by Endre Farkas
By halftime it was 3-0, and the boys were breathless and confused.
“What are you guys doing out there?” Coach Hustle yelled. “You’re not playing soccer, you’re playing chase. You’re like chickens with their heads cut off. What happened to teamwork? Where is your attack formation? Talk to each other. You need to play smart. You guys are supposed to be smart, people who know how to think. Derek can’t do all the work. Schmutz and Kostas, you’re giving their insides too much freedom. Wolfie, you’re not getting free.”
Gasping for breath, Tommy nodded. He looked over to Hungaria’s bench. They were laughing and drinking beer. Some were even smoking.
“Okay, you prima donnas, I want you to start by playing their game, let the halfs and fullbacks start the plays but instead of long wing passes, take it down the wing in triangles and have the other winger fill the middle. Speedy, keep cutting in to centre and, Tommy, take his inside position.”
Hungaria felt that they had the game won. They were content to let the Internationals come up the sides until midfield and then shut them down. Hungaria tried some long passes but didn’t really press. The boys had tightened up against the wingers and didn’t fall for their footwork. They kept their eyes on the ball. The triangles were working, they were penetrating deeper and deeper into Hungaria’s zone. Archie made a cross pass to Tommy on the left where he was all alone. By the time Horvath got to him, Tommy was on their eighteen-yard line. Horvath tried to tackle him, but he switched the ball to his left foot. His father was always telling him that God gave him two feet for a reason, so use both. He lobbed a lead pass to Speedy who had a free path to the net. Speedy made no mistake and tucked it neatly into the left corner.
“Lucky once, kid. Your ankles next time,” Horvath said as he passed him back to the centre kickoff circle.
“Goal! Goal! Goal!” he heard his father yell. The other fathers took up the chant and started to clap in unison. Fist in air, Marianne stood, yelling “¡Arriba, arriba!”
Hungaria’s fans yelled back. “Hajrá Magyarok! Hajrá Magyarok! Hajrá Magyarok! Õld meg õket!”
Hungaria picked up their game. It was as if the goal was an insult that had to be avenged. They stepped on toes, elbowed and pulled jerseys. But the boys gained confidence from the goal. They realized that Hungaria really had only one system and the boys adjusted, anticipated well and cut them off.
Schmutz and Kostas took control of midfield and were spreading the ball to both wings with accuracy. Tommy drifted back into centre and Speedy to his inside forward position. Then Tommy pulled the same kind of switch with Luigi as with Speedy, and when Hungaria’s half went after Tommy, anticipating the same play, Schmutz slapped a pass to Archie, who took off with it up the middle. He had space and by the time Hungaria’s half closed in on him, just before he was hard tackled, he got off a sharp high pass to Tommy who timed his jump perfectly and headed it just as he felt a sharp jab in his ribs. He landed with a hard thud on his back. The wind rushed out of him. He lay motionless, clenching his teeth, staring up at the evening sky wondering if the stars were real. Worried faces stared down at him. “Are you okay?” Coach Hus asked. Desperately trying to breathe, he tried to answer but couldn’t. It seemed to take forever for his breath to come back and when it did, so did the pain in his ribs.
“You should give that goalie a red card,” he heard Speedy shout.
“Who is the referee here?”
“Not you, that’s for sure.”
“You want a card? Here’s a card.” He waved a yellow one in Speedy’s face.
“Shut up.” Schmutz grabbed Speedy and pulled him away.
The pain subsided. Slowly Tommy sat up.
“Get him off the field!” the referee ordered.
He was doubled over on the bench. “What happened?”
“The fucking goalie got you with his knee when he came out to try to stop you,” Ben said as he applied an ice pack to his side. “But it’s a goal, man.”
Pain shot through him every time he tried to take a deep breath. He couldn’t sit up properly. He tried to turn around to look for Marianne, but the pain was excruciating.
The whistle blew and his father rushed over to him. “Are you okay? Do you want to go to the hospital for an X-ray?”
“No, it doesn’t feel cracked.”
“That was a dirty play. That horse prick of a goalie should have been kicked out.”
He was surprised by his father’s anger and language. He rarely heard him swear. Tommy laughed.
“Ahhh,” he winced and pressed his side.
The game ended with handshakes and dirty looks. Tommy searched the stands for Marianne but she was gone.
17
“Those dirty rotten lice!” Tommy’s mother hissed as she fussed over him. “Are you all right? Have some soup. We should go to the hospital.”
“I just got winded. I’m okay. We could have won.”
“I told you they’re anti-Semites.”
“No, they’re just dirty players.”
“It was your first game at that level,” his father consoled him. “They play a rougher game than what you’re used to. You guys are younger. You’re good, you’ll do good.”
“Those dirty rotten lice,” his mother muttered over and over again as she placed a bowl of chicken soup in front of him. In his mother’s world dirty rotten lice was the worst thing you could be called. It was the most feared and hated insect in the concentration camps. She lost many friends to typhus even though every evening they would finger comb each other’s hair, hunting for lice. She often recalled, when lecturing Tommy on cleanliness, the burning fever, the blinding headache and the dark rash that her friends experienced before dying an excruciating death. Even now, after all these years, he has seen her stop whatever she was doing and pick at her hair and then carefully examine the flakes on her fingertips. He knew that her curse carried painful memories that the nightly long showers and her many soaps and shampoos could never cleanse.
The phone rang. Tommy went to answer but groaned and sat back down.
“I’ll get it,” his father said. “Hello. Who? Oh. How are you, dear? That’s good. I am fine, thank you. That is very nice from you. He is sick but he is okay.” There was an old-world politeness in his father’s voice when he spoke English, a clunky formality that he didn’t have in Hungarian. As if he had to be on his best behaviour. His accent heightened it. “Yes, that is good. Okay, one minute, dear. Good-bye. It’s for you.”
“Who is it?”
“Marianne.”
He was surprised. “I’ll take it in the TV room,” he said getting up too quickly. He groaned and levered himself off the chair slowly.
“What’s so private that you have to kill yourself?” his mother asked.
“So I can lie down,” he said rubbing his ribs.
Gingerly he lowered himself onto the couch and lifted the receiver. “I got it,” he spoke into the phone.
“Good-bye, dear,” his father said. There was a click.
Tommy listened to be sure that there was no breathing on the line. “Hi,” he said.
“How are you feeling?”
“Sore but okay.”
“Nothing broken?”
“No. Just sore.”
“That was a dirty play.”
“Yeah, but it’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I wanted to kick that goalie where the sun don’t shine.”
He laughed, then winced. “Ow.” He gently massaged his ribs.
“No laughing for you.”
“I guess not. Ow.”
“Would you be up for meeting?”
He wasn’t especially, but he didn’t want to miss a chance to spend time with her. “Tomorrow?” he asked.
“Are you loco? You sound like you can hardly breathe.”
“I’m okay.”
<
br /> “Can you take a deep drag?”
He tried. “Ow.” He gasped. “When?”
“Friday.”
“Sure. At Naomi’s?”
“No. Um…she began awkwardly. “I’m thinking more like a date.”
He was taken aback.
“Tommy?”
“Yeah, yeah, for sure. Where?”
“At the Prague.”
He groaned as he changed position. “The café on Crescent Street?”
“Yeah, near Ste. Catherine. East side.”
“Sure.”
“Around eight?”
“Sure.”
“Sure?” She laughed and hung up.
“What did she want?” his mother asked. As usual, she was cooking something. The only time she was at rest was when she was reading.
“She wanted to know how I was.”
“For that you had to go to another room?” she said.
“That was nice of her,” his father said.
“Yes. She’s nice.”
“Is she your girlfriend?” His mother didn’t waste time.
“No. She’s Speedy’s sister. We’re just friends.”
“Boys and girls can’t be just friends.”
“Sure they can,” he countered, but was pretty sure his mother was right. He didn’t like her being so nosy.
“And, she’s not Jewish.”
“Why does it matter if she’s Jewish or not? We’re just friends. I never even asked her out.”
“Do you have a girlfriend? We haven’t seen anyone.”
“No. I’m too busy with work and soccer.” He didn’t want to talk to his parents about girls. Especially his mother.
“Girls today are terrible. Their clothes are terrible. Their skirts are too short. The miniskirt is terrible. You can see almost everything. And those hippie girls don’t wear what they should. Sometimes not even shoes.”
Clothes were important to his mother Seeing girls wear old or used clothes as a fashion statement really upset her.
“When I was young,” she would start whenever she saw a girl in patched jeans, “we were too poor to have nice dresses. And in the concentration camp we had to wear lice-infested rags. I promised myself that if I survived, I would have nice new clothes. They don’t know how good they have it here. And then they dress like that.” And running her own business making women’s blazers, she felt she had the right to judge style and morals.
His mother loved well-made clothes. She would spend hours in dress shops, checking not only the styles but also stroking the fabrics, feeling the nap of the material, looking at the cut and the match at the seams. Then she would make them herself, taking pride in making them better than the ones she copied. When friends asked where she bought it, she would bask in their incredulity and their oohs and ahhs.
“People judge you by how you look,” she often said. She insisted that her husband and Tommy wear nice clothes to work. There they changed into their work clothes and changed back at the end of the day. On weekends when everybody in the neighbourhood wore casual clothes, his father wore a suit and tie, even to sit on the balcony. His mother wore ironed blouses, skirts and a spotless apron when she cooked. She didn’t like but tolerated his wearing jeans on the weekend but not during the week. His mother was always nagging him to dress nicely even when he had a game to go to. She even insisted that he polish his cleats before each game. Because he scored a hat trick the first game he played with polished cleats, it had become one of his rituals.
His mother had an opinion about everything. Even things she didn’t know much about. It made arguing with her impossible. One of her favourite expression was “I know everything.” His father was less opinionated, but not much. Being survivors of the Holocaust gave them a right to be right about everything. And because of this, Tommy always felt guilty arguing with them. So, he didn’t. Until recently there hadn’t been much to argue about. Now he was hiding more and more, and he didn’t feel good about it. But he liked what he was doing. He certainly wasn’t going to tell them about smoking grass. Or about liking Marianne. He wasn’t even sure if she liked him in the same way, though after the last call, maybe.
“And what is this free love anyway? It’s disgusting.”
“It’s about loving the person you want to love, that’s all. Their race or religion shouldn’t matter.”
“You can say that all you want, but I know it’s not true. If you marry a shiksa and you get into a fight the first thing she’ll call you is a dirty Jew.”
“Who’s talking about marriage?”
“Thank God. And you can’t be like them. They won’t let you. I know.”
“How do you know?”
“Before the war, many Jews tried to assimilate in Hungary. Especially the educated ones from Budapest. They said that everybody is a Hungarian. They said it didn’t matter if you were a Christian or a Jew, you were still a Hungarian. But those rotten Arrow Cross fascists didn’t think so. Those free-love Jews still ended up wearing the yellow star. Many tried to convert. Even my father converted to keep us from being taken away. And they still took us. So, don’t tell me about this everybody-is-the-same craziness.”
“But this is Canada.”
“It’s the same everywhere. Believe me. I know.”
There is no winning, Tommy thought and went off to watch Hogan’s Heroes.
“And when are you going to get a haircut? You’re starting to look like a girl,” his mother called out after him.
Watching the prisoners outwit bumbling Colonel Klink and simple-minded Schultz, he thought about his parents’ concentration camp experiences. Their stories were certainly not funny, although his father often recounted them in a humorous way. He once told him that after liberation, he wandered into an officer’s bedroom and beheld a wondrous thing, a bed with a mattress and duvet. “I was going to lie in it. But then I saw another prisoner who had the same idea. I yelled out to him that it was mine, that it was mine. He yelled back the same thing at the same time. We both ran—well, shuffled was more like it—toward that goose-feathered heaven. It was a race between two turtles. Then I realized I was looking into a mirror! For two years I had lived without seeing myself. It’s a good thing or I would have scared myself to death. I looked like an old man.”
His parents had been his age when they were in the camps. He had never thought about that before.
“I see nothing! I hear nothing! I know nothing!” Sergeant Schultz declared and there was laughter.
18
Café Prague was a hole-in-the wall a few steps below street level. Though it was only two blocks from the campus he had never been inside. He had heard that weirdos, artsy-fartsies and shit disturbers like Naomi hung out there. He sat at a table for two about halfway along the wall. A waitress in a black turtleneck sweater, short suede skirt, black tights and knee-high boots came over.
“I’m waiting for someone.”
“Godot?”
“Sorry?”
“Cool.” She smiled and walked away.
Canvasses of splattered paint hung on the exposed brick walls. A little stage, big enough for a stool and a microphone, was tucked into the far corner. To its right was a cigarette-vending machine and to its left, a bar with a pastry display case. At one of the tables two bearded guys wearing turtlenecks and smoking pipes were contemplating a chessboard. At another, a girl in an army surplus jacket was absorbed in her book. At the far corner table, near the door, a chubby guy with scruffy hair was busy scribbling. Quiet music filled the room. In his chinos, button-down shirt, navy blue jacket and tie, Tommy felt out of place.
Why did Marianne want to meet here? It didn’t feel like a date kind of place. She had danced into his life and drawn him into another world. She was someone close and far at the same time. She was like a guy, loud and tough. She was the one who calle
d him, told him where to be and when. But like a girl, she was a mystery who had kissed him with a kiss that was not a kiss. She was the lightest touch of lips that had sent smoke and shivers through him and got him high. He sailed on Marianne’s kiss for days after. It wasn’t just the grass. He was sure of that. And he wanted more.
He spotted her coming down the stairs. He couldn’t make out her features because of the backlight from the street but he recognized her outline. She wasn’t a pretty girl; she was a beautiful woman.
He inhaled deeply and stood up. Her hair cascaded past her shoulders, and flowed over her black vest. His mother would certainly have approved of her pin-striped collarless shirt but not the patched full-length flowered skirt or sandals.
“Hi.”
She offered her cheeks. He inhaled her. She made him feel suave and serious. He kissed her once, twice. He would have loved to embrace her.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Fine, you?”
“Okay.”
“Still sore?”
“Not much.”
“You sure?”
The waitress arrived to take their order. “Hi, Marianne. The usual?”
“Yeah.”
“And you?” said the waitress.
“A Pepsi, please.”
“We don’t serve pop.”
“They only serve coffee or tea,” Marianne said.
“Coffee, please.”
“What kind?”
“With milk and sugar, please.”
“But what kind?” the waitress repeated.
“He’ll have a cappuccino also,” Marianne said.
“Do you want any pastry?”
“We’ll share a mille feuille,” she said. “And two glasses of water.”
“Okay.”
Tommy felt stupid.
“A cappuccino is an Italian coffee and has a milky foam on top. The Prague is one of the few places that has a cappuccino machine in Montreal.”
