Learning to Lose (8 page)

Perhaps in that instant, stopped in the middle of the yard, on a cold November morning, months before Pilar left Lorenzo, in that silence of spent explanations, the crime was forged. Paco ran a hand along Lorenzo’s shoulders, paternal, pacifying. If you need money, I can lend you some … But Lorenzo didn’t
let him finish; he pushed Paco’s arm away roughly and lifted a fist to hit him in the face. He didn’t do it. He froze his rage in the air. And he felt that he had won for a second. He looked up toward the house and saw Teresa peering out a window in one of the rooms, amid the lace curtains. He relaxed his fist and turned around very slowly. They didn’t say anything more to each other. Lorenzo walked toward the gate. His bitterness needed time to grow, until the obsessive certainty that Paco had stolen his luck would drive him once again to that residential neighborhood and lead him to commit a crime.

Now a killer, he watches the soccer game. There are fans who leave the stadium before the match is over to avoid the traffic, the crowded mass of people. Some of them are lucky to miss how their team is served with a definitive, last-minute goal. The Czech goalkeeper picks the ball out of the net and rapidly hands it over to a teammate. The coach orders a quick subsitution of the left winger. A recently signed Argentinian whom the crowd whistles at and heckles. Lorenzo gets up to whistle at him, too. Go home, Indian, go home, a group of kids chant. The player doesn’t run toward the touchline, and that makes the stands even madder. Run, you shitty spic, someone shouts at him. And Lalo and Óscar laugh. He’s got some nerve, why doesn’t he run off? We’re losing. The crowd’s protests relax Lorenzo, reconciling him with himself. Taking part in the general indignation is a way of escaping. And those five minutes in which the stadium pushes the local team to pull off a tie that never comes are the only five minutes he has enjoyed in the last few days.

Getting drunk is never the same twice. The last time, before he left Buenos Aires, had nothing to do with this one now. He wasn’t by himself. He’s just left Asador Tomás, where he had dinner with two teammates. They’re young like him, but they seem less affected by the defeat. We’ll win next time, Osorio told him. But Ariel’s twisted expression wasn’t about the loss, or not just about that. He was hurt by the whistles, the substitution, even though it was the third time in a row the coach pulled him out at the end of a game. During the match, he kept repeating to himself, I got it, it’s not so hard, gotta play one touch. When he received the ball with his back to the goal, he couldn’t find a teammate. A forward has to create the space and then run into it, Dragon used to tell him. During the whole game, Ariel couldn’t shake the fullback’s breath on his neck as he kneed him in the tailbone. Every once in a while, Ariel stuck him with his cleats and cursed his mother. The ball came to him imprecisely, it burned at his feet. Again the whistles, trying to create a play that never went well.

Tired of waiting for the ball, Ariel dropped toward the center of the field, and the traffic jam was worthy of rush hour. If no one is where they’re supposed to be, Dragon used to say, then there’s no soccer. Legs and bodies are glued together and the ball just gets battered. What I don’t understand is why the ball doesn’t sue you, shouted Dragon in irritation when they played like that. Ariel heard the stands, felt the pressure like a physical presence. He asked for the ball even though he didn’t know what to do with it. They weren’t passes, they were
teammates passing the buck. Let somebody else lose it. And Ariel lost it.

The restaurant didn’t charge them. Its wall was filled with portraits of famous customers, most of them soccer players, some politicians, and the king with a group of hunters. There was also a photo of the owner on his knees before the Pope in an audience at the Vatican. From one of the nearby tables come persistent glances from two girls with high breasts in tight sweaters. They’re whores, Poggio said. You’re crazy, man, responds Osorio. They ask the owner to introduce them and they strike up a lively conversation. Should we call a friend? asks one when she sees Ariel’s serious expression, as he downs his wine. Ariel shakes his head. He stands up. I’m going home.

He leaves a generous tip for the maître d’, who sends for his car keys. Do you like
orujo?
he asks, extending a thick glass bottle with a cork. The owner makes it himself. It’s dry and has no aftertaste. Ariel takes the bottle and picks up his car at the front door. He’s in the mood to drive. He puts on music and flees toward any highway. The last time he got sloshed was definitely nothing like this.

It was in Buenos Aires. In a restaurant owned by the sister of his teammate Walter, to whom he had rented his little apartment in Belgrano when he left. The night before his flight, Ariel had gotten together for dinner with some friends from the neighborhood, players from his team, and the physical trainer, Professor Matías Manna, who swore that the great opera singers had a gin and tonic before going onstage, thus justifying his fourth of the night. Macero was there, too, still a close friend, even though he now plays for Newell’s and holds the championship record for red cards. Charlie didn’t come. You go out with
your friends, it’s your night. But Agustina did, his girlfriend up until a few months earlier. They joked with Ariel, saying he should remember them when he’s a millionaire. Several of them brought gifts that Ariel had to unwrap. An Argentinian flag, for you to put up in the locker room. Alberto Alegro, grandson of Aragonese exiled after the Spanish civil war, who studied with him during the last few years of high school, got up to sing him the schottische “Madrid,” and the others crooned trombone chords. By then most of them were drunk and some proposed going to Open Bay for drinks and others suggested dancing at Ink. Agustina was one of the first to say she was headed home, using the confusion at the restaurant door to say her parting words. I guess your trip will help me get over you, she said, and then kissed him on the lips. The breakup had happened without much explanation. I didn’t know how to do it, Ariel reproached himself. She was still in love with him and he felt nothing more than vague affection leftover from his initial enthusiasm in their relationship, one that was calm and sweet, but never completely fulfilling. He said good-bye more noisily to the others who were leaving, but with her he drew a strange, cruel curtain on their love. All the good-byes were bitter, as if he were closing a chapter. But the alcohol helped. He refused to stand up and say a few words, even though they demanded it, shouting, speech, speech. It was the sunrise that finally sent them home to bed.

Now in the car, miles away on the almost empty highway, Ariel remembered the months he played in the “Cenicero,” which held only a third of what this potbellied Madrid stadium could pack, luxurious in its vertical expansion, with glassed-in box seats for special guests. Yet on the field the space seemed to be reversed. There he had enjoyed playing, he didn’t feel
pressure, and it was easy to find open spots. He escaped the fullback’s brusqueness. When he played at home, the crowd chanted his name or sang to the team like familiar background music, show some balls, show some balls, let’s see some real balls. The fans over there insulted them when they lowered their guard or didn’t perform, but that was the price of passionate, sometimes brutal, love. Yet they were never cold and expectant like the fans in Madrid. His legs weren’t heavy there like they were now. There he was still just the kid who one day, after practice, was told that a Spaniard was waiting to talk to him.

The agent was named Solórzano and he wanted exclusive rights to negotiate on his behalf. Let’s not lose our heads, Charlie said to him, but he was the one who most wanted to lose his head. The Spaniards come loaded with money, soccer over there pays anything you want, anything you want, repeated Charlie. That same night he took them out for dinner at Piégari. If you’re not playing on a Spanish team next season, I’ll cut off my ponytail, Solórzano told them, and Charlie cracked up laughing. The guy is bald, we’ve got nothing to lose. I don’t work alone, Solórzano explained. Ariel’s team preferred quick money, they were already in talks to sell his player rights to a company owned by two well-known middlemen who moved Iranian capital and had bought a club in Brazil and were in negotiations with another in London. They had to act fast. It seemed that Boca was offering a million and a half dollars for 50 percent ownership of the player. I don’t want to end up where they tell me to go, I want to choose my team, Ariel insisted to Charlie.

After signing the exclusive with Solórzano, they realized what he meant when he said that he didn’t work alone. An article appeared about him in the Spanish soccer press. “Everyone
wants to sign the player of the moment, the winger from San Lorenzo, Ariel Burano Costa.” In the next match against Rosario Central, Ariel made the second goal and the wife of Puma Sosa, the Uruguayan center midfielder, told him that he had also been on the international Spanish news channel. Solórzano called from Madrid, you’re all set up perfectly, next week I’ll tell you about the offers.

Days later he had a live telephone interview with a Spanish radio host who asked him things like, is it true what they say, that you can make so many feints on a patch of field that the defenders stop to watch and then applaud? Ariel started to understand Solórzano’s domino game. How he set up the pieces so that they all worked in the same direction: Madrid.

By fax Solórzano sent them another clipping from a Spanish newspaper, the peninsular equivalent to
Clarín
. They profiled Ariel as one more player who had sprung from hardship, a born competitor, quick, intuitive, an artist. “In the streets of a poor section of Buenos Aires, Ariel ‘the Feather’ Burano learned to keep the ball at his left foot at all times. They call him ‘Feather’ because he moves with the weightlessness of a dancer.” Ariel smiled at the clichéd image. It must not sell as many papers to say he was the son of a middle-class family from Floresta and that he had learned his mastery of the ball during endless classes at the Lincoln School, where they scuttled the ball from left to right, beneath the desks, as a distraction from the tedium of the lectures. They really called him Feather because they said he could be sent down to the ground just by blowing on him. In rival stadiums, every time he fell to the grass, they chanted: fall, fall.

Ariel later learned that a scout had written to the Spanish club recommending they sign him: “In two years he’ll be playing for
Boca or River and he’ll cost twice as much.” Someone from the board of directors leaked to Solórzano the names of the players they were going to try to sign and then Solórzano would work his way in. The first thing he would do was raise the price, don’t worry, the more expensive a player the more interest, because a lot of people live off the money that falls by the side of the road in the process. Solórzano shared commission with the deep throat inside the board of directors and then stirred up a media storm, greasing palms with privileged information and the occasional banknote. The idea was to multiply the price, get other buyers interested, and force the signing with expectations created by the media. If the public starts pushing, you get the president on the ropes and he’ll pay whatever, as long as you always let him make a little, send a pinch of dough to his account in the Caymans and everybody’s happy. The important thing is that everybody’s happy, right? Isn’t soccer all about making people happy? lectured Solórzano.

For Ariel Spanish soccer was familiar. He knew players who had gone over there, and on satellite TV they showed live games on Sundays. Even though many players return from abroad without having succeeded, going over there was still the dream that year for Martín Palermo and Burrito Ortega and, on his own team, Loeschbor and Matías Urbano. But on Solórzano’s next trip, things seemed less close. It’s gotten complicated, but we’re working on fixing it. The club filled all its spots for non-European foreigners. They’re leaving us with our pants down. They don’t want to bring over an Argentinian and this is after it was all sewn up and the press already said you’re the next Maradona. He showed him the cover of a sports newspaper with his photo and a huge headline: “Bring over this kid.”

Burano is an Italian last name, right? Solórzano asked them one day. Charlie nodded unconvincingly, they say my father’s grandfather comes from over there. Two weeks later, Solórzano showed them the birth certificate of a Burano great-grandfather expedited by an Italian parish. For a modest sum, I’ll make you a family tree where your mother’s the Mona Lisa. Carlo Burano was the name of the forebear, their made-up great-grandfather. With his Italian roots, Ariel would take a European spot, he wouldn’t have to fight for his place with Brazilians, Africans, Mexicans. With that cocky face and that gangster hair, you could only be Italian, Solórzano said to Ariel. We aren’t doing anything wrong, just finding some lost family papers. There’s no stopping the machine.

Solórzano didn’t inspire trust in either Ariel or Charlie. He drank red wine and smoked cheap cigars. His teeth were like an unmopped floor that ended in two gold molars. Even though he assured them that the only flag he bowed before was a waving banknote, several times, egged on by alcohol, he would confess that what Spain needed was another Franco and Argentina another Perón. He was sarcastically nostalgic, and a veteran barhound. He traveled with a young lawyer, a representative of the club, to close deals, and they all met in the offices of Ariel’s financial advisers. Charlie acted as a security guard, but Solórzano, his laughter breaking into a cackle, relaxed the atmosphere with his endless anecdotes. He told them where the team’s president—the one they called “the mother from
Psycho”
—found his love for soccer. He bought a team in the north, which shared ownership of the stadium with the city hall; he managed to get the team knocked down to Second Division and then lower than Second, and then bankrupt
it. It was absurd. Instead of trying to get the team to win, he did everything possible to make them lose. It looked like the world turned upside down. But the whole business brought about the demolition of the stadium, which was near the beach, and on the site they built fourteen hundred luxury apartments, splitting it with the municipal government, of course, so there were no legal qualms. The season ticket holders wanted to kill him and, in a gesture he carried off with the utmost dignity, he sold the team. At that point, the team’s legacy was all in its name and its coat of arms, that’s it. A few years later, he was so solvent they practically sought him out to preside over the Madrid team. Now it gives him social prestige; a box seat in Madrid is tantamount to the king’s court. You can do business with those kinds of people, concluded Solórzano, because they’re like me: there’s only one thing they respect more than money … and that’s a lot of money. This chatty, obnoxious guy, with his bad breath, his rust-colored hair, golden tie clip, and woven leather shoes, took him to Spain, and judging by his shifty charm Ariel should have suspected that nothing was going to be easy.