Love in Revolution

by B. R. Collins

  ‘You didn’t even move, kid,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you another serve if you want, but you didn’t even try . . . Know you’re beaten already, don’t you?’

  ‘But I knew it was going out –’

  Before the boy had finished speaking the Bull smacked the ball against the wall, a straight whistling blur of a serve that hit the wall then the ground, so hard it jumped back into the air, dropping and bouncing again until it fell dead at the boy’s feet. He looked down, confused; it had happened so fast he’d missed it.

  ‘It’s ten love now,’ the Bull said. ‘What are we playing, anyway? First to twenty-five?’

  ‘First to fifty,’ the boy said, his eyes widening. ‘It’s always first to fifty. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Hardly worth the effort.’ The Bull grinned, his nostrils flaring, and waited for the boy to stoop and pass the ball back to him. ‘Good lad. Ready?’

  ‘Wait a sec–’

  This time the serve went out wide, beyond the boy’s reach; but somehow, too quickly for my eyes to follow, he’d thrown himself sideways and picked it out of the air as easily as taking something off a shelf. I blinked. The Bull started to say, ‘Fifteen lo–’ and then stopped, staring at the ball in the boy’s hand.

  ‘First to fifty,’ the boy repeated. ‘A pello game is always first to fifty. That’s what my papa says.’

  The Bull looked at him in silence for what seemed like a long time. Then, finally, he said, ‘Twenty love.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘If you catch the ball, you have to throw it again within three seconds. That’s the rule. Since you’re such an expert. You’ve still got a hold of it, so you’ve lost ten points. Twenty love.’

  No one was clapping now. The boy looked down at the ball in his hand. His fingers were white, the nails gleaming like bone against the deep red leather. He was frowning, like a little kid trying to do a sum that was too difficult for him. For a horrible moment I thought he was going to cry.

  ‘Stop thinking he’ll play fair.’

  That voice again, clear as a bell.

  The Zikindi boy dropped down from his perch on the windowsill, landing lightly, like an animal. He must have sensed the collective hostility as the crowd turned to look at him, but he didn’t show it. He called across the pello court, ‘No one plays fair. Not ever. Get used to it.’

  The other boy (the young man, the angel) stared at him, his eyes narrowed, and then turned away. He went on frowning, but now his expression had something different in it, something hard. He threw the ball sideways in a little arc and caught it with his left hand; then he held it out to the Bull.

  The Zikindi boy smiled a quiet, private smile. He put his hands in his pockets and sauntered over to us, not seeming to notice the way people drew away from him, or the Ibarra girl wrinkling her nose. The Bull glowered at him, then spat silently on the ground and took the ball. Then he swung his arm around, grunting, as if he was preparing for the biggest effort yet.

  And the serve was fast. I didn’t even see it. I heard Martin say, ‘Wow,’ as it whistled and smacked against the stone, but then there was another duller smack, like an echo, and a thin skein of mortar dust dropping from the wall, and suddenly the Bull was diving for the ball and –

  And it hit the ground, just short of the line. In.

  There was a gasp from all of us, scattered, bewildered applause, and then silence.

  Teddy said, carefully, as if he was trying out the words, ‘Um. Love twenty.’

  The Bull looked at the ball coming to rest on the line, then back at the wall, squinting suspiciously. You could still see a faint haze of dust where the ball had hit, at the corner of a block of stone where the angle had thrown it off straight. Then he snorted and turned away. ‘Go on then. Your serve.’

  The boy’s serve was soft – a friendly, pulling-its-punches arc that bounced gently off the flat part of a stone. But somehow it swerved in the air and dropped just a little too low, so that the Bull had to readjust his stance at the last moment. He grunted and whacked it back, off balance, but the force in it was still enough to make the boy dance backwards and hiss through his teeth as he returned it.

  The square was dead silent, except for the impact of the ball and the players’ breathing, echoing off the walls. I glanced down and saw that Martin was gripping my arm, just below the shoulder. It should have hurt, but it didn’t. Suddenly his fingers spasmed, tightening, and I looked back at the court, just too late.

  Teddy said, ‘Ten twenty.’

  The boy was staring at the wall again, his head tilted. The Bull was at the side of the court, breathing heavily. There was a dark island of sweat in the small of his back. He kicked the ball up into the air with his toe, reached out to catch it, and flung a hand out for it, skidded and missed. It thumped down and rolled away.

  Martin breathed, ‘Sacred heart, the Bull’s going to lose.’ It was a like a prayer.

  Behind me, the crowd rumbled quietly. Someone said, ‘The kid’s fluking every shot,’ and someone else said, ‘You can’t fluke every shot.’

  The boy’s next serve was too fast to see.

  There was no applause now; hardly any sound at all. No one knew what to do, except watch. Teddy cleared his throat and said, ‘Fifteen twenty.’

  The Bull won the next point, smashing the ball against the wall and down. It hit the ground in a splash of dust, and even though the kid got a hand to it he couldn’t get it back; but when the crowd tried to cheer, the Bull scowled and the sound petered out thinly in the sunlight. ‘Twenty fifteen,’ Teddy muttered.

  But the Bull lost the next point. ‘Fifteen twenty.’

  ‘Twenty-five twenty.’

  ‘Thirty twenty.’

  ‘Thirty-five twenty.’

  The next point was a long rally, full of shots that threw flakes of paint into the air from the sidelines, both players dancing back and forth, their faces set. It felt as though they were the only people breathing – in the square, in the town, in the country. I could feel the fierce weight of the people behind me, all willing the Bull on; but I was digging my nails into the palms of my hands, praying for the angel-boy. It was as if he knew in advance where each ball would go, as if the ball and the lines and the wall itself were on his side. Everything looked like a fluke, but they were right: you couldn’t fluke every shot.

  The ball landed and skidded towards the line, bouncing like a stone skimming across water.

  The Bull swiped for it, misjudged it and tried to run backwards at the same time. It was too late to get to the ball before it bounced the second time, but he grunted and threw himself towards it anyway, at full stretch. His black going-to-church Sunday-best shoes slid in the dust. He lost his balance, floundered for a split second, and then fell over.

  No one laughed. It would have been better if someone had.

  There was a long, long silence. The Bull levered himself up, looked down at his trousers and then rolled each ankle in turn, testing for injuries.

  ‘Forty-five twenty,’ Teddy said.

  I took a deep breath. I could smell dirt and sweat – my own sweat, sharp and peppery – and the pomade Martin stole from Mama to put on his hair. The stones of the square were almost too bright to look at, with one thin edge of deep shadow at the base of the church.

  The boy walked over to the ball and picked it up. He pushed his hair out of his eyes. Dust came out of it and glittered in the sunlight. The skin of his face was damp.

  One more point, on serve. That was all he needed. One more.

  I wanted him to win. I wanted it desperately, so much I could taste it, like thirst. But – not yet. I wanted this to go on for ever. I wanted him to lose the next point but win the next-but-one, on and on, the serve swapping back and forth between the players: so that we could go on standing here, like this, breathless and dry-mouthed, every nerve tingling, and never go back to being ordinary.

  Martin took his hand off my arm. I heard the little grinding creak of his teeth as he started to
bite his nails. Normally it made my skin crawl, but now it only added to the silence, like the players’ breathing and the drip of the Bull’s sweat on the stones.

  But the boy couldn’t win. Could he? Some unknown peasant kid, against Pitoro Toros, the Bull himself. Surely . . .

  The Bull won the next point. The ball smashed into the boy’s solar plexus, winding him. If he hadn’t seen it in time and twisted to lessen the impact, it might have done him more damage; as it was, he staggered back, flailing for balance, and gaped for breath like a drowning fish. I felt the air go out of my own lungs, and then turn solid, like a wall of glass. I couldn’t inhale.

  Martin grabbed my wrist again and squeezed it. I couldn’t look at him, but I could feel his fingers, like a Chinese burn. I heard myself hiccup with relief as the boy finally sucked in a mouthful of air, and Martin’s grip eased.

  The Bull smirked, a little grimly, and served.

  The next point went to the boy; the one after, to the Bull. Forty-five twenty, twenty forty-five . . . The court was so bright it was hard to see the lines; it was hard to see anything. I no longer wanted it to go on for ever. I just wanted the boy to win . . . I prayed, in my head: not for the boy, but to him. Please, please . . . I could hardly bear to watch.

  The ball smacked and spun against the wall, finding angles no one could have predicted, catching the dimples and dents in the old stones as if by magic. It was so fast it made my heart race, like hearing gunshots. And the players . . . None of us had ever seen anything like it. It wasn’t a game, it was a duel.

  The point went to the boy. For a moment he and the Bull looked at each other, both breathless and sweating, almost smiling. Then the Bull kicked the ball, flicking it up, quick and vicious, at the boy’s face. I heard someone next to me hiss through their teeth. But the boy ducked sideways, and caught it.

  Teddy said, ‘Forty-five twenty.’

  The boy rolled his shoulders, and served.

  I squeezed my eyelids shut, as if someone was going to punch me in the face. I prayed.

  A clear, urgent voice said, ‘Look.’

  I opened my eyes and caught my breath, because it wasn’t Martin holding my wrist, it was the Zikindi boy, pushing between us for a better view. His fingers dug into the flesh between my bones and he gave my arm a little jerk, gesturing at the court. His face was damp, and there were beads of sweat on his neck, where his shirt was open. The damp skin there was very smooth, and there was a shadow in the dip of the collar-bone. In a strange, split-second shock I realised he was a girl. I raised my gaze to meet hers. She said again, ‘Look.’

  So I looked.

  And I was just in time to see the boy spin, his arm outstretched, twisting into his shot so that the ball spat across the court to the wall like a bullet, and ricocheted off, going high and straight. If the Bull had left it, it would have been out.

  But the Bull was in the way. There was a kind of double thump. Then the Bull was stretched out flat in the dust, while the ball rolled away, and a little trickle of blood started to weep from his eyebrow.

  No one moved. The boy’s face was alight, as if the sun was shining more on him than on anyone else; but he was standing quite still. I felt a moment of pure triumph, blazing through me like a flame. He’d done it. He’d won.

  Someone should have moved, run to the Bull to check he was all right – Papa, or the priest, or the person standing closest . . . But no one did. The pause seemed to go on for ever, as if it was the end of the world.

  Then the Bull swore and sat up, shaking his head as though there was an insect buzzing round it. He coughed, scraping the phlegm out of his throat, and spat. He said, without smiling, ‘Well played.’

  And then, suddenly, underneath the triumph, I felt a kind of shame.

  Teddy cleared his throat and took a hesitant step forwards. He said, ‘Er . . . Are you all right?’

  The Bull shot him a look of pure contempt, and got to his feet without answering. He wiped his eyebrow with the back of his hand, tilted his head to one side and then the other, testing the muscles in his neck. He glanced around. For the first time I remembered that his family was there: his mother, his aunts and uncles, nieces, nephews . . . The crowd began to separate, spreading out like oil on water. I looked over my shoulder and saw the priest turn and walk away, the Ibarra girls swap a look, Mama’s hat dip and bob backwards like a turquoise horn.

  ‘Phew,’ Martin said, not to anyone in particular. ‘Don’t think I could’ve stood another second of that. Would’ve killed me.’

  The Bull had his family surrounding him now. They moved slowly away, past the tavern and down the street. The old women were talking too loudly, with too many pauses. The kids were subdued, kicking stones along the ground.

  The Bull was never going to play pello again. But we didn’t know that yet.

  Two

  The church clock chimed midday. It rang out across the square, resonating from wall to wall, and I thought I could see the vibration in the dust hanging in the air. The Zikindi girl’s grip on my wrist loosened, but she didn’t let go, and I didn’t pull away.

  The boy was still standing in the middle of the court, alone, his arms hanging loosely at his sides. Then one hand crept to his collar, fumbling, and he glanced down at his feet.

  ‘What a player,’ Martin said, shaking his head slowly. ‘Wow. Can you believe . . . ? Just turned up out of nowhere and beat the Bull . . .’

  I didn’t answer. There wasn’t anything I could have said. I looked sideways, and saw that the Zikindi girl had the same expression on her face that must have been on mine: glowing, dazzled, full of something too pure to smile. Her eyes were pale green-blue, and she met my gaze without blinking. We stared at each other for a few seconds; then she let go of my wrist and glanced around, like someone waking up.

  The boy was crouching now, his head bowed, running one hand over the stones. He was still dripping sweat. He looked like a kid playing in the gutter.

  ‘There’s Mama and Papa,’ Martin said. ‘We’d better go and –’

  He stopped. I followed his gaze.

  Leon was walking towards us, with a patronising elder-brother smile; but when he passed in front of the boy he paused, and his face changed. His shadow fell across the boy’s hands. He said slowly, ‘What’s your name?’

  The boy looked up, and flinched. He scuffled backwards on his haunches, like an animal that didn’t want to be kicked. He said, ‘I’m only looking for my button. My collar button. Then I’ll go.’

  Leon frowned, and then crouched so that he could look the boy in the face. He stretched his hand out and patted his shoulder. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I just want to know your name.’

  The boy ducked swiftly away, out of Leon’s reach; but he licked his lips and finally said, ‘Angel.’

  ‘That’s a nice name.’ The sunlight flashed off Leon’s glasses so I couldn’t see his eyes. ‘Where do you live, Angel?’

  ‘Angel Corazon. From Oldchurch Farm. Over there.’ The boy – the angel, Angel – pointed at the tavern, as if there was nothing in that direction but bare countryside and his farm.

  ‘A peasant. I thought so.’

  Angel stared at him, and didn’t answer.

  ‘You’re a strong, hard-working son of the earth,’ Leon said, leaning forward, his voice low and thrumming with drama, as if he was telling Angel a secret. ‘A hero. A fighter. You’re the backbone of this country. Without men like you, we would be nothing. And yet – look at you. Covered in dust, dressed in rags –’

  ‘My button,’ Angel said, in that blurred, scraping voice. ‘It must’ve come off . . .’

  Leon grabbed him by the shoulders. The tendons in his hands stood out as if it was an effort not to shake him. ‘No, forget the damn button! Listen to what I’m telling you.’

  I heard Martin sigh. He said, ‘Odds on him saying “comrade” in the next ten seconds? Wait for it . . .’

  ‘Do you know what you’ve done today?’ Leon softened
his voice. ‘You’ve given us hope. All of us. You know what you are? You’re a symbol.’

  Angel gazed at him, his beautiful dark blue eyes wide and uncomprehending.

  ‘The peasant,’ Leon said, so quietly I could hardly hear him, ‘rises up and defeats the bourgeoisie. Against all odds. He leaves the blood of the old order in the dust. He brings in the revolution. He vanquishes.’

  Angel blinked. ‘If I go home without it, my father will be angry. The button.’

  Leon drew in a sharp breath, and then let it out slowly. The corners of his mouth softened. He said, in his normal voice, ‘All right . . . what about if someone gave you a new shirt?’

  ‘I – a new shirt?’ It was as if he lived in a world where things like that didn’t happen.

  ‘Well,’ Leon said, ‘not exactly new, but at least with all the buttons on. Not – well, not . . .’ He grimaced at Angel’s shirt, at a loss for adjectives. Then he took off his jacket and started to tug at his tie.

  ‘Oh, God, no,’ Martin said. ‘Please, no. Not with Mama and Papa just over there . . .’

  I glanced sideways. Martin was biting his lip, but the Zikindi girl had the hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth.

  Leon dropped his tie on the ground and unbuttoned his shirt. It was too hot to wear a vest, and there were dark patches under his arms where his sweat had soaked through the material. He undid his cuffs, took the shirt off and offered it to Angel.

  Martin said, ‘I can’t watch. When we get home it’s going to be carnage . . .’

  I said, ‘It’s not even clean . . .’

  But Angel took the shirt and smiled, holding it up to the light as if to admire its whiteness. And – to be fair – it was whiter than the one he was wearing. The smile widened into a grin. Suddenly the triumph was back in his eyes: as if this was his prize for winning the game. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Leon winced. ‘Comrade. Please. Call me comrade.’ He stood up and put his jacket back on over his bare torso, shoving his tie into the pocket. Then he paused, looking down at the stain on the ground where the Bull’s blood had dripped and spread out. His eyes narrowed.