Off Side

by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  ‘If you touch my knee again, you’ll leave this ground with a faceful of stud-marks.’

  Pedrosa spat at the ground at his feet as he turned away and ran to stand guard over his goalie, who had fallen on the ball and was looking to right and left, challenging anyone to try and take it off him.

  ‘He’s a thinking player. But he’s been out of the game for too long.’

  ‘And he’s getting old.’

  The spectators were beginning to exchange opinions on his performance so far.

  ‘A centre forward needs time to develop.’

  ‘Give Palacín any more time and he’ll be over the hill. Past it. He must be forty if he’s a day.’

  The first half drew to a close, and Palacín felt more psychologically than physically tired. The club’s manager continued with the gesticulating and unintelligible strings of recommendations that he had embarked on at the ref’s first whistle, twitching about like an electrocuted animal on the manager’s bench. Now he was leaping around his players distributing criticism and ranting about the failings of their respective genital apparatuses. There was a special chapter devoted to Palacín. The voice was lower, and the syntax more composed: ‘Don’t stick so close to Pedrosa. Keep free of him, for heaven’s sake, Palacín. You know what the game is. Even you can beat him once you get a good run with the ball in front of you.’

  The troupe nodded and stared at their boots, and some changed their dirty, sweaty shirts.

  ‘Stop that, Confucius! How many times do I have to tell you?! Don’t take showers in the middle of a game. You’ll chill your muscles. How can you be so bloody useless? Why do you have to wash so much? You’re worse than my daughter.’

  By the time they came out for the second half, the afternoon was wearing on and the failing light made the terraces look even older, dirtier and more derelict, and likewise the little stand from which Sánchez Zapico was presiding, surrounded by the other club directors and their families. The chairman had one eye on what was happening on the pitch, and the other on Dosrius, who was mingling with the spectators on the terraces, a philosophical onlooker apparently unconcerned by the way the match was going. Every now and then their eyes would meet, and Sánchez Zapico would narrow his eyes as if to confirm an implicit agreement.

  ‘God, that was close …!’

  Palacín had control of the ball. He dummied and left Pedrosa sitting at the edge of the area with his heavy arse almost wedged into the ground. Then he gave a kick that sent the ball across the goal-mouth. With painful slowness it missed the goal and slid past the post. The roar and the applause from the spectators put renewed lightness into Palacín’s step as he ran back to his original position, and out of the corner of his eye he caught the vicious look that Pedrosa was sending his way. As play resumed, Pedrosa closed in, but Palacín was expecting him, and dug the studs of one of his boots into his thigh, as he jumped over his tree-trunk leg. The ref gestured as if to pull the yellow card from his pocket, but he went no further than shaking his head bad-temperedly as he struggled for breath. It was in the twenty-second minute that Confucius, the student, emerged from an absence that may or may not have been deliberate and dribbled past three of the Gramenet players, to reach the goal line. He passed the ball back to Palacín. The centre forward took in the wide open goal, and the goalie standing like an impotent statue of clay which he was now going to beat. The ball thudded into the opposition goal and lifted the net like a breeze lifting a pretty girl’s skirt, and the magic word became a collective shout: ‘Goal!’ From where he lay on the ground, Palacín glanced first at the linesman and then at the ref. The goal was allowed, even though the Gramenet players were clustered round the ref arguing that Confucius had been off side.

  ‘He was not off side! I saw it with my own eyes!’

  ‘You, ref, you couldn’t see anything, because you’re blind as a bat.’

  ‘The only thing you see is the bribe they gave you.’

  The ref pulled out two yellow cards, or rather the same one twice, in the way that someone threatened by a vampire might brandish a cross for protection. The Gramenet players backed off and returned to the middle of the pitch with renewed urgency, while the Centellas team performed a victory war-dance around Palacín, glorying in the applause from the fans on the half-full, half-empty terraces, which as far as they were concerned could have been the most prestigious stadium in the world.

  ‘Don’t fall back now! Go for the bastards! Let’s have some balls now,’ shouted Precioso, partly in order to spur his players on, and partly to liven up the fans on the terraces behind him.

  Sánchez Zapico was engaged simultaneously in applauding delightedly and at the same time registering the meaningful looks that were coming from the direction of Dosrius. The pressure of the Gramenet attack meant that Palacín had to shore up the defence, and every time he got a ball out of the area with one of his power-headers, a group of spectators chorused ‘Olé!’ Palacín had thrown his marker off balance, and now they changed roles, as he moved to deny him any chance of shooting, exploiting the blind, bull-like nature of his movements. The ref used his last puff of breath to give the final whistle, and some of the fans came down off the terraces intent on touching their hero. Two boys handed Palacín an exercise book and a biro for an autograph, and as he was signing he felt a profound tiredness creeping up from his feet. His team-mates were slapping him on the back. He responded to the handshake offered by the man who a short while previously had been trying to kill him.

  ‘Congratulations, maestro.’

  ‘Till the next time, matador!’

  By the time they reached the changing rooms, their manager was claiming the credit for their victory, arguing that it had been a result of his tactical planning, although he was willing to recognize that in the second half they had put more balls into the game.

  ‘Confucius, if it wasn’t for those passes that you manage to conjure up every once in a while …’

  ‘Every team needs at least one intelligent player.’

  The other players started jeering at Confucius, and Palacín took advantage of the general air of complacency to get first use of the scant supply of hot water in the showers. Then, as he dressed, he received a pat on the back from Sánchez Zapico, whose face had suddenly become a picture of tiredness. Palacín left the ground and turned down offers of a lift to Barcelona. After a match he preferred to walk, and he walked with a light step. Soon he was viewing the ground from a distance as if it had nothing to do with him. The Centellas club was surrounded by working-class barrios, a cheap geometry for anonymous immigrants who had added a touch of floral display to windows and terraces in an attempt to incorporate a bit of nature into that nightmare of glass, cement and brick. The Centellas ground was like a presence of something out of place, like a sort of urban folly. Like the ruins which tourists visited on the outskirts of Oaxaca, attributed to the Zapotecas or the Mixtecas; like the pyramids of Monte Albán which surge up out of the countryside, and which include the Temple of the Dancers, claimed by some to be a celebration of dance, but by others to be a pre-Columbian hospital for the sick and the crippled. Or like that stadium for ball-games where legend says that the captain of the winning team had the right to tear out his rival’s heart. He walked until he was tired, and until he entered another set of ruins, the ruins of the abandoned factories in Pueblo Nuevo, with their big sheds and their railway sidings rusting among the weeds, and the leaning bulk of threatening, macabre buildings which still retained something of their brick-built beauty, and whose long-extinct chimneys reached towards the ceiling of the night, all waiting for the demolition which would shortly be creating the environment of the Olympic Village. When he reached the Pueblo Nuevo cemetery, he took a cab and asked the driver to drop him at calle del Hospital. The cab driver had his radio on, and he was able to catch the final items of the sports news. It was Mortimer, Mortimer all the way. Mortimer had been the hero of the day.

  ‘Jack Mortimer, the golden boy of Europ
ean football in the season of 1987–88, has now become the idol of the Barcelona fans at the start of what promises to be a very good season. This man is solid gold, and will set the turnstiles clicking in every club in Spain … Now I’ll hand you back to the studio.’

  He turned off the straight line of pasaje de Martorell that marked his homeward route and went in search of the Boqueriá market, with its bars for black men and its huddles of beggars in the La Garduña parking lot. As he passed the Jerusalem Bar, he saw her sitting at the counter, staring obsessively into a small glass of beer. He carried on walking, but stopped a few yards further on and turned back. He wanted to find a way of striking up conversation with her, but didn’t know how.

  ‘Well, look who’s here. The footballer!’

  ‘I just happened to be passing.’

  ‘I thought as much. Would you like something to drink? Do you want a beer?’

  He ordered a beer, but barely touched it. He had something to say, but didn’t dare say it.

  ‘What are you doing round here? Looking for something?’

  ‘Could you arrange the same as the other day?’

  ‘No problem. Very simple. Do you have money?’

  Palacín nodded, and the girl got off the bar stool as if it was burning a hole in the seat of her pants.

  Basté de Linyola ushered the president of the Generalitat of Catalonia and the Mayor of Barcelona into the lift serving the chairman’s box. He was rewarded with contented smiles and a slap on the back.

  ‘That was an unforgettable game.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Ja tenim equip!’ exclaimed the general commanding the Barcelona military region, parading a recently acquired commitment to showing that the army these days regarded the Catalan dialect with favour, on the grounds that it was one of the ‘treasures of the pluralism of a united Spain’.

  The club’s directors had lit their Montecristo Specials at the moment when Mortimer had scored his second goal, and by now some of them were on their second. They were no longer moving their cigars in and out of their mouths as if they were guests for whom it was difficult to find house-room, nor were they biting on the foreskins of these delights as if they were being subjected to oral rape; now the cigars had become welcome guests at the party, and were ushered in and out of their mouths like much-cherished princes as they emitted smoky signals of relaxation and contentment. The personalities from the world of politics and culture who had been specially invited to be present at Mortimer’s debut allowed themselves to be sought out by radio reporters, and tried to find a suitable language with which to connect with their respective political and cultural audiences. So, on the one hand, a representative from the Convergencia i Unio, the ruling party in the Catalan Assembly, declared that ‘If this club goes forward, then the country goes forward too, and vice versa,’ an admirable sentiment which compromised him neither with the club nor with the country; on the other hand, an organic intellectual of the Partit dels Socialistes Catalans, also a member of the European Parliament, expressed the opinion that: ‘Up until now the club has been inward-looking, but now the team seems ready to take on a new sense of the other. A sense of the other in which they will be scoring goals.’ The radio journalists were in their element, waving their microphones under the noses of the city’s notables as if offering a chilly hertzian kiss in exchange for a bit of free public relations. The stadium vomited spectators out from its various orifices into the dusk which was settling early, thanks to the end of summer time. Now that the game was over, they turned on their transistor radios so as not to miss the post-mortems. After an away game the previous Sunday, Basté de Linyola had declared: ‘Mortimer’s debut will give the team a new identity’; this Sunday he felt up to substantiating his expectation: ‘Mortimer’s debut has given the team a new identity.’ All this stuff had to be listened to. It was a necessary part of being able to survive the working week that was about to start. Then came the results of the other games. And the pools. And the league tables. And who had been sent off. And comments on how the refs had behaved. The players themselves were no longer the protagonists of the scene, because by now an army of young radio reporters, microphones at the ready, were preparing to squeeze out, drop by drop, the last mortal juices of the day’s various battles and their heroes.

  ‘Pere Rius? Pere Rius at the computer centre — are you on-line?’

  No, it wasn’t a call to mission control at Houston prior to a space launch.

  ‘Pere Rius is at the computer centre, and he’s going to tell us how many minutes Mortimer had control of the ball.’

  ‘Eight minutes.’

  ‘How many shots on goal?’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘How many goals?’

  ‘Two, as well as laying one on for Mendoza.’

  ‘We couldn’t hope for better. Mortimer has shown today that he’s the kind of centre forward the club so badly needs. It’s only the fifth day of the season, and already Mortimer’s presence has given an incisiveness to the forward players which has been missing for the past two seasons. It has taken just one afternoon for the fans to discover Mortimer for what he is: the king of the pitch. It’s not often that we see a player so instinctively able to control his area. He shakes off his markers. He opens spaces. He knows how to wait for the ball with his back to the goal, and swing round in an instant ready to shoot.’

  The fans emerged slowly from the stadium with smiles of satisfaction on their faces and the name of Mortimer hanging from their lips like a festive garland. As Carvalho reached the stairs that led down to the changing rooms, he paused to watch as an impressive air of solitude descended on the terraces, and then went off in search of Camps O’Shea. He found him leading the club’s manager into the press room. The dozen private security guards were posted discreetly about the place, their eyes and muscles alert for any eventuality. The floodlights of the various TV channels bathed the changing room door in a harsh light which caught the players unawares as they came out and made themselves available to answer a string of leading questions.

  ‘What difference would you say it has made to have Mortimer joining the team?’

  ‘Why did you pass so few balls to Mortimer?’

  ‘How do you feel when people say that your team consists of ten people plus Mortimer?’

  ‘Is Mortimer the start of a new era?’

  ‘How does it feel to be playing next to a superstar like Mortimer?’

  In the harsh light of the TV lamps it struck Carvalho that the players looked so young that it was easy to forget that they were the solid, determined, uniform figures that he had just seen dominating the pitch, invested with all the significance of heroes of the afternoon, as Camps O’Shea might have said. They looked more like little boys who had been landed with a role which was actually beyond them, and whose main interest was to get their photos taken so that they could file them in their photo albums. And there was Mortimer, as a kind of blond shadow whom they accepted because he gave them a place in the limelight as the privileged colleagues of the hero of the hour. And when Mortimer himself came out and stood framed in the doorway of Gate 1, the mikes and the cameras were only for him.

  ‘Did you give a hundred per cent this afternoon?’

  ‘Do you expect to keep up your English average of two goals per match throughout the season?’

  ‘What difference do you find between the Spanish style of defence and the English?’

  ‘What did you feel when the fans all started chanting your name when you scored?’

  Mortimer used an interpreter that the club had placed at his disposal in order to explain that the day’s win had come about thanks to a good team effort and the manager’s strategy. The interpreter managed to render this in a surprisingly large number of words, which could have been expected, seeing that he was considered one of the best translators of James Joyce into the Catalan. Camps O’Shea had hired him in the manner of a literary patron, so that when he wasn’t interpreting f
or the club, he’d be able to continue with his translation of Daedalus, which, hopefully, would have the same select cult success as had been enjoyed by his Ulysses. Now he appeared to stumble as he replied to the journalists’ questions, as if he was the dummy to Mortimer’s ventriloquist. He replied either in Castilian or in Catalan, according to the language of the questioner, and contrived to have the kind of accent attributed to English people when they try to speak foreign languages. Mortimer recognized Carvalho and winked in his direction, with the amiable smile of a likeable adolescent aware of his role as the saviour of a Sunday afternoon’s football which would help thousands of people to suffer the harsh reality of Monday morning with the hopes of another Sunday, of another exhibition by Mortimer, and of other goals on which they would eventually construct a new legend. Carvalho followed the crowd of journalists, photographers and TV cameramen, who were insatiable in their demands for Mortimer to continue answering the kinds of questions that were asked every Sunday, but which in this case were magnified by the status of the star. Camps O’Shea arrived from the press room, where a scattering of hardened hacks had now finished their ritual of asking the club’s manager all the usual questions, and he cleared the way for their new star to approach his Porsche, which was staked out by security guards at each of its four corners.

  ‘OK, gentlemen. Time to let him go. You’ve got a whole season ahead to pick his brains. Save a few questions for next Sunday.’

  This didn’t stop one of them thrusting a microphone right under Mortimer’s nose as he sat at the wheel, and as he moved to drive off he all but took the arm off the journalist holding it. The journalist returned the mike to his own lips in order to give the final touches to two hours of communication with his audience: ‘Mortimer seems satisfied, but he tells us that he wasn’t firing on all cylinders today. The golden boy of European football in the season of 1987–88 obviously still needs to get acclimatized to the Spanish style of football, and only time will tell how he’ll handle an experience which has broken plenty of other good foreign players. It’s one thing playing on your home ground, backed up by fans who will protest against the slightest foul, but it’s another thing playing away at some of those grounds where the opposition’s tactics tend to be, shall we say, over-vigorous. Anyway, I’ll return you now to the studio with one final observation, in the commendably honest words of the club’s manager: “With players like Mortimer, any coach is bound to win.” We’ll hold you to that, mister. If the club doesn’t win, it won’t be Mortimer’s fault. He’s ready to set the heavens ringing. So, now we leave this great stadium, with the impression that a new god has taken his place on the altars of our city: Jack Mortimer, the golden boy of European football in the season of 1987–88, has now become the idol of the Barcelona fans at the start of what promises to be a very good season.’