April 2006
April is the month where Kaká scores his first Rossoneri hat-trick, Milan drowns in rain, and Sheva finds himself listening to his wife excuse the way his eyes look blanker than usual. He watches her flutter, marvels at the way her breasts look confident even as she falters.
“He’s always like that sometimes,” Kristen says, tucking her hair behind her ear, nervous as all of them are at his stupor. She drinks wine from a glass as they mingle, and Sheva feels that she’s too beautiful, too out-of-place for him again. What’s he to her? He’s plain, old, Andriy Shevchenko, a boy who has never grown up, who has stares in his eyes from fighting too much.
But he thought he cured himself by converting to a different sport. Sheva doesn’t understand why they think he’s blank now; he’s yet to shoot all of his bullets. More than ever, he’s filling with substance, the wetness in his mouth, the flood in his gut, metallic and strong, like tipping back too much wine and feeling your liver in your throat. Something is happening to him, something has disorientated him, and Sheva feels a sense of anticipation and dread braiding together, chained around his heart. He’s always like that sometimes - he thinks of correcting her, there is no always and sometimes at once, only one or the other (unless, he thinks, you are talking about death and life).
Maybe it was because of the dream sailors. Kristen often wakes up to find Sheva standing on a chair in the middle of the room, absurd and silly, and on waking all he can say is, “I’m looking out to port.” She has to help him down and watch him till his eyes recover from their glaze. (“Are you all right?” she says, he says, “I dreamt of the sailors.”) And the sailors take him to places he can hardly think of going otherwise; once he stood on the roof of the Duomo and dived into the sea (“When I woke up, I was finally out of Italy. I was back home,” he says. “I was young again and in a train. My parents were in the train. The train was moving.”) and when he woke up, it felt like drowning.
Now it is April. Sheva marks off the days of his calender, and Kristen watches him, wonders if all he dreams of is leaving Italy, wonders why he won’t say a word.
*
April is the month in which Kaká’s birthday falls. He rings Kaká’s doorbell the day before, when it’s evening. He stays for fifteen minutes.
“Thought I’d say it before anyone else,” Sheva says. “So happy birthday.”
Kaká lets him in and Sheva drips rain all over his carpet. The fan whirs overhead, and Sheva doesn’t sit.
“I didn’t know what to get you,” and the speech of his, so planned, seems stilted and caught like toffee in his teeth. Continuing feels like a problem, so he doesn’t, just wanders to the counter where the fruit is displayed, picks an apple in his hand. The size of it is like a heart, red like blood. The fruit feels alive, unlike so many things. Andriy Shevchenko chokes.
“Sheva,” Kaká says.
“I need to go soon.” Pause. “I hope you have a nice time with Caroline tomorrow. And I hope you enjoy being young. I miss being twenty. Twenty I was young and crazy and playing football at home.”
“Sheva, I’m not twenty,” Kaká says.
“You’re twenty.”
“Twenty-four.”
“I thought you were born when I was nine,” says Sheva, blankly.
“No.”
“There’s a quote somewhere,” Sheva says. “There’s a quote somewhere that says, ‘You’re in a diseaseridden land, boxer. Keep your weight on all the left feet you can lay your hands on. Keep dancing.’ Did you know? I didn’t know till recently, but by that time it was too late.”
“Sheva. Stop it, Sheva.” Hands on his shoulders.
“I’d like to see you tomorrow,” Sheva says.
“That’s cheating.”
“On me?”
“On everything we’ve agreed to. We’ve never said it aloud but you know it’s agreed.” Then softer, “It’s not as if it’s my last birthday.”
“Oh?” Sheva says. His mouth is drawn in a line before it eases, quiet now.
“Take care,” he says.
And Sheva visits before Kaká’s birthday, knowing that Kaká will be spending the day after with Caroline Celico. He stays for fifteen minutes. In those fifteen minutes, he still allows himself to hope. At the end of fifteen minutes, he gathers his wet coat and grasps Kaká’s hand for a second. He leaves. They do not kiss.
Notes: “You’re in a diseaseridden land, boxer. Keep your weight on all the left feet you can lay your hands on. Keep dancing.” is a quote from Family Voices by Pinter.
Kaká's birthday is on the 22nd of April 1982, but Chernobyl happened on the 26th of April 1986, when Andriy Shevchenko was nine years old.