Learning to Lose

by David Trueba

  Lorenzo sees his parents reappear on the corner, moving slowly, the wheelchair advancing in fits and starts. They pass a Filipino family and there is a car parked on the sidewalk that forces his father to maneuver the wheelchair pathetically down the curb. Have you been waiting long? No, no. They go upstairs. Aurora seems tired. What a nice day, don’t you think? And she says it with a melancholy that tries to encompass more than the good weather. His parents’ apartment now seems smaller to him, the hallway narrower, the living room inadequate; even the upright piano in his father’s studio seems tiny. The cleaning lady bustles about. You still have her? asks Lorenzo. His father shrugs his shoulders. Months earlier Lorenzo had heard them argue over Benita. Poor woman, said Aurora. It seemed the problem was that her obesity only allowed her to do a rather superficial job. Also, given her short stature she would need stilts to dust the tops of the furniture. Your mother keeps her on out of pity, Leandro explained. No one has a cleaning lady out of pity, said Lorenzo, you hired her to work. She needs the money, she’d be so upset if I told her not to come anymore, I can’t do that, concluded Aurora.

  Lorenzo takes the bus back to his neighborhood. It’s not far. He rides the 43 and then walks from the stop toward his house. In the market he buys a chicken breast cut into fillets. He heads home with the little bag. His friend Óscar had called him to go have a bite somewhere that night. He’ll go out with him and his wife, maybe Lalo will join them. They’ll chat about politics, soccer, someone will talk about some TV program or an incident at work. It’s always better than staying home, watching television. The night before, Lorenzo went to bed early, but when he got under the sheets his sleepiness disappeared. He pulled out a Barbie doll he had been hiding in the back of the closet where his clothes piled up, sad that they no longer hung alongside Pilar’s clothes. The Barbie was one of Sylvia’s childhood toys, now forgotten, abandoned, too. She was blond, although her hair had lost its shine. She wore a short little dress that closed with Velcro. Lorenzo got into bed with her, took off her dress, and masturbated as he caressed her protruding, dynamic, streamlined breasts. His hands traveled over her shape, her perfect thighs and her almost tiptoed feet. He fantasized about the doll’s ass, imagined it was real. Sometimes he made love to her in bed, other times in the bathtub. He had found her at the bottom of a box of toys that was lying around. When Pilar left, closets were gone through and the house got reorganized. It was like a partial move. The doll had taken him by surprise, as if she’d come back from the past. He was about to throw her into the garbage, but something stopped him. The doll spoke to him, her plastic touch aroused him, her studied form, the perverse design of her curves, her body language, her haughty, somewhat disdainful, cold, elitist nose. She became an absurd partner in his erotic games, a lonely comfort. After he came, Lorenzo dressed her again and hid her at the back of the closet, beneath the thick socks and the T-shirts he no longer wore.

  Lorenzo arrives at the entrance to his building and calls the elevator, until he notices the little sign that says it’s broken again. He sighs with annoyance. It happens too often. It’s slow, small, and its motor breaks down every two or three weeks. When Lorenzo starts to climb the stairs, he hears the door to the street open. The Ecuadorian girl who works for the young couple on the fifth floor comes in. She’s pushing a stroller and from the handles hang two full shopping bags. He sees her stop in front of the elevator and then head toward the stairs. He is about to ignore her, but thinks better of it. Let me help you. She thanks him, unsure if she should give him the bags or the stroller to carry.

  Lorenzo puts his little white bag on the sleeping boy’s lap and grabs the stroller by the front wheels. He lifts it up in the air. She does the same from the other end and they carry it up the stairs. The effort is somewhat repetitive: an hour earlier he carried his mother up in a similar way. The boy is sleeping, unaware of the clatter. Were you planning on carrying it up yourself, five flights? Lorenzo asks her. She shrugs. They have never exchanged more than hello; sometimes Lorenzo sticks out his tongue or winks at the boy, but with her there’s never been more than a smile and a brief greeting. Now he watches her. She isn’t very tall, she has straight brown hair that falls over her shoulders. Her body seems to widen as it goes down, but her face has lovely indigenous features. Her sharp, almond-shaped eyes, her thin but pretty mouth, her nose with personality, rounded but pleasant. Where are you from? Ecuador, she says. And your daughter? Lorenzo doesn’t really understand the question. How’s her leg? Oh, fine, fine. She went to spend some time with her mother. He’s starting to feel tired but he’d rather not stop if she doesn’t. Are you separated? Yes, but my daughter lives with me. Lorenzo can’t help a burst of pride. Now I’m the father and the mother. Your daughter is great, really nice, she says. Sylvia? Yes … and Lorenzo thinks that maybe that’s her way of criticizing him for not being very friendly. What’s your name? Daniela, and you, sir? Sir? No, please, just Lorenzo.

  A straight lock of hair has fallen in front of her face and Lorenzo has a desire to brush it aside; she blows it out of the way. In Loja we had a Spanish priest named Lorenzo. He told us about the martyrdom of Saint Lorenzo, it was very frightening. Lorenzo lifted his eyebrows. Yes, well, of course. On the grill and all that. They cross the third-floor landing. I’m named after San Lorenzo de El Escorial. It seems I was conceived there, on one of my father’s jobs or something, they must have liked the name, because there are no other Lorenzos in my family. That’s what they always told me. Daniela smiles shyly. Is El Escorial pretty? I’ve never been there. Lorenzo thinks for a second. Pretty? Well, it’s … interesting. I can take you there someday if you’d like, I haven’t been in ages. No, never mind, Daniela says, excusing herself as if she feared there had been a misunderstanding. Lorenzo becomes uncomfortable. She puts the stroller down. They have gotten to the fourth floor. This is your apartment, isn’t it? Lorenzo objects. No, no, I’ll take you up to yours, please. Daniela resists, but they go up the last flight quickly, barely speaking. Their breathing sounds heavier. They say good-bye once Daniela opens the door. And any time you want to go to El Escorial, I’ll take you, okay? I’d love to, really. Daniela laughs and thanks him two more times.

  Lorenzo tosses his jacket onto the sofa. He has broken out in a sweat from the exertion. He goes into the kitchen and drinks straight from the tap. Pilar didn’t like it when he did that. Now it didn’t matter anymore. She didn’t like it when he shaved in the kitchen either, as he sometimes used to do. The light is better. And she laughed when she heard him urinating and flushing before he was finished. Are you in that much of a hurry? Now there was no one to call him on his little vices.

  The doorbell rings. Lorenzo turns around. He lets it ring again. When he opens the door, he’s surprised to see Daniela standing in the threshold. She lifts up Lorenzo’s little bag with his groceries from the market and smiles. This is yours, right? Lorenzo grabs the little bag. Thanks, it’s my food for today. That’s all you’re going to eat? Lorenzo shrugs his shoulders. I’m by myself. Suddenly he realizes that Daniela feels pity, almost sorry for a man over forty coming home alone with a ridiculous little bag of food. They don’t say anything, but Daniela points to the apartment upstairs and reminds him that she has left the boy alone. Lorenzo watches her head up the stairs. She is wearing skin-tight pants, black jeans. He thinks of Pilar: she would never have dared to wear such snug clothes, no matter how thin she was. But these girls are that daring. They play up their breasts, butt, thighs, curves, they use bright colors, sometimes plunging necklines, they walk around with their bellies exposed, they show off without hang-ups no matter what their size. Sylvia inherited her mother’s modesty about her body. She wears black, baggy clothes, she pulls at the sleeves of her sweaters until they are stretched out and cover her hands. If she is going out with friends, she ties a jacket around her waist to hide her ass.

  Lorenzo leaves the living room television on, with the news, as he fries the chicken breast in a pan. He arrives in time
to sit down and watch the fifteen minutes of sports devoted to soccer. In the fruit bowl, all that’s left is a bruised pear, which shows a mushy, dark side.

  16

  Ariel flies at night, tired, on the charter plane that brings the team and reporters back from Oslo. That evening they played against a tough, rugged team, on a frozen field, beneath a blanket of cold. They had lost two nothing and he had played one of the worst games of his professional career. He could argue that the ball wasn’t really circulating, that all his team’s midfielders had done was return the Norwegians’ fast clearances and that in every tackle and rebound the opponents’ size weighed in heavily. He could argue that the touchlines were two degrees colder than the rest of the field, that he had chosen the wrong cleats, or that the fullback defending him was a super-fast blond who used his arms like windmill blades. He could also point to their fourteen fouls, but he knows full well that when you lose there are always too many excuses.

  His teammates doze on the plane. The coach looks over the notes in his work. Matuoko snores with his mouth open. Jorge Blai, confident that no one is watching, sticks boogers underneath the foldout tray in front of him. Seated in impossible positions, four or five players play a card game called pocha without the shouting that usually accompanies it. They lost and have to keep up appearances.

  Osorio, seated beside Ariel, is playing video games. Ariel has his headphones on and is listening to Argentinian music. He finds it somewhat absurd to be hearing, on his way back from Norway, the verses of an old Marcelo Polti song that complain about the heat: “hace calor, tanto calor que tus piernas esconden el centro de la tierra.” He had met Marcelo, a huge San Lorenzo fan, two years ago. On the day he was made an honorary member of the club, Marcelo got down on his knees in the circle in the middle of the field and ate a fistful of grass to the euphoric applause of the stands. Then he invited the entire team to one of his concerts at the Obrero. I think I have all your albums, Ariel told him when they met backstage. You’ll be able to say that tomorrow, Marcelo whispered to him, and the next morning he received two CDs with eighty songs that had never been released. They became good friends. He came to the Nuevo Gasómetro for every match and Ariel had twice been to Marcelo’s house in Colegiales, with its basement turned into a recording studio, from where, he said, I only leave to steal moments and stick them into songs, like a vampire. He was pedantic, excessive, a wannabe genius, chaotic, an inveterate smoker and yerba maté drinker, allergic to drugs after having tried them all; Ariel fell in love for the first time with one of his songs, with a girl who only existed in lyrics from 1995, named Milena. “Milena, those kisses into the air, my arms around nothing, I’m saving them for you, baby … ” Every week he got a protracted e-mail, encouraging him if his morale seemed low, remember that I ate the grass you walk on. Marcelo tells him the latest news and congratulates him on the distance, an ocean away from this country seems perfect. He was going on about Mr. Blumberg, practically a national leader, whose teenage son Axel was murdered by kidnappers with a bullet to the temple in a dump in La Reja. Ariel was in the massive march on April 1 in front of Congress. There the boy’s father led the citizens’ rebellion against violence and lack of safety. Marcelo ridiculed the political weight he was starting to throw around. This is a country of crazies, they’ve turned around what being a victim has always meant, now they use pain to beat down those on the margins of society, as an alibi to punish the poor, and he went on like that for paragraphs and paragraphs, venting on current events in Argentina, the only country in the world where two things and their opposites happen every fifteen minutes, according to Marcelo’s definition of it.

  The reporters’ laughter is heard from the rear seats. The vodka they bought at the airport helps them fight off fatigue. They are listening to Velasco, a radio announcer with an unmistakable voice, telling off-color jokes and impersonating celebrities whom Ariel doesn’t know. Husky comes up from the back of the plane and leans over his seat. Seeing Osorio wrapped up in his video game, he warns him, with a smile, take care of your brain cells, you. Ariel takes off his headphones. Tomorrow they’re going to give you a thrashing in the press. I played badly. Badly? You sucked. Are you sure the Norwegians didn’t put a square ball in the game? Ariel smiles. Husky continues, I’ll take you out to dinner tomorrow night. They assigned me to interview you. That way you’ll get out a bit, okay? Ariel concedes. Husky goes back to his seat after saying, I’m outta here, this is like a wake. He shakes the team delegate’s hand, a man who’s spent his entire life in a trench coat, handling minor matters for the team in his old-fashioned way.

  Ariel had met Husky during the preseason. He was a journalist who attracted attention in the press room because of his hair, red like an Irishman’s, and his voice, which sounded like a guitar being played with hammer swings. The club confined the team to a hotel in Santander for the month of August. Physical training, getting up to snuff with the coach’s statistics, the first tactical conversations. Ariel shared a room with Osorio, a young guy his age, who had grown up in the club’s reserve teams, and who had little chance of being a first-string player during the season. He spent his free time playing with the PlayStation. Sometimes after dinner Ariel would join in on a pool game with one of the veterans: Amílcar or the substitute goalie, Poggio, who suffered from insomnia. By the third day, the monotony was unbearable: living with his teammates, the strict schedule, the boredom of repetitive meals, pasta and chicken or chicken and pasta. At noon it was time to go to their rooms; sometimes they got together to chat or watch TV and listen to the comments of what a babe, did you see those tits? that marked the appearance of a woman on screen. Charlie came to Santander in the Porsche. Tonight I’m taking you out on the town. The way he said it was “te saco de marcha.” He’d been talking like that ever since they first arrived, borrowing expressions he heard the Spaniards use. Ariel slipped out secretly to meet up with him in the parking lot. He lay down in the back of the car, covered himself with two towels to get off the premises without being seen. When he left the room, Osorio said bye, get laid for me.

  All the bars are packed, mostly with people summering. They go into a club with deafening music and scope out a corner. At the end of the bar, Ariel recognizes Husky. We fucked up, there’s a journalist, he told Charlie. Journalists always end up using every player indiscretion, sometimes not even to hurt them, just to show off how well-informed they are. But Husky came over to say hi. I haven’t seen a thing. Do you want me to ask the owner to give us a private area? It’s better if not too many people see you. They agreed.

  They were put in a room where the music was muffled. In spite of being private it was crammed with people, but the owner prepared a table for them off to one side. Husky, accompanied by a photographer who played the role of a mute whisky and Coke drinker, told them stories about the coach, the team, some of the players. He was sweating. He took off his glasses to wipe his face with paper napkins, which he then balled up and threw. He asked Ariel whom he was sharing a room with. Osorio? His last brain cell committed suicide, out of boredom. They talked about Solórzano and Husky told them that in the club they called him Mr. Commission. If you said good morning to him, he kept the good. Husky drank beers at a feverish rate. He was as tall and slim as a basketball player. Solórzano is protected by some club executives, remember this is a snarled nest of social climbers, businessmen wanting to impress and be famous. The president’s box is their trampoline to get their illegal rezoning, unearned favors from the city councilmen, social prestige, certain notoriety, and, in the best-case scenario, they can hook up with some beauty queen who will suck their dick in exchange for a taste of luxury. Maybe Argentina is an incredibly fucking corrupt country, but here they’ve managed to make corruption photogenic and legal, and that’s that.

  He told them that Coach Requero was called “clean hands”: he never made a mistake. Husky inspired trust. He smoked black tobacco and held the cigarette inside his palm, protected. He talked about some of
the players, about Dani Vilar, who had been the most critical of signing Ariel. He’s a good guy, but he’s lost the physical edge needed in your position, it’s kind of sad to watch a guy who’s a millionaire drag himself around the playing field. But, of course, retiring is traumatic, and even more so if you have five kids and a wife like his, who they say is a Legionary of Christ. I promise I won’t say a word about your sneaking out, last night Matuoko took three whores up to his room.

  In the third bar they visited, Charlie and Ariel met two Argentinian women signed up for a summer course on “emotiveness” at the Palacio de la Magdalena. Inside the car, parked near the team’s hotel, the women were able to put some of what they had learned into practice. One of them talked even when she had nothing intelligent to say, but Charlie considered that a virtue, as if she had piped-in music. Flying the flag, brother, flying the flag, he shouted as the four of them fucked uncomfortably in the car. It looked like nothing could go wrong. The next day there were no repercussions for his escape. It helped that early that same morning Wlasavsky had totaled his car against a fence, to avoid hitting a cow crossing the highway near Torrelavega according to him, and on his way back from a whorehouse called Borgia IV according to everyone else. Two days later six of the team members, including the goalie coach, got food poisoning, probably from some shellfish. Ariel was spared; he never could stand seafood.