She was waiting by the door of the clubhouse. She handed him a plastic bag, and he made a quick check of the cardboard folders it contained: all the players’ registrations were there.
“Did she recognize him?”
“She wasn’t sure. Those pictures are tiny.”
“Are you kidding me? I get it that she’s stupid, but surely she’s not blind as well.”
“Please don’t be cynical,” she said softly.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But the whole thing seems topsy-turvy to me.”
“Truly, Mr. Vařeca, I’m sorry to be taking up your time with this. I understand why you’re angry …”
“I’m not angry. So he didn’t even give her his name, for God’s sake?”
“But he did.” Her smile was a sad one. “So what is it?”
“Robert.”
Vařeca’s smile was triumphant. He fished in his pocket for the keys to the clubhouse and turned back to the teacher before going in.
“What can I say, Mrs. Dvořáková? You know as well as I,” he said lifting the hand with the bag, “that there’s no Robert here.”
He was about to enter the office and close the door behind him. But when he looked up she was still there, her expression serious, patient, and determined. She just stood by the entrance to the clubhouse, looking at him, saying nothing.
“There’s no Robert in the team, really there isn’t.”
“He invented the name, but he’s one of yours all right.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Something she told us.”
“You interrogated her?”
“We have our methods.”
“You’re worse than the FBI, you are.”
“Pedagogical techniques, Mr. Vařeca.”
“The poor girl.”
“She confessed to the main thing. Then we left her alone with her best friend. They’ve known each other since elementary school.”
“Why did you do that?”
“To get her to open up.”
Still Coach Vařeca stood in front of the clubhouse of Semotice FC with a plastic bag in his hand. Helpless, he was scratching the wreath of short gray hair around his pate.
“Is all this really necessary?” he asked, annoyed now.
“Believe me, it is.”
“It seems a bit much to me.”
“They had unprotected intercourse.”
Silence but for the muted, sorrowful peal of the church bell on the square.
“How do you know that, for God’s sake?”
“Repeatedly.”
Vařeca was about to say something untoward, it was on the tip of his tongue, but the steely determination in her expression held him back. And there was a surprising intransigence in her body language.
“We train from nine till five, with an hour and half for lunch, Mrs. Dvořáková. I’m responsible for the boys within those hours. If what you say happened did indeed happen, then it was in their free time.”
He was suddenly aware of the lightness of her build. She was wearing jeans and a cream-colored sweater. Now he wasn’t so sure about her age. The short hair was youthful and sportif. This time, it seemed to him, there was something different about her.
“Of course you’re right, Mr. Vařeca.”
“Then I don’t see how I can help you.”
“Do you think I could have a look at your gym?”
“The gym’s at the school. All we have here is a small weights room.”
“That’s what I meant.”
He unlocked the door of the locker room. They passed through a narrow windowless space, past wooden lockers and long benches. A smell of sweat and dust hung in the unventilated air beneath the low ceiling. Beyond the next door was the little room with weight-training equipment; in the corner were a washbasin and two showers. Mrs. Dvořáková looked around. Her eyes came to rest on the facing wall, where, under a narrow oblong window, there lay a mat with a checkered blanket wrapped around it; there were several empty cola cans on the floor. She looked at the coach.
“Who can get in here?”
“There’s one key in the club office, which is always locked. And there are three more that do the rounds among the boys, so that they can exercise on their own.”
“Do you keep a record of who uses it and when?”
“We used to, but the boys never used to write their names down. There’s no need—it’s been years since anything went missing. Who’d make off with any of this stuff? Dumbbells, barbells, and benches.”
Still her eyes darted about—desperately searching for any kind of evidence, Vařeca thought.
He laughed. “You were thinking the boy might have recorded in a book that he was in here with a girl?”
She flashed stern eyes at him. “It’s plain to me what went on in here.”
“So what did go on?”
“So you’re going to downplay it, are you? Like all men.”
Vařeca had the feeling he needed to put something right, though he wasn’t sure what. First and foremost, he couldn’t understand why she’d come to him with this. What did she hope to achieve? What she’d do if she tracked the boy down, he couldn’t imagine. The woman seemed desperate and lonely, but he was starting to take an interest in her, which was probably why he walked her to the hostel. This time he was the one who broke the uneasy silence, by telling her about the forthcoming game, and about his trek in the regional capital with the bribe. When they stopped in front of the long whitewashed building, at last she was smiling.
“You’re a just and reasonable man, Mr. Vařeca. I saw that right away.”
He mumbled something in reply.
“Their class teacher and I won’t get much sleep tonight, I can assure you.”
“I imagine not.”
“We’re leaving first thing in the morning the day after tomorrow. Could I please ask you for one last thing?”
The next morning at nine Coach Vařeca had the juniors stand together in a line. Eighteen youths in soccer boots and training shirts.
“It’s the whole squad, including the subs,” explained Vařeca, as he left the locker room in the company of Assistant Coach Moravec, Mrs. Dvořáková, and a young girl with an alarmed expression. The group stopped where the line began.
“We couldn’t get the student in question to come with us,” said the teacher, turning to Vařeca. “She won’t leave her room.”
The coach nodded his understanding. Out on the field like this, it looked as though the referee was about to toss a coin to decide who would take which end and who would kick off. There was a slight nervousness in the air, just as there was right before a game. The players were shuffling from foot to foot, exchanging nervous glances as their boots hit the ground heavily.
The teacher whispered something in the girl’s ear. The girl gathered her wits, stepped up to the first player and looked him in the face. The coaches stayed where they were as the other two went from one boy to the next. The boys were restless and fidgety; one snickered, others studied the grass or rolled their eyes in incomprehension. The gangly girl, with her ponytail and summer dress, approached the end of the line in the company of the teacher. Vařeca and Moravec exchanged glances; after they looked away, an expression of slight strain remained in their faces. Having lingered over none of the boys, the girl remained silent; her duty discharged, straight away she lowered her gaze, with obvious relief. Mrs. Dvořáková took her arm and led her away from the young soccer players.
“Well, Lenka?” said Mrs. Dvořáková.
“I don’t know.”
“Isn’t he one of the blond ones?”
“His hair was more reddish than pure blond, Marie said.”
The teacher sighed with disappointment and put her hands on the girl’s shoulders.
“Let’s go one more time. And concentrate. Focus on the eyes. She said they’re brown, didn’t she?”
The student nodded. This time they started from the other end. In the midd
le of the line the girl stopped, helpless. She looked at the teacher.
“I really don’t know.”
“Come on, let’s get to the end,” said Mrs. Dvořáková. “Concentrate on the eyes, remember.”
The scent of grass hung in the air and the sun was getting hot. Now the girl was standing in front of the last player, but she was looking beyond him, toward the white, netless goal frame.
Again Mrs. Dvořáková took her aside and conducted a hushed conversation whose contents Vařeca didn’t catch. Martin Moravec nudged him gently and nodded toward the teacher and her charge. Vařeca walked up to them and lowered his head to Mrs. Dvořáková’s.
“My assistant and I were wondering … Maybe she’d know whether he’s a defender or a forward.”
The teacher looked at him doubtfully.
“It would narrow it down a bit,” he insisted.
The girl was looking at the ground with a pained expression.
The teacher turned to the student and said in a patient tone: “Lenka, what do you think, from what Marie told you?”
“A forward, probably,” the girl mumbled.
It was around seven in the evening and Coach Vařeca was still hunched over his desk in the clubhouse, drawing up the final teamsheet for Sunday’s game. He was roused from his thoughts by a faint knock at the door.
“I was just passing and saw you through the window,” said Mrs. Dvořáková.
He asked her in and pushed up a chair so that it was facing his own and they were sitting just like the first time, the day before. She was wearing a black top and a tweed jacket—a rather masculine style, Vařeca thought—and tiny gold earrings he hadn’t seen before. She cleared her throat, breaking the silence.
“How did the matter of the bribe end up?”
“It hasn’t yet. We haven’t had time for it. How about your situation?”
“To tell you the truth, my colleague and I are of different opinions. It’s her first year as a class teacher, so it’s her first orientation course, and she’s not keen to come across like an investigating officer. She wants to let the matter lie.”
“Well, wouldn’t that be the most reasonable thing?”
“She’s only twenty-five, you know. I’ve been teaching for nearly thirty years. I wanted to give her all the help I could, but … well, it’s her class.”
“A teacher for thirty years …” He nodded his appreciation.
She was gathering her thoughts. When she spoke, Vařeca heard the urgency in her voice, as though she were delivering a message.
“When a group of girls finds itself in the same place as a group of boys, something always happens. Maybe you don’t understand exactly what I mean. When something is a possibility, even if the conditions for its occurrence are minimal, occur it usually does. Say there’s a top-floor window with eaves outside, you can bet your life someone’s going to climb out.”
“I can see that your profession’s a tough one.”
“At this particular age,” she went on, as if struggling to complete her important statement, “a thing needs to be only slightly—hypothetically—possible for it to come to pass.”
As she leaned forward in her chair, toward the desk and him beyond it, he felt her agitation and saw the fire in her eyes.
“These days there are no working parties for strawberry-harvesting, or apple-picking, or potato-gathering in September. Can you imagine how many working parties and dormitories and hostels I went through with my students?”
He stood up and opened the closet, where cups from various leagues and tournaments were arranged. Although he always had something alcoholic in here, this time he found only an empty fizz bottle and the dregs of some homemade brandy.
“Young teachers today know nothing but these orientation weeks and ski courses in the mountains.”
“I was about to offer you something to drink. I’ll run over to the store, it’s not far. What do you say?”
With apparent reluctance, she agreed. Vařeca checked his watch, then his pocket, then, inconspicuously, all the pockets of his tracksuit. In the end he opened the right-hand drawer of the desk and took out the white envelope. It was barely a hundred yards to the general store, but it was closed. Two cottages farther down, toward the square, Vařeca rang the doorbell. A woman leaned out of the window; she was stout, with blond highlights in her hair and a cigarette in her mouth.
“Would you open up for me, Blanka?”
The woman disappeared behind the curtain, to reappear a few moments later on the doorstep, rattling a bunch of keys. She and Vařeca walked to the store together.
“I’ve got a few bottles of really good Moravian wine, Franta. It’s pretty expensive, but I’ve been telling myself that if I can’t sell it, I’ll take it home.”
She unlocked the store, walked around the counter, and handed Vařeca a bottle. He read the label.
“Late harvest. Two hundred and fifty crowns a bottle,” she said.
“Grüner Veltliner,” Vařeca said, nodding. It occurred to him that he hadn’t asked Mrs. Dvořáková which she preferred, white or red. Troubled, he scratched his gray mustache.
“I’ve got a Blauer Portugieser too, from the same wine grower,” said Blanka, who might have been reading his thoughts.
“I tell you what, Blanka, give me both of them.”
He took the five-hundred note out of the envelope and handed it to Blanka across the counter.
On his return to the club’s office, he rinsed out two glasses. Mrs. Dvořáková chose red.
“What are you going to do now?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Nothing. We leave tomorrow, right after breakfast. My colleague wanted me to leave her alone with the students for a while.”
“She’s closer to them in age. Maybe they’ll confide in her.”
“When I was twenty-eight I had a really torrid week with my girl students.”
“A working party?”
Mrs. Dvořáková sipped from her glass. “That’s right. Imagine the situation. The hostel of the Fruta enterprise full of girls, and barracks right across the road. The girls and the soldiers looking at each other through the windows. Shouting and waving to each other … There was no problem during the day—the girls were harvesting strawberries—but how were we supposed to watch them in the evening?”
“So what happened?”
“One of them got pregnant. At sixteen.”
“And then what?”
Mrs. Dvořáková stared thoughtfully at the diplomas in dusty frames on the wall.
“She had the baby,” she said after a while, a faint smile on her face.
As he sat there under the club pennants and photos of senior Semotice elevens, Coach Vařeca began to feel embarrassed: slowly their conversation was heading off into the world of women.
“That girl was top of her class. Straight As, exemplary behavior. Parents very well placed.”
“A big mess, then.”
“I got fired. It was in eighty-eight.”
Beyond the window it was getting dark. Vařeca heard her teacherly voice lower and soften.
“I found a job at a high school. I was there for seven years. My qualification is for chemistry and biology. For the last ten years I’ve been teaching future nurses.”
He filled up their glasses. A silence fell.
“It’s easy to forget that we were seventeen once,” said Vařeca.
“There was a time I had it at home as well as at work,” Mrs. Dvořáková resumed. “But my daughter’s twenty-five now. Left home long ago.”
“Do you have a house in town?”
“No, after my divorce I moved to an apartment. It’s little more than a studio, really, but it’s enough for me. I bet you have a cottage here. On the square.”
“I do, but I live alone. I’ve been a widower nearly ten years. My daughters live in town. I’m a toolmaker by trade, you know. But I’m looking forward to my retirement. Then I’ll have more time for the boys and their soccer
.”
“You’re in charge of twenty boys. I guess you understood my situation because you know all about the world of boys.”
Coach Vařeca felt that he was about to venture into philosophizing. He was less shy with Mrs. Dvořáková now.
“I keep trying to remember what it was like for me when I was the same age as those boys are now. Even as a nipper I noticed how grown-up men talked about soccer players who were just boys, and how they watched them. At home, at elementary school, at trade school. When I was eighteen and started work, the older guys would look down on us, thinking we didn’t know anything about anything, so they—who were wiser and more experienced—would teach us. But when these older guys stood the other side of the touchline or sat in the grandstand, they talked about the same boys, or boys of the same age, in a different way. How could that be? If they were good, they showered them with praise, cheered them on; sometimes they even looked up to them. I experienced this as a young player myself. I don’t know if you see what I mean …”
Taciturn Vařeca had surprised himself by the length of his speech. It was a relief to him when she took over, telling him about the first dance she attended, when she was seventeen, in spite of the fact that her parents had forbidden her from going.
“My folks were strict, Dad more so than Mom. We lived in a small town, and he came to the Sokol building, where the dance was taking place, slapped me in front of everyone, and dragged me all the way home.”
“How had you gotten out of the house?”
“Through the bathroom window and down the lightning rod,” she said, laughing.
His workman’s hands—hands like shovels—lay open on the desk. Boy’s world, girl’s world, that’s what he was thinking.
“So, do you think the girl really didn’t recognize him from the photo on the registration?” he asked.
“What do you think?” Was her smile conspiratorial?
“I’m pretty sure she knows very well which boy it was. But she’s keeping her secret.”
The bottle was empty. Vařeca picked up the second, the Grüner Veltliner. He looked about. “Not very cozy in here, is it?” he said. “How about we drink this one at my place?”
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