by Mal Peet
Uncle Feliciano scuttled sideways, like a crab, to my chair and nudged me out of it. I went and leaned against the wall. He made a big business of getting settled. He still seemed unaware of anyone other than Acuna.
‘Yes, it was four. Forgive me, my memory is old. But the shot was beautiful, and I think you took it with your left foot, although you are a right-footed player. Am I correct?’
Acuna might have smiled, enjoying the praise, but he didn’t. Instead, he looked at Uncle Feliciano like a suspect being interrogated by a sly policeman. He said nothing. Uncle helped himself to the glass of cordial that Señora da Silva had refused.
‘It is a very great pleasure to meet you, Señor Acuna,’ he said. ‘Unless my old brain is playing tricks on me, that Argentine goalie was Perez — am I right?’
Acuna nodded.
‘A great keeper, but you fooled him. I have watched that goal, oh, maybe fifty times on television. It is used for commercials, these days. They use your goal to sell underpants, Señor Acuna, did you know that?’
Something like a smile did now drift across Acuna’s face.
‘And Perez should have stood up to your shot and stopped it,’ said my uncle. ‘Instead of that, he went down to his right because he had decided that you would use your right foot to put the ball inside his right post. And you drifted it over him with the outside of your left foot. Ten minutes later you had the Copa America in your hands.’
Uncle Feliciano fell silent but kept his eyes fixed on Acuna’s. Acuna said, ‘With respect, señor, is there some point to all this?’
‘Oh yes, Señor Acuna. You have watched this boy here only once. But tell me: would that shot have beaten this kid? Or would he have read you?’
Acuna looked at me. ‘I think he would have stopped it,’ he said.
Uncle Feliciano lifted his stick and slapped it down on the contract. Señora da Silva’s pen jumped from the surface. The cordial glasses rattled. My uncle leaned into my father’s face and said, ‘Sign this damn thing. Give the boy his life. He is ready.’”
“I KNEW EVERY inch of the path, of course, and all its tricks — the places where it hid itself, pretended to fade away, the places where the forest stretched its fingers out to lash at your eyes, where roots snaked out to trip you up. But I had never gone in there at night before, and I had never run so desperately toward the clearing. Here and there tiny splashes of silver light lay on the forest floor like coins, and now and again I caught a glimpse of the fat-faced moon sliding through the canopy of branches way above me.
I was shaking, and soaked with sweat, when I stumbled into the clearing. I put my hands on my knees and dragged the air, always sharper and cleaner here, into my lungs. The clearing was drenched in cold light. The moon had come to a stop overhead. Everything was divided into just two colors: brilliant silver and an inky blue-black. The silence was like something solid you could lean against, and rest, and recover from miracles.
I did not expect the Keeper to be there. Whatever and whoever he was, he seemed to depend on daylight. I was quite sure he would not materialize at night. When my breathing had steadied, I straightened up.
He was standing in the goalmouth, his back against the right post, arms folded over his chest, staring at the ground. No soccer ball. My heart lurched like a truck going over a rut in the road. It was as hard as it had ever been to walk toward him. I stopped at the penalty spot.
‘It has happened, then,’ he said. It was not a question. So I didn’t answer.
He began to pace. He touched the upright nearest him, walked to the other, touched that, walked back, touched. Walked back. I waited. At last he faced me.
‘Because of what I am,’ he said, ‘I have almost forgotten what it is like to be afraid. I should have taught you more about fear.’
‘I have signed for DSJ,’ I said. ‘Why are you talking about fear? I am not afraid. I am happy. Don’t spoil this, please.’
He looked at me. From within the shadow of his face two tiny lights shone, like distant stars in deepest space.
I said, ‘No, that’s not true. I am afraid. I am afraid of not coming here. I don’t know what I will do without you.’ I was outraged to discover tears in my eyes.
The Keeper smiled. Actually smiled, like a living person. Tiny muscles reorganized his face. One more amazing thing to happen on one amazing day.
‘What happened in the game this afternoon?’
I struggled with the question, then offered the simplest answer. ‘I was beaten,’ I said.
‘By what?’ demanded the Keeper. ‘What made you vulnerable? What were you doing when that goal was stolen?’
I thought about it, went back to the game. ‘I think I lost concentration. My head wasn’t clear enough. I was reacting to one player. He told me tonight that his job was to put me on a roller coaster, and he did that. He was testing my temper.’
Then I remembered. ‘Thank you for speaking to me then. It helped.’
He gave a slight nod.
‘Also, I let the crowd get to me. They were expecting something to happen to me, and I let that affect me. They were much louder today. The noise disturbed me. Once or twice I couldn’t tell if the roar was coming from inside me or from outside. I couldn’t tell the difference.’
The Keeper studied my face for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said, very quietly. ‘As I said, I have not been able to show you everything. Perhaps I have not had enough time.’ He walked to the edge of the clearing. ‘Come here.’
The Keeper spread his right hand in front of my face, his fingers like the bars of a cage. Through them I saw the moon, which had somehow come down closer to us, hovering over one corner of the clearing, glaring at us, hard and blue.
‘Watch. Do not blink.’ He moved his hand very slowly from side to side. The moon flashed, died, flashed again as his fingers moved across it. I had the sensation of shrinking and also of floating. His voice was now distant and tiny and crystal clear: ‘Follow my hand with your eyes. Do not blink.’ I turned as his hand moved, tracking across the clearing. His hand brought the moon with it. No, that’s not quite right. His hand brought another moon with it, leaving the first where it was. It was as if he had slid one disc of light from behind the other. His hand carried this other moon to the second corner of the clearing, and stopped. Again the clear, distant voice: ‘Do not stop watching. Follow.’ His hand moved on, and from his spread fingers a third moon appeared, slipping from behind the second; at the final corner of the clearing his hand paused again. When there were four moons, one at each corner, he shook his hand as if he had cramp, or as if a fly had settled on it. And I felt restored to my normal size; my feet were once more firmly on the grass. The light that now flooded the clearing was almost blinding. The four moons blazing down on us printed my shadow four times on the turf like the spokes of a wheel with me at the center. The Keeper had no shadow at all.
He stood facing the wall of the jungle for a moment. Then he stretched out his right arm, turned, and began to run, quite slowly. The trees he passed and gestured at with his outstretched arm began to move. Slowly, at first. Silver leaves and silver twigs and silver branches and ink-black shadows bent toward him as he passed, as if wanting to go with him. The Keeper circled the clearing twice, and by the time he returned to where I was standing, the whole forest was gripped by the storm that he had summoned up. It hissed like a million snakes, howled like a million monkeys, threatened to tear itself to pieces and whirl into the sky. Yet in the clearing itself the air was eerily still. We seemed to be in the eye of a cyclone.
I fell to my knees. I wanted to claw my way into the earth to escape the terrible flood of moonlight and the screaming rage of the forest. And then, like a knife cutting through everything, the Keeper’s voice: ‘Get up. Stand. Go to the goalmouth.’
Dazed, shaking, I went. The posts and the ancient net were electric blue in the moonglare. I narrowed my eyes against the storm and the light and saw the shifting shape of the Keeper placing a soccer ball a
t his feet. He moved, a glowing silhouette, and the ball grew larger, larger, and then was past me before I could move. Despite the uproar of the forest, I heard the whisper as it struck the net behind me. Dumbly, I turned to pick the ball up from the back of the goal and found it had disappeared. Baffled, I faced the Keeper again — once more he had the ball at his feet, and once more he struck it, and once more it swelled and flew past me. I stood straight and faced him.
‘What is your problem?’ he asked me through the barrier of noise and motion.
I was unable to speak. I did not think I could make myself heard.
The ball was once again at his feet. He ran it toward me, his feet flickering. He made as if to shoot, dropping his right shoulder, putting his weight on his right foot.
‘Call!’ he yelled.
I managed to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth. ‘Low, left!’ I screamed hoarsely.
The ball did not come at me because he had put his foot on it and stopped it dead. He turned his back on me, took the ball back several paces and came at me again, tracking slightly to my left. I squinted into the fierce light and watched him closely.
‘Call!’
‘Low, left again!’ I moved to make the save, but once again he stopped the ball dead, and then turned instantly, knocked the ball slightly to his right, and struck it cleanly at the top-right corner of my goal. Two moons blinded me; I had to imagine the route of the ball because I could not see it. Somehow I struggled through the screaming air and tipped the ball over the bar. It vanished and was back at the Keeper’s feet by the time I had stood up. But now he ran at me, feinting this way and that, evading imagined or ghostly defenders, his route very unpredictable. I understood that this was no longer practice. He intended to beat me. The invisible crowd howling from the forest faded into almost nothing. In the burning light I could see only the ball and the magician controlling it. He went out to my right, stopped the ball and dragged it back, set his body for a left-footed shot at the right of my goal, turned again, and then ran at me, chipping the ball up slightly: he was going for a half-volley from close range.
I sprang out of the goalmouth, but before I could reach him, the Keeper drew his right leg back to make the shot; the ball seemed to hover just above the silver grass, just beyond my reach. I flung myself sideways. I could not guess the angle the Keeper was going for, so I made myself as big as I could, spreading myself across his line of fire. I heard the hollow bang of his cleat striking the ball. It hit my chest with heart-stopping force. I tried to smother it with my arms, got a hand to it, but crashed onto the turf at that instant. I saw the Keeper almost on me, a huge silhouette against the glaring moons, and braced myself for the impact. There was none. He went either over me or through me. I got to my knees, looking around desperately for the ball. It was rolling slowly away from me, about two yards away. The Keeper had come to a halt almost in the goalmouth and had turned and thrown his weight forward, ready to knock the ball into the net. He was as near to it as I was. I crouched and sprang, pure reflex. I was at full stretch when my hands reached the ball, and his cleats were inches from my face. I turned onto my side, away from him, and wrapped myself around the ball. There was one more roaring surge of noise from the forest around us; then, in a moment, it faded and vanished.
The silence was shocking, and wonderful. I felt like a man who had been drowning but had bobbed up through the surface of the sea into the air again. I could hear the rasping of my breath, the beating of my heart, the creak of the leather ball beneath my fingers. I lifted my head.
The clearing seemed very dark in the pale light of the single moon that hung above me. The trees around the clearing were perfectly still. The Keeper was standing on the goal line, his arms folded on his chest.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘A good save. Are you okay?’
I nodded and stood up. My knees were shaky.
‘Soccer is not often a quiet game,’ he said.
I think I laughed.
‘The trick,’ he said, ‘is to let the noise flow through you. Like a tree allows the wind to pass through its leaves and branches. In this way it remains standing, even though the wind is much stronger than the tree is.’
My breathing settled, and I was back in the real world again. I remembered what had taken place at my house earlier, and a great anxiety filled me.
‘I am not ready,’ I said. ‘I have so much still to learn.’
‘Not from me.’
This seemed such a cold and final thing to say. I suppose I must have looked as if I had been slapped in the face.
His voice softened a little. ‘There are things that you cannot learn here, in this secret little field of ours. You have to go out into the world, and play your game under lights even brighter than those you played under tonight, and against noise that will make what you heard tonight seem like a whisper. You will be afraid, of course. Only very stupid people never feel fear. But you have courage, and you know you are good.’ He gazed around at the trees, and it seemed to me that he faded slightly; his shape became vague for a second. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘who knows how long this place can survive? The forest is being killed, tree by tree. Every minute another three acres vanish. Do you think that we can resist those machines of yours, the ones you work so hard to keep functioning?’
‘I will not be doing that anymore.’
‘No, and I am glad of that, at least. When will you leave?’
‘Tomorrow. The people from Deportivo are picking me up at nine o’clock.’
There was a question I needed to ask, but I hardly knew how to word it. I stumbled through it somehow.
‘I know you are there at the camp when I play. Will you be there in San Juan? Will I know you are there? Will you help me?’
Instead of answering he held out his hands. I gave him the ball, and he stared at it like a gypsy reading futures in a crystal ball.
‘You must understand,’ he said, ‘that it is very difficult for me to leave the forest. I have been trying to leave for a very long time.’
He lifted his face, and once again I glimpsed those specks of light, the distant stars, that were perhaps his eyes.
‘That is why I called you here,’ he said. ‘To help me leave. To end the waiting.’
‘So you can leave now? You’ll be with me at San Juan?’
‘No. I will be here. My wait is not yet over.’
‘I still don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Are you saying that you will be here if I need you?’
Something happened to his face that may have been another smile.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘it is I who need you.’
He walked away from me, toward the edge of the clearing. Bouncing the ball, catching it, bouncing it again.
‘Don’t go,’ I said.
He stopped but kept his back to me, still bouncing and catching the ball like a basketball player.
‘I will come back,’ I said.
He turned.
‘We are depending on it,’ he said.
The light failed. I looked up and saw a narrow cloud the shape of a knife blade cut the moon in half. When I looked down again, he had gone.”
SOMETHING ODD WAS happening to Paul Faustino. As a journalist, he was used to being lied to. It came with the job. For that reason, he was good at recognizing liars. He knew too well the heightened sincerity in a man’s voice that heralded a lie. He could spot the tiny swivel in the eye, the slightly exaggerated body language which told him that truth was being shown the door. But during the several hours he had now spent with El Gato, he had detected none of these signals. Worse, the shine he now saw in the goalkeeper’s eyes had nothing to do with the light reflected from the gold trophy on the table. It was caused by tears. The man was trying not to cry. Faustino found himself briefly considering the outrageous possibility that he was being told the truth. He cleared his throat.
“Gato? Gato, have you just described your last meeting with the Keeper?”
“Yes.”
<
br /> “You never saw him again?”
“No,” the goalkeeper said. “Well, yes, I saw him — I think I saw him — in San Juan. But I’ve never met him or spoken to him since that night in the forest.”
“You’ve never been back to look for him?” Faustino asked.
“Yes. Just once.”
“And?”
El Gato massaged his face with his hands, then sat straighter in his chair. “It was the day after my father’s funeral. I waited until the quiet part of the afternoon and found the track I had always taken into the forest. It led nowhere. The curtain of leaves that I expected to open onto the clearing now opened onto even denser vegetation. I blundered around like a stupid tourist for two hours, but the clearing had disappeared. There was no sign at all of where it might have been.”
Faustino considered this. The man had, then, suffered two losses at the same time. A double bereavement. But time was getting on, so he said, “Tell me about San Juan, Gato. What was it like for a fifteen-year-old boy from the jungle to find himself in the big city?”
“I saw ordinary things for the first time. Traffic lights, policemen, umbrellas, burger joints. Shops that sold just one thing — watches, or shoes, or books. Crowds of people walking to work along sidewalks. Roads and sidewalks astounded me. I thought of the millions of tons of concrete and stone beneath the city’s feet, and the amount of human work that had put it all there. I saw children sleeping on the streets.”
“Where did you live, Gato?”
“I went to live with Cesar Fabian and his wife,” Gato said. “Cesar was, still is, a physical therapist at DSJ. A lovely man. A lovely couple. I shared a room in their house with another boy, another junior. He didn’t stay though. He left after six weeks, because he couldn’t deal with his homesickness.”
Faustino said, “And you, Gato? You were not homesick?”
It was as if the great goalkeeper had not considered this question before. After a pause he said, “No. Not really. I felt sort of unreal, as if I were in a dream. But it was a good dream, not a bad one.”