by some invisible hand that was picking out each cruel moment.
‘What’s wrong with Palacín? He can’t control the ball, he can’t head the ball, and he can’t run.’
His arms trembled as he turned to the sports pages of the Madrid newspaper with the article commenting on his ‘catastrophicperformance’ in the game against Bilbao Athletic. ‘A game which is best forgotten, out of respect for the Palacín we once knew, whom we all saw as the natural heir to Zarra and Marcelino.’ Sometimes, when he returned home drunk in the early hours of the morning, in order to avoid a confrontation in bed with his insomniac wife, he would take refuge in the kitchen. Its territory of crude light, tiles, and shiny surfaces accentuated the contours of his body as he collapsed, and offered only a chilly silence in response to his murmurings of self-pity. Then came the fights, the apologies, the remorse, and again the wait for the following week’s headlines, in the hopes of regaining a confidence which by then had abandoned him. One day Valladolid beat Madrid on their home ground, and the papers reported that Palacín had not only ‘played decisive football’, but also that ‘he succeeded in opening spaces, and running rings round the opposition defenders, with the kind of style that he used to show with Barcelona’. The article took him from depression to euphoria, and from euphoria to alcohol. By the time he reached home he was walking ten feet tall and not in a mood for Inma’s reproaches. That night he felt like a winner. He had hit her, and her expression had changed from one of anger to one of helpless impotence, a look which was to pursue him through the long years of their separation like a dark, evil shadow. First came her decision to go to Barcelona, to cool off and think things over. The days turned into weeks, and then months, and when he got an offer to sign for a club in the US, Inma responded more enthusiastically than might have been expected. He’d travelled to Barcelona to see her, and her response had been to hand him a letter from her lawyer, in a flat which smelt of another man — of Simago, in fact, the transfer agent who had advised him in his negotiations with Barcelona, with Valladolid, and now with Los Angeles, without ever letting on about his secret affair with Inma. She was putting on weight a bit, but she still looked good, and the kid seemed oblivious to what was going on. He gave him a picture of a monster that he’ddrawn. ‘That’s you,’ he said. The picture was of a giant with two heads — one head was his own, and the other was a football, growing out of his shoulders like a cyst.
A phone call woke Sánchez Zapico at seven in the morning to tell him that a hoist in one of his scrap metal yards had been wrecked on account of having had its cables cut. Sánchez Zapico gathered his thoughts, while his wife beside him snored and sent sour exhalations in the direction of the Murano glass chandelier which they had brought from Venice as a utilitarian souvenir of a trip taken to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary. From the corner of her mouth a trickle of saliva emerged as she slept, and as Zapico lifted the bed covers he was confronted by the sight of his penis as it thrust impatiently out of the fly of his pyjamas. He would have to do something for it, and not just go for a piss. He headed for the toilet with his head full of plans and plummeting lifts, and his cock waving in front as if pointing the way. He locked the toilet door and set about masturbating over the toilet bowl, but his attempts at erotic recollection failed to provide the necessary stimulus. He mentally summoned up the following: the arse of the freckled little French girl at the Solar Sauna; the pendant breasts of one of his nieces as she had leaned over to serve him food at a family birthday gathering; and the body of his wife in one of their more successful moments of coitus, for which the scene had been a
‘What’s wrong with Palacín? He can’t control the ball, he can’t head the ball, and he can’t run.’
His arms trembled as he turned to the sports pages of the Madrid newspaper with the article commenting on his ‘catastrophicperformance’ in the game against Bilbao Athletic. ‘A game which is best forgotten, out of respect for the Palacín we once knew, whom we all saw as the natural heir to Zarra and Marcelino.’ Sometimes, when he returned home drunk in the early hours of the morning, in order to avoid a confrontation in bed with his insomniac wife, he would take refuge in the kitchen. Its territory of crude light, tiles, and shiny surfaces accentuated the contours of his body as he collapsed, and offered only a chilly silence in response to his murmurings of self-pity. Then came the fights, the apologies, the remorse, and again the wait for the following week’s headlines, in the hopes of regaining a confidence which by then had abandoned him. One day Valladolid beat Madrid on their home ground, and the papers reported that Palacín had not only ‘played decisive football’, but also that ‘he succeeded in opening spaces, and running rings round the opposition defenders, with the kind of style that he used to show with Barcelona’. The article took him from depression to euphoria, and from euphoria to alcohol. By the time he reached home he was walking ten feet tall and not in a mood for Inma’s reproaches. That night he felt like a winner. He had hit her, and her expression had changed from one of anger to one of helpless impotence, a look which was to pursue him through the long years of their separation like a dark, evil shadow. First came her decision to go to Barcelona, to cool off and think things over. The days turned into weeks, and then months, and when he got an offer to sign for a club in the US, Inma responded more enthusiastically than might have been expected. He’d travelled to Barcelona to see her, and her response had been to hand him a letter from her lawyer, in a flat which smelt of another man — of Simago, in fact, the transfer agent who had advised him in his negotiations with Barcelona, with Valladolid, and now with Los Angeles, without ever letting on about his secret affair with Inma. She was putting on weight a bit, but she still looked good, and the kid seemed oblivious to what was going on. He gave him a picture of a monster that he’ddrawn. ‘That’s you,’ he said. The picture was of a giant with two heads — one head was his own, and the other was a football, growing out of his shoulders like a cyst.
A phone call woke Sánchez Zapico at seven in the morning to tell him that a hoist in one of his scrap metal yards had been wrecked on account of having had its cables cut. Sánchez Zapico gathered his thoughts, while his wife beside him snored and sent sour exhalations in the direction of the Murano glass chandelier which they had brought from Venice as a utilitarian souvenir of a trip taken to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary. From the corner of her mouth a trickle of saliva emerged as she slept, and as Zapico lifted the bed covers he was confronted by the sight of his penis as it thrust impatiently out of the fly of his pyjamas. He would have to do something for it, and not just go for a piss. He headed for the toilet with his head full of plans and plummeting lifts, and his cock waving in front as if pointing the way. He locked the toilet door and set about masturbating over the toilet bowl, but his attempts at erotic recollection failed to provide the necessary stimulus. He mentally summoned up the following: the arse of the freckled little French girl at the Solar Sauna; the pendant breasts of one of his nieces as she had leaned over to serve him food at a family birthday gathering; and the body of his wife in one of their more successful moments of coitus, for which the scene had been a
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