Verzaubern
did my best, it wasn't much / couldn't feel so i tried to touch / i told the truth i didn't come to fool ya
even though it all went wrong / stand before the lord of song / with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah
Warum soll ich die Welt bezwingen, wenn ich sie verzaubern kann. -- Mesut Özil
Clip-clopping up and down the front yard in his mother's red high heels, loving the sound of it, steady and brisk and regular, very businesslike, until a rough hand spins him round and he wheels, teetering, axis off kilter and the ground rising up to greet his little boy's nose, and there he lies as they shout over him, grandpa hovering above his prostate form like a friendly albatross, his father using ugly words he does not understand, and there is a large gap between his ankles and those bright red heels that he hasn't noticed before.
****
Under fortuitous circumstances he learns to do more productive things with his feet. Shod in sneakers with their soles worn smooth by age and quick pivots they almost seem to be pirouettes, he dribbles down the left flank and looks up just once to see if S. has caught up with him so that he can make a cross. Arms out like wings, or more accurately, like the spindly blades of the old fan that circles the air in his room at night when he drowses off to sleep, the first thing he'd learnt, no hands, letting the rest of his body work its magic. And by the end of this half-thought (of wings, or blades, or malformed dreams) S. has hovered into view and only then does he give the ball up, eyes now no longer on the ball but dawning upon S.'s wicked grin as he sends it home.
A round of cheers and they are off again, running into space, hollering, putting their hands up in the air to call for possession. The intensity of play is punctuated every once in a while by an indignant shout over some slight or other, quickly resolved so that play can resume on borrowed time. Here, there is no linesman. There are no boundaries on this well-worn court, only the rusted chain-link fence that keeps both ball and players caged within for as long as the sun allows, and the ball is yours if you are skilful enough to keep it between your toecaps. He taps it and it goes from foot to foot, flicks it so it jumps up to his knee, a convenient height for him to execute the perfect trick. But the game is hardly about being fancy; for all his flair he knows the magic's second only to the back of the net, and swears under his breath at his own silliness. An older boy has won over the ball now, some distant cousin or acquaintance of his brother, two heads taller and a lumbering presence on the field, imposing by his sheer height if nothing else.
And that is football, the mercurial game where a tackle that is lost can spell disaster, or if this momentary loss is the prelude to the next ruse, the next graceful pass to someone who might just have enough strength and luck to alter the score. It is this immense sense of possibility, of clever trickery and shifts in favour, of S.'s knowing smile and gangly arm looped around his narrow shoulders when the match finally ends and they trudge home reluctantly, and perhaps, his own tireless feet that seem to cast a spell on that ball which chases all their dreams, that he chooses to make his calling.
****
In reality it is hardly as noble and succinct as that neat little phrase put it. Oftentimes, dodging mannequins dotting the training ground, he wonders if they are any different from those plastic effigies, pawns bought and sold and transferred from one pen to another, contracts and transfer fees and the purported glamour they enjoy a veneer for their replaceability and effervescent success. It distracts him from the game. It's almost as if they are not professional competitors but celebrities whose sole purpose is to entertain. He hasn't forgotten his boyhood yearning to please, yelling, see what I can do!, to his brother as he mimicked his idol's nimble footwork in a caper down the street, an awareness which makes his current situation no less ironic.
He does revel in them, he must admit, his roles apart from that of a sportsman, playing the fashion icon, the dashing wunderkind. But those are only roles. Even with a girl on each arm in the small hours at a party he is fashioning himself into but another part. The charm he exudes is manufactured, stilted like the faux-Spanish he finds himself stumbling through now that he has relocated to Madrid.
And yet, how is that different from the guile he displays on the pitch, the absolute cunning with which he picks out the exact spot of green to launch the ball where it will meet the striker's boot? One cunning easily shadows another. Genius is nothing without the assiduous honing of one's skills; a chance opening on the field comes to naught if one does not pay attention to it and tease it out for one's use. Anyway, all this talk veers off-course into the realm of theory and hardly does justice to the way his heart leaps when opportunity and brilliance collide to bring what he imagines into being. Inspiration is organic. The more he tries to reason with it, the more it resists definition and dissipates. Dribbling mindlessly through the maze of slalom poles, he insists, this, this is it, spontaneity springing from talent and time and, if given the briefest of blessings by chance, tricking its way into fruition. To engineers of goals who themselves are hardly aware of its sly entrance and exit, the journalists' constant questions about inspiration and how they manage to find it on the pitch sound truly, tragically laughable.
****
Haunches perched precariously on the railing with S.'s little boy snug in his lap, those tiny feet dwarfed by his sneakers as they swing their legs in rhythm, one-two, one-two, until he suddenly clasps them together in mid-swing and sends the boy squealing to a stop. S. sits on the ground, looking up at them both. Overhead, the night sky is treacherous and holds either depthless hope or depthless sorrow. He gazes up at the stars who have chosen not to make their presence felt tonight. It's not his fault that they have elected to gaze back only upon him and not S., whose voice pulls him back to the present as it picks up a story in mid-weave (it's the only way S. tells stories, starting from the complication and on to the climax and resolution before looping back to the beginning to orientate the listener, wait wait wait what do you mean you didn't know?) and tickles the boy silly with its spot-on impression of the comic character he has chosen to impersonate. Something flickers behind his eyes, recognition, perhaps, of a dozen paths unexplored, a score of lives yet unlived. In spite of that he chatters on as animatedly as ever. Maybe he thinks he can talk them all into being.
He smiles. He likes to listen to S., likes the way his hands wander uninhibited with the rising tensions of the tale.
He's leaving tomorrow. They should probably go; he has an early flight and it's a school night. He stands and hands the boy back to his father, who swings him above his shoulders. He'll head back to his hotel room, and S.'ll probably go back to his bed and a wife. The future laughs at them all.
****
He clears his throat. The boys (funny thing, to call them that, boys, when they--) fall quiet.
Hands behind his back, he sings a nonsense song about a hundred-legged centipede. It meanders its way through verse and chorus, nothing too difficult, just a final reprise as the notes fold back unto themselves and his voice chooses just that moment to crack into a squeak, and he stops, mid-tune, stunned into silence. He tries to pick it up again amid low, well-meaning laughter, but it slithers off. He ducks his head sheepishly. Pink floods his ears. Just when he had wanted to be at his grown-up best, childhood had claimed him again.
But no matter. They've all been there. Tear the ball away from their feet and they're just boys again. They are cheering now, boisterous, manly noises ricocheting off the low ceiling and damp walls, unsettling him. Palms on his back, roars of Welcome! in five different languages until the captain, exasperated, exclaims over the din, English, please!, and he grins, then laughs, but says nothing.
****
You never call; you never write!
How is he to write when there are no words for the soggy sky that threatens rain even at the height of summer, for the weight of the future that leers at him from the back of his locker, in a craft where talent is shackled to a price tag of its own expectations? How can he convince the world he is of some fleeting worth, that past prestige is a mere prelude to what he is truly capable of, when affirmation or censure is alternately dispensed by some obscure higher being at seeming whim, when games are chance and chance is nothing, and everything.
Alone, he eases into the comfy chair. It's nice to feel little again. He likes the darkness that swallows the theatre hall when the lights dim to nothing, the cacophony of voices which for once he doesn't need to bother deciphering (hello, thank you, my English is bad). Even the faces make sense. They smile, or cry, or have eyebrows crested in mock surprise. Sometimes a hand is raised in a threatening gesture. He knows the name of the good-looking lead actor, the curves of the woman in the red dress. Cars explode at random intervals. It's decent entertainment for an hour and a half, away from the field and the camera, that damned lens that watches and minds and condemns.
****
The pad of a thumb that travels cleverly between the waistband and his skin whispers in a language he understands. It's like the prickling he gets at the top of his spine when a teammate chips a ball into the air and it hovers, suspended in all their attendant hopes, before--
Inching, teasing, nothing.
A pass that turns out to be a sliver of what he was expecting. He shrugs it off, carries on changing back into civilian clothes.
****
There is no time to throw a glance at the goal's mouth but he is sure of its dimensions as it looms closer and closer, vaguely aware of the shadow of a goalkeeper who now pales in comparison to his gnawing ambition, and off he goes flying with the ball at his feet, nothing like the freedom this calculated dribbling gives, and his boot greets the ball with its left instep. And at that instant he knows the ball's trajectory is off, and in half a second we could harness trigonometry and carve out angles and lines and possible outcomes, but his chiefest informant is the unpleasant twist in his gut that tells him he's blown the shot. Sure enough, it flies wide off-target, and what else do we need but a close-up camera shot of him waving an arm to ward off attention, curses falling from his lips where they should have been cheers, and then off the camera goes in pursuit of the errant ball, chastened by a goal kick back into play. A million screens broadcast another drawn-out replay of his missed opportunity. What the lens had left behind and failed to capture when it so earnestly trailed the ball as it was lifted back into the green was his hunched figure, jogging lightly back into midfield, and S.'s fingers applying the slightest pressure on the taut muscles roped into the back of his neck, and his leaning into that encouraging touch before tilting his chin back up, doubts pushed to the back of his head for now as they run back into the game, into the fight, to toggle the locks to that elusive goal, one more time.