* *
To first know Liz, in those early weeks after we had met, was to think of space in a different way. We would arrange to meet, and I would head out on my bike to train. Yet all the while I would wonder where she was, what she was doing. I would be out riding and a storm would come in, and I would wonder whether the rain had reached her down in the city. She would tell me she was going to visit her mother, and my attention would be on those roads up into East Anglia. I think of those signs one finds at landmarks that state, through fanned-out arrows, how far it is to major cities. I felt myself to be attuned to where Liz was, like such a signpost pointing to only one other location.
When B arrived, suddenly there was another point in my conception of space. Three of us: enough, any mathematician will tell you, for one to locate oneself with knowledge of one’s distance from the other two.
* *
Fabrice comes over to where I sit. He smells of sunscreen. He smiles a smile he did not have in him yesterday. “How are you?” he says.
“Fine,” I say.
“Good for you,” he says. He wants something. He moves the right arm, the one attached to his damaged shoulder. He’d like me to ask about this surprising range of movement, the apparent comfort with which he makes circles with his elbow. “We’re going to do it,” he says.
“You’re going to hold on to your placing?”
“Perhaps more,” he says. He winks. “Though maybe I am crazy.”
“You’re feeling good?”
“I’m up in the clouds,” he says. “The Butcher found something that works for me. It suits my constitution. I respond to it.”
“I’m glad,” I say.
“Hey,” he says. “A giraffe goes into a bar and orders a beer . . .”
He stops, then. He waits for some signal to continue from me. I cannot do it, I realize, though I do not know why just listening to him for a few seconds should be too much. “I have to fetch something from the bus,” I say.
“Really?” he says.
“Yes. Sorry.”
He touches me on the elbow. I make my way slowly away from him, past the mechanics and through a crowd of support staff. Voices drift over from the group Fabrice has gone to join. “Why did the giraffe want to go into the bar?” I hear Sebastian say. “I think this is the question.”
I spit onto the cobbles of the square. I try to collect myself. I look around the paddock. The bus of the French farm-machinery team is parked next to ours. The team’s riders, all known to us, wait together near their vehicle. There are a couple of press trucks facing our bus. Retired riders walk about, serving in so many capacities: as pundits, organizational staff, team leaders. It is a small world. One can live one’s whole life in it. Rafael came in as a young rider, for instance, and has never left. There are whole families created from this tight mix. Riders marry team administrators, journalists, masseuses. I sometimes expected my own life to be conducted within this space: an assumption drawn from what others around me intended, what others before me had done. I had thought of working in administration, planning stages, perhaps doing journalistic work. Only with the arrival of Liz into my life did I really think that I could be done and walk out of it, into the world beyond. I am grateful to her for this. Though like any creature accustomed to a certain life, I have sometimes felt this latitude to be a fearful thing.
Rafael has been standing beside me, I realize; I do not know for how long. He squeezes my shoulder, then walks away silently.
* *
I begin the stage removed from those around me, separated from their giddiness, their attention to the stakes of the day. I pedal near the rear of the group, letting other team members drift ahead of me. Tsutomo rides next to Fabrice. The pace is high but steady.
Teams are stocked with experts who are able to explain our riding as the conversion of so much potential into so much motion. They predict our limits, work out how many calories we might burn through. We riders, though, do not think in this way. We think about rhythm. There seems to be a perfect pace, at which we could ride forever. Things stack together: breathing, pedaling, thought. In this zone you become a sort of passenger within your own body.
This morning, despite myself, I find a rhythm. We pass around a roundabout on which a policeman stands, waving a flag to give advance warning of the obstacle. He looks ahead, moves the flag evenly, does not flinch in response to the proximity and speed of riders going by. There is something impressive in seeing a man diligently doing so mechanical a task. To lose oneself in an act like that, in a perfectly repeatable motion, can be a joy. It is one I find in my own riding on this late morning. I know the policeman’s satisfaction as I pass him.
I find myself creeping through the peloton. I arrive next to Fabrice, who wordlessly takes a position behind me, who follows me forward through the press of riders, into the foothills of the first mountain of the day. The gradient rises. The peloton stretches. I welcome the burn in my thighs.
* *
As the climbs go on, the better riders move to the front of the group. They do not lead or set the pace but hover behind those riders who do, wary of others breaking away. If any of the main race competitors jump ahead, the others are ready to cloak the attack, tagging behind them, preventing gaps from opening. I think of our group as some single-celled organism: stretching, compacting again, shuddering, never quite splitting.
We ride and watch each other. “Eat, Fabrice,” says Rafael through the radio. “Eat and drink.” This is the time in which essential acts become forgotten.
“You’re riding with the big names,” Rafael tells us over the radio, some relish in his voice. By this he means the leaders, the climbing specialists. And though these riders are to a man short and skinny, I cannot help but turn the phrase through my head as I pedal, imagine these men around me as bigger and more solid than they are, credit them with the gravity of something larger than themselves.
I ride ahead of Fabrice as the pace starts to increase. He has drawn himself into an unfathomable blankness. He pedals. He eats on command, reaching into the pocket on the rear of his jersey, sucking an energy gel, or chewing a sugary fruit bar.
* *
When the main group passes over the second peak of the stage, it is already diminished. All day the pace has slowly risen.
The descents offer some respite, but today more is ventured even here. People take corners quicker, pushing tires to their limits. Fabrice and I find ourselves pedaling hard on downhill straights to keep pace with those in front. When not pedaling, we tuck ourselves down into our handlebars, our stomachs on our saddles, seeking the most aerodynamic profile. We barely touch our brakes.
The mountains here are shunted next to each other, packed in and steep. As soon as we finish a descent, we begin to ascend again. In this region, Sebastian has told me, people hid from religious tyranny in former times. They built churches as visible and as high as possible, warding off charges of heathenism. Now these churches look down on us from mountainsides. Bell towers pick out the network of villages through which our route will climb. Sometimes the descendants of these fleeing peoples ring the bells in these churches as we appear, encouraging our own flight from the valleys.
* *
I stay with Fabrice. I pace him. I feel light, able to accelerate, to shift, to mark the other competitors around me.
I am riding as well as I ever have, I think, and in this I realize a change in me: I am not nervous. I do not have the normal sense that I must ration my energy, the usual dread of the sudden plunge that will come when my reserves are spent. I have what I have. I am doing what I am doing.
I taste the smallest quantity of blood in my throat. A wind blows up the valley. A fan showers us with water, holding his thumb partly over the top of a plastic bottle, waving fat drops from it.
I pull back to the car often to retrieve bottles. The Butcher passes them out to me. “There are some painkillers in this one,” he says. “Tell Fabrice that this is the stuff he like
s.”
I nod in reply. The Butcher smiles, as happy as I have seen him.
Fabrice receives the bottles without comment. He concentrates. All the team leaders are now on edge, seeking to identify weakness or confidence and to react accordingly. We riders study each other. We consider fingers itching against gear shifters. We regard tensing calves and wonder if they aren’t preparing for a burst of speed or suffering the first stages of cramp. We look at others’ faces—blank faces, pained faces, happy faces—and wonder what they really mean.
We ride and we wait for a move, and time does not seem to pass. Yet the road rolls beneath us. The landscape changes. We cast empty water bottles from our bikes.
* *
With three-quarters of the race gone, we approach a mountain pass: the final ascent of the stage. Rafael has warned us that this is where crucial seconds will be won or lost in the overall race. The road climbs from fields, through trees, past barren slopes that in winter would be ski pistes, and up into windswept emptiness.
From the start of the ascent, the skinny little men start raising the pace. The fans cluster on the road ahead of us and part as we approach, a human bow wave. Some of them run beside us. In front the motorbikes sound their horns. Voices rise in response.
The karaoke singer, the same man who was out ahead for hours on the previous stage, goes at the third turn. He does it craftily, just after another couple of riders have lunged into a break and been chased down. He sets off where the road pitches up more steeply. We are not ready to pursue him.
I accelerate to the front of the group. I stand, begin to really chase the little man. Fabrice is behind me. He says, “Not too hard.”
Tsutomo takes a turn at the front. We let other teams, keen to pull their own riders back into the pursuit, do their share of leading.
When I can, I turn and look at Fabrice. He breathes evenly. He pedals smoothly.
The chase slows a little. I push to the lead of the group again.
On the front, I feel well. Rafael now has a reading of how far out ahead the karaoke singer has pulled himself. “Forty seconds,” he says through the static.
I press the pace a little more. I am tiring, but I do not really care. This is the last climb of the day, and when I have pulled Fabrice back into contention, my work will be done.
“Thirty-five seconds,” says Rafael.
The corners come and go. The route is fully lined with fans. We are in trees, and the smell of wood and moist earth is around us.
I feel the slightest spasm of a coming cramp at the back of my knee. I want to coast for a couple of strokes of the pedals. I move out of the racing line and Tsutomo arrives immediately to lead. “Thirty seconds,” says Rafael.
A message for Fabrice is whitewashed onto the road:
GO
FABRICE
GO
We accelerate around the corners, where the road flattens. We push right into the inside of turns, brushing into the fans. Fabrice, behind us, still seems content.
“Thirty-seven seconds,” says Rafael.
This panics me, the fact that the gap is no longer dropping.
“Steady,” says Fabrice.
I take the lead again. I will the cramp to hold off just a little longer. I stand on the pedals.
“Thirty-six seconds,” says Rafael. I think we should have made up more time. I take a drink from my water bottle and throw it to the side of the road.
Tsutomo moves ahead of me again. The other teams seem resolved to ride behind us, to let us do the chasing. I would normally be annoyed by this. Today, though, I push and do not worry about holding back.
I take a turn. I stamp on my pedals. My hamstrings ache. They are completely empty of strength, close to cramping. There is an ecstasy in this exhaustion. It is the kind of heedless tiredness that I remember from summer evenings in childhood.
“Twenty seconds,” says Rafael, and I see the singer up the road. We approach him so quickly that this time estimate is obsolete as soon as it has been issued.
The singer disappears around a corner. I feel shaky but push on. My breathing is a mess. I want to finish this. We turn the corner ourselves.
I dig my fingernails into my handlebar tape. We are so close. There is bile in my throat. The singer looks back, seeing that he will be caught. He puts in a burst of speed just to test us. I ride a little faster. I pray that this is a bluff. I am an instant from collapsing when he drops his pace again. He sits down in the saddle. He lets us make up the ground toward him. We come past. I ready myself to peel off the pack, to leave Fabrice and the other main contenders to scrap out the rest of the day.
As I am about to slow though, another rider puts in an acceleration, passing us. I flail after him. Fabrice is behind me. I am a meter behind the rider seeking to break. He keeps pushing, but I hold my pace somehow. I can hardly breathe. My vision is nearly gone. He looks back. He gives up. I catch up to him and in the same motion I swerve from the racing line and begin to slow. Fabrice glances a grateful hand against my back as he passes me.
I simply stop. I double over at the side of the road and start vomiting. The radio turns on. “Good job, Solomon,” says Rafael’s voice. “That was what we needed.” A man wearing swimming trunks and hiking boots comes over and rubs my shoulders as I stand hunched over the front of my bike puking onto the verge.
* *
My hands are on my knees and my knees are shaking. My field of vision is returning to normal. The air smells of pinecones and warm tar. I have done all I could. I couldn’t have set Fabrice up better. I stand. The man rubs circles on my back. It does not come to me, though: the regular feeling of having executed a plan, the suffusing rush of exhaustion to an end. I still feel a numbness to the stakes of the day. There is a weight in my stomach that all this effort has not reduced, that has lain waiting beneath the simpler pain that overlaid it.
The riding has been less than it was, and in this easier. I have wanted nothing more than to use myself up. Maybe I should have always raced with such lack of interest. And yet, of course, had I always felt about racing as I do today, I would never even have begun this career. I could not have discharged my duty so effectively today without the desire to be done with all this.
I clamber back onto my bike. I make two unsteady strokes. The man in the swimming trunks pushes me, and I am going again. Stragglers pass me—not Johan and the other sprinters, who ride in a bunch even farther behind, but better, more tragic back markers, who expected more from this day and now seek vainly to get themselves back in contention.
I struggle to stay with any of these men though. I cannot hold them in my line of sight. It is not until a domestique of the German banking team passes me that I find someone riding at a pace that I can sustain. I tuck behind him. He looks back and nods.
The team vehicles come past then, moving up the road to be just behind their leaders. When the car of my team goes by, Rafael stares straight ahead. The Butcher waves.
After some time, the banker wriggles an elbow to indicate that it is my turn to ride ahead. I step up on the pedals. I bear my stint setting our pace. Unlike the leaders, we are not shepherded by motorbikes or race referees. Spectators swarm around the road as we ride. My skin is pricked with the spittle of fans. I can feel their warmth and taste the sourness of their breath. I lead for as long as possible and then pull out of the racing line.
When the banker edges past me, I seek to settle behind him. I sit down in my saddle. I change the position of my hands on the bars. Sitting alters the muscles I use to propel myself. In this new position, however, I am just as weak. Usually in exhaustion I can pump my thighs at a low cadence. Now even this ability is gone. The space between me and the banker stretches: a hand, an arm, the height of a whole person.
* *
I am alone but for the groups of fans I pass through. Life rolls back over me now: the police station, the lawyer, the investigating judge, my wife and son entangled in the middle, Katherine making her way across the
country to assist where I have not.
I inch toward the peak. I stand to force my pace. The difficulty of any given activity, I suppose, is no guarantee that that activity is not selfish.
Two fans run beside me: a couple of men, one of whom is wearing a comically outsized pair of sunglasses. The crowd shouts words of encouragement, though I am sure that they do not know my name. They spray water at me. Some of them even reach out to clap me on the back.
I consider Fabrice’s advice about physical pain and try to pin down what hurts me.
The radio channel crackles open. “Push, Fabrice. Push,” says Rafael.
Beads of sweat run down my nose. The television helicopter is thumping up near the peak, a few kilometers away. I wipe my face with the back of my glove. I try to change gear. The chain chatters, misaligned. I wiggle the shifter and it jumps into place.
My lips are crusted with sunscreen and grit and salt. My mouth tastes like tin.
The crowd is all around me, encroaching onto the road. They wave flags, they bellow me on. They mug for a photographer coming past me on the rear of a motorbike.
I do not believe in this, I think. I do not believe, and realize in coming to this conclusion how much I did. I do not feel the necessity of these people being here, the sense that I do anything special. It feels like some assumption in the logic that has brought me here has given out: an assumption buried, assumed secure, like the foundation pile of a house, ignored until it crumbles. And yet what exactly this assumption was I do not know. I cannot work back to it. I am the same man, the same body. I stand on the pedals. I haul on my handlebars. And yet it is gone.
* *
We Begin Our Ascent Page 19