by Amos Talshir
Slowly and in a supremely orderly manner, all the local fans dispersed to their seats and the woman giving birth remained lying on the green grass, alone on the massive turf in the summery morning light. She lay there, writhing and screaming, her hands on her swollen belly, waiting for the baby that was about to appear. Previous births in the stadium since the lockdown had been sheltered within the restroom facilities and took place after advance coordination with doctors who were part of the audience of fans. This time, for the first time, the urgency of the birth had accelerated by the light of day, in front of the tens of thousands of spectators in the stadium who sat down in their seats, tensely awaiting the expected event. At this stage, there was only one player on the field, and no one knew how the game would develop. The audience sat in the stands, the tension increased, and it seemed as if all spectators were now fans of the one female player, yearning for one result only: one–zero in her favor.
One by one by one, they were seen rising from their seats in various locations in the stands, going down the stairs with cautious swiftness. Even when they spotted one another, none of them retreated, and all of them approached the turf and began to cross it, heading toward the woman in labor, who was moaning on the grass. At the point in time in which it became clear to each of them that the sharpshooters had spotted them and realized their intention, they began to run.
Six doctors assembled around the woman giving birth. Two of them knelt beside her and one of them before her. Simon identified Dr. Thomas. It was impossible to miss the camouflaged hump that had left its impression on him during their previous meeting. He also noticed that the aging doctor’s full hair now flowed down to his shoulders, nearly touching the hump.
The utter silence engulfing all inhabitants of the stadium emphasized the muffled screams of the woman in labor. Simon pushed his thermos into Veronica’s hands and his pocketknife into her pocket and urged her to run to the woman and to hand the pocketknife specifically to Dr. Thomas. Veronica rose from her seat, raised the thermos above her head in full view of the sharpshooters, and then began to run toward the woman giving birth. She reached the doctors just as the baby’s head was crowning and handed the thermos to Dr. Thomas. The spectators held their breath, focusing on the birth taking place in front of their eyes. The doctor kneeling in front of the expectant mother began to gently pull at the baby, muttering with a smile that he would have preferred the presence of one obstetrics nurse to that of so many doctors. His fellow doctors laughed and then the baby was already in his arms. He lifted it up, slapping its wet body lightly. The baby’s faint crying, so anticipated, released a collective sigh of relief from all of the stands’ inhabitants. Veronica took off one of her shirts and placed it as a cradle in her arms. One of the doctors gently splashed water from the thermos on the baby’s tiny body, placed the baby on the shirt in Veronica’s arms and cleaned him up. Veronica gestured with her chin at her pocket and Thomas extracted Simon’s pocketknife and cut the umbilical cord. Another doctor gave the new mother water to drink from the thermos and cooled her face with a water-soaked rag. An additional doctor turned toward the stands, and with a gesture of his raised arm, his other hand supporting his elbow, signaled to the fans that the newborn was a boy. Cries of joy and applause drowned out the baby’s crying. The calls turned into a rendition of the anthem of the local Sportive fan club, with all the visiting fans joining in.
Veronica gazed at the baby in her arms and knew there was no way back from the most important decision in her life. She lifted up the baby wrapped in her shirt toward the stands. The applause increased, and she began to walk with the baby along the route surrounding the pitch, received by the fans with coordinated waves of sitting and standing. Veronica increased the pace of her steps, holding the baby against her chest, and began to run a victory lap across from all the stands rising in her honor. Her feet carried her like the wind around the stadium, whose inhabitants were all cheering for the newborn. Veronica’s heart was beating hard, and she was about to complete the four-hundred-meter dash that would return her to the group of doctors waiting, startled, next to the concerned mother. A great happiness filled her heart, flooding her body and streaming to her legs. She knew that for the first time in her life, she had decided to do something not for anyone else, but only for herself, without considering her mother or her lovers, or anyone with expectations in regard to her. She would make a baby for herself.
The doctor took the baby from her and laid him on the new mother’s chest. Dr. Thomas returned the pocketknife into the palm of Veronica’s hand and looked in her eyes.
“Please convey my appreciation to the boy who owns the pocketknife. Tell him that Dr. Thomas has the highest esteem for him. Please remind him I still think we need to conduct an exchange of opinions. And one more thing, tell him that I need a new haircut.”
The cheerers’ boisterous singing continued and the fans began to descend upon the pitch. The doctors took the new mother to the restroom facilities. Veronica was left standing on her own without having had time to say goodbye to the baby. The doctor kissed her hand and said he would be happy to collaborate with her on any matter she could think of.
32.
For weeks now, Charlie had been walking around with a cable to plug into the PA system, a pair of wire cutters and insulation tape in the pocket of his coat, brimming with a sense of commitment to Simon. He identified one of the floodlight poles close to their stand, on which the immense loudspeakers of the stadium’s PA system were installed. In all the previous times he had approached the pole in order to dismantle the cover of the access panel, he had felt the sharpshooters’ sights focused upon him. Charlie could not have wished for a better opportunity to wreak havoc in the stadium. He couldn’t afford to miss it. The convergence of well-wishers celebrating the birth of the baby boy had created a dense, festive environment, camouflaging any activity taking place near the pole. Charlie snuck up there, used a screwdriver he had taken from Simon’s backpack to remove the cover over the access panel, and with the skilled hands of an expert in boat engine repair recognized the wires to which the loudspeakers were connected. There was no problem distinguishing the regular electrical wires of the floodlights from the loudspeakers’ complex cables. He exposed the points of contact by removing the plastic sheathing, attached the ends of the connecting wires he carried in his pocket, and wrapped the exposed tendons of the wires with insulation tape. He had time to screw the metal cover protecting the access panel back into place a mere second before Veronica hugged him from behind. Charlie stroked her face, wanting to hurry off and give Simon the news of his success in connecting to the PA system.
Veronica did not let go of him, continuing to snuggle into his shoulder. Despite the intimate way they had gotten to know one another more than two years ago in the bathroom stall, no romantic relationship had formed between them, although he seemed to like her, and they could certainly have made the long hours spent sitting in their seats at night much more pleasant for one another. Despite the tense environment in the stadium, Charlie was willing to admit he often experienced that same old yearning for a woman’s touch. The scent rising from Veronica’s neck, laid upon his shoulder, blurred his senses. Sometimes, he would adjust his posture in the seat in his sleep, and Veronica’s arm would fall to his knees. Currents of excitement would rise from his thighs to his lower belly, toying with his imagination all night long. Half-asleep in his seat, he would envision himself taking pleasure in Veronica’s body, reconstructing the sight of her breasts suddenly peeking out from behind the barrier he had unfurled for her when she bathed by the sink. Since that brief gesture, he had been prodding his imagination in order to try and feel their soft touch, to no avail.
He would wake up for a moment, see her body leaning against him in an innocent embrace of sleep, and compel himself once more into another fantasy of pleasure. For a few seconds, he thought of himself fleetingly as a forty-year-old man masturbating his imaginati
on on a stadium seat. He banished this sullying thought and devoted himself once more to savoring the memory of Veronica’s rump situated on the toilet seat while her hands tried to conceal her actions. For many long nights, he tried to drag Veronica into his thoughts, but until this day, he had not managed to be sure that she was interested in him. More than any other impediment, Simon’s presence in the seat next to him served as an absolute barrier. Night after night, all night, his son was by his side, while on his other side was this woman, with the scent of her body trapped in her tight clothing. He smelled her all night; every slight motion she made in her seat sent off a fragrant tremor of presence.
She let Charlie think and feel that she was trapped in her independent theories about the nature of the special sort of relationship she desired, and he felt unworthy. She told him about no-strings-attached connections as she traveled all over the world with men hiding from their wives. She also told him how she yearned for a different sort of man who had never come along. She said she was so disappointed in herself for taking care to attain the proper partner, to the extent that she could not find him unless it was in the form of someone who had already been sanctioned by another woman. She explained, and he wasn’t certain he understood her but dismissed this with the thought that this was simply how it was among former Frenchwomen. He then concluded privately that maybe she was right after all. In any case, the men she knew were indeed interested only in themselves. All of them were rich guys looking for salvation in gyms and dance classes.
Now, suddenly, after the commotion of the birth, she hugged him from behind in broad daylight in a way that left no room for misinterpretation. But this devoted embrace made him fear the snipers, who did not approve of displays of sexual activity in public. He felt the soft touch of her warm arms wrapped around his neck, her breasts floating upon his back in the slight motion of her body entwining into his sedate steps. Her thighs clung to his own from behind and she adjusted the pace of her movements to his as he sauntered toward his chair. He stopped walking and waited for Veronica to tell him what was going on with her. After such a long time when she had avoided displays of affection or touch, he was confused. After years of marital routine with Clara, the pickup skills he had successfully shown off to the female tourists who arrived at the beach across from his parents’ house on the coast had grown rusty. In those days, when he had been young, tanned and muscular, all he had needed to do were a few daring exercises on the pull-up bar that would emphasize his tan muscles, and then take off into the blue water in a display of his stylized front crawl. The sun and his tan did all the rest. He didn’t speak their language, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have known what to say other than something about the state of the waves, the temperature of the water, and maybe the weather expected later on in the week. He had known even then that he was no more than a tan, well-built man, destined to provide an escapade of casual sex for the female tourists on the beach.
After fixing Clara’s bicycle chain and marrying her, he had lost the meager ability he had once possessed for communicating with women. How could you charm a woman with your knowledge of fixing boat engines? After they had broken up, he and Clara, he’d found himself nearing the age of forty, with no skills in creating relationships with women, not even the panicked ones who arrived in his repair shop by mistake because they thought he could fix car engines as well.
Veronica gazed in his eyes and told him something about green eyes and black hair, and he thought she was trying to flatter him. He smiled at her in embarrassment and she laid her head down on his chest. They were standing on the turf among the thousands of fans congratulating each other on the birth of the baby. Veronica asked Charlie why he was impatient and he replied that he was in a hurry to let Simon know that he had succeeded in carrying out the task allotted to him. He went on to explain how much he wanted to fulfill Simon’s expectations of him, getting tangled up in all kinds of words about the duty of setting a personal example, until he heard himself saying things he didn’t quite understand. He returned to the matter of the mission, saying it had been very important to him to carry it out, because it had to do with the grand plan that Simon was working on, and the less they spoke about it, the better. Veronica held him tighter and said he could tell her, since she was not as dumb as she looked. She explained it simply took her a while to grasp things because she was in a state of panic over everything that was going on, and therefore she replied too hastily, which made her sound stupid. But if she was given the time to process things and sleep on them, she could certainly understand them in depth.
She began to tell Charlie about her recurring thoughts at night, since that was the time when she was calmest, and managed to really see all sides of what she was told during the day. Charlie, who was very wary of this talk about the depths of Veronica’s understanding, preferred to take her word for it, and told her Simon was planning their escape. She seemed not to have heard this grand, terrible secret that Charlie thought he had just revealed to her. He lost his confidence once more. He thought he had just told her the greatest secret of his life, the only significant thing he was thinking of, the escape plan, but she had not even reacted, and appeared not to have heard him. After all, his and Simon’s world could change—it was unclear exactly how—but he, Charlie, was about to take a chance and seize control of his own fate and that of his boy, and she hadn’t even heard!
She only said she had been very moved when the baby was laid in her arms immediately after the birth, and this had been the greatest experience she had ever gone through in her life. She felt that all the eyes staring at her from every direction did not interest her, and her whole heart was devoted to the newborn baby she was holding. She did not think about other people and what they were thinking, or about the lockdown and her fears. A weighty sensation of peace had filled her arms and her heart and she had a hard time handing the baby over to his mother. A sharp, unfamiliar pain had stabbed at her belly. Charlie kissed her on the lips and felt, for the first time in broad daylight, those exciting currents he had grown used to imagining at night.
“I want a baby,” Veronica said. “I want a baby of my own, and not to run away anymore. I feel better here than I did at home, in the dance studio and at the gyms. Everything here is familiar to me. I don’t want to travel anymore and sleep in all kinds of places I don’t know with men I don’t know. To be courted to the point of fatigue, to say no or to give in because I feel obligated, or out of fear that the one special guy might not come along. I’m happy in my seat, I’m protected next to you and no one will hurt me. They’re watching over all of us and I have almost everything I need. I just want a baby of my own. Charlie, I want a baby.”
“Veronica, sweetie, we can’t go on living like this. You have to think about the future.”
Veronica hugged Charlie and covered his mouth with her hand. She asked him to stop saying things that were so predictable. The sort of things her mother told her in encounters that ended with the slam of a door. In fact, the same things she told herself when she returned home after another stupid date. She was certain she was making the best decision for her, the thing that would make her happy. For the first time in her life, she would be unpredictable, not nice, not blonde, not a master at stroking the chest of a man who flipped over onto his back and complimented her on how good it had been for him. Not only had her previous life been cruel to her, but life in the stadium truly suited her; she had given up on men but continued to believe in love. Everything and everyone she knew was characterized by a concealment of true intentions. Her entire life, she had looked for love and failed to find it, and suddenly, she had realized that she didn’t need a man for love. She wanted to love her baby. And here at the stadium, there was no one who would say ugly things to her or ask where the father was and what his occupation was and where they were living. Even her mother would not bug her and couldn’t tell her she had let her down.
Charlie was sure he did not unders
tand what she was talking about and therefore did what he was used to doing, which was always the thing he did best. He kept quiet.
“Charlie, make me a baby,” she said.
Charlie maintained his silence. He did understand what she was saying but could not believe the words he was hearing. He had seen such things in the movies Clara would watch. There, it would happen to girls in love with handsome, carefree guys who toyed with women. He couldn’t believe it was suddenly happening to him.
“I’m not staying here. I’m running away with Simon,” Charlie said.
“Make me a baby and then run away,” Veronica requested.
“Veronica, I’m running away from the stadium, not from you. That’s Simon’s and my intention, and we’re not willing to live in this prison.”
He didn’t know what to tell her beyond that. He was thinking more about her decision to stay in the stadium than about the other thing, which he was trying not to think about at all. Actually, there were things he wanted to tell her about her decision to stay here. It might be right for her, appropriate for her life; after two years of sleeping in a seated position, it didn’t seem like her greatest problem in life. She certainly had more troubling issues on the outside. She was actually enjoying herself here; no one was harassing her, and men, of course, did not dare take advantage of the fact that she was an older single woman, or at least saw herself as such. She liked her morning runs in the stadium, and in fact, this might be an old dream coming true for her, to live in a fitness room the size of a stadium. Food had never interested her, and in any case, she had made do with healthy snacks in the course of the dozens of diets she had tried. This entire issue of freedom was not really crucial to her, and she did not have anyone to miss on the outside, which was really sad, Charlie thought, embraced in her arms in the warm sun washing over the turf. But having a child with him—that was not his sort of deal.
