Off Side (25 page)

Palacín found the ritual of shooting penalties irritating. He never enjoyed the repeated exercise of gunning down a goalie, and only succeeded in getting twelve out of his twenty in.

He abandoned the penalties and stretched out on the ground for some leg exercises, raising first one leg and then the other skywards. It was getting late. Fluffy clouds were passing overhead, and passing flocks of birds gave an autumnal feel to the space that occupied his gaze. He abandoned the exercises and lay back, relaxed. He felt as if he was out in the country, lying under a tree, with the world feeling cool at his shoulders, and somewhere in his mind a notion that he could dive right deep into the universe, a notion which sometimes came to him in his dreams and made him wake up suddenly with a sensation that he was falling out of bed. His knee was hurting, and he had a feeling that he wouldn’t be able to leave it many more days before he’d have to go looking for Marta again, to get his ration of cocaine and low-grade sex. He shut his eyes in an attempt to make himself disappear, but
when he opened them again he was still there, lying on a small patch of grass that had somehow managed to survive in one corner of the Centellas pitch.

‘Dreaming of the seaside, are you?’

‘I’m not feeling well.’

‘Is the knee hurting?’

‘No. It’s my guts.’

‘It must be the salad they gave us at La Vidrera. You can bet your life they put rat poison in it to give us the shits.’

The manager sat next to him on the ground, and his voice was all of a sudden velvety-smooth.

‘Don’t get me wrong, Palacín. I know you’re new to the club, but as far as I’m concerned you’re not just anybody. I’ve always admired you, and I’m proud to have you with us. The trouble with Toté is that he’s a nobody, but he’s a particularly tough nobody, and he wants to prove that he’s not scared of you just because you’re famous. You follow? I have to do what I can to keep his morale up, because he’s got no balls. Don’t get me wrong.’

‘Sure, sure …’

‘He’s still got a few years of footballing ahead of him, and he’s like the others — worried that the club is going to fold. This is a very valuable piece of real estate. If the team goes down the pan, then Centellas disappears with it — and you probably haven’t seen them, but every day there’s a hundred vultures hanging around waiting for us to go under. You with me, Palacín?’

‘I understand.’

‘Right. On your way, now. If you’re not feeling well, go home. We’re going to carry on for another half hour. It’ll be dark soon.’

But he didn’t go straight away. He waited for a few more minutes, enjoying the illusion that he was a free man, communing with nature. As he lay back on the cool earth, he thought back to an old and favourite project of his, to buy a farm in Granada and to watch the plants and the hams grow. ‘Hams don’t grow,’ had been Inma’s only comment when he had invited her into
his dream one day. This was at the time when she was carrying in her belly the other portion of his dreams, the son whom he already imagined wearing the club colours, taking the kick-off at the testimonial match when his father retired, with all the TV cameras there, and the boy suitably impressed by the sound of a whole stadium chanting his father’s name. What was he going to do with himself when the season was over? Sánchez Zapico had promised him a well-paid job as a sales rep, but he couldn’t really see himself representing anything other than his own deep-seated sense of fear and the memory of what he had once been. He felt a sudden pain in his kidneys and as he stood up he felt slightly dizzy, but after a few steps and a couple of deep breaths he felt better. He made his way over to the centre of the pitch where Mariscal, ‘Confucius’, was doing fancy tricks with the ball, apparently oblivious to the sarcastic comments coming from his manager on the other side of the pitch:

‘Confucius, you should join a circus!’

‘Did you hear that old creep? He doesn’t like it, because I know how to control a ball. He prefers gorillas and boneheads like Toté.’

‘Ignore him. Just carry on with what you’re doing. You’re getting better.’

‘Thanks, maestro. Remind me to send you a box of cigars for Christmas.’

He continued on his way to the dressing rooms, pleased at the prospect of being able to change in his own time and get a decent shower before the others. He stopped on his way for a few words with the young centre half, who had been sentenced by the manager to a session of kicking a medicine ball.

‘He says I’ve got skinny legs.’

‘Go easy with that, because you might very easily end up tearing a muscle. You’re doing well, but take it easy. Try and kick with your instep and not with your toe.’

‘My dad’s always talking about you. The things he tells me, I
sometimes think he must be making them up.’

‘How old’s your dad?’

‘Um, I don’t remember. About the same as you … getting on a bit. About forty-something.’

‘I’m not that far gone, son.’

‘Well, you’re fit, and he’s not. He couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag.’

Palacín walked on to the open dressing-room door. He pushed the door. The sick hinges squeaked and the door opened to reveal a view of the corridor. The transition from light to shade meant that at first he wasn’t aware of the sudden surprise on the faces of three men who were moving in the corridor. They froze. By the time he saw them he was already in the dressing room, and it took him several seconds before his senses associated their presence with danger. All the locker doors were hanging open, and the three reacted to his arrival by adopting automatic but differing bodily stances. One of them stepped back a few paces, as if to protect a sports bag which was sitting on the ground, and the other two came forward rapidly to within a few inches of him. He read in their eyes a fear at having been surprised, and they gave him no chance of backing off towards the door; one of them leapt round and put himself behind him. He heard the sound of a flick-knife clicking open. Seconds passed in concentrated panic and silence before he managed to stutter: ‘Anything you’ll find in here will hardly be worth the risk. Nobody’s got any money here.’

‘Shut up.’

The sound came from behind him.

‘Shut up, or we’ll break your legs.’

This time it was the one in front of him speaking, and in a flash he too pulled a flick-knife from his pocket, and opened it. Palacín’s skin registered the sensation of the cold air moved by the knife by the simple fact of its flicking open.

‘Who’s he?’

‘Can’t you see? Maradona! It’s Maradona, and he’s very stupid,
because he decided to go home early without anyone asking him to. Who asked you to come sticking your nose in where it’s none of your business?’

Palacín sighed, tried to relax, and moved his arms as if in an attempt to distance himself from this nightmare. He was about to say: ‘Go, just go, take what you’ve taken, and I won’t say a word.’ He wanted to tell them that he hadn’t seen anything, and that even if he had, he wouldn’t say anything because he recognized they were just poor bastards like himself. He needed them to go, to remove the weight of fear, both his and theirs, but most particularly theirs, which he could feel pressing against his back and his chest, extending in a direct line from the tips of their knives. However the sound that filled the room was not the sound of his voice, but the words of the man who had stayed in the background guarding the sports bag on the floor.

‘He’s seen us. The bastard’s got a complete description of us.’

He felt the first knife-stab in his back, just below his shoulder blade and aiming for his heart. As he went to run forward, as if running from death, he ran right onto the knife that the other man was holding at just the right level. It was as if the knife was there to save him from falling, as if it was trying to hold him up. When the man pulled the knife out again, Palacín fell to the ground, his hands weak and trembling, uselessly trying to staunch the flow of blood. His eyes, at ground level, watched the movements of feet and he listened to the sound of voices which were showing no further interest in him.

‘Have you done all the lockers?’

‘Sure. You saw I did. Come on. Let’s move. They’ll be back in a minute.’

He felt as if he was floating in his own blood. He felt as if he had a fever. He didn’t want to fall asleep, so he opened his eyes, looking to see as far as he could, and when a grey and increasingly opaque glass screen seemed to place itself between him and the damp-stained cobwebby ceiling, he engaged his brain in an effort
to work out who was the owner of the woman’s face which was leaning over and talking to him. No. It wasn’t Inma. Nor was the voice that of his son. He tried to think what his son’s voice would sound like. Anyway, it was a woman. Who was it?

‘She’s gone out.’

This was a statement of fact, but also an order and a justification addressed as much to herself as to her partner in crime.

‘Now, we’d better think for a moment. Just think. We’re going to be depending on that car. Memorize the exact spot where it’s parked. Don’t forget the keys. We won’t have a moment to lose. Everything’s ready for the getaway, isn’t it?’

‘Sure.’

Her voice was filled with urgency, and she gave him a push to get him moving. She closed the window and went out onto the landing. He followed. She ran down the stairs and emerged hurriedly onto calle de San Rafael, where she started her reluctant streetwalker routine. He followed several paces behind her, allowing her to take up her position in the boarding-house doorway. Then he turned and looked from left to right. The street was deserted, as it usually was in the late afternoon, and the lottery ticket seller in pasaje de Martorell was just a distant shadow. Marta was ahead of him, up on the landing, and he called to her to slow down a bit. His legs were willing but he was panting a bit, and when they reached the front door of the boarding house she glared at him fiercely. The key trembled slightly in her hand, and it took two goes to get it into the lock, whereupon it gave out a pained metallic screech.

‘Are you in, Doña Concha?’

The only sound of life in the building was a fridge loudly protesting its misfortunes, and its motor drowned the words of the old invalid at the end of the corridor, who had heard her, and had sought to make his presence known.

‘There’s somebody in.’

‘It’s the old man. Don’t worry about him.’

Marta burst into the kitchen and started turning all the jars upside down, regardless of what they had in them. She pulled up the greasepaper linings in the cupboards, tipped out the drawers, and within minutes the kitchen read like a randomized inventory of its contents.

‘Come on, the mattresses.’

She led the way by taking the largest knife she could find, ripping the mattress covers and probing their foam-rubber hearts. She searched under the carpets, emptied all the cupboards and left him the task of examining what she had tipped out. Room by room, there wasn’t a single book that wasn’t looked into, nor a window shutter, nor a piece of suspect wallpaper that wasn’t ripped apart. But they found nothing. Her hands and face were sweating, as was his whole body, and he began to try to say that there was no point, because there was nothing there.

‘The oven! We haven’t looked in the oven!’

They ran to the kitchen and opened the oven door; he used the knife as a lever and lifted up the rusty bottom, only to reveal an empty space beneath.

Not a thing.

‘Shit! Where’s the old witch put it, then?’

All of a sudden the fridge found peace with itself, and in the silence they clearly heard the sound of the invalid trying to say something.

‘The old man.’

‘I heard it.’

‘That’s not what I meant. The old bitch has probably put her money in the old man’s room.’

‘But if we go into his room, he’ll see us.’

‘So? Who cares?’

‘But supposing we don’t find anything? What use will the car be then? We can’t go anywhere without money.’

‘We’ll go anyway. I’m not turning back now. Let’s go for the old man.’

They were momentarily stopped in their tracks by the look of terror that came from the sunken eye-sockets of that living skull, but they side-stepped it. The room was full of objects abjectly ashamed of their own wretchedness, and its windowless walls were illuminated by one bare lightbulb.

‘The pot. Look in the pot.’

‘What pot?’

‘Where he pisses, idiot. It’s under the bed.’

He pulled out the pot with a trembling hand, and part of the urine that was in it splashed onto his hand and spilled onto the floor. He managed to contain his desire to throw up, but not his desire to drop the vessel and its contents.

‘Search his bedclothes!’

He pushed the invalid over to the other side of the mattress, and raised the sheet with one hand as he struggled with the old man’s warm, stiff body. Then he reached under the mattress, searching around in the hopes of finding a promising lump.

‘There’s nothing here, Marta.’

‘Shut up and keep looking. Search him.’

But his hands fluttered like paralysed crows over the frail little body that he couldn’t bring himself to touch.

‘What are you waiting for?’

‘He’s looking at me.’

‘You’re useless.’

And in the end she was the one who ripped open the buttons of the dirty flannel pyjamas covering his aged skeleton, and even reached down to his crutch in the hopes of finding what she was looking for.

‘Shit! It must be here somewhere.’

She stared at the walls and the floor, looking for inspiration.

‘But where? Let’s check to see if we can find anywhere hollow. I’ll try the floor, and you try along the walls.’

She went down the corridor, stamping up and down on the floor as she went. But her obsessive searching did not stop her hearing the clear sound of a key turning in the front-door lock, and in virtually a single movement the simultaneous apparition of Doña Concha, who was muttering to herself until the point where she registered Marta’s presence and stared at her, dumbstruck and uncomprehending.

‘What are you doing here?’

Her second question was answered even before she asked it. All it took was one look at the mess in the corridor, and down into the kitchen, where she could see the results of Marta’s handiwork. But the ‘how did you get in’ continued as a silent logical link between the two women, the portly Doña Concha weighing up the evidence of her eyes as she tried to decide whether to hurl herself on to Marta or to retreat to the door and scream for help. But the sight of her there, at the end of the corridor, so thin and fragile and looking as guilty as a rat, gave her courage, and she advanced on her with an evil tongue at the ready.