Learning to Lose

by David Trueba

  When he gets off the plane, he says good-bye to Humberto. He woke up with his mouth dry and his eyes foggy. When do we play against each other? But neither of them remembers the game schedule. Well, we’ll definitely see each other at Tiger Lavalle’s birthday, that you can’t miss.

  At customs a kid with a small backpack on his shoulder asks him for help. The police are detaining him, he doesn’t have enough cash and no particular address to go to. He is very nervous, worked up. I didn’t bring enough dough, just for that they want to screw me. Ariel talks to the policeman at the window. There’s nothing we can do. Ariel wants to help, he turns to another policeman, who recognizes him instantly. I don’t know, is there something that can be done? The policeman smiles at him, don’t get into trouble, that’s my advice. Ariel thinks it over, gives the little money he has in his wallet to the kid, and passes through customs.

  When he goes out with his suitcases, he still feels uncomfortable, disturbed by the situation. He has to stop and sign a couple of autographs for two boys. He looks up and, behind the line of people waiting for the recent arrivals, he sees Sylvia. She smiles at him but doesn’t approach. He walks toward her, but Sylvia evades him. She walks behind him as he heads toward the parking lot and they maintain the distance through the entire path of moving sidewalks. He turns every once in a while and they smile at each other. They don’t say anything, but it’s as if they are embracing from afar. As if they are making love, each from their own space, she ten feet behind.

  The parking lot is ice-cold. It had dipped below freezing that night. Ariel finds his car. They kiss inside it. They only separate when she tries to put on the heat, turning the buttons on the dashboard to the maximum. I’m gonna freeze. She pulls on the sleeves of her sweater.

  He slips his fingers underneath Sylvia’s curls and caresses her neck. Happy New Year, she says.

  part three

  IS THIS ME?

  1

  Sylvia leads a double life. In one she sits at the back of a classroom, at a green desk with chipped edges that touches her classmate Alba’s desk. During the morning, different teachers try to leave a small mark on her and the other kids. Sometimes in the form of notes in a notebook, other times as a fact they’ll remember until the day after the test, and rarely as a piece of knowledge that will be with them all their lives. The math teacher is setting up a vectors problem on the blackboard. He had a strong start to the semester, his passion still intact after years of teaching. Everything is mathematics, he told them. Math applies to when you buy, when you sell, when you grow, when you get old, when you leave home, when you find a job, when you fall in love, when you listen to a new song. Everything is mathematics. Life is mathematics, adding and subtracting, division, multiplication, if you understand math you’ll understand life a little better. And when he saw them laugh, he added, tell me something that isn’t math, come on. My ass, muttered “the Tank” Palazón, and they all laughed harder. God, said Nico Verón, is God math? Don Octavio stopped for a second, but he didn’t seem surprised. God is the solution to an equation that has no solution. But today the class wasn’t paying attention to Don Octavio.

  When the morning ends, Sylvia will walk home. Maybe with Mai, maybe with other schoolmates, who will scatter at each intersection. She’ll make lunch for her father and herself or eat something he’s prepared. She’ll lock herself in her room to listen to music, study for a test, answer some text messages, or search the Web to find the lyrics to some song, chat, or just surf. She will count the seconds until the time comes to switch to her other life.

  Her second life takes place at Ariel’s big house, where they watch some movie on the plasma screen, chat with a beer and music in the background, challenge each other in a video game. Then they’ll eat the stew Emilia left for him, or pick up thin-crust pizzas from an Italian restaurant where they make a fuss over Ariel, or order in Japanese or Argentinian from a deli that delivers to their area. They undo the bed to make love. It’s nothing like the thin cold sheets Sylvia returns to later, where love is just a memory and a worn teddy bear with soft fur, a survivor from her childhood. The two lives develop on different planets or on different stages, with Sylvia playing two almost opposite roles. Sometimes the planets brush past each other, sending off a spark. Like one day when they were buying music and movies in the Fnac store on Callao. From a distance, they showed each other the covers, she some popular British group, he a band that sings in Spanish. In the checkout line, they stand one behind the other and then Mai appears, surprised to see Sylvia, didn’t you say you were going to your grandmother’s house? And Sylvia lies, I slipped out for a while. She’s already gotten used to lying and she does it quite naturally. And when Mai insists on having a drink together, Sylvia is evasive, and when Mai points to Ariel, who is paying in front of them at the register, she says, isn’t that the soccer player, the Argentinan one? I have no idea. Well, he is super-cute. Yeah. And Sylvia gets rid of Mai in spite of the uncomfortable suspicion. I know you’re not telling me the whole truth, you’re going to see your boyfriend. I wonder when you’re going to introduce me to him, or is it that you’re keeping him hidden for a reason, he’s a hunchback, he’s a count, I don’t know? And they laugh. Later Sylvia manages to meet up with Ariel in the parking garage.

  It happens again when Ariel bumps into a teammate at a red light. They talk from their cars, through the windows, joking until the guy points at Sylvia with his eyes. She’s a friend’s daughter, Ariel couldn’t think of anything better to say, and Sylvia spends the afternoon making jokes about the incident. And does your friend know what you do with his daughter? It’s in those accidental moments when the two lives seem, more than ever, irreconcilable.

  On other occasions, Sylvia finds the contrast of fleeing one life for another entertaining. Today she left English class in a hurry. Her explanation to the teacher seemed to drag on forever, while he pulled on the hairs of his sideburns in a nervous tic. She took the metro to a meeting with a real estate agent to see an apartment near the Bilbao traffic circle. Are we waiting for anyone else? asks the agent, when she finds herself with a client carrying a school backpack. No, in the end my father’s not going to be able to make it, explains Sylvia as the elevator ascends to the penthouse. She amuses herself by playing the role of a millionaire’s daughter. My father doesn’t have time for these things, he lets me choose. The agent abandons her reluctance and opens the door to the apartment after searching in her purse for the keys.

  Sylvia walks through the apartment while, from a distance, the agent tells her about the benefits of its recent renovation. High ceilings, wood-framed windows, a striking terrace with views of the rooftops. I love it, but my father said not to pay more than a million euros, that’s his limit. That’s going to be difficult, reasons the agent, but, of course, if a large part of it is under the table we can negotiate. Of course, says Sylvia, most of it will be under the table.

  It’s been a few weeks since Ariel decided to move to the city. He’s tired of being isolated in a housing complex where the most exciting encounter is with a neighbor who’s decided to jog in the mornings after a mild attack of angina. This way we could see each other easily, without so much driving, it’s ridiculous, Sylvia told him one day when Ariel was yawning with exhaustion along the highway to drop her off at her house. Ariel assigned his financial adviser to draw up a list of possible apartments. They ruled out several from the photos online and the place that Sylvia is now visiting, allowing her a fun stint as a millionaire, is the one they liked best.

  A little while later, Ariel picks her up in front of the Roxy movie theater. Sylvia gets into the car. I loved it. I would knock down a wall to make the living room bigger, what do you want three bedrooms for? She told me if you pay for part of it in cash under the table, they’ll let you have it for a million euros. Ariel has no problem with that; a substantial part of his contract is paid into an account in Gibraltar. Sylvia is surprised he never pays with cards or takes out money from the
ATM. He always has large amounts of cash on him. He calls his financial adviser from the car. He closes the deal. That neighborhood is a good investment, the guy tells him. Sylvia smiles and rests her foot on the dashboard.

  That night they joke around in the gym installed in the basement of Ariel’s house. He lifts weights with his legs while she walks on the treadmill. She gets tired easily. He tells her, you’re gonna get a fat ass if you don’t do a little exercise and she reproaches him, I don’t want to be the typical stuck-up rich girlfriend of a soccer player who spends the morning in the gym and the afternoon shopping and at the salon. They aren’t all like that, Amílcar’s wife is really great. The exception, Sylvia tells him, but all the rest … What’s the deal, do they kick you off the team if you hook up with someone different? Can’t a soccer player have an ugly but smart girlfriend? Ariel smiles without stopping his exercise, well, I’m going to be the first. Sylvia threatens to drop a five-pound weight on his crotch.

  Gyms depress me. They’re like torture chambers, she says. In my neighborhood, there’s one that fills up in the afternoon with crazy wannabe boxers who end up in skinhead gangs, kicking the crap out of immigrants. One day I went with a friend of mine and there was a guy in one corner, with his hand stuck in the pocket of his sweatpants jerking off, I swear, while he watched the chicks on stationary bikes.

  Ariel’s cell phone rings and Sylvia hands it to him. She can’t help looking at the name on the screen. Husky. Ariel chides her for her curiosity and answers. What’s up, how are you? Oh yeah? No, I haven’t read it. It says that? Of course, because he’s perfect, he never makes mistakes. What a son of a bitch. And where is this interview? No, no, whatever, I don’t want to read it.

  Sylvia listens to him talk. She smiles at the thought of how soccer has become a priority in her life. She plans her nights out with friends and her studying around the league calendar. Something that no one close to her would have suspected. And she’s up-to-date on all the soccer scene commentary and back-stabbing. My father would be proud, she thinks.

  By the way, I bought an apartment downtown, Ariel tells Husky. What do you mean a soccer player can’t live downtown? And where do we have to live? In the locker room? Go screw yourself. Yeah, sure, I’m crazy, and that’s coming from you, the sanest guy on the planet.

  Who’s Husky? asks Sylvia when Ariel hangs up. He says an interview with my coach came out where he explains how some of the newly signed players aren’t producing the way they hoped, he’s talking about me, of course. What a dick. He never takes responsibility. If I play well, he was right to bring me over, if I play badly, I’m of no use to him. Dragon always told me, never trust stupid-looking people.

  Who’s Dragon? A coach from back home that I had as a kid. And what did Husky say about the apartment? Nothing, that I won’t be able to live downtown because of all the people, the whole autograph thing … His name is Raúl, but everybody calls him Husky. He’s a journalist. And you can be friends with a journalist? Sylvia asks him. Why not? And if one day he has to talk about you? Well, then he’ll talk about me. Yes, insists Sylvia, but if he has to say bad things about you … Well, then he will, I understand … Ah, so you take criticism well, like the comment your coach made, and Sylvia smiles. It’s different, that’s the typical son of a bitch trying to shift the responsibility for his mistakes onto everyone else. There are a lot of those, most of them are like that. They don’t say anything to your face, but then they insinuate in the press like it was nothing. Was I the one who signed an injured French midfielder who hasn’t been able to train with us all year? Or two fucking Brazilians who just sit around scratching their balls?

  Ariel stops exercising. I’m gonna take a shower. Sylvia watches him leave the basement. Maybe he’s mad, she thinks. She knows how tense his work makes him. The good thing about winning on a Sunday is that you know that week the press will leave you alone, he told her one day, they’ll mess with the team that lost. If I were jealous, thinks Sylvia, I would be jealous of his job, of fucking soccer. Sometimes she uses that expression. It’s her way of establishing the rivalry. It’s her and fucking soccer fighting over Ariel’s life. But she is aware that it’s essential to him. I would be nothing without soccer, he had confessed to her. Hey, what would I be without soccer? An uneducated employee, an everyman? I can’t allow myself the luxury of not appreciating what makes me special. And sometimes she sees him lose himself in the game on television, isolate himself from the world, as if he were playing with his eyes. Should we order some dinner? she asks, and he answers, if they’d pull their lines together they’d be harder to attack.

  Other times he gets calls on his cell phone and talks for a long time. Always about the same thing. Fucking soccer. About the play, a rival’s game, what they told him about the Argentinian championship, about someone’s statements, an article criticizing them, a comment made by the president’s wife. Don’t be a baby, he says sometimes when he hangs up and she says, if I knew you were going to spend the evening talking on your cell I would have stayed home.

  Sylvia knows when Ariel needs to withdraw from reality in order to dedicate himself entirely to his work. At those times she feels vertigo. As if she were falling from way up high with nothing to grab on to. Alone, like she is in her relationship with Ariel, hanging in the air, beside the trail he has left in his wake. She feels like the special guest on a distant, gravity-free planet, which she’ll disappear from as soon as Ariel loosens his hold on her, when he no longer takes her fingers between his as he drives.

  Often she finds herself overcome by sadness, her eyes damp. She knows that dependence is love’s worst enemy. But there is little she can do; she can’t settle into Ariel’s life, into her other life, and stop being who she really is. She enjoys when they get out of the car and walk down the street with other people. When they sit in a movie theater and a couple arriving late makes themselves comfortable nearby and when they take refuge in a café and someone comes over to greet Ariel. Then she feels like everybody else.

  The month of February came with fifteen spring days. People sit outside in the Plaza Santa Ana. A few afternoons they lay out in Ariel’s garden, carefully trimmed each week by Luciano, with a view of the branches silhouetted against the sky. They felt like all the other young people.

  Sylvia goes straight from the basement to the garden through the garage door. She sits on the edge of the pool where leaves float on the greenish water. She leans her hands on the grass and lets herself fall backward. She feels how her hair hangs down her back and is rustled by the breeze. She stays there until he finds her. Ariel walks on the grass, his hair wet. He is wearing the sandals she hates and as he approaches they slap with each step. He sits behind her and holds her by the shoulders.

  What are you thinking?

  It takes Sylvia a little while to tell him that she’d like to go out, to meet people, to do something together. Ariel moves his face from one side to the other so that it brushes against her hair. Should I make some pasta and we can watch a movie? he suggests. Sylvia nods. She is cold and he wraps her up in his arms. During the movie, Sylvia falls asleep, overcome by tiredness. She rests her head on the arm of the sofa. Ariel carries her up to his room. He undresses her delicately and she, although smiling, pretends to be asleep. When he takes off her pants and drops them onto the floor, Ariel brings his face to her sex. She picks up one knee and leaves her leg bent like a mountain towering over him.

  They both seem to be more relaxed knowing their time is limited. In less than an hour, they will have to comply with her strict curfew.

  But that night, Ariel’s caresses put Sylvia to sleep. She will wake up disoriented and surprised, with the light of a sunny dawn in that early spring. Ariel will be sleeping beside her, facedown, with one arm tangled in the pillow. Slight noises can be heard from the floor downstairs, some footsteps, a chair scratching along the kitchen floor, a faucet running. Sylvia, panicked, will elbow Ariel hard in the ribs, twice. She is trying to wake him up.
r />   Ari, Ari, it’s daylight. It’s the morning. Fuck. It’s the morning.

  2

  How strange to encounter your reflection all of a sudden and have it be alien to you. Recognize yourself in it, know that it’s you, but at the same time feel like someone else. Leandro had dampened his gray hair to comb it back into place, tight against his skull. Who is it that looks back at him from the mirror? He washes up before leaving for the chalet, where he will once again meet Osembe. Spotless, like a decent old man on his way to Mass or some conference, with a sweater beneath his jacket, because today he’ll skip the coat, it’s so nice out. Often, when he combs his hair in front of the mirror in the chalet, which is so similar to the one at home, Osembe comes over and musses it with a childish naughtiness that somehow feels absurdly normal. As if a moment later they were going to stroll arm in arm down the street, stopping in front of a store window or maybe going into the supermarket to buy some fish for dinner. He looks at his watch. It’s time to go.

  In the last few weeks, Aurora hasn’t been able to get up. She doesn’t trust her strength and, even though several times she’s sat at the edge of the mattress, she hasn’t dared to get out of bed. For her, terra firma no longer exists. Leandro even has a hard time getting her comfortable in the wheelchair. In the mornings, he fills up a large bowl of water and places it on her thighs. Aurora spends a long time washing her face and dampening her hair and neck. Her skin gets easily chapped and she asks for the lotion to moisturize her arms and face. Leandro sometimes does her legs while Aurora lifts her nightgown to reveal her fragile, pale extremities. Leandro, leaning over her, looks at the fabric pulled halfway up her thighs. On other occasions he washes her feet with hot water. While they are still damp, Leandro trims her nails, resting the sole against his thighs. You don’t have to do that, it’s okay, she would say. Benita can do it. No, no, it’s no problem. And Leandro continued, wanting to see his actions as some sort of penance, kneeling before his wife.