Sudden Lockdown

by Amos Talshir

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Dad, how long did you think we’d have to stay here when the game ended and you saw the sharpshooters?”

  “Maybe half an hour.”

  “And what did you think when they told us to stay in our seats and let the locals leave first?”

  “That it was a good idea to let them leave before we did so we wouldn’t run into them in the parking lot.”

  “How long did you think it would take?”

  “A couple more hours’ delay.”

  “And later, when the locals came back to the stadium?”

  “Hours? All night long?”

  “You said it was a terrorist attack?”

  “Twenty-four hours?”

  “So, in ten hours, you made the leap from half an hour to twenty-four hours.”

  “Right, twenty times as long,” the father said. “That’s not too bad.”

  “Dad, are you calculating an arithmetic sequence?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Try calculating a geometric sequence, and you get how many years?”

  “You know I don’t know how to do those kinds of calculations,” Charlie said.

  “Then don’t calculate. Just look around you.”

  Simon took out his camera and began to scan the locals’ stands. Charlie knew what he was looking for, but he was bothered by the fact that his son was so hopeful about the girl. It was just like Simon to think she would return his blanket. Perhaps he even deluded himself that something more might develop between them. Charlie often found himself perturbed by the question of how Simon would get along with girls. With women. True, he had a charming smile, but it was very easy to detect that he was a little different. It would be especially easy for women to take note of a guy like that and perhaps take advantage of his innocence. He was mad at himself for worrying about all this too early, but the fact was, he was indeed worried. Charlie knew how painful and difficult it could be to want the girl you wanted, and later, it became even more complicated to stay together. No one could believe he’d scored with the tall Scandinavian from the Northern Coalition who had arrived to tan on the beaches of the Mediterranean. After all, he was just a guy who fixed boat engines. But he was honest and strong and orphaned at a young age, and had won her over without speaking one word in a language she understood. Later, everything got complicated. He had to stop comparing his boy to himself. Not everyone had to be an alley cat. His son might be a bit different, but he was a lot smarter and better educated. It would be all right.

  “Did you call Mom to update her?” Charlie asked.

  “That’s your responsibility,” Simon said.

  “No, it’s not. You know your father’s irresponsible about stuff like that.”

  “Right. Hi, Mom, we’re in the middle of a terror attack. Is that what I was supposed to tell her?”

  “No, you should have just told her there was a delay.”

  “I don’t lie to Mom.”

  “Sometimes?” Charlie teased.

  “I wanted to save the cost of an international cell phone call. Besides, I’m sure Mom’s heard about the terrorist attack on the TV and online, along with the rest of the world.”

  “But you don’t believe that it is a terrorist attack.”

  “Right,” Simon said. “But I already read online that that’s what they’re reporting.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “I’m not sure yet, but I think something weird is going on here, because if I’m right, then they should have taken control of the online reports. Never mind, it’s something else…”

  Charlie extracted his cell phone from his pocket, hoping the battery hadn’t died. Unlike his son, he had not brought a charger with him for the four-hour flight, the three-hour interval of the game, and the four-hour flight back. Who took a cell phone charger for a trip of that length? And even if he had packed a small bag for a longer trip, he would leave the charger at the hotel. That was what they would do when they left for two or three days for Formula car races in the Northern Coalition. They’d arrive on Saturday for the trial determining each team’s spot in the starting lineup, spend some time together in the city where the race was taking place, return the next day for the two-hour race, and fly back home at night. This trip had been a quickie, since no one cared about the city. The soccer was good, but the coalition consisted of many suffering people, with lots of unemployment, lots of upheaval, but very little action. They had managed to stop the overflow of Muslims in time but had retained their bums and their excellent soccer.

  The battery in his phone was on its last legs. Simon said he could see his blanket in the stands diagonally across from them, approximately in the tenth row, and began to walk toward the stairs. Charlie wanted to stop him, but Simon’s mother had just answered the phone. She sounded strange.

  “Clara, Clara.” He tried to stop the rush of her hysterical speech and calm her down.

  She erupted as if something was frightening her, or chasing her. She had never made a true effort to learn Charlie’s language, and he was certainly incapable of acquiring her northern one. Perhaps he should call Simon to talk to her and better understand the flurry of speech she was trying to convey to him. No, he would leave Simon alone, rather than positioning him between the two of them again. The little he would understand, the way he had thus far, would be enough.

  She said she was terribly worried because unclear things were going on. She was with the girl in their house on the bluff by the sea and didn’t really understand what was happening. He tried to tell her that they had apparently stumbled into a terrorist attack, and therefore could not leave the stadium, but the important thing was that they had beat Sportive.

  Clara didn’t understand humor of that kind, or didn’t hear him, and told him, her breathing heavy as if after a prolonged effort, that she and the girl were afraid to go out because at night everything was dark and in the morning there was no one on the streets. He tried to explain to her that there was a terrorist event going on in their stadium, but she said she wasn’t talking about terrorism, but about the fact that she didn’t know where everyone was, and she had a feeling something strange was going on, and there was no one around.

  Charlie found himself suddenly fantasizing about those lovely days when he had thought she loved him. Maybe he had been sure she loved him. She told him he, on his part, had never truly loved her. Perhaps now he would tell her how much he had loved her, how much happiness she had brought into his life. He wished he could, but obviously, right now they would not talk about the nights of sea and waves, the days of sun and sand, and her cries to God, so that He would hear and know how happy she was with Charlie. He tried to tell her everything would be okay, but she started to cry, and he realized he had worried her, and that he shouldn’t have talked about terrorism. She said something about the power going off and on again and then his battery died and the call was cut off. Charlie was sorry for bothering her with all that stuff about terrorism; that had done no good at all. He should have told her he had loved her, that he still did. That was what he would tell her next time. There was no point in anything else he had tried to say, and anyway, it was incomprehensible, because even he didn’t truly understand.

  Charlie needed his son next to him, with his full battery, and besides, he thought, maybe it would have been better if he had invested more in learning Clara’s mother tongue. His eyes searched for Simon and found him crossing the turf, illuminated by rays of morning sun. By now he was certain that he needed to call home and alleviate his wife’s concern. He’d acted so stupidly. He considered chasing after his son but gave up on the idea. Clara could wait a bit. He shouldn’t embarrass his son in front of the girl. Simon would come back soon and it would all work out.

  On the pitch, several hundred fans were huddling in groups, some even jogging
to loosen up their frozen bones after a night in the seats. Next to one of the goals, a group of fans had come together in a game of soccer, using an improvised ball made of rags.

  ***

  Simon crossed the turf, approaching the place where he had last seen his yellow-and-red blanket laid out over the heads of the fans. He had no doubt that she had laid out the blanket so he would recognize her among the tens of thousands of people and come to her. He vividly recalled how she had told him she wanted to return the blanket to him. He was glad he had remembered to take off his Athletic Club scarf and conceal it deep in his backpack. He saw her standing within a group of local fans, conducting a heated conversation. He paused at the bottom of her stand, almost regretting his hasty initiative to meet her. She spotted him from afar and gave him a signal to come up. The group surrounding her heard her explanation about who he was, and all of them applauded him and even called out a cheer in the local language. He was familiar with those cheers from previous games. They were common to all languages spoken by fans throughout the world.

  “Te abrazo con el corazón,” they told him, gesturing with their fists at their hearts. We embrace you to our heart.

  Simon already knew the locals had a sentimental way of expressing themselves. He wasn’t certain it was exactly sentimentality; perhaps it was more accurate to say they tended to go overboard. Rose hugged him and kissed his cheek. A big grin spread across her tan face and she passed a long finger over his own smiling lips. She was wearing very broad jeans, erasing the outline of her body, which had been exposed to everyone yesterday, and a giant sweatshirt over a T-shirt, bearing the words Free World in the same white lettering that had been on her rump the day before. Simon assumed the writing was still there. His smile widened, and she noticed. She asked him why he was smiling so much, and he told her this was the first time he had seen her dressed. Rose slapped his cheek lightly, telling him that was chauvinistic humor, but that she forgave him since he was still a kid. Simon agreed with her about the chauvinist thing but was hurt by her saying he was a kid. Rose explained to Simon that in the society she lived in, they hadn’t even gotten around to thinking about chauvinism, since they were so busy with coups against the existing regime, killing citizens and corrupt abuse of the state’s resources. She sat down in one of the empty seats and invited Simon to sit beside her. Simon remained standing, towering above her. The morning light revealed her anew to him, and he found her even more beautiful than on that mixed-up night.

  She was tan to the point of appearing to be of mixed race, with curls of chestnut hair cascading luxuriously down her neck. Last night, he had been certain she had black hair. Her forehead was particularly high, emphasizing her wide-open and very direct eyes, black, slanting slightly and burning bright, threatening to hunt down anything someone might try to conceal. Her lips, cocoa-colored, blossomed and shone every time she passed her tongue over them as she began to speak. Simon had noticed this habit of hers, running her pink tongue over her lips as if ridding them of invisible dryness. She looked at him from the low vantage point of her seat with smoldering eyes, as if displaying her power this morning, thus erasing her weakness from the night before. One of her legs was extended and resting on the seat before her, like boys sat, Simon thought.

  “Come sit next to me, I didn’t mean to insult you,” Rose said. “The men I know would have gone even further than you did and told me ‘they couldn’t recognize me with clothes on,’ and I’ve decided not to overlook statements like that. Even when I was still back home, I heard my father talking to my mother like that, thinking he was paying her a compliment, but really humiliating her in front of all the guests she had to entertain on his behalf. All his diplomat colleagues would come over to see us, to the mayor’s house. They would compliment my mother on the refreshments and for having them over and on our beautiful home. My father would thank them for their flattery in the form of an explanation of women’s role in our people’s culture. I was so mad at him, but I was even angrier at my mother for just accepting my father’s chauvinism. He was so smug that it was hard to tell whether he was more of a chauvinist or more of a politician.”

  Simon found himself drowning in the sea of Rose’s words. He knew girls like that in class, who had a lot to say about matters of principle and values. He did not participate in such discussions but would actually have liked to do so. It was a lot easier for him to take part in internet forums, and in fact, he felt as if he had a lot to say. Annette had tried to draw him into a discussion on the bus driving them home from school about what she had written on an online forum the night before. In her blog, she tried to explore the question of loyalty resulting from possessiveness, which would ultimately transform into jealousy, the most destructive human instinct. He listened to her and actually found her interesting and original, and he wanted to say that her philosophy would lead to the ruin of the mystique that is an essential ingredient in a romantic relationship. But he couldn’t utter a single word because he was imagining her small breasts floating in the waters of the lake. In the afternoon, he saw her kissing an older boy on the beach and thought she was just bullshitting about all that women’s lib stuff. He went into the water and swam twice as far as usual, angry at himself for feeling jealous, because that was the exact proof that she was right, as the fact was that he himself, Simon, was possessive and jealous. He swam a few more miles to stop thinking about her and hoped that this time, the distance would impress Annette. But she continued to make out with the older boy among the rocks, and Simon grew tired and fell asleep on the beach and dreamt that he was drowning that guy who had been kissing her among the rocks.

  “I imagine you haven’t really delved into the issue,” Rose said after letting the sunlight caress her face, “but I’ve decided to dedicate my life to fighting that kind of domination. Most politicians are men, and most men are chauvinists, and that’s the greatest danger. They have to win all the time and subjugate and kill—otherwise they’re not satisfied enough with themselves. They try to delude us that they’re dedicating their entire life to serving the public. Not to their lust for power, not to stealing public funds, not to the pleasures of life, not to cruelty. They’re devoting their life to us.”

  “It’s interesting that you chose to fight them naked,” Simon said.

  “Unfortunately, men are interested in what a woman has to say only if she’s naked.”

  “Not all of them.”

  “And you, didn’t you come to me because I was naked?”

  “Because you needed help.”

  “And was naked.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’d have come even if you had clothes on.”

  “That’s what you came here to tell me?”

  “No. I came to tell you that I missed you.”

  “That quickly?”

  “Everything happened that quickly.”

  “But you don’t say it that quickly.”

  She then seemed to apologize, telling him she hadn’t thought they would meet up so soon, and he said there was no big rush, but on the other hand, they might have opened the gates, and she and tens of thousands of other locals would disappear into their subways and perhaps he would never see her again. She asked what no big rush meant, and he explained that it was an expression that apparently didn’t work in her language, but he had meant that he could come some other time, since they were going to stay here for a long time anyway. She asked why he thought they were staying for a long time and he said he didn’t believe it was a terrorist attack.

  Her face grew solemn and she examined him. Her friends, who still hadn’t picked up on the fact that he spoke their language, asked her, without knowing that he understood, how she could be sure that he wasn’t an agent. Simon wasn’t sure about the meaning of the phrase soplon delatador; it might have meant something like “service man” or a slang term for a spy. She hadn’t simply said agente secreto.

  She silenc
ed them, telling them he spoke their language.

  “At night I didn’t notice that you were so young, Simon.”

  “I’ve already turned sixteen.”

  “You’re still so young.”

  “You look really tired.”

  “You mean so old?”

  “No. I meant that you didn’t sleep at night.”

  “But I’m also older than you.”

  He did not reply.

  “And also a Sportive fan.”

  “That’s not a problem.”

  “Why?”

  “We already beat you.”

  “That really is the least of our problems.”

  Rose surveyed Simon’s gigantic smile and he felt his earlobes go up in flames. She put her tan arms around her waist and he noticed the oversized shirt clinging to her chest. The breasts he had seen at night were revealed once more. She was liberated in her gestures, free with her touch, with her looks. Simon felt so different with her than he did with girls his age. With Annette, for example, there were always stiff, concealed gazes. Rose shook out her curls, which bounced lightly against his face, and rocked his waist with her hands, her dark skin glistening. Simon was excited, his long legs trembling, feeling too weak to bear the cresting of blood in his body. Rose hugged his body and complimented him on his height, which positioned her face against his scrawny chest. She showered his chest with quick pecks, the kind that elicited giggles from plump babies indulged by their adoring mothers. Simon was truly embarrassed, but it felt good. He looked down at Rose, who was kissing his hands. His blanket was wrapped around her shoulders, sliding down her back and covering her behind. He remembered that behind as well, with the writing there. He laughed, and she was swept into laughter as well.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “The writing’s still on your ass.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You haven’t had a chance to bathe.”

  “You’re funny.” Rose felt herself blushing.