We Begin Our Ascent

by Joe Mungo Reed

  There are times in a race of this profile when it feels we riders are lost within all the peripheral activity, like a rich man diminished by his large house. Tsutomo wheels toward the other members of our team, giving quiet warnings to riders as he negotiates his way past them. It is the race, of course, that takes us back to ourselves: the lurch of adrenaline as the starting klaxon goes, the return to our objectives, the need to hold the pace.

  * *

  Liz and I conceived B in the first winter of our marriage. It seemed both logical and slightly mad to have a child. On the one hand was the desire we both had to add something new to our life, to advance together. On the other was work. “It’s not normal so early in a postdoc to take maternity leave,” said Liz. I would be racing throughout each spring and summer.

  There was something about the assumption that parenthood should threaten our ambitions, however, that we were eager to disprove. The idea that now was not the time seemed to contain an implicit assumption that at some future date our lives would be halted by parenthood. Even to put things off was to buy into this. Our relationship was forged on pushing on, on noticing our own drive in the other, and so there was something fortifying in facing down this thing that people said would take us from our work.

  He was a baby we would love, of course, a result of our love for each other, but the choice of having him when we did was determined also by a private assurance, shared only between Liz and me.

  We went to a café and watched a couple twitching with anxiety as their toddler played quietly in the corner, and in a strange way this made the prospect seem easier because neither of us could imagine our way to being that kind of parent. Who were these people, so obsessed, so hollowed out by their offspring? Who acted as if the most enduring of human practices was the most impossible?

  Everyone is an exceptionalist in relation to their marriage, and yet I felt we were remarkably diligent, capable, and tough. We moved toward the decision by contrasting ourselves against the wider world. In separating our partnership from others, we felt more certain of its solidity. We were stepping ourselves apart in myth, as countries build a nationality from the threats and deficiencies of their neighbors.

  That February when B was conceived, I was sleeping in an altitude tent: an airtight little chamber that through the grumbling operation of a small machine mimicked the oxygen-reduced environment of a mountain top. The tent was set out beside the bed, a single mattress inside it. I would zip myself inside each night and sleep a fitful sleep of odd dreams in my little pocket of depleted air. Liz and I would have sex, and then I would get up and leave the bed, tucking down the duvet again and padding over the carpet toward the tent, where I bedded down on the small mattress, closing the door behind me.

  I had to race that summer through Liz’s pregnancy. The crimped time we had together at home was intense. We listened to the stories and the tips of friends who already had children, and afterward sat up in bed critiquing their accounts and the actions they had described. We prepared what was to be B’s room. We sat on the sofa and leafed through catalogs and baby books. The coffee table in the living room became a heap of paper, just as Liz’s desk had once been. The writing on this paper was so banal, though this banality seemed a challenge. Like a bank statement or a vehicle manual, the import of the parenting literature inhered in its impenetrability. We learned much that was petty and pointless, yet who could know whether we were still missing some crucial thing? There was a sort of ecstasy in giving in to it all.

  * *

  Once we have left the town, the weather begins to close in. It is a gray, windy day, piled cloud tumbling across the sky above us. It is the kind of day that makes sense of the complexions of veteran riders, that skin rippled and creased like bark. We huddle into our bikes, we turn our faces from the gusts, barely looking where we are going. We grumble and pray that the hours will just pass.

  We move through a village, the buildings offering moments of shade from the wind that cuts in from the right. We round a fountain, the plume of which is blown into a mist. We leave the town again and speed through fields, a slightly sweet hint of manure in the air, copses of trees swaying around farmhouses.

  Rafael is active on the radio. “These are the days where you earn your money,” he says. “These are the days where we learn who you really are.”

  * *

  Last autumn I went to a race weeks before B’s arrival. I was eager to be done with the season, to be fully attentive to Liz. The race was important for the finances of the team, however, and a place where I could push my case for inclusion in major events over the following year. Rafael was already planning the next season. I arrived to the hotel in which we were staying to find that he had improvised an office in the basement. He had already, apparently, renegotiated sponsorship with a sports drink company and cut two riders from the roster. The office had been nicknamed “the Führer bunker.”

  The evening after the race, which had gone well, he called me to a meeting down there. I descended the rickety stairs with trepidation. He’d set out four chairs, a laptop, and a foldout table. Behind him was the Hotel Alpina laundry cart, situated under the laundry chute. The basement was illuminated unforgivingly with strip lighting. I took a seat facing him.

  “Let’s say,” Rafael began, “that you’re in a small village and you’re chasing a girl.” The only reminder of the day continuing above was the periodic dropping of linen, as vacated rooms were prepared for new guests. “This village we are imagining is small,” he said. “There’s not much for the other boys to do. You’re going to have some competition.” Pillowcases fluttered out of the chute like downed birds.

  “What do women like?” Rafael said. This is not the kind of question directeurs sportifs usually ask their riders.

  “Um,” I said. Rafael looked at me very intently, raising his heavy eyebrows. “Some people date on the Internet now,” I said, “if their job makes it hard to meet women.”

  “I’m not asking for dating tips,” he said. “This is a metaphor, you bag of shit.”

  “Right.”

  “And if I were looking for dating tips, I wouldn’t ask you.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  He squeezed water into his mouth from a team bottle. “You almost fucked my metaphor.”

  “I’m in a village, chasing a girl,” I said. “I’m following.”

  “You are a married man, of course.”

  “In the metaphor?”

  “In real life.”

  “Yes,” I said. “My wife’s about to have our first child.”

  “You never told me.”

  “I didn’t think that sort of thing interested you.”

  “What do you mean, ‘that sort of thing’?”

  “Our families.”

  “Of course I’m fucking interested.” I expected him to explain this assertion, but he said no more.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “What were you saying about the village?”

  “What do women like about men?” he said. “What does your wife like about you?”

  “Conversation?” I said. He shook his head. “Commitment? Empathy?” He kept shaking. “Jokes? Cooking?”

  “Okay, okay, okay,” he said. “Perhaps all of those things a little bit, but what they like a lot is height. Of all the James Bonds only the new one, Daniel Craig, has been under six foot. And what is Daniel Craig?” He mimed flicking something off the table. “A little goblin.”

  “I like Casino Royale,” I said.

  “Of all the Bonds, only Roger Moore has the true British style.” Rafael wrinkled his nose. There was a rattling from the laundry chute and a ball of towels shot out. “Women like height. So in the chase for this, how you say, ‘hypothetical’ girl in our village, height is important.”

  “Okay,” I said, “I can see that.”

  “And it is man’s nature to maximize every advantage.”

  “I don’t see,” I said, “how you could maximize your height.”

>   “Not many people know this,” said Rafael, leaning forward conspiratorially, “but I am only one hundred and fifty centimeters tall.” He placed a shoe on the table with a thunk. It looked like a bowling shoe with a bath sponge glued to the bottom. “A built-up shoe,” he said. “Nearly undetectable.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “Now, imagine every man in the village goes and buys a pair of built-up shoes. Every man apart from you.”

  “Okay.”

  “A big problem, no? All of you—the men in this village—have natural charms, but your own are being obscured by something unnatural.” He prodded the thick sole of the shoe. “By this rubber shit.”

  “I can imagine,” I said eventually.

  “Is this a problem for the other men? No! They all have built-up shoes. They are differentiated by other things. It is, how you say, zero sum. But for you, it is a problem. This girl is deceived in her view of you. What do you do?”

  “Buy her flowers?”

  Rafael banged his shoe on the table. “Don’t fuck me around!” he said. “You go and buy some built-up shoes!”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “You go and buy some shoes and you put them on and then you can try and impress this woman with your funny jokes or your gourmet cooking or your magic tricks or whatever you think is so fucking impressive about you!” He banged the shoe on the table again. “Everyone is happy! Everything is back to normal! The end!”

  “I’m not sure I quite understand,” I said.

  “It’s a metaphor,” he said, “and I haven’t told you what it’s a metaphor for yet.”

  “Is it a metaphor for something to do with cycling?” I said.

  “Of course.” He raised his bottle again and sprayed water down his throat. A little liquid dripped from his chin, spotting into the table. “Suppose I told you some people were using”—Rafael made air quotes—“ ‘built-up shoes’ in cycle races.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Suppose some people were enhancing their natural talents in a way which obscured yours. Would you be happy? Would you feel it was fair that they were making you look like a weak little Daniel Craig?” Rafael pointed at me with every you, as if tapping on an invisible window.

  “No,” I said. “They’d be cheating.” Confronted with Rafael’s intense, small-man self-possession I sometimes feel like a lumbering giant, overwhelmed, unable to swat him off. I don’t know quite how to face him, where, as it were, to put my legs and my arms.

  Rafael leaned toward me, shaking his head. “But what if it was the kind of cheating which nobody cared about stopping?” He stroked the toe of the shoe. “What if it was a harmless kind of cheating, a sort of open secret?”

  “But if everyone thinks like that . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “If no one tries to change . . .”

  Rafael hissed out a breath. “How many races have you won?” he asked. “How many stages?”

  “I won a stage of the Tour of Colombia.”

  “Have you won a stage of the Tour? Of the Giro? Of the Vuelta? One of the classics? When you ride, are the fans shouting your name? Do you see your name written on the road? Who, my friend, is going to listen to you if you start talking about built-up shoes? Who is going to listen to me, even? I’d love to say something too, but I am just a nobody. People will just say, ‘Oh, Rafael is old and bitter.’ No one, my friend, wants to hear us talk about built-up shoes. They are being used and talking will not do anything to stop it. Do you want people to disregard your natural talents, your training, your excellent bicycle-handling skills?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Then, as you British say, as Roger Moore might say, ‘If you can’t beat them, join them.’ I have a totally safe kind of built-up shoe, the very kind that all these less-scrupulous cycling teams are using. Do you understand me?” He raised a thick eyebrow.

  “It’s becoming clearer,” I said.

  “Well,” he said, “suppose a doctor visited you and he offered you this totally safe built-up shoe. Keeping in your mind that we have reached this conclusion—that there is no way to get around the fact that all of the opposition are also using built-up shoes. Could you offer any objections?”

  “It’s undetectable?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “What if it is not always?”

  “That is a worry for later.”

  “You don’t care about that?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I think you misunderstand. The trophy presentation happens on the day of the race. You were born now. You are racing now. Maybe you hope the others will be disqualified in many years’ time. Perhaps you want to win in the small print, be a little asterisk, but I thought you might actually want to cross the line first, hear the cheering of the fans.” He stopped. He looked at me, a steady stare. “You have done the training already, and now this is one last push. You would get the full benefits of your many natural talents and we would all win a lot more races. Then perhaps one day, as a man of such excellent moral judgment, you would have acquired the necessary stature to speak and be listened to on the subject of built-up shoes and they’d be banned forever and we would have you to thank.” He pointed directly at me and smiled, as if paying me credit. “And, by the way, if you didn’t want to do things this way, I must say, it would hurt the team. Your talents would be obscured. We wouldn’t want that, would we?”

  “Of course not,” I said quickly. I was taken aback by his sudden severity. He still seemed to want more of me. “Not in the least,” I said.

  “This team doesn’t have room for anyone who isn’t prepared to make full use of their talents, just to be clear.”

  “Right.”

  “Does that sound good? No? We will discuss the specifics: some painless injections, drops of a substance taken orally during stage races, and the collection of a couple of liters of your blood sometime in spring. Okay?” He took the shoe from the table and put it back on. He rose and proffered a hand. “You can go now.” I shook and then moved toward the stairs. A series of duvet covers began to billow down into the laundry cart. He scuffed his foot more securely into his shoe. “Congratulations too,” he said.

  “Sorry?” I said.

  “On the child,” he said.

  * *

  As we near the finish now, the pace of the peloton rises. There is a strong crosswind cutting into our faces. The various national flags held by spectators are pulled taut. We shield Fabrice and, as a team, seek the shelter of the middle of the group.

  In a crosswind the power of the peloton is even more pronounced. Riders take short turns at the front of the group, dipping back into wind shade afterward to recover. Those at the front span across the road in an echelon formation, one rider furthest up the road and others shaded on a diagonal. This formation recharges itself with a painstaking switching of positions. Pressed so close and traveling so fast, riders move cautiously, call out warnings, dab brake levers, and swear emphatically.

  The sprinters’ teams are driving at the front, seeking to pull their men into the best position in advance of the finish line. A few of the other teams have sent their leaders up through the group too, trying to keep them safe by minimizing the number of riders ahead of them and thus the possibility of being taken out by a crash in front. Johan has already moved forward with the other sprinters. We should probably be dragging Fabrice up, but the road is clogged and the impetus escapes us. If Fabrice wants to go to the head of the group, he will tell us, I think. If it were so important, Rafael would be shouting it into our ears.

  The road bends right, then left, then right again. The peloton flexes, quicksilver through these turns. Then there is a slight rise, and we are touching our brake levers to account for the slowing of the leading riders on this ascent. The riders at the front pick up speed again as they make the crest. This acceleration, though, comes like a jerk on a rope. The group ceases compressing, begins to stretch again. Each rider takes an instant to recognize the nee
d to go faster. Suddenly there is more space between riders than ever. The wind cuts into the middle of the pack.

  Some riders ahead of us stand on their pedals and sprint to keep up with those ahead of them. The road is congested though, and much of the group has been caught off guard. The riders at the front of the peloton, sensing the opportunity, are pushing their advantage. The group, we realize too late, is tearing. Around our team, people call out in frustration, urging those directly ahead of them to push on. Yet the riders on the point of the tear are surprised. They block our way. The front bunch churns ahead—five meters, then ten, then fifteen—taking its wind shade with it.

  It is an emergent thing: some tiny glitch in the behavior of the group. And yet this small discrepancy has unloosed Fabrice’s competitors, who advance into the distance. Their gain is still less than a hundred meters, but those are meters which are almost impossible to ride across alone. The feat would require effort beyond that made by the riders ahead, who so efficiently swap their places. The riders at the head of our new group are unready to push into the wind, unorganized. Fabrice could lose time on his rivals for no good reason, for no lack of effort or conditioning on his own part. We must organize our own group into some semblance of an efficient machine, work together to pull back the group ahead.

  Rafael comes on the radio now. He offers only a crackly scream of rage.

  He is understood. We ride to the front, leer into the wind, call to other teams to assist us. We try to pull Fabrice back across the gap. Recovering from an effort at the front, I find myself pressed in the pack next to him. His face is set. I pass him my bottle, which he takes and squeezes over his head. He pauses, frowns. “Sugar drink?” he says. “Not water?”

  “Drink,” I say. “Sorry.”

  He wipes at his face irately then, as if attempting to shake the stickiness off him, convulses his head and neck muscles, a vaguely equine gesture, graceful in the midst of all the chaos.

  Our rump peloton does not make good time. The group ahead, populated by the more motivated riders—the sprinters still hunting for a win, the other team leaders looking to make time—stretches its lead. We are surrounded by riders simply seeking to make it through the stage: climbers saving themselves for the mountains and domestiques who have already performed their water-carrying duties. Some of these riders take turns at the front but our pace is forever dropping off, requiring one of our team to return to the front to try and pull it back up. Fabrice sits pedaling sullenly.