long before that happened, your father and I only shared the comfortable habit of living together, of raising a daughter together, of getting together with friends, and that’s about it; we let time slip away, she explained. Mothers don’t leave fathers and much less daughters, thought Sylvia. On this occasion, traumatic but illuminating, Sylvia looked at her mother as a woman, not just a mother, that sort of sentimental household appliance, and she told her, you have to be happy.

  Sylvia’s father had latched on to the television, to music, to Sunday soccer games, to his work, to balancing the accounts, to getting back in touch with some half-forgotten friend, to his daughter, anything to avoid letting his defeat show. Sylvia observed him. She tried to spend more time at home, to cook for him when she noticed he had no energy for anything, to go with him on Sunday afternoons to her grandparents’ house. He always said “your mother” and never “Pilar.” Little by little, the photos and mementos disappeared, the details accumulated over twenty years of marriage. In two quick visits, she had finished taking her clothes and her work stuff, which filled the most frequently used shelves of the small office. Her bathroom things and other various belongings faded like afternoon light. In front of Sylvia, her parents hadn’t argued or displayed any more awkwardness than a thick silence that covered those scenes of separation. Mai always told Sylvia that the worst period of her life was her parents’ divorce, when a fucking psychologist told them that for her sake, for their daughter’s good, and I was seven years old, instead of separating cleanly they should do it bit by bit: they spent eight months insulting and beating each other up, so in order to save me the trauma of the separation I had to put up with the horror of their forced coexistence.