Learning to Lose

by David Trueba

  Why are you so afraid of everything?

  3

  Her grandstand seat in the stadium is almost at field level, with the grass before her eyes like a damp, springy carpet. Soccer isn’t so simple from there. The ball is more intractable. The spaces tiny. The players human. You can smell the sweat, you can hear the groan of a collision and the whistle asking for the ball. Sylvia is seated beside Lorenzo, her leg in a cast. With every breath, steam comes from her mouth. Dress warmly, Lorenzo had told her before leaving the house. He wears a wool cap, but Sylvia is protected by her cascade of curls. They shared the row of comfortably upholstered seats with some players who are sitting the game out and the wives of some others, mass-produced beauties, who instead of following the game keep their eyes fixed on their husbands and shiver slightly every time they are tackled. Look, that’s the wife of the Pole who wears number five, points out Lorenzo, they say she spent a hundred thousand euros on a pedigreed dog, but Sylvia doesn’t pay attention to the gossip. And the Argentinian? Which one is his girlfriend? she asks. Haven’t the slightest.

  When Sylvia was fifteen months old and had just started walking, Lorenzo watched her looking at herself in the mirror. She held a jar of her mother’s face cream in her hands and offered it to her own reflection, convinced that it was someone else. Lorenzo dressed while keeping an eye on her. At one point, Sylvia peeked behind the mirror, trying to figure out where the hell the other girl was hiding, the girl who was watching her and also offering her a jar of face cream. She looked for her several times. Lorenzo didn’t say anything, didn’t explain it to her. He just watched, smiling as he enjoyed his daughter’s concentrated calm as she stared at her reflection, unbeknownst to her. Sometimes he remembered that moment and wondered if something as simple as that was happiness.

  And another time Lorenzo had taken his daughter to a soccer game. Sylvia was eight years old. After half an hour, she had lost all interest and was playing in her seat, talking to herself, looking around. Being back at the stadium, sitting beside her, sharing the bag of sunflower seeds, his gaze searching for the woman who raucously shouted insults at the referee and his family and trying to find where the cigar smoke was coming from, it felt like he was getting that day back. At the VIP door, Sylvia had picked up an envelope with her name on it that held two tickets. I won them in a radio contest, she told him. Lorenzo helped her get through the turnstiles that led into the stadium. In their special seats, Lorenzo joked, sang the team song out loud, and recited both lineups to her, leaving time to comment on some of the player’s particular traits. He was enjoying the luxury of sharing a moment with his daughter again, a rare gift in these days when she’s so independent.

  Pilar had suffered Sylvia’s adolescence before he had. As mother and daughter, they argued and got mad at each other over trivial things. The way she dressed, the long silences, her table manners, her friends. Sylvia turning fifteen had been decisive in Pilar’s daring to end their marriage. We still have a lot of life ahead of us and she doesn’t need us so much anymore, she had said, suggesting a separation. Lorenzo can’t seem to pinpoint when their home stopped being a place of refuge, their family a guarantee of happiness, how their partnership, their love, died. Before he even realized it, the three people living under the same roof were strangers. Each one had their own interests, worries, priorities. In Sylvia’s case, that was normal, part of her growing up. But in theirs, as a couple, it was a symptom of something darker, sadder. Passion dies out in small trifling moments, and one day there’s none left. Lorenzo sensed that there was a moment when Pilar let go of his hand and decided not to get dragged down with him. She jumped in a parachute from a crashing plane. He was too busy avoiding his own catastrophe to hold on to her. He doesn’t blame her for not wanting to share in his breakdown.

  In the past, when Lorenzo reflected on his relationship with Pilar, he used to think that she made him a better person. She infected him with her tranquillity, her confidence, her generosity. She allowed him to choose, to establish himself, to grow. She celebrated him each time he made progress. The marriage was a support structure, a driving force. Getting married, living together, having a daughter, those were the natural steps of their harmony. When Sylvia was born, Pilar stopped working, but after a while she needed to escape the house. I feel like my life is on pause, she said. She drifted through unsatisfying jobs until she found her place, but Lorenzo was convinced it was at that moment they started on diverging paths. Paths that crossed at home at night, in shared details about their little girl, in the quick sex on Sunday mornings. The union ended, the coexistence ended, and, as happens, someone new came into her life.

  When Pilar announced her escape, Lorenzo couldn’t hold on to her. He knew his wife well. Once she had made the decision, there was nothing that could force her to change it. No tears, no promises to change, no emotional blackmail. Pilar’s decisions could be slow in coming, but they were rock-solid. She was indulgent, but her sentences were definitive. And that was how it happened. In two days, she no longer lived there, in four there was barely a piece of her clothing, in two weeks they had negotiated the separation and worked out the accounts, done the math, divided expenses, savings. It was easy. She left him almost everything. I’d rather stay in my home, Sylvia told them. Lorenzo took it as a victory, that she had chosen him, but he also knew it was the most comfortable choice for her, as well as the most respectful of her mother’s new life. Really, he thought, she is choosing her neighborhood, her friends, her high school, her room, not choosing me over Pilar.

  Since the separation, Lorenzo hadn’t been with another woman. Sex was something he could do without, something dormant, pushed into a corner. Too many problems. He didn’t have enough money for the drinks he’d have to buy to wait out the arrival of a woman lured by his lonely soul or his desperation. He was too proud to admit defeat. He wasn’t going to beg in matters of love, either. Everything would work itself out once he recovered his true standing.

  Looking for work in a waning field wasn’t easy. For three months, he worked as a salesman on commission at a computer company, but the contract expired and Lorenzo found himself out on the street again, without the energy young people have for stringing together six or seven crappy jobs a year. Thanks to a friend’s help, he got a position at a telephone equipment distributor, but the workdays were endless and the chemistry with his coworkers was soured by a stupid accident. During one of the little five-a-side soccer games they played on Thursdays after work at a municipal gym, he tackled hard on a disputed ball and one of the young guys at the company, a cocky little guy who often feinted and nutmegged, was badly hurt. He suffered a cranial fracture, a broken collarbone, and a concussion that scared them for a while. Lorenzo apologized a hundred times and they all chalked it up to an unlucky play, but he stopped going to the games, and shortly after he quit the job. He didn’t have the energy to make new friends, start new relationships. At that point, he was already considering the heist that would give him back some of what was rightfully his, taking justice into his own hands. Stealing from Paco what Paco had stolen from him, which wasn’t only money.

  His father had lent him some cash to get over the rough patch: I don’t want Sylvia to have to change her lifestyle. He worried that his daughter would suspect his money problems, feel she was a burden, and go live with her mother. It would mean losing everything. For Lorenzo power had always been something physical that travels with you, that’s conveyed, like some sort of body odor. That was why he struggled to show everything was the same as always, when really nothing was the same.

  So the young woman who took care of the neighbor’s kid had showed up at the right moment, when he most needed new people, people who wouldn’t judge him for what he had been, but rather for what he could be. Who didn’t know about the skids he was coming off, and who could appreciate his ability to bounce back.

  When he had offered to drive Daniela to the airport, they agreed to meet at the metro entrance. Lorenzo dro
ve up and she got in with her friend. This is Nancy, said Daniela, introducing them. The young woman’s smile was bridled by braces. It was her cousin they were picking up at the airport.

  In the arrivals terminal, they waited more than three hours for the flight from Quito and Guayaquil, which had constant delays. A little girl waiting for her father rolled on the floor. Other families waited restlessly, checking the clock, pacing back and forth. All foreign faces, distrusting looks, tension. Sometimes they seemed more like mourners at the door to a morgue than people waiting for an airplane. Daniela and her friend Nancy accepted a bottle of water from Lorenzo to make their waiting more bearable, but that was it. He asked them questions about how they had come to Spain, their working conditions. Neither of them had papers. They both worked without contracts in domestic service. Daniela claimed to be happy with the family on the fifth floor; Nancy was more critical of the family of an old man she took care of. They shared an apartment with three other girlfriends, on the first floor of a building near Atocha Station. Nancy had a daughter in Ecuador, left in the care of her grandmother, whom she sent money to every month. I didn’t leave anyone behind, said Daniela, although she explained that she supported her mother and her younger siblings in Loja.

  Nancy feared that they were holding her cousin at customs. Daniela reassured her. As time went on, they were more sincerely appreciative that Lorenzo had come with them. It’s nothing, it’s nothing, he said, but they insisted. They were afraid of the Spanish taxi drivers, who often ripped off foreigners, and if Wilson came with a lot of luggage, going on the metro would be a drag. If you ask someone you know for a favor, said Daniela, they almost feel like they have something over you. Lorenzo didn’t say anything. He asked Nancy if she missed her daughter. I’m spoiling her, she answered, she’s got the best toys in the neighborhood. Daniela smiled with her cheeks and squinted her lovely indigenous almond-shaped eyes.

  Wilson appeared, loaded down with a ton of poorly wrapped packages. He was well built, his face speckled with pockmarks, his hair black and wiry, and he had a wandering eye that observed his surroundings. He wasn’t yet thirty, but he hugged his cousin with paternal authority, with one hefty arm, while the other, suspicious, held on to the cart filled with boxes. Lorenzo noticed that Daniela’s greeting was somewhat more distant; she stepped forward to exchange a kiss on each cheek. They introduced Lorenzo as an acquaintance who brought us in his car.

  Lorenzo went up to their apartment with them. It had a small living room attached to the entryway and a long hallway lined with bedrooms. It was old, with paint on the walls half peeling off, and enormous doors of sagging wood. Two windows in the living room opened onto the back of Atocha Station; the rest faced a dark inner courtyard. When the terrorist attack happened, the windows shook. It was horrible, explained Nancy. We were looking for a friend, for many hours we thought she was dead, but then she turned up in a hospital, with one leg destroyed. She was lucky, they’re going to give her papers.

  Daniela and Nancy insisted Lorenzo stay for lunch, and they prepared a stew with rice and goat meat they called seco, accompanied by a two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola. In spite of the large iron radiators along the walls, there was a small butane heater in the room. While the girls bustled about in the kitchen, Lorenzo talked to Wilson on the sofa, which that night would transform into his bed. He was coming without work, with a tourist visa, but convinced that the next day he’d find something. Noticing Lorenzo’s interest in his situation, Wilson asks him, and what do you do? Lorenzo grew visibly worried before answering. Right now nothing, I’m unemployed. But Wilson took it as great news. Why don’t we do something together? Hauling, anything. In Ecuador, Wilson worked as a driver. From trucks to limos, for a little while I worked as a bodyguard, too, for a guy who had an enormous hacienda in San Borondón. But your license from there won’t be valid here, Lorenzo told him. Well, answered Wilson, and he added an open smile, I could use your license, we look a bit alike, don’t you think? Except for the crazy eye. Lorenzo laughed.

  Wilson faded a bit after eating, subdued by the time difference. By then Lorenzo was already captivated by his outlook. He had listened to his offers. If you had a van, tomorrow we’d already be working as a little business, keep me in mind for whatever you need. What else do I have to do except stay here at home with these five chicks, and Wilson smiled as if they shared a secret. Lorenzo made excuses, I’m looking for a different type of work, but I’ll think about it. Then he went down with Nancy and Daniela and two of the other roommates to a nearby bar, an Ecuadorian bar. He was the only foreigner in the place, which was attached to a Dominican-owned business where immigrants could call home cheaply. The bar was called Bar Pichincha, spelled out in orange adhesive letters stuck on the plate-glass window. Its old sign, Los Amigos, was still hanging in front of the building, above the door, unreachable it seemed, except for the rock that had broken it. It was a wide space with a tall bar, a terrazzo floor, and metal tables where many of the customers were still finishing their meals.

  No one looked at Lorenzo as he approached the bar and the girls clustered around him, but he felt uncomfortable, foreign in that place belonging to another latitude. The music transported him to another country, as did the faces. Daniela wore a tight black shirt, with silver embroidered letters that read MIAMI, which were sometimes covered by a lock of her straight hair. People approached to talk to Nancy or Daniela and soon Lorenzo found himself alone with his iced coffee. Daniela realized and went back over to him. We come here a lot. Sure, of course, he said. They started a private conversation, on the side. He asked her about her job; she talked about the rest of the neighbors in the building. About the man in 2B who once, insolently, rubbed up against her in the elevator. It was gross, sometimes Spaniards think we’re all whores or something like that. Lorenzo smiles. The guy from 2B? He’s a retired military man. Retired? Maybe from the army, not from the other thing. She said “dother,” melding the two words. They both laughed, but she covered her mouth, as if she got a charge of shame from saying it.

  Daniela told him that almost every Sunday morning she went to church, but she’d made an exception that day to accompany her friend. Are you religious? she asked him suddenly. Lorenzo shrugged his shoulders. Yes, well, I believe in God, but I’m not practicing … A lot of people in Spain are like that, she said. It’s like they don’t need God anymore. But if you don’t believe in God, you don’t believe in anything. Lorenzo didn’t really know what to say. He looked around him. It didn’t seem like the right place for a mystical conversation. She continued, and to think it was the Spaniards who brought religion to the Americas. Yes, among other things, said Lorenzo. The dance music resonated.

  A burly guy approached the bar to one side of Lorenzo. As he leaned onto the counter he pushed Lorenzo, on purpose. Lorenzo turned to look at him, but said nothing. The guy fixed his defiant, deep black eyes on him. He was thick, not very tall, with the physical decisiveness of a refrigerator. I’ve got to go, said Lorenzo. Don’t pay any attention to him, they drink too much and they get aggressive. No, no, it’s not because of that, said Lorenzo after moving toward her and away from the guy at the bar. My daughter is at home and her leg’s still in a cast.

  He said good-bye to Nancy, who was chatting vivaciously with her friends, and Daniela felt the need to accompany him to the door, as if she were protecting him. Thanks again. It was nothing, said Lorenzo. Tell Wilson he should call me if he needs anything. Daniela seemed surprised, ah, okay, but I don’t have your phone number. Lorenzo searched his jacket for a pen. It’s okay, she said, I know where you live. They said good-bye with a kiss on each cheek. On the second one, Lorenzo’s nose brushed her hair. It smelled of chamomile.

  Lorenzo met up with Sylvia, who had eaten at her grandparents’ house. He had called earlier, don’t wait for me, I’m out with some friends. He felt a bit embarrassed about lying to his father, but he found it hard to explain that he was having lunch with the girl who took care of the kid wh
o lived upstairs. Sylvia was with her grandmother, in the bedroom. They were playing checkers on the bed with the board tilted and the pieces sliding. Leandro walked through the hallway, restless. Lorenzo spoke to him about Aurora’s condition. Her spirits seem better. She likes seeing her granddaughter, said Leandro, with her she pretends she’s feeling good. I think I’m going to buy a van, he said to his father, I want to start something on my own, I’m tired of working for other people. Lorenzo didn’t get the enthusiasm he was hoping for out of Leandro. His father offered him money, although we aren’t doing too well right now. No, no, refused Lorenzo, I have some, I made some, but he chose to hide that it was from Sylvia’s settlement.

  The first day that Sylvia got into the van it was on their way to the game. I was tired of the car, at least with this I can look for little jobs. It was chaotic approaching the stadium, but he wanted to leave Sylvia in a nearby bar so she wouldn’t have to walk too far. Lorenzo’s friends, Óscar and Lalo, met up with them. It was their usual meeting place. The bar filled up when there was still an hour until the game started. Seven draft beers, a call came out, another round over here. Checking Sylvia’s tickets, one of them let out a whistle. What good seats, if you stretch out your hand you can grab the players.

  And it was almost true. Although Ariel rarely came close to that area. In the second half, Sylvia had to strain her eyes to see him from her seat. The game wasn’t going brilliantly. Lorenzo had to explain some plays to Sylvia, but she wasn’t paying attention. They’re making mincemeat out of number ten. Number ten was Ariel Burano. Right before the end of the game, it was that player who took advantage of a muddle in the penalty box to edge the ball into the net. Sylvia lifted two fists to celebrate the goal. Lorenzo held her tightly in his arms and they both let loose with untempered joy. It was number ten, she says. Lorenzo feels his daughter’s body glued to his and savors the moment. When she was a little girl, he squeezed her in his arms or tickled her and gave her affectionate bites, but as she left childhood behind their regular contact was also lost.