“I don’t really live here.”
“It’s your house, isn’t it?”
“More or less. I have two rooms down at the college. And there’s also a cafeteria there.”
“A child shouldn’t live in a college. A child shouldn’t even study there, in a place like that.”
“Then what should a child do?”
“I don’t know, play with his dog, fake his parents’ signatures, have a bloody nose all the time, things like that. Certainly not live in a college.”
“Fake something?”
“Forget it.”
“Fake?”
“At least a governess, they could at least have a governess for you, has your father ever thought of that?”
“I have a governess.”
“Really?”
“In a certain sense.”
“In what sense, Gould?”
Gould’s father was convinced that Gould had a governess, and that her name was Lucy. Every Friday, at 7:15, he telephoned her to find out if everything was OK. Then Gould handed the telephone to Poomerang. Poomerang imitated Lucy’s voice very well.
“But isn’t Poomerang a mute?”
“Right. Lucy’s a mute, too.”
“You have a mute governess?”
“Not exactly. My father thinks I have a governess, and he pays her every month by money order. I’ve told him that she’s very good but she’s mute.”
“And to find out how things are going he telephones her ?”
“Yes.”
“Brilliant.”
“It works. Poomerang is terrific. You know, it’s not the same thing listening to an ordinary person be silent and listening to a mute be silent. It’s a different silence. My father wouldn’t fall for it.”
“Your father must be a very intelligent man.”
“He works for the Army.”
“I see.”
The day of Gould’s graduation, his father had flown in by helicopter from the military base at Arpaka, and had landed on the lawn in front of the university. There was a big crowd of people. The rector had given a very good speech. One of the most significant passages was the one about billiards. “We look at your human and scientific adventure, dear Gould, as at the masterly course that the intelligence of a divine arm, leaning over the green felt of the billiard table of life, has imparted to the billiard ball of your intelligence. You, Gould, are a billiard ball, and you run between the cushions of knowledge tracing the infallible trajectory that will let you, with our joy and sympathy, roll gently into the pocket of fame and success. It is in confidence but with enormous pride that I say to you, my son: that pocket has a name, and the name of that pocket is the Nobel Prize.” Out of the whole speech what impressed itself in Gould’s mind above all was the sentence “You, Gould, are a billiard ball.” Since he was, understandably, inclined to believe his professors, he had adjusted to the idea that his life would roll out with a predetermined exactitude, and for years afterward he tried to feel under the skin of his days the soft caress of the green felt: and to recognize in the intrusion of unforeseen sorrows the geometric trauma of precise, scientifically infallible cushions. The unfortunate fact was that the pool halls he needed to enter were prohibited to minors, and so for a long time he was prevented from discovering that the gilded image of a pool table could be converted into a perfect metaphor for failure, a place that demonstrated the human inability to approach exactitude. A single evening at Merry’s could have furnished him with useful hints on the inevitable incursion of chance into any geometric figure. Under the smoky light hanging over the grease-stained green felt he would have seen faces on which was enacted, as if in hieroglyphics, the unmaking of an illusion, an illusion that harmoniously intertwined intention and reality, imagination and deed. It would not have been difficult, that is, to discover an imperfect world where it was extremely unlikely that among the physiognomies of the players you would come upon the solemn and reassuring face of God. But, as stated, you entered Merry’s only if you could produce a driver’s license, and this allowed the rector’s fine metaphor to remain for years illogically intact in Gould’s imagination, like a holy icon that escapes a bombardment. And so he found it untouched inside himself years later, on the day when he suddenly decided to devastate his life. He even had time to look at it again, at that moment, with affectionate and hopeless attention, before giving it the most brutal farewell he could imagine.
“Do you have a job, Shatzy?”
“No, Gould.”
“Want to be my governess?”
“Yes.”
2
Behind Gould’s house was a soccer field. Children played there, while the grown-ups sat on the sidelines shouting, or in the little wooden bleachers, eating and shouting. There was grass everywhere, even in front of the goals and in the middle of the field. It was a beautiful soccer field. Gould, Diesel, and Poomerang sat for hours at the bedroom window watching. They watched the games, the training sessions, everything there was to watch. Gould took notes. He had a theory. He was convinced that every position corresponded to a precise physical and psychological type. He could recognize a forward even before he had changed and put on the No. 9 jersey. His bravura act was reading team pictures: he’d study them for a while and then he could tell you what position the one with the sideburns played and which was the right wing. He had a margin of error of 28 percent. He was working to get it under 10, and practiced whenever he could on the boys on the ball field behind the house. He was still struggling with the defenders, because although it was relatively easy to identify them, to figure out which one played right and which left was a problem. In general, the right back was physically more compact and psychologically cruder. He had a logical approach to things, and proceeded by deductive reasoning, usually without imaginative variations. He pulled up his socks when they slipped down and seldom spat on the ground. The left back, on the other hand, tended, over time, to take on characteristics of his direct opponent, the notoriously volatile right wing, who had strong anarchic tendencies and obvious mental weaknesses. The right wing transforms his area of the field into a land without laws where the only stable reference is the lateral line, a white chalk stripe that he looks for obsessively, desperately. The left back, who, as a defender, has a psychology founded on order and geometry, is forced to adapt to an ecosystem that is uncomfortable for him, and he is therefore, by vocation, a loser. The need to continually adjust his reactions to unpredictable patterns condemns him to a permanent spiritual and, often, physical instability. This may explain his conspicuous tendency to wear his hair long, to be thrown out for protesting, and to make the sign of the cross at the starting whistle. Given this, to distinguish him from a right back in a photograph is nearly impossible. Sometimes Gould was successful.
Diesel watched because he liked headers. He felt an extraordinary pleasure when he heard the impact of skull against ball, and every time it happened, every single time, he said, “Amazing,” a big smile on his face. Amazing. Once, a boy hit the ball with his head, the ball hit the bar, ricocheted off, the boy hit it again with his head, it struck the wood, and he dived forwards and went for the header before it touched the ground, just grazing it and getting it in the net. Then Diesel said, “Really amazing.” Usually, though, all he said was “Amazing.”
Poomerang watched because he was looking for a move he had seen years before, on TV. In his opinion it was such a good play that it couldn’t have disappeared forever; it must be roaming the soccer fields of the world, and so he was waiting for it to show up there, on that children’s playing field. He had found out the number of soccer fields in the world—one million eight hundred and four—and he was perfectly aware that the chances of seeing the move take place right there were minimal. But Gould had calculated that the chances were not much less than those of being born mute. So Poomerang was waiting. The move was the following: the goalkeeper makes a long throw, the striker, a little beyond midfield, sends the ball on with his head, th
e opposing goalkeeper comes out of the penalty area and kicks it on the fly, the ball sails back beyond midfield, skipping over the heads of all the players, hits the ground at the edge of the penalty area, and, bouncing over the stunned goalkeeper, goes into the net just grazing the wood. From a strictly soccer point of view, it was lamentable. But Poomerang claimed that in a purely aesthetic sense he had rarely seen anything more harmonious and elegant. “It was as if everything were happening in an aquarium,” he didn’t say, trying to explain. “As if everything were moving through water, slowly, smoothly, the ball swimming through the air, unhurried, and the players turned into fish, scattered and wandering, looking up open-mouthed and all together rolling their heads to the right and to the left, while the ball bounced over the goalkeeper, his gills wide open, and in the end a wily fisherman caught in his net the fish-ball and the eyes of all, a miraculous catch in the absolute, deep-sea silence of an expanse of green algae with white lines made by a mathematician diver.” It was the sixteenth minute of the second half. The match ended two-nothing.
Every so often Gould went out and sat down at the edge of the field, behind the goal on the right, next to Prof. Taltomar. Minutes passed, and they said nothing. Always with their eyes on the field. Prof. Taltomar was of a certain age, and behind him were thousands of hours of soccer watching. The game mattered relatively little to him. He observed the referees. He studied them. He always had an unfiltered cigarette in his mouth, unlighted, and from time to time he muttered phrases like “too far from the play,” or “play the advantage, asshole.” Often he shook his head. He was the only one who applauded decisions like a sending-off or a retake of a penalty kick. He had some questionable convictions that he had summarized in a single maxim, and for years it had been his comment on any discussion: “Hands in the penalty area is always intentional, offsides are never in doubt, all women are whores.” He claimed that the universe was “a match played without a referee,” but in his way he believed in God: “He is the linesman, and always screws up offsides.” Once, half drunk, he admitted in public that he had been a referee, as a young man. Then he retreated into a mysterious silence.
Gould attributed to him, not wrongly, an infinite knowledge of the rules and sought in him what he could not find in the illustrious academics who were daily coaching him for the Nobel: the assurance that order was one of the properties of infinity. This was what happened between them:
Gould arrived, and, without even saying hello, sat down beside the professor and watched the field.
For minutes they exchanged neither a word nor a glance.
Eventually Gould, continuing to watch the game, said something like: “Cross from the right, striker volleys it to the right midfielder, the ball hits the bar, which breaks in two, then caroms off the referee, ends up between the feet of the right wing, who kicks it at the net. A defender blocks it with one hand and then hurls it back up the field.”
Prof. Taltomar took his time removing the cigarette from his lips and shaking off an imaginary ash. Then he spat some bits of tobacco on the ground and murmured softly: “Game suspended while the bar is fixed, with consequent fine against the home team for carelessness in maintaining the field. When play resumes, penalty kick for the visiting team and a red card for the defender. A one-match ban, unless he escapes with a warning.”
They continued to stare at the playing field for a while, without comment.
At a certain point Gould left, saying, “Thank you, Professor.”
Prof. Taltomar murmured, without turning, “Take care, my boy.”
This happened more or less once a week.
Gould enjoyed it a lot.
Children need certainties.
One last thing that was important happened at the soccer field. Every so often, while Gould was sitting there with the professor, a ball would roll past the goal, heading towards them. Sometimes it passed right beside them and stopped a few yards farther on. Then the goalie would take a few steps in their direction and shout, “Ball!” Professor Taltomar didn’t move a muscle. Gould looked at the ball, looked at the goalkeeper, and didn’t move.
“Ball, please!”
Gould, bewildered, stared straight ahead, into space, not moving.
3
On Friday, at 7:15, Gould’s father telephoned to find out from Lucy if everything was OK. Gould said that Lucy had gone off with a traveling watch salesman she had met at Mass the Sunday before.
“Watches?”
“And other stuff, chains, crucifixes, stuff like that.”
“Christ, Gould. You’d better put an ad in the newspaper. The way we did the other time.”
“Yes.”
“Get the ad in the paper right away and then use the questionnaire, OK?”
“Yes.”
“But wasn’t that girl a mute?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell the watch salesman that?”
“She told him.”
“She did?”
“Yes, on the telephone.”
“People are unbelievable.”
“Right.”
“Do you still have copies of the questionnaire?”
“Yes.”
“Make some photocopies, just in case, OK?”
“Hello?”
“Gould?”
“Hello.”
“Gould can you hear me?”
“Now I hear you.”
“If you’re running out of questionnaires, make some photocopies.”
“Hello?”
“Gould can you hear me?”
“. . .”
“Gould!”
“I’m here.”
“Did you hear me?”
“Hello?”
“This is a bad connection.”
“Now I hear you.”
“Are you still there?”
“I’m here . . .”
“Hello!”
“I’m here.”
“But what the hell’s happening to . . .”
“Bye, Dad.”
“Are these damn telephones made of shit?”
“Bye.”
“Made out of shit, these teleph”
Click.
Since he couldn’t come and do the interviewing himself, Gould’s father had the applicants fill out a questionnaire that he had put together and mail it to him, so that he could choose a new governess for Gould based on the responses he received. There were thirty-seven questions, but it was very rare for applicants to get to the end. Generally they stopped around the fifteenth question (15. Ketchup or mayonnaise?). Often they got up and left after reading the first (1. Can the applicant reconstruct the series of failures that led her today, at her age, and unemployed, to apply for a job that is not very well paid and has obvious risks?). Shatzy Shell set up the photographs of Eva Braun and Walt Disney on the table, put a sheet of paper in the typewriter, and tapped out the number 22.
“Read me 22, Gould.”
“Really, you’re supposed to start at the beginning.”
“Who said so?”
“That’s No. 1, people always begin at No. 1.”
“Gould?”
“Yes.”
“Look me in the eyes.”
“Yes.”
“Do you truly believe that when things have numbers, and one thing in particular has the number 1, that what we have to do, what you have to do, and I, and everyone, is to start right there, for the simple reason that that is the number-one thing?”
“No.”
“Splendid.”
“Which do you want?”
“22.”
“22. Can the applicant recall the nicest thing she ever had to do when she was a child?”
Shatzy sat shaking her head for a moment and murmuring incredulously “had to do.” Then she began to write.
When I was little the nicest thing was to go and see the Ideal Home Exhibition. It was at Olympia Hall, which was an enormous place, like a station, with a cupola-shaped roof. Enormous. Instead
of trains and tracks there was the Ideal Home Exhibition. I don’t know if you remember, Colonel. They did it every year. The incredible thing is that the houses were real, and you walked around as if you were in some absurd town, with streets, and street lamps at the corners, and with the houses all different, and very clean, and new. Everything was in place, the curtains, the front walk, and gardens, too—it was a dream world. You might have thought it would all be cardboard, and yet the houses were built out of real bricks, even the flowers were real—everything was real. You could have lived there, you could go up the steps, open the door. They were real houses. It’s hard to explain, but as you walked into the middle of it you felt something very strange, a sort of painful amazement. I mean, they were real houses and all, but then, in actuality, real houses are different. Mine was six stories tall, and had windows that were all alike, and a marble staircase, with a little landing on each floor, and a smell of disinfectant everywhere. It was a beautiful house. But those houses were different. They had odd-shaped roofs, and fashionable features like bay windows, or a front porch, or a spiral staircase, and a terrace or balcony, things like that. And a light over the entrance. Or a garage with a painted door. They were real, but not real: this was what bothered you. If I think back on it now, it was all in the name, the Ideal Home Exhibition, after all what did you know then about what was ideal and what wasn’t. You had no concept of ideal. So it took you by surprise, from behind, so to speak. And it was a strange sensation. I think you would understand what I mean if I could explain to you why I burst into tears the first time I went there. Seriously. I cried. I had gone because my aunt worked there, and she had free tickets. She was tall and beautiful, with long black hair. She had been hired to play a mother working in the kitchen. You see, every so often the houses were animated, that is, there were people who pretended to live there, I don’t know, a man sitting in the living room reading a newspaper and smoking his pipe, or maybe even children, in their pajamas, in bed—they were bunk beds, marvelous, we had never seen bunk beds. The idea was always to give that impression of the ideal, you see? Even the characters were ideal. My aunt played the ideal in the kitchen, looking elegant and beautiful, in a patterned apron: she was arranging things, opening the kitchen cabinets, and she opened and closed them continuously, but gently, all the time taking out cups and plates, things like that. Smiling. Sometimes even film stars came, or famous singers, and they did the same thing, while photographers took pictures and the next day the pictures were in the paper. I remember one woman, all in furs, a singer, I think, with diamond rings on her fingers, who gazed at the camera while she ran a Hoover vacuum cleaner up and down. We didn’t even know what a vacuum cleaner was. This was another great thing about the Ideal Home Exhibition: when you left, your head was full of things you’d never seen before and would never see again. It was like that. Anyway, the first time I went with my mother, and right at the entrance there was an exact replica of a mountain village, with meadows and paths, it was something. Behind it was an enormous painted backdrop, with mountain peaks and blue sky. My head began to feel very queer. I would have stood there looking forever. My mother dragged me away, and we went to a place where there was nothing but bathrooms, one after another, bathrooms you wouldn’t believe. The last was called “Now and Then,” and there were a lot of people watching—it was like a play, on the right you saw a bathroom from a hundred years ago, and on the left the identical bathroom but everything was modern, very up to date. The incredible thing is that in the bathtubs were two models, no water but two women, and here’s the clever part, they were twins, you see? Two women, twins, in the exact same position, one in a copper tub, the other in a white enameled one, and the really crazy thing is that they were naked, I swear, completely naked, and smiling at the public, and they held their arms very carefully so that you could get a peek at their tits but not really see them, and everyone was making serious remarks about the bathroom fixtures, but the fact is their eyes were continually darting away to see if by chance the twins had moved their arms just a bit, just enough so their tits were visible; the twins, by the way—you see the odd things that one ends up remembering—were called the Dolphin sisters, although now, thinking back, I suppose it was a stage name. I’m telling you this story about the bathroom because it has something to do with the fact that I burst into tears at the end. I mean, it was a whole combination of things that disconcerted you, from the start, a stratagem that wore you out and predisposed you, so to speak, to something special. Anyway, we left the naked twins and entered the central hall. There were the Ideal Homes, one after another, all in a row, each with its yard, some antique, or old, and others more modern, with a sports car parked out front. It was marvelous. We walked slowly, and at one point my mother stopped and said Look how lovely this is. It was a two-story house with a front porch, a peaked roof, and tall red-brick chimneys. There was nothing extraordinary about it—it was ideal in a very ordinary way— and maybe that was why it struck you. We stood there looking at it, in silence. There were so many people passing by, chatting, and so much noise, the way there always is at the Ideal Home Exhibition, but I began not to hear it any more, as if, little by little, it were all fading from my mind. And at some point I happened to see through the kitchen window—a big window on the ground floor, with the curtains open—I saw the light go on inside, and a woman came in, smiling, with a bunch of flowers in her hand. She walked over to the table, put down the flowers, got a vase, and went to the sink to fill it with water. She did all this as if no one were looking at her, as if she were in a remote corner of the world, where there was only her and that kitchen. She picked up the flowers and put them in the vase, and then she placed the vase in the center of the table, nudging back a rose that was escaping from one side. She was blonde, and her hair was held in place by a headband. She turned, went to the refrigerator, opened it, and reached in for a bottle of milk and something else. She closed the fridge by giving it a little shove with her elbow, because her hands were full. And although I couldn’t hear it, I distinctly felt the click of the door as it closed, precise, metallic and slightly warm. I have never heard anything so exact, and definitive, and redeeming. So I looked at the house for a moment—at the whole house, the garden, the chimneys, the chair on the porch, everything. And then I burst out crying. My mother was frightened, she thought something had happened, and in fact something had happened, but what she thought was that I had wet my pants, it was something that often happened, when I was a child, I’d wet my pants and start to cry, so she thought that was what it was and started dragging me to the bathroom. Then, when she saw that I was dry, she began asking me what was wrong, and she wouldn’t stop. It was torture, because obviously I didn’t know what to say, I could only keep saying that everything was fine, that I was fine. Then why are you crying?
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