by David Trueba
Was it a sect? A delusion? Was Amílcar involved in this? He obviously was. He had left him alone with her for the recruitment ceremony. He stood up with the book under his arm. He could have cried or laughed right then. She spoke again; her face was lovely, not tense in the least. Don’t be ashamed, we’ve all come from places that would shock you, you are no worse than I am. The man who came up the stairs a moment ago was just a normal man, perhaps the one who goes down them now is a better one.
Ariel nodded his head and backed out of the room. Before he closed the door, she folded her legs and Ariel could catch a glimpse of her tanned, attractive inner thigh through the slit in her dress.
When Amílcar arrived, he was sitting on the sofa leafing through the book. He had asked the maid for two more coffees and was about to start climbing the walls from caffeine. They didn’t talk about the book. Was Amílcar some weird athlete of God or like that Chilean center halfback in San Lorenzo who recommended a psycho-wizard to his teammates, one who read your future in your asshole? The same one who told a player who was losing his hair from the stress of the competition to rub his own feces on his head, which didn’t bring any results? He and Amílcar smiled, each for a different reason. They joked a minute with the kids and then Ariel called a taxi. He had a date with Sylvia at the café. He uses the waiting time to look at the DVDs they rent on the lower floor. He knows he won’t break up with her in spite of his efforts to distance himself. Outside everything is strange. He is so lonely without her. Why is it always like that?
17
Sylvia sensed his need to talk and she let him get things off his chest. So Ariel abandoned his usual hermeticism. Beneath his hair and behind his light eyes, he kept his thoughts locked in a safe. Would you come to Buenos Aires with me? Would you come with me?
What would I do there? Ariel lent her some thick wool socks. She has her feet up on the sofa.
On Friday she brought a backpack with some clothes. Three pairs of panties. Sportswear from Ariel. Every week he gets huge bags from the brand he endorses. They spent the weekend holed up at his house. Another fake trip with Mai, but her father didn’t give her a hard time about it. She seemed happy. For Sylvia it was a pleasure to wile away the evening together, wake up beside each other. When Ariel went out to buy the newspapers, Sylvia feared the worst. He had gotten a call from his friend Husky a little while earlier.
One of the sports papers had written a harsh, relentless article about him. It listed his failures, his inability to adapt, his lack of commitment, and the inopportune injury that had left him, to top it all off, out of commission for the three decisive games of the season. The harshness was unusual. Too young to lead a team that needs wins. The end was enlightening: “The president would do good in finding him a team where he could get toughened up, and find a substitute who’s not a potential but a reality. It’s always better if the promising player is still promising in a couple of years, instead of just adding to the long list of failures.” It seemed to already be fated. Ariel threw the newspaper down.
Barely a minute later, Sylvia heard the murmur of Husky’s voice on the telephone trying to calm him down. Come on, that guy is on the club payroll, he’s just another employee. They call it journalism but it’s just a branch office. Ariel told Husky about his conversation with the sports director. Sylvia heard the story for the first time, even though it was being explained to a third party. Seeing her interest in the conversation, Ariel put it on speakerphone, and she listened to Husky say, they showed you their sophisticated working style, but they could also show their other face and throw you into the river with cement shoes.
Look, last year the president forced a sports newspaper to change both journalists who covered the team. In exchange he made sure to filter them the signings, the important news, before any other media outlet, what do you think, that the journalists aren’t part of the game? Husky let out a sardonic laugh. Here everybody has to sell what they have. They need each other, fuck, I can’t believe I have to explain this business to you.
Ariel tossed and turned in the armchair. Sylvia tried to calm him down after he hung up. He confessed all his frustrations about the team to her. That evening Sylvia heard him talking to his brother in Buenos Aires and noticed Charlie was able to pacify him. In their conversation, his original accent came back, the old expressions that little by little he had set aside because they were strange to Spaniards. He read paragraphs of the article and Ariel seemed to take pleasure in the things written against him, as if it were some sort of masochistic exercise.
The day before, he had run into the sports director again during practice and they had talked about some French team’s interest in him. Monaco is a perfect place, don’t you think? Pujalte said. Ariel had then showed his defiant side. I want to stay and I’m going to fight to stay. It seemed obvious that the article was an emphatic response to Ariel. The fight is going to be unevenly matched, get ready. A message aimed straight at his jugular.
Sylvia didn’t really understand the sports reasons or the contractual difficulties. She was only thinking about one thing. If Ariel left the city, it would surely mean the end of their relationship. However, he denied that possibility. When she heard him talk, reflect on the problem out loud, Sylvia wanted to ask him, and what about me? What’s going to happen with me?
Sylvia heard him say things to his brother in Buenos Aires like, the money is the least of it, it’s a question of dignity. When he tamed his rage after talking with friends and his agent, Ariel lay down on the sofa, beside her. He seemed like a different person. Talking calmed him down, he lost the tone in his voice he’d had during the calls, like a caged beast. He now used a more broken, fragile tone, which was tender and made Sylvia feel useful, closer.
Now she listens with a pillow hugged tight against her belly. He says, I’m no good, I wasn’t good enough, I can get as mad as I want, but that’s not going to cover up the truth. No one will come out to defend me because I haven’t done anything outstanding, they always have to find a guilty party, everybody was expecting something from me that I wasn’t able to give them. This is a game, if you play it well, you give the orders; if not, then they have control of the situation. It happens all the time, there are players with promise, but things don’t go right, and five years later they’re a pathetic shadow on third-tier teams and you ask yourself, wasn’t that guy going to be the new Maradona? And you feel sorry for him, or you don’t even care. Well, now I’m gonna turn into someone like that. Sylvia is afraid to interrupt and say something well-intentioned but stupid, so she just looks at him with enormous eyes and tries to understand him.
Which is why she is so surprised when he changes his tone and asks, would you come to Buenos Aires with me? She doesn’t answer right away. She doubts he has stopped to think, for even a second, about how all this affects her. Sylvia sees herself as the companion to a soccer player, the partner with the suitcases always packed. She looks at her backpack with the changes of underwear placed at the foot of the coffee table. The two distant, foreign, incompatible worlds come back to her, but she doesn’t say anything, she knows it’s not the right moment. It’s time to console him, it’s selfish for her to think of herself. They are talking about his career, his profession, not his feelings. That’s why all she says is, and what would I do there?
Damn people. I’m not leaving here, I’m not leaving you. Sylvia knows he isn’t thinking about what he’s saying. In a little while, his team’s game will start on television. They sit down to watch. Sylvia hopes they lose by a scandalous margin. That they make fools of themselves, that the fickle, cruel public will miss the injured player. Don’t say that, we have to win, he says to her, this game is really important. Sylvia now thinks their relationship may end with the season, that he’ll vanish and she’ll go back to being the same gray high school student she was before she met him. She feels a fear she can’t wipe away.
As soon as I’m playing again, I’m going to bring them to their knees.
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br /> 18
Wait, lie down here, feel the music. Leandro takes Osembe’s hand. He helps her climb up on the piano. The pink sole of her foot produces a dissonant chord as it steps on the keys. Her body lies on the shiny black wood of the piano. She is naked, except for her bra, which once again she has insisted on keeping on. She gathers her legs in a protective gesture, managing to make herself comfortable as she smiles. Leandro sits in front of the piano and starts by playing a slow improvisation. The resonance is magnificent. Osembe rests her head and looks at the ceiling. The light comes from a distant lamp and from the large window where the streetlights’ glow sneaks in. But Leandro doesn’t need light to play. Without consciously choosing it, he is playing a Debussy prelude, leaving out many notes along the way. She closes her eyes and he slows down the rhythm of the music.
The moment gradually loses the ostentatiousness of the staging. They forget about the clothes piled up any which way on the nearby sofa, about the sneakers overturned on the rug and the tiny white socks that stick out of them. The music covers it all. Osembe’s thigh is just a few inches from Leandro’s eyes. He doesn’t know if the vibration of the music goes through Osembe’s spine and manages to affect her, but he is suddenly surprised to notice his eyes filled with tears. The piece had always moved him.
He suddenly knows that he will carry out with Osembe all that life didn’t let him have with Aurora, when they were both splendid young bodies, filled with desire, wanting to take the world by storm. How absurd. Who is to blame? Is there even a guilty party? In his old age, he gives this private fantasy to someone who isn’t able or interested in appreciating it. A scene reserved for the woman of his life, but played by a substitute who charges to carry out a role she doesn’t understand.
Play something, I can hear you from here, Aurora still asks him some nights before sleeping. And he carefully chooses those pieces that he knows she’ll recognize and enjoy. He remembers the not so distant occasion when she told him, when I hear you play the piano and I’m doing something else, in some other part of the house, I think that’s the closest to happiness I’ve ever known. For years it had been hard for him to come home from the academy and sit at the piano, he associated it with work, and only during his private lessons with students was it heard in the house. The masseuse who comes some mornings says, play for her, you have that touch, I’m sure it’ll help her. Aurora’s pains seem to have spread and in the last few days Leandro has seen her stifling a wince when she changes position and closing her eyes as if she were suffering horrible whiplash. When he cleans the excrement from her backside with the sponge and bucket of warm water, he does it delicately, because the slightest brusqueness makes her cry in pain.
On the last visit to the hospital, the only thing the doctor dared to prescribe was rest. If the pain is unbearable, we’ll admit her, but while she can be at home, she’ll be more comfortable. You know how hospitals are. I prefer to die at home, Aurora had said to Leandro as they left, with a terrifying calmness.
It had snowed that week in Madrid, hiding spring’s proximity. Many trees that had flowered in the previous sunny days received the snowstorm with surprise. Leandro told his son, I wish we lived in a building with an elevator, at least that way I could take her out for a walk every day. But sitting was very painful for Aurora; she prefered to lie in bed. Sometimes she watched the television in her room and Leandro sat by her side, to keep her company, and she said, less television and more looking at the trees is what I need.
Friday I’m going out for dinner, can you sit in for me? Lorenzo was about to answer, but Sylvia beat him to it, offering to sleep over with her grandmother. Leandro explained that he was collaborating with Joaquín’s biographer. You don’t know how hard it is to remember such an awful period. At that point, he had already arranged a date with Osembe in Joaquín’s apartment …
How many hours? The whole night. That’s a lot of money, she warned him over the phone. No problem. Two thousand euros. You’re crazy, I’ll give you what I always do for every hour, that’s it. Okay, honey, but no funny stuff, just you and me alone.
They were alone. Leandro stops playing and stands up. He brings his lips to her body and runs them along the rough skin of her thighs. She puts her hand on his head and musses his hair. You’re an artist. Leandro realizes he has never given her pleasure, just those overacted orgasms she fakes to excite him. She has never let herself go. Leandro places his mouth between her thighs, but Osembe stops him immediately. No, no, I suck, I suck. Take off all your clothes. Leandro insists. He brings his hand to her shaved, sandpapery pubic hair. She fakes a few seconds of uncontrollable pleasure, making a somewhat grotesque spectacle before sitting on the piano top. She steps on the keys again and amuses herself with the dissonant sounds she makes. She unbuttons Leandro’s shirt with a white smile.
She gets down from the piano and leads Leandro through the apartment by the hand. It’s beautiful, is this where you live? No, no, I only practice here. A lot of money. She stops to point to an abstract painting. How ugly, eh? she says. She pushes open the door of the bedroom and discovers the large double bed. Osembe walks to the closet and opens it. She brushes her fingers along the elegant women’s clothes, the two or three suits hanging in their designer bags. There is a bathroom opposite the bedroom door. There are barely any traces of life; everything is precisely ordered.
Osembe goes naked through the entire house. He leaves his pants there, on the floor. So you’re a millionaire pianist … Well, I give concerts around the world. You must know women much more beautiful than me. Leandro smiles and shakes his head. He hugs Osembe and tries to kiss her on the mouth. It had been a while since she stopped avoiding his kisses. But she reciprocates in a very contained way, the way she does almost everything with him. Leandro sometimes has the feeling he’s kissing a damp object.
She unmakes the bed that he would have preferred to leave out of their games. But he doesn’t say anything. They’ve opened a bottle of champagne from the fridge. I’m going to get my bag, she says, and leaves the room. As always, the wait drags on. Leandro lies on the bed, relaxed. He knows they won’t be there all night, because in a couple of hours he’ll want to be alone, he’ll feel guilty and dirty again.
Leandro thinks he hears Osembe talking on the phone. Shortly after, she comes into the room again. She carries a condom in one hand and a small plastic bag hanging from her forearm. The image, together with her nakedness and her bra, is pleasing to Leandro’s eyes. He likes when everything isn’t just a calculated, professional erotic experience. Deep down, he thinks, what he’d like to do is just sit down and read the newspaper and have Osembe watch TV, or just have dinner, one in front of the other.
You’ve got the money, right? Of course, he replies. Leandro runs his fingers over her hair, styled hard. You like it? I like it better when you wear it without so much stuff, it’s like a rock. She laughs. You’re so fickle.
Osembe’s movements are as unbelievable as ever. Her routine is half gymnastic and half erotic. Leandro lets her do it. Today he gets easily excited. The space helps. He tries to free her breasts with his hand and finally Osembe allows it. He manages to get her bra off over her head. He never could open the clasp, because of his arthritic hands. She tries to jerk him off but Leandro orders her to stop, there’s no hurry. Sure, you’re the one paying, honey.
Leandro is asking her for something impossible. For her it must seem sad, pathetic, this romantic and perverse staging I’ve set up. Why do I do all this? Leandro enjoys the mere play of his skin against hers, touching the hardness of her muscles, feeling how her abundant sweat soaks him, sometimes even managing to get rid of the smell of cheap cologne. He knows this will be his farewell to Osembe. There will be no more nights after the fantasy of owning this apartment, owning these picture windows, this woman’s body, this mirage of eternal life. He drinks from his glass and spills a bit of liquid on Osembe’s shoulder, which he immediately licks off. She smiles.
He hadn’t e
ven wanted to think about or calculate how much money he had squandered in this inexplicable torrent. The last time he checked a bank statement, the bite out of his loan was considerable, so much so that he tore the paper in pieces as if he could refuse to be aware of it. Every time he pays the masseuse or the cleaning lady or buys medicines at the pharmacy, he feels relief that the money also slips out through other, nobler, outlets.
His erection has disappeared and Osembe seems to have grown tired of her mechanical movements. She gets a message on her cell phone. She gets up for a minute to make a call. Leandro likes to watch her walk. She’s picked up her bra off the floor and is heading toward the living room. He imagines her spending her free time glued to her cell phone, which she keeps in a colorful cover. It’s almost like her pet.
Leandro follows her to the living room a moment later. He is naked and he sits at the piano. It bothers him to notice his flaccid arms as he lifts his hands to the keys. When she hangs up the phone, she touches him on the shoulder. Do you wanna fuck or not? Leandro smiles. She sits on the keyboard and interrupts his music. Leandro strokes her thighs. Are you going to stay in Spain forever? She shakes her head no, I’m going back and I’m going to start my own business, I’ll have my own house. And I’ll find a man who loves me and works. You like your country better than this one? Osembe nods without hesitation. But there democracy is bad, all the politicians are thieves. It would be better to have soldiers, a strong hand, people could be safe.
Leandro smiles at the unexpected analysis of Nigerian politics, at her almost completely naked, with her muscular rear end resting on the keys, speaking in defense of military dictatorships. In what other moment in history could someone like you and someone like me have met? Does it seem like a miracle to you? Leandro felt like talking. He didn’t really mind showing his nakedness in front of her. Where would you have met an old man like me? A dirty old man, she says. Someone must have taught her the expression.