“The stage is flat,” I say. “We’ll all finish together. There will be a sprint.”
Shinichi looks disappointed.
“You just need to wait,” I say. “His time will come.”
“Wait?” He laughs now. “You think you only need to wait to have your time?”
I go back to the coach. It is dim, quiet. I sit rubbing Tiger Balm onto my legs, kneading my muscles. Other riders are elsewhere, warming up, going to the bathroom, doing interviews. I look up to see Liz moving down the aisle of the bus, holding B.
I smile. B beats his arms up and down. “Hello,” I say. She shuffles into the seat next to me. She passes me B.
We sit for a time. I enjoy the smell of B’s scalp. He grabs at me with his small sticky hands. We sit in silence. This is a kindness of Liz’s. During her maternity leave, as I trained at home on the turbo trainer, she gave me space. My mornings were my own. I would sit in the little room with only the hum of a flywheel and the click of gears. Some riders listen to music or even watch films while on the trainer, but I need to feel the time. I waited it out in silence, studying the crack in the paintwork above the skirting board, the slight steaming up of the window. I relished the passing of these hours, sensing as they went by that I was accumulating something, gaining some second-order pleasure in my attention to this accumulation. Now, on the bus, I want to perceive the minutes ticking down until the race, to feel myself arrive slowly at the start.
Rafael climbs onto the coach. My heart sinks to see him approaching. “My favorite family!” he says. Liz laughs. “VVIPs!” he says. I resent the way that he can avoid the nerves I suffer. I know that he will feel the result of the race more intensely than I will, but beforehand he is ebullient, happy, patient in a way he is not usually, while I am the opposite. He stands in the aisle.
“You slept okay in that hotel?” he says. “I am sorry. I owe you an apology. That hotel was of poor quality.”
“It was fine,” says Liz. “I’ve stayed in worse places.”
“I cannot believe that,” says Rafael. He grins and gives a little nod. “But it is nice of you to say so. My colleague, the one we call the Butcher, is as you say in the doghouse for this. The one we have booked for you tonight will be better, or he will be in trouble. I will make him sleep outside.”
“I’m not sure that will be necessary,” Liz says. She grins. “But thank you.”
He leans across Liz, touches my shoulder. “You are well?” he says.
“Yes,” I say. “Fine.”
“It is a happy situation,” he says. He laughs. “Your family is here. The stage will be good, I think.”
“Of course.”
“It is raining, but what is raining? Are you a cat?” He looks at me with an intensity that suggests he expects me to answer.
“No,” I say. Liz laughs at that. On my lap, B giggles too.
“Not a cat,” says Rafael. He turns to B. “Your daddy is not a cat.” B is glad to see the funny little man. Rafael widens his mouth in a manic grin, turns his eyes loose. B screeches with delight. I would not have expected Rafael to be good with children, but then he is a man who commits.
* *
In spring, I suffered insomnia. Liz speculated that it might be the drugs or the pressure that surrounds them, but instead I thought of a crash I had suffered in a race the previous year. I was descending through a village when a dog ran out in front of me. I pulled the brakes and turned the bars. I still hit the animal, though only softly, as the sudden deceleration had channeled my momentum up and over it. I came down on the road headfirst and lay there stunned at the edge of the village. A couple of spectators rolled me onto the verge and picked up my bike. My helmet had broken like a melon and drooped behind my head, attached only by the strap running under my chin. The dog was a Labrador and its owner blamed me. He attached it to a short lead and shouted that I should have been able to avoid it. The dog was fine. The man was scared by my condition, I think.
The team car arrived. The doctor, Marc’s predecessor, shone a light into my eyes, holding my chin with his latex-gloved fingers. They checked my bike over and gave me a new front wheel and another helmet. They asked me some questions that I answered. I finished the race. Only later, in the shower, did I feel blood dried into my hair.
In March I had headaches and couldn’t help but wonder whether that fall was the cause. I replayed the moment, again and again, the memory acquiring a definition and a coherence it could not have truly had. I have since thought often of the crash, wondered whether its effects have stayed with me. Probably the symptoms I suffered come from stress or from my new regimen, but there is some attraction in returning again and again to that stuttering image of myself going down on the road, to the drama and the idea that I was changed suddenly and by accident.
The insomnia passed, at least. Davina heard of my sleeplessness through Liz and forced an herbal medicine on me. “You need to restore your natural rhythms,” she said, as if the concept was incontestable. My wife, loyal to her friend and interested in seeing an experiment conducted on me, made sure I took the pills each night. Despite my considerable skepticism, I found them effective.
I had other physical problems, after that, some so embarrassing I could barely tell Liz. My nipples became puffy, swollen, and sore. I rubbed Vaseline on them. I couldn’t bear to wear a woven shirt. I developed blotchy rashes. I only told Liz about the problem when I saw her studying my chest as I emerged from the bathroom.
Liz was sure it was the drugs. She speculated that it was one of the hormones, giving the body the wrong signals. She burrowed deep into Internet forums and the next day she handed me a set of pills. I took them nightly, and after a week the swelling had subsided. Liz told me they were the same pills she used to stop inflammation while breast-feeding. She found this very funny. She entreated me to call Rafael to offer news of this cure in case any other riders on the team were suffering similar difficulties.
* *
Hans the mechanic passes me my bicycle. I mount up and ride out from the gazebo into the rain, ready to get wet and stay so for the next few hours. I have missed seeing Fabrice as I usually would. I feel out of sorts, rushed. Others are already ahead of me on their way to the line. My route to the start passes the bus. Liz stands at the open door. I pedal toward her. “I’m taking him to the hotel,” she says.
“Yes,” I say. I think of all Rafael’s promises about the place.
“We’re on holiday, at least.” She lowers her chin to look at B. “We’re going to have a bath, aren’t we?”
“I’m jealous,” I say.
She looks at me steadily, silently urging me not to rush, to calm myself. “Honestly,” she says. “It’s good to be here. You’re doing well.”
I kiss her. I mount my bike. I roll off, and the spray flung up from my tires is already dampening my shorts. This is me, I think. I built this career, brought us all here. I am happy, for a moment, imagining the hushed, clean room that my wife and son will arrive in.
* *
The start on rainy days is always muted. Fewer people are here to watch. They are in coats, under umbrellas. Groups stand back from the line, in doorways, waiting until the start is imminent. The commentator runs through his introductions. We riders all keep our heads down. Above the start line, flags wrap wetly around their own poles. When the starting horn goes, the fans rouse themselves to shout.
The hiss of our tires shedding water cloaks other sounds. Our plastic coats diminish our sense of others around us. Jackets cover numbers, jersey colors, familiar postures. It is hard to identify others in the peloton. Though cycling is a noncontact sport, one comes to relish smaller, locating feelings: the chittering gears of riders around you, for instance, or the feeling of air moving across your skin.
The topography of the stage is unremarkable. It is flat and fast and we all should end bunched together, sprinting down the high street of a southern coastal town, with Fabrice tucked in the wind shade, saving himself for
the mountains the next day. It is a day to display the prowess of the peloton, to show that it is a machine which, when needed, can eat miles at little cost.
We sit and spin and take in the rain. Spectators huddle under umbrellas. Five riders have broken from the peloton and headed up the road. As usual, they will be caught before the finish. There is a grayness to the sky and a misting across the landscape that make it hard to tell where the flat fields around us end and the sky begins. The route rolls endlessly through agricultural grids. Until one cycles and is forced into them, one forgets about these marginal landscapes, between the city and the truly pastoral countryside. When one cycles, one becomes aware that these areas are what mostly compose the world.
* *
At times I find it odd to be where I am, riding amidst the peloton. I have cause to check my own complacency. Selection for the big races is never a sure thing, after all. The squad is large enough that not all of us start the major events. At the outset of each season we are compelled to renew our claims for inclusion.
The training camp, earlier in the year, was a venue for competition in this respect. Ostensibly we were there to train, to get ourselves up to speed for the season, but we were also being judged. At the end of the week we did tests: physicals with the Butcher, power tests and a timed hill climb.
We sensed that our lifestyles were being monitored. Riders made defensive and offensive moves. Most of us kept to our rooms. Some played tricks. An anonymous rider called the hotel reception impersonating Tsutomo and had three burgers ordered to his room on the team bill. Someone else set a wake-up call for me at two a.m. the day before our biggest ride. Johan, lobbying to have more resources devoted to his sprinting in the coming season, took to oiling his thighs each morning. He would emerge from the hotel into the morning sun, his legs glistening, brown, as shiny as furniture in a stately home, his skin seeming to strain to keep all the muscles in their places.
On the last day of the camp, Fabrice and I went on a ride together. It was not necessary. We had completed all our drills and tests, and others were readying themselves to leave. There was no need to continue to impress Rafael. It was a bright day though, and Fabrice was eager to feel the winter sun. I said that I would ride with him because he appeared to want company and because I felt the need of some time to think, some moments away from the claustrophobia of the hotel. We took little food and not much water, because we would not be out for long. It was a pleasure to be so lightly loaded.
We climbed up out of the rocky, temperate landscape in which the hotel was situated, up toward truer winter. The road ran next to a river, which came down the valley, and was shaded in many places by broad trees. In the shade it was chilly, but the sun was hot on exposed skin. We rode fast to stay warm. Fabrice led most of the way up the climb. He had a spring to his pedaling motion. He whizzed along at a high cadence that seemed to deny all effort.
At the head of the valley, where the river steepened into small falls, the road peeled upward, ascending through the thin tree growth, nosing back and forth up the incline. We could see that above there was snow on the mountains. It was morning and there were still some small bits of ice fringing the slower-moving sections of the river. Fabrice pulled over, raising a hand to warn that he was doing so, out of habit. He had a puncture. “Don’t stop,” he said. “It’s cold.” He had his bike flipped over already, the back wheel nearly prized out of the frame. I had braked but stayed track-standing, balancing on my pedals. “There’s a reservoir by the road, up there,” he said. “I’ll race you to that. You’ll get a minute’s start on me, maybe more.” I released the brakes, lurched off up the road. He had the wheel in his hands. He began to work the tire off with his thumbs.
The training camp had not gone well for me. I had not found my form over the week but felt heavy legged and awkward. We did a timed hill climb at the end of the week to assess our conditioning, and I was well beaten, not just by Fabrice (whom I would have expected to lose to) but by Tsutomo and men I should have easily surpassed, like Sebastian. Johan was not far behind my time. I supposed that I had choked in the hill climb test and never settled into enough of a rhythm. I sweated every stroke. I crossed the line at a crawl. Rafael was still to “process” our numbers over the coming days, and I did not relish the thought of this.
Still, I felt good that morning with Fabrice. I was glad of the chance to push into the incline, to play at Fabrice’s little race. I stood on the pedals. The first switchbacks came and went easily. I felt better than I had all week. I had found my pace and felt that I could keep it. I stood, built a speed, rocked the bike beneath me. I did not feel that I could go any faster, that anyone could. A sign by the road declared that the reservoir was two kilometers away. The road crossed a bridge, then steepened. I pressed into the hill, stood, and pumped my legs to keep pace. I heard the sound of a gear change behind me. I looked back down the road and saw Fabrice on the bridge. When he hit the point that the road pitched up, he did not appear to slow. He came toward me surely, his eyes on me, his shoulders level. He came past me, and I tried to stay on his rear wheel. I was leaning forward over the handlebars, collapsing onto my bike, while he hovered, just touching the nose of his saddle, his legs spinning fluidly. His hands, with their thin fingers, were draped over the bars, as relaxed as those of someone resting on the armrests of a chair. The calmness of it all astounded me. We went past the reservoir and kept going. I struggled to stay in his slipstream.
We rode for five more kilometers until I eventually cracked. I dropped gears and sat back in the saddle. Fabrice carried on for fifty meters up the road and then turned and rode toward me. There was a lay-by next to us, and we freewheeled into that and set our bikes down. It was a sun trap, improbably warm.
I was spent. I clambered off my bike and doubled over. My lungs were torn up by the effort and the cold air. Fabrice stood, taking in the view. I laughed between breaths.
“What?” he said.
“You’re a beast,” I said. “You’re a monster.”
“What?”
“Riding like that after a week of training camp.”
“Oh.”
I took a moment to get hold of myself again. I walked over to my bike. I retrieved my water bottle. I went to stand next to Fabrice. We could see down the valley: the trees, the river, the rocks, flashes of the road we had ascended, in the distance the hotel. A car came down the road, rattling: a Fiat Panda, a farmer’s car. “How do you do it?” I said.
“I love it,” he said. “I love all of it.”
I could see the reservoir below: a chunk of turquoise, clouds reflected across it. “I love the sound of a freewheel,” I said. “I like the smell of the grease.”
“That’s not it,” he said.
“I like feeling strong in a race,” I said. “The sense that you have more strength than the others.”
“No,” he said. “That’s not it. The thing in itself.”
“The thing in itself?”
“The riding.”
“You love the riding?” I said. “Every minute of it? All of it?”
“There is only all of it,” he said.
“I’m good at it,” I said. “I like parts of it.”
“I love all of it,” he said.
The Fiat had left a tinge of gasoline in the air. I coughed and spat.
“Love it and it will love you back,” said Fabrice. He inhaled as if preparing to say more but then did not.
* *
As we approach the town in which we will finish, the roads widen. The route coils, rising on concrete bridges, plunging down underpasses.
Here we finally catch the group of riders who broke away earlier in the day. The pace begins to increase, building toward a sprint finish.
Our team must again usher Fabrice forward, not seeking victory for him but trying to get him across the line in the first group so he loses no more time. Keen to avoid repeating previous mistakes, we begin to move him toward the front of the group. Johan, as u
sual, is lost to us in the hunt for another win. We form into a line as a team and Tsutomo leads, incrementally forcing himself into the personal space of the riders around him, worrying out a gap for the next of us to inhabit and pull Fabrice into.
As we get closer to the center of town, the roads narrow again. The turns become tighter. Warnings are shouted out amidst the peloton.
The town is incomparably noisier than the countryside. The crowds are thick here, and cries are contained by the tight layout of streets and buildings. We pass up a boulevard where baskets of flowers hang from streetlights. The regular transit of their bright colors through my peripheral vision marks our pace.
We cannot be picky about where our wheels land. Our trajectories are decided by the group at large. I crash through potholes and puddles, thump across drains and traffic markings.
I ride just ahead of Fabrice. I turn to check that he is on my back wheel. We pass under the five-kilometers-to-go banner and the pace jumps. The rain and wind are now coming from behind us. I think that I hear the sound of a ship’s horn from the town’s harbor.
“On your left!” goes up the shout, and we lean together, swinging suddenly left. We pedal through the corners here, maintaining our pace, leaving no gaps. The peloton accelerates again, up the straight, though the rain, and wind now cuts into us from our left side. “On your right!” comes the call. I pass it on myself. I hear Fabrice do the same. The riders in front of us dip away as they lean sharply into the turn. We lean ourselves, training our eyes on the exit. Then the rhythm is broken. I see a rider thrown out of the smooth movement of his colleagues ahead of me. Amongst the procession of bent backs there rises, for the briefest moment, the rear wheel of a bike, a flailing arm. Another couple of riders pitch forward in his wake.
A crash at this speed is like a bomb going off. All our momentum meets this tangle of bikes and bodies, going into or over it. I can steer neither right nor left because of the crush. I brake, take a quick breath. My front wheel hits something and twists sideways, as if snatched. I am flying over my handlebars, my feet still snagged in the pedal clips, dragging the bicycle behind me. I raise my arms reflexively. I fall toward a writhing mass of flesh and metal. Our bicycles have gone immediately from our mode of travel to sharp objects with potential to do us harm. I hit bikes and bodies and my hip contacts the wet tarmac. Metal and plastic scrape against the road surface. My feet release from my bike. An object flies over me. A wheel strikes my shoulder. Someone’s trailing leg hits me. I am conscious of the smells of the wet asphalt and the oil of the road. I hear brakes screeching, people swearing. A final rider barrels into our prone group with a damp thump.
We Begin Our Ascent Page 14