Off Side

by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  ‘Well now that you’re all going round pretending to be so very educated and civilized, I’ll tell you what I think of what you’ve just said: every age finds the words that it needs in order to conceal its real motives.’

  ‘That is a normal condition of human life. It happens among all peoples, at all times.’

  The audience was getting bored with the level of abstraction, and a lady stood up and brought things down to earth again: ‘Would you say that we have made enough of an effort to give our Catalan sportswomen a chance to win an Olympic medal?’ Basté was courteous in proclaiming that all of Catalonia’s women deserved an Olympic medal, and he was also sufficiently well documented to reveal a precise knowledge of the poor state of our, I stress our sports environment at all levels. But, he said, a country which, without any particular liking for music, had managed to produce a Pablo Casals, could equally well surprise the world by suddenly producing champions.

  This was the moment that Carvalho chose to extricate himself from the audience. He hesitated for a moment, unsure whether to take the left exit or the right — a delay that was sufficiently long for Basté to recognize him, and for his eyes to narrow momentarily. However Carvalho didn’t return the recognition, and as he headed for the exit he crossed paths with the ageing radical.

  ‘I gather he didn’t convince you.’

  ‘They might not look it, but they’re the same as ever.’

  ‘And so are you.’

  ‘Unfortunately not. And that’s the way they like it. We will never again be the people that we used to be. As far as I’m concerned, they can stick the city up their arses, and much good may it do them.’

  Basté had not succeeded in convincing him, but neither had he had the opposite effect. Having had the opportunity to assess him in a civic environment where people treated him like a patrician, Carvalho now needed to see how he operated in his other scenario of creator of heroes. He transferred himself to the football ground, to see the effect on Basté of having to switch between so many roles in the course of one day. As a patrician orator he had struck Carvalho as a cynic, and when the detective reached the ground and showed his ‘Social Psychologist’ pass, he thought to himself that surely Basté could not really take the rituals of the football world seriously, for all that this powerful club was built more like a cathedral than a football ground. The players were sitting on the grass absorbing a theory lesson from the manager, who was expounding the principles of ball control, with his back to the fans with time on their hands who regularly attended the club’s afternoon training sessions.

  ‘According to Charles Hughes, to create openings, you have to apply the following principles: you have to scatter the opposition across the pitch in all directions; you have to change direction frequently, either by suddenly changing the trajectory of the ball or by connecting the trajectory with another team member; you have to pass the ball quickly, and not hog it; you have to be able to conceal your own intentions; you should not dribble the ball longer than is strictly necessary; and when you’ve got control of the ball, there are four other principles that you have to bear in mind …’ And so he went on, elucidating his principles, until Carvalho finally got bored, and was confirmed in his conviction that human beings are divided into two basic categories: those who lecture, and those who are lectured.

  The cashier referred him to a senior clerk, who, having listened in an unctuous bank-managerial style, lapsed into meditation for a moment and decided that this was a job for the bank’s manager. Palacín waited for the manager to finish a meeting with a man who looked a lot more nervous coming out than when he had gone in. The manager was patting him on the back as he went: ‘Cheer up, young man.’

  And he shook his hand in order to transmit to him the vibrations of confidence that were appropriate for what was the sixth- or seventh-largest bank in the country. Then he dissolved his smile and assumed an air of gravity as he came across to usher Palacín into the office.

  ‘I don’t think we need to …’

  ‘There is no conversation which deserves to be had not sitting down.’

  So they sat down. The manager listened to his brief explanation of how he was trying to trace his wife through her bank account. He asked for his identity card, and then called an assistant to bring him the file for that particular account. He studied it with all the seriousness that he would give to the bank’s annual report, until finally he offered Palacín a smile and a ray of hope.

  ‘I don’t foresee any problems in providing the information you’re looking for.’

  He called over his assistant, and they didn’t even need to finish their conversation for Palacín to feel the anxiety suddenly swelling in his chest like a ball of wet dough. His son and his ex-wife were no longer in Spain. They had left an address for the money he deposited to be sent on. The address was in Bogotá. The manager communicated this information to Palacín, and handed him a piece of paper on which was written an address so far distant that for Palacín it was as good as extra-terrestrial. He stared at this more or less useless piece of paper, and something like a desire to cry seemed to box off his soul. It was a moment before he heard the manager saying: ‘Do you need anything, señor Palacín? Hello, señor Palacín …?’

  He stammered his thanks and rose to his feet with the note in his hand.

  ‘I hope you will continue to honour us with your business.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘I can assure you that we have a very good team of people in this bank, and they are here to work for your interests and those of your family. Have you heard about our new issue of bonds that can be converted into shares? They can be converted at any moment that you decide the market is right. Would you be interested …?’

  ‘No. Not for the moment, thanks.’

  ‘If you have second thoughts, you know where to find us.’

  Palacín found himself standing outside the bank, torn between two directions, neither of which made much sense. He could either go and do the recovery exercises which the manager had prescribed for him, or he could go and hide in his room and allow himself to sink into the depression that was flooding over him. He called a taxi, and took a moment or two deciding on his route. Finally he plumped for the depression, and asked the cabbie to drop him at the corner of calle de la Cadena and Hospital. He sleepwalked towards the entrance of the pension, and as he arrived he noticed that something was stopping him from going up. He was hungry, or at least he ought to have been hungry. At any rate, it was lunchtime, and he headed off down calle de San Olegario in search of a place to eat. He went into one that looked less dirty than the others, probably because it was better lit, and settled himself at a plastic table which a waiter promptly draped with a paper tablecloth. The words on the menu swam before his eyes, but he already knew what he was going to order — a rare steak and a salad. He picked up his fork and toyed with the lettuce leaves, searching out the two slices of cold meat where they sat in the vinegar dressing, and it was the girl’s smell that he noticed before her voice, a smell of sweat and cheap cologne, as she inquired: ‘Do you have a light?’

  ‘I don’t smoke.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  There was something familiar about her thin body, and particularly about its subdued way of being, as if she was waiting for something, which, whatever it was, would hold no interest for her when it finally arrived. She interpreted his attempt to decide who she was as an invitation to sit down at his table.

  ‘Am I bothering you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ve seen you around,’ she said, as if, by saying it, she had somehow regained possession of a part of him after a long absence. ‘I’m sure I know you from somewhere.’

  ‘I know you from somewhere, too,’

  ‘There’s something very familiar about you, you know.’ She leaned back in her chair in order to get an even firmer grip on his perplexity.

  Palacín had a curious sensation of being in the presence of a female
invertebrate whose skeleton wasn’t even up to bearing the weight of her skinny body.

  ‘I know! You’re the footballer!’

  ‘You’re too young to remember me. It’s been years since I was last in the news.’

  ‘You’re the footballer from señora Conchi’s.’

  Now he remembered her. Her profile at the end of the kitchen, a coffee in her hand, and the air of bored resignation as she endured the landlady’s chit-chat.

  ‘Are you staying there too?’

  ‘No. Señora Conchi invites me up for a coffee sometimes. As a matter of fact, yours truly is a prostitute.’

  He twitched momentarily as he took in this piece of information. His brain took a moment registering what she had said, and when it did he suddenly felt tense, both with himself, and with the vibrations that were coming across from this unnerving presence.

  ‘Would you fancy a literary screw with me?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘I was forgetting, you’re a footballer. Literary screws wouldn’t do a lot for you. How would you fancy scoring a goal between my thighs?’

  ‘No.’ He said this so abruptly that he felt the need to qualify it in case she felt offended. ‘Not today.’

  ‘This is the best time. Just after you’ve eaten. A little siesta. Footballers need a bit of relaxation. So you just relax, and I’ll do the business. My clients don’t even have to move. A thousand pesetas, plus the price of the room. Clean and decent … I might not be pretty, but I screw with a lot of imagination. You just score the goal, and I’ll do the rest.’

  ‘Maybe I can get you something to eat?’

  She was expecting this, because she raised one arm and called the waiter over to ask for a coffee and brandy.

  ‘You can have something to eat too, if you want.’

  ‘I know I’m skinny, but I’m not starving. I save eating for when I go to see that crazy old woman. She enjoys mothering me. Tough shit on her.’

  The harshness of her words were matched by the electric brightness of the gaze which she fixed on him from the depths of her dark-ringed eyes. All of a sudden she smiled and placed a hand on his arm.

  ‘I don’t need anything to eat, but if you fancied getting me a line of coke, you’d be doing me a favour, and you could have a good time too.’

  ‘I’m not into cocaine.’

  ‘I know where to get some.’

  ‘For me too?’

  These words had been spoken by some alter ego that he had inside him, but none the less he didn’t retract them. All trace of irony had disappeared from her face; now it showed only wanting, and a willingness to please.

  ‘As much as you want.’

  ‘I’ve never taken it before.’

  ‘I’ll show you how.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that. You just give me the money and I’ll go and score. Give me fifteen thousand pesetas. Are you carrying that much?’

  He nodded, but delayed reaching for the wallet in the back pocket of his trousers. They looked at each other as if to see who was going to speak first.

  ‘Don’t you trust me?’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘Yes it is. It’s all right. I understand. You follow me. We’ll go to Plaza Real, and you’ll see how I get the stuff. You keep at a bit of a distance, so as not to get involved, and I promise you, if you’ve never tried it before, you’ll never forget it.’

  He paid the bill and followed her down calle de San Pablo to the Ramblas. She was running more than walking, and he was trying to hide his excitement as he followed her with his hands in his pockets, his head held high, and his legs trying to look as if they weren’t really hurrying at all. When they arrived at the arcades in the square, she went on ahead and slowed down a bit, as if on the look-out for punters. She had already spotted a pair of men drinking beers on one of the terraces. She went over to them, looking for all the world as if she had just run into a pair of old acquaintances. She put up a good performance, but the two men weighed her up with a look of calculated irony in their eyes. However, when she tucked the money under the tray that still bore the remains of a moules marinières, the two men’s air of remoteness suddenly disappeared, and one of their four hands reached into a pocket and re-emerged to shake the woman’s hand as she turned on her heels to leave. As far as Palacín could see, she had just met a couple of old friends, and when she came back over he immediately began to repent of his impulse. In fact he hurried ahead of her to tell her that she could keep the money, because he was no longer interested in the cocaine.

  ‘I’ve got it. It’s in my bag.’

  They returned to calle de San Olegario, went down calle San Rafael and turned into an entry that smelt of cats’ piss and fossilized filth. They went up the broken brick stairs and arrived at a door covered with layers of paint accumulated over the best part of three centuries. She inserted a heavy iron key into the lock and turned it, but the door barely shifted.

  ‘Shit. The son of a bitch is inside.’ She kicked the door a couple of times and shouted: ‘Come on! Move the bucket and open the door!’

  It was a while before there was any sign of life from inside, but then came the sound of something metal being put on the floor and a chair being dragged aside. The door opened to reveal a corridor full of junk. In the middle of the corridor stood a young man in his underpants, with a bucket of water at his feet and his eyes seemingly unable to focus on what he was seeing.

  ‘OK, scram. I’m here with a client.’

  ‘With a client? I thought I told you not to bring people up …’

  ‘Scram, I said.’

  The young man studied Palacín and the woman in turn, and all of a sudden it dawned on him: ‘You’re not here to screw! You’ve been out to score! I know you, you bitch! You never come here to screw!’

  ‘Scram, or you’ll get no more dope for a month.’

  ‘What’s it worth for me to go?’

  ‘I’ll make it worth your while.’

  He walked in front of them to a room which a lone mattress in the middle of the floor had transformed into their bedroom, and from the floor he picked up a pair of crumpled trousers that would have looked good on a scarecrow, together with a pullover which he put on with nothing underneath. He didn’t look at them again, even when she followed him out. Once he had left, she put the chair and the bucket back in their rightful place. Then she ran back down to the room and gestured to Palacín to sit on the mattress.

  ‘I’m afraid we haven’t any chairs. I’ll go and get things ready.’

  She disappeared and returned with a mirror and the tube of a ballpoint pen without its inky heart.

  ‘Do you want me to strip?’

  ‘No. It’s OK.’

  ‘Any time you want me to strip, just say the word.’

  She sat next to Palacín and unclenched her hand to reveal a small white paper packet. She opened it and showed him the fine white dust inside.

  ‘There it is. Life itself. Better than life, in fact. Better than anything at all. I think they won’t have cut it too much. I know the dealer, and he might be a son of a bitch but he treats his regulars properly. He’s a decent sort.’

  She traced two lines of coke across the mirror and sniffed one of them up one nostril, using the barrel of the ballpoint. She breathed in deeply and let her head fall back as if she was trying to absorb the dust deep inside her. Then she handed the mirror and the tube to Palacín.

  ‘Block one nostril, silly. How are you going to sniff it up if you use both nostrils.’

  Palacin saw the line of dust disappear, and noticed a slight tickling sensation in his nostril, which made him twitch as only air began to come up the tube.

  ‘You’ll see — it’s brilliant.’

  Her voice had changed. Her eyes had become beautiful. Beautiful and kind. As if they were kissing him.

  When Gerardo Passani had been hired as the club’s coach, the appointment had been made bearing in mind the role th
at Mortimer was going to be playing in the tactical scheme of things. Passani had a worldwide reputation for his theory of the double midfield, which some Italian journalist had chosen to define as ‘schizocentrocampism’. Basically the theory involved expanding the midfield to six players who doubled up into an advanced midfield and a rearguard midfield; up front a lone centre forward would open spaces and wait for balls from the three advanced midfield players, all of whom had been selected for their speed and their ability to shoot from outside the area. These six men were the key, and on the manager’s blackboard they were represented in the following formula:

  The formula never failed, and the final outcome produced a surprising logic, as Passani stressed, because the six who opened the formula were not necessarily the same six as the six who closed it. He stressed the point: six does not invariably equal six; it might equal 6AR. In other words, having been recreated via the process of the double midfield, the six midfield players became something more than just six midfield players, because they assumed a double quality as both attackers and defenders, simultaneously complementary and interchangeable. During the first month of training, Passani was very insistent on his tactical system during the theoretical sessions that he organized for the players, and when Mortimer joined the team — still recovering from an injury incurred during an England game — there was no problem in adapting the tactical schema, because the particular characteristics of Mortimer’s style of play made him the ideal final point, the receptive and transformatory destination of the work of his six team-mates, whether you saw them simply as six, or as 6AR. Passani derived a second formula from this complementarity, which he summed up as follows:

  From this it could be deduced that the opposition defenders might at any given moment find themselves facing an unstoppable mathematical formula in the shape of the following: