by Mal Peet
Do you remember the game, Paul? You were there.”
“Yes, I was there. What I remember is that you had a great game, and no one else did, really. It wasn’t what you’d call a classic.”
“No. For the first twenty-five minutes or so, we concentrated on keeping possession of the ball, as did Real. There were several slow buildups that came to nothing much. All I had to do was clear a few back-passes and watch a long-range shot go well wide of my goal. The crowd got very impatient. Back in the café, there was a great deal of expert opinion flying back and forth. According to Hellman, my father was silent, just nodding when he was spoken to. Hellman said that he looked very pale and was visibly shaking with tension.
It was our captain, Massini, who woke the game up, if you remember. He cut out a rare, sloppy pass close to the halfway line and set off on one of his great galloping runs. No one came to meet him; the Real defense retreated, keeping their marking very tight. Massini looked up; saw that the keeper, Ruiz, was busy screaming and pointing to his defenders; and took a chance. He shot from almost thirty yards out, and he hit the ball so fiercely that when it struck Ruiz’s left-hand post I heard the impact through the howling of the crowd.
Massini’s near miss should have inspired us; instead, it fired up Real. They went for us like wolves. Ernesto Pearson, their Argentine forward, was especially dangerous; he tore our defense apart. I had to make six or seven saves in the last ten minutes of the first half.
It was during this period that men in the café started buying my father beers. He was not a drinker, my father. Okay, he’d sometimes have a couple of beers on a Saturday night, but he’d always come home early and fall happily asleep after winding Nana up a bit. But that day in the café he was bought a beer for each of the saves I made. And he was so worked up that he drank them all.
Well, you know what happened, Paul. We scored in something like the sixty-fifth minute. We didn’t mean to go on the defensive after that, but the Spanish gave us no choice. They came at us more and more desperately. It was like trying to beat back the sea. But we hung on. We won.”
Faustino let out a little snort of laughter. “There are just a couple of small details you forgot to mention, my friend. The fact is that you won that game. You stopped two direct free kicks, one of which you cannot possibly have seen until it was almost past you. And you saved Pearson’s penalty four minutes from the end. That’s what killed Real.”
“I think it also killed my father,” the goalkeeper said. “If the game had ended differently, it is likely that my father would still be alive.”
“The word if can drive you mad, Gato. There should be a law against it. Tell me what actually happened.”
“Well, you may remember that when Massini picked up the European Cup, he didn’t lift it above his head in triumph, which is what captains usually do. He handed it straight to me, and I lifted it. In the café, that image of me holding the Cup, the same one as that photograph, filled all three TV screens, and that’s when my father was hoisted up onto a table. He was already fairly drunk, according to Hellman, and had to be supported by men holding his legs. He would have been embarrassed and overjoyed at the same time, and when he felt in that mixed-up state he had a habit of nodding his head like a donkey bothered by flies. I can imagine the scene. I am so angry at the old fool. So angry.”
Paul Faustino stayed silent.
Gato, too, was silent for a moment, and then he continued. “Anyway, that’s when the men started calling for cachaça.”
“Ah,” murmured Faustino. “The demon rum.”
“That’s the stuff. And this was the local rum, smooth as silk and vicious as a whip. My father never drank the stuff. My mother wouldn’t have it in the house, anyway. And here he was, reeling about on a tabletop with a glass of it in each hand, while the mob chanted his son’s name.
Hellman left the café at this point, but he pieced together the rest of the story during the next two days. The celebrations in my honor went on for the rest of the afternoon. When my father eventually managed to get out of the door he instantly collapsed in the street as if he had been shot. This was, of course, very funny. A couple of guys brought a table from the café and placed it upside down next to my father. They heaved his body onto it, and then four men, all wearing blue shirts with my name and number, somehow got the table onto their shoulders and set off, wobbling dangerously, across the plaza in the general direction of our house. They were followed by a crowd of chanting, cheering drunks.
My mother was not delighted to have this drunken rabble of her son’s fans turning up at her door. When she realized that the arms and legs dangling from the upturned table were her husband’s, she almost fainted. My grandmother, of course, assumed that my father was already a corpse and wailed horribly while beating one of the table-bearers about the head with a soup ladle.
My father was still alive, in fact. He didn’t die until the following day. He was lifted off the table and put to bed. He came around, just for a while, about an hour later. He managed to drink some water, then slept right through until the morning. My mother was horrified to find him awake and getting dressed for work at six o’clock. He looked like hell. She begged him not to go. He said that he had never missed a day’s work in his life — which was probably true — and didn’t intend to start now. So he went.
There was light, unbroken rain that morning, and the men huddled inside their ponchos in the back of the pick-up. Most of them were in the same sort of state as my father, red eyed and shaky. My father threw up twice. Another man took out a small bottle of greenish liquid and persuaded Father to drink some. Whatever this brew was, it seemed to do the trick. Hellman told me that when the truck reached the camp, my father seemed okay. The rest of the crew didn’t, though, and Hellman was half-minded to send them all home. But my father said no, they’d be fine. He was the team boss, and he’d make sure everyone was careful. So Hellman said okay. He congratulated my father on my success and went back into his office. The crew got into their bright green waterproofs — my father’s had a broad orange band across the back — and set out for the cutting. The rain was heavier by now.
My father’s was one of three crews cutting trees on the upward slope of a long, low hill. It was a new section, so the machines hadn’t churned up the ground too much, but there were streams of tea-colored water running down off the hill. After an hour the team had set everything up and felled a big hardwood. It was a good tree, worth the work. The trunk was thicker than I am tall. The sawyers and the saw-monkeys went in and trimmed it. By now my father had started to look pretty sick again. What had happened, I think, was that whatever was in that green stuff had got him a bit drunk again, which is why he’d seemed so confident talking to Hellman. And when that wore off, he felt worse than ever. But he was stubborn and wouldn’t quit.
The crew got the cables fixed to the great trunk of the tree. By now the ground along the sides of it had been mushed up by the loggers’ feet, and the saw-monkeys were slithering around and swearing, their waterproofs fouled with red mud. The winchman, a guy called Torres, started the winch motors and began taking up the slack so that the cables came up tight. It was at this point that my father came up to the winch. He looked terrible, and Torres told him so. My father told him not to worry and to run the motors at slow speed; he didn’t want the trunk coming fast down the slope in this sort of weather. Then my father walked off and disappeared. Torres told Hellman he reckoned the old man had gone off out of sight to throw up again, not wanting anyone to see him do it.
Torres ran the winch at slow speed, and the cables tensed and twanged like the strings of a huge guitar. The trunk shifted, and the mud beneath it made a sucking noise. Then the trunk stuck, somehow. Torres eased the motors off and on again, trying to get the thing moving, but nothing happened. He was worried and peered through the drifting rain for my father, who was nowhere to be seen. So what Torres did was crank the winch motors up to half speed for five seconds, to try to jerk
the trunk free. It worked. The trunk bucked slightly and then started to move down the slope. It came a bit quicker than Torres would have liked, but it was okay. Then everything went wrong. The tree skewed and slid sideways. The top end of it came slicing down the slope, cutting through the undergrowth like a blade through grass. Torres knew the cables wouldn’t hold, so he hit the release button and let the trunk go where it wanted to go. It turned and tumbled and finally came to a stop about sixty yards to the right of where it was meant to end up. What stopped it was one of the shallow gullies that were spewing water down the slope. The trunk rolled right into it.
It took Torres and the crew another hour to reposition the winch and the cables and drag the tree down to the foot of the slope to where the tractors could get at it. Twice Torres sent saw-monkeys to find my father, but there was no sign of him. Then, when the trunk had been dragged out, one of the boys spotted my father’s green and orange jacket half buried in the mud at the bottom of the gully. So he scrambled down to pick it up. He couldn’t do it. The jacket wouldn’t come free of the mud. So he braced his legs and grabbed the collar with both hands and heaved. It was when the back of my father’s head lifted out of the sludge that the boy realized my father was still inside the jacket. The big hardwood had rolled right onto him and crushed him face down into the gully where he’d gone to throw up. That’s how he died.”
Faustino pressed the stop button on the tape recorder.
EL GATO WAS leaning back in his chair, his arms stretched out in front of him, his fingertips resting on the edge of the table. He stared blindly at the World Cup. Faustino was content to let this grievous silence continue because he was busy thinking.
Faustino was not what you might call a sentimental man, but he was baffled by the calmness with which El Gato had related the story of his father’s death. Just as, earlier, he had been baffled by the detached way he had described those . . . what? Experiences? Hallucinations? His friend’s coolness was, of course, one of the attributes that made him the best keeper in the world, but Faustino found himself wondering if such self-control was, well, unnatural. Sometimes he didn’t seem to be living in quite the same world as everyone else.
On the other hand, there was no doubting the emotion Gato had shown when he had spoken about parting from the Keeper. Faustino was struck by the contrast. The man who had just related the death of his own father so matter-of-factly had been on the verge of breaking down when he’d talked about saying goodbye to an apparition. This goalkeeper was a damn sight more complicated than any soccer player had the right to be.
Still, Faustino had begun to see a way of handling the mass of stuff that he’d taped during the course of the night. Three articles, not one. The first one would have to be about the jungle and the Keeper. Gato would probably insist on that. But Faustino thought he could put a bit of spin on the story, just enough so that the readers might believe it while understanding that he, Faustino, didn’t. The second article would deal with the logging camp and the death of Gato’s father. Good, solid human interest stuff. The third would be Gato’s view of the World Cup Final. (And there was still that to do, dammit. It would be dawn soon. He hoped the goalkeeper still had enough steam in him to talk through the video of the game.) The more Faustino thought over this scheme, the more he liked it. A three-day running exclusive on the man who was, for the time being, anyway, the most famous person on the planet. Sales of La Nación up by at least thirty percent. Selling the story around the world. His boss would love it. And getting three exclusives for the price of one, that was exactly her style, the cheapskate. Faustino began to consider the size of the bonus he might be able to scam out of her. He started to feel very cheerful.
As sadly as he could manage, Faustino said, “I had no idea your father died such a terrible death. I am so sorry.”
Gato tipped his head in acknowledgment but said nothing.
Carefully, Faustino said, “I’m surprised that I knew nothing of it. Never read about it anywhere.”
Gato smiled a little. “It happened in the middle of nowhere. Loggers get killed every day. The story didn’t make the national papers. And I’ve never spoken about it. Until now.”
“Can I use it?”
“Yes,” Gato said. “I want you to.”
Faustino did reasonably well at hiding his pleasure.
“But Paul,” Gato said, “we’ll not use this, if you don’t mind.”
“This” was the photograph. Gato flipped it casually back into the box file and closed the lid. Then he tapped the third file and said, “So what’s in this? Which bits of me have you got in here?”
“Stuff up to about 1998, I think. Your coming back, the years with Coruna and Flamingos. Then everything is on hard disk. Even pictures, up to and including us — you — winning the World Cup.”
“So,” Gato said, “you think you have everything you need?”
Faustino’s face was all pained apology. “There’s one more thing I’d like to do. Something I’ve got to do, really. If you have the energy.” He looked at his watch. “I tell you what, the cafeteria here starts serving breakfast in forty-five minutes. It’s usually pretty good. If you can give me another three-quarters of an hour, I’ll take you down there and treat you to what they call the Full Works, which I’ve never managed to finish. Deal?”
“Sounds good,” Gato said. “What do you need to do?”
“I’ve got the World Cup Final on tape over there. I’d like to go through bits of it with you. Especially the penalty shootout, obviously. Is that okay?”
“Yes, sure.” The keeper smiled. “In fact, there are a couple of things I’d like to see again. I didn’t watch any of the replays.”
“You didn’t?” Faustino was incredulous. “There’s been nothing on TV since. You must have seen it.”
“No.”
“You amaze me, you really do. Okay, drag that chair over. The video is ready to run.”
The two men arranged their chairs in front of a big flat-screen TV. Faustino picked up a remote control and thumbed a couple of buttons. The room was swept by sound, the German national anthem against wave after wave of roaring from the crowd packed into the vast bowl of the stadium. The pictures came from a hand-held camera tracking along the faces of the German team.
Faustino said, “We don’t want to watch this, I presume. This machine has a really quick fast-forward. Shall we watch the Masinas goal that put us one up?”
“No,” El Gato said. “Let’s skip to the second half, when Lindenau scored the equalizer. I’d like to see that.”
Faustino looked sideways at his friend. “You want to watch yourself being beaten?”
“Yes,” El Gato said. “It doesn’t happen that often, after all.” And he laughed.
So Faustino pressed a button on the remote, and tiny players ran frenziedly around the screen. After a while, commercials, loud and lurid, flashed across the screen, followed by men gabbing in a studio. Halftime. Then more crazed rushing about by players in white shirts and purple and gold shirts.
“Here it is,” Faustino said, stabbing the remote.
The video steadied and slowed. The screen showed the German forward, Lindenau, receiving the ball, a long pass that came over his shoulder. Gato said, “Let’s go back a bit. Walter Graaf, their keeper, does something fantastic just before this.”
Faustino rewound. Players ran frantically backward. The ball went the wrong way, returning to each player who kicked it. Faustino hit another button, and time started going the right way again.
“Look at this,” Gato said. “Graaf is a great keeper. I’ve played against him many times. He’s steady as a rock. But watch this bit. He does something none of us expected him to do.”
On the screen Germany were defending desperately. They were one down with barely twenty minutes left. They needed to score.
“Look,” Gato said, pointing at the screen. “Here, here. The German defender, Effenberg, gets the ball but has no choices. He’s hemmed in, b
etween the touchline and Graaf’s penalty area. So he passes back to Graaf. Now, nine times out of ten Walter will choose to hoof the ball up the field to give his defense time to reorganize. We thought that was what he would do here. So the players closing Effenberg down turn around and back off him. But what does Graaf do? Look, here it comes. Walter shapes himself up to make the long clearance, but instead of doing that he plays a soft pass back to Effenberg. Crazy! Our attackers rush back at Effenberg. And look — our midfield turns and starts to move up as well, thinking that Graaf has done a crazy thing. But what happens is that Walter rushes up to the edge of his penalty area so that he can take a return pass from Effenberg. This is the World Cup Final, and Walter plays a one-two in front of his own goal. Fantastic! He carries the ball fifteen yards or so, then looks up and hits a fabulous diagonal pass toward Lindenau, who is just onside. Lindenau looks as if he’ll take it on his chest, which would leave him with his back to my goal, but instead he dummies. He turns and lets the ball come over his shoulder. He leaves Carlos Santayana standing. He’s only got me to beat, and twenty-five yards to do it in.”
Faustino took a sideways look at Gato. The man was actually enjoying this! This was a video of how he almost lost the World Cup to Germany, and he was talking about it as if it had happened to someone else.
“It was obvious,” El Gato said, “that Carlos couldn’t catch Lindenau. So I had to come out and hope to get down onto the ball before Lindenau could get the shot in. At the same time, I knew that if I didn’t make it he would chip the ball over me, and there was no cover on the goal line.”
“You come out of the goal like a guided missile,” said Faustino, fixed on the screen. “Lindenau must have been terrified. He’s only a little guy.”