Authors: Mal Peet
“Yeah,” Faustino muttered, pressing the button. “I’ve seen this a dozen times now, but I can still hardly bear to look.”
On the screen Walter Graaf, in close-up, faces his first penalty. He stands quite still, hands on hips, while Babayo steps up to take it. As Babayo strikes the ball, with tremendous power, Graaf does a star-jump, arms high and apart. The ball flies just over the bar and vanishes into the howling, hysterical crowd. Babayo crouches, his head in his arms, devastated, crushed by the roar that fills the stadium.
“Poor Babo,” said El Gato quietly.
Faustino sat back in his chair and made a gesture of despair. “But he
never
does that,” he said. “He’d scored every one of his last eighteen penalties. What the hell did he think he was doing?”
“Well,” Gato said, “not even Babo had been under pressure like that before. He knew it was crucial, psychologically vital, that we also score with our first penalty. I’m not really surprised he missed. But it was then that I began to feel a little worm of fear start to eat me. It was possible, after all, that the World Cup would evade me a second time. A last time. It was an effort to push doubt aside as I waited for Tauber to take Germany’s second penalty.”
“And you saved it,” Faustino said. “Here it is, look.”
Gato watched himself fly to his right and palm Tauber’s shot around the post.
“Great stop, my friend,” rejoiced Faustino. “Tauber really hammered that one.”
“It wasn’t as hard as it looks. I offered him a tiny amount of extra space to my right, and he fell for it. And I could tell from the way he leaned that he was going to hit it high.”
“Okay, now here comes Masinas,” said Faustino, leaning closer to the screen. “This is good.”
“Yes, a real captain’s goal, this one. Look, just here, see? He bounces the ball a couple of times, casual as you like, on his way to the spot. And now he smiles at the referee and says something, and the ref smiles, too. But this little performance is for Graaf’s benefit, really. And it works. Walter looks very edgy. Masinas just plops the ball down on the spot, doesn’t tee it up or anything. Doesn’t look at Walter at all. Here we go: look at that! Simple side-foot, sends Walter the wrong way, bang. One–one. Excellent. As if we were on the training field.”
Paul Faustino looked at his friend and smiled to himself. Gato was watching this with all the simple pleasure and excitement of a teenage fan. Maybe he was a normal human being after all.
“So,” Faustino said, focused back on the screen. “It’s a penalty each, and the game is still anyone’s. Now you face Jan Maschler, the young midfielder. He’d had a good game, I think.”
“Yes, and I’d never played against him before. This was only his third game for Germany. I was surprised that he’d been picked as one of the penalty takers. I didn’t have any idea what to expect. He’s a left-footed player, so naturally I figured that if he went for a power shot, he would send it to my left, but if he shunted his weight in the approach, he would go for a side-foot to my right. I was wrong on both counts. Here it comes.”
The two men watched the screen. To Faustino, it looked as though El Gato had left it very late to make the save, to make the fast dive to his right. But if he’d gone any sooner, he wouldn’t have been able to block Maschler’s shot with his legs, which was what he did. Maschler drove the ball straight at the very spot that Gato had left, at the dead center of the goalmouth. But the keeper had timed it perfectly, Faustino realized. Watching the replay very closely, he saw that Gato seemed to float, just for a heartbeat, motionless in the air and look back along the length of his own body, somehow getting his legs to the ball, which cannoned off and away to the right of the goal.
Gato said, “Paul, if you say that was a lucky save, I’ll never speak to you again.”
Faustino laughed. “After tonight,” he said, “I’ll never use the phrase ‘lucky save’ again, I promise you.” He looked back at the video. “Here comes Paolo da Gama.”
They watched da Gama place the ball very precisely on the penalty spot. The camera cut to Walter Graaf, who looked very confident, occupying his space.
Gato said, “I never doubted that Paolo would score. I’d have given him the first penalty if I’d been able to choose. He’s always in the papers, being a playboy, a wild boy. But there’s ice in his veins. Look how he does this. Walter doesn’t have a ghost of a chance.”
They watched da Gama’s short, deceptive approach to the ball, his drop of the wrong shoulder, the way he slid the ball, not fast at all, into the net. Graaf hardly moved. Da Gama walked quietly off the screen, not celebrating, not milking the crowd’s delirious applause, which came into Faustino’s office so loud it seemed solid.
Once again the camera showed Gato in close-up on the goal line; then the angle flicked to Tobias Mann, the enormous German defender, placing the ball for the fourth German penalty.
Then, as Mann walked away from the ball for a long approach, Gato said, “Generally speaking, big defenders like Mann go for extreme power, rather than accuracy. And that’s fair enough. After all, it’s only twelve yards from the penalty spot to the goal line, and someone like Mann can drive the ball that distance in less than a second. You don’t have time to think about or calculate what to do. All you can do is hope to mess with the penalty taker’s head. And the odds are always against the keeper because he isn’t allowed to move until the kick is taken, as you know. So I cheated.”
Faustino pressed the
pause
button. “You did what?”
“I cheated.”
Both men were looking at the screen, which showed Mann frozen in a grim posture, hands on his hips, leaning forward slightly, staring defiantly into El Gato’s face.
“What do you mean, you cheated?” Faustino wanted to know. “I’ve watched this over and over again, and I never saw you do anything wrong.”
El Gato turned in his chair and looked at the journalist. “I’d noticed something about the referee,” he said. “A tiny thing. He’d set everything up, check everything, confirm with his assistants, whistle to allow the kick. But, standing at the edge of the box, he’d always, at the very last moment, take his eyes off the keeper — whether it was me or Walter Graaf — and watch the kick. He didn’t turn his head or anything obvious, but he’d flick his eyes at the ball for just that second as the penalty taker struck it. He couldn’t help it. So I used it. Can you move the picture one frame at a time?”
“Um, yeah, I think so,” Faustino said, fumbling with the remote. “Here we are.”
The screen now showed jerky stills of Tobias Mann bearing down on the ball like a bull going for a matador. Then, briefly, just before the German struck, the camera cut to Gato.
“Freeze it there, Paul,” Gato said.
Faustino stared at the image. “You’ve come off your line,” he said. “About half a yard. And you’re pointing, are you? Yes, you’re pointing to the bottom-right corner of the goal. You’re telling Mann where to put the shot!”
“Yes,” Gato said, “and I’ve put my weight on my left foot, just to tempt him a bit more, make him think I’m going the other way.”
“But I still don’t get it,” Faustino said, perplexed. “I mean, Mann was already committed to what he was going to do. You’re not telling me, are you, that you persuaded him to try something different, right at the last moment?”
“Not really. But what I did was put another idea into his head, another possibility. Right up to that last split second his only thought was to blast the ball into the goal. Exactly where didn’t matter that much. But then I put a second option into his head, too late for him to sort one from the other. I messed his mind a bit. That is why he misses.”
The two men watched Mann’s ferocious shot pass harmlessly wide of the right post.
Faustino, grinning, looked at Gato and said, “You know what? Of all the words I could use to describe you,
sneaky
is one I wouldn’t have thought of. But that was downright sneaky. I’m shocked.”
Gato didn’t take his eyes from the screen. “I needed to win this game,” he said.
“You must’ve thought you’d done it,” Faustino said. “You’d saved three German penalties in a row, which is incredible. We’re two–one up, and it’s our turn. If Fidelio scores, it’s all over.”
The camera cuts briefly to players not involved in this critical moment. Most of the Germans are sitting or crouching on the turf, not daring to watch. Lindenau is pacing back and forth in the center circle, making fierce little gestures and talking to himself. Tauber, the captain, with his arms folded, watches grimly as Fidelio picks up the ball and heads for the spot. The noise, the tidal roar of the crowd, is now almost unbearable.
“This is horrible,” Faustino muttered.
“Graaf is superb here,” El Gato said quietly. “I admire him so much for this. He knows he has to stop this one. And so far, he hasn’t got a hand on a single one of our penalties. But he knows that Fidelio’s fear is greater than his own. He knows that he will be forgiven if he is beaten by a penalty. But Fidelio isn’t at all sure that
he
will be forgiven if he fails to win the World Cup with one. It’s the most important kick, maybe the most important moment, of his life. And here, look, Walter stops on his way to the goal line to fiddle with his gloves. Fidelio is already poised for his approach, but he has to wait and watch. Just for five seconds, but that’s another five seconds of dread. Walter stands on the line. He looks like someone waiting for a bus. Everything about him is telling Fidelio that he is not going to score.”
On the screen Graaf hurls himself to his left to parry Fidelio’s low shot, which has not been struck quite hard enough. Graaf deadens the ball with his forearms and it rolls aimlessly off the screen. The stadium explodes with noise and flares as thousands of German supporters roar out their anthem.
Faustino sighed, slumping back in his chair. “So Graaf keeps them alive,” he said. “The score stays at two–one. Now it’s down to you, Gato. Your last penalty of the five. Are you sure you want to watch it?”
“Yes. I think Rilke slices it, but I’d like to be sure.”
Faustino stared at him. Any normal player, he thought, would hide in a dark cellar rather than relive a thing like this.
El Gato watched himself being beaten by the German midfielder without comment.
Faustino chose to stay silent, too.
When the slow-motion replay came on, Gato leaned forward closer to the screen. “I was right,” he said. “Watch. Rilke’s got the same sort of pressure on him that Fidelio had but shows none of it. He starts his approach, not a long one, six paces. He does a little shuffle, but I’m not buying it. He’s going to go for top-right, I’m sure, so I’m in the air almost before he hits the ball, because I know he’s going to hit it very, very hard. And yes, he slices it, just a little bit. It cuts away from the top-right slightly. Before I can adjust myself, the ball hits my shoulder and goes in off the underside of the bar.”
He sounded, Faustino thought,
pleased.
“Okay,” Faustino said, “two–two. After two and a quarter hours the whole game depends on Mano Elias.” He paused the video as the slender winger walked slowly to the penalty spot. His purple and gold shirt looked too big for him. “What must it have felt like, being him?” Faustino wondered. “I can’t imagine it. I don’t
want
to imagine it. Twenty years old, and the whole damn world watching.” The camera now showed small sections of the crowd in quick sequence. Faces, faces. Faces painted in greasy colors, faces strained with unbearable tension, eyes closed and teeth bared. A number of people praying; a section of German fans howling and pointing at Elias, trying to break his concentration, or his spirit; a woman frozen in what looked like pure terror, all her fingers stuffed into her mouth. Each shot, Faustino thought, looked like a painting of a madhouse in hell.
As if he had had the same thought, Gato said, “Yes. Too much, too much. It was hell on earth at that moment. The noise was enough to make your ears bleed. I looked at Graaf and I looked at Mano, and I knew he wouldn’t score. Knew it in my gut, like a chunk of ice.”
He and Faustino watched Elias’s shot hit Graaf’s left post and vanish off the screen. Faustino hurriedly jabbed the volume control on the remote as the German supporters erupted, and the camera cut between them and Elias, kneeling, wretched, wanting to die.
“Poor, poor kid,” Faustino murmured. “As far as he’s concerned, the entire world has just seen him throw away the World Cup. I imagine he just wants to plunge his head into the ground and keep it there.”
With the sound off, the two men watched the preparations for the sudden death penalty shootout. They watched the two teams huddle and confer. There was an obvious difference between them.
“The Germans were much more up than we were,” El Gato said quietly. “They’d come back from the dead. You can tell by looking at them that they had the feeling that, despite everything, they were destined to win. There, look: you can see Tauber and the German coach sorting out who takes the kicks, and no one is looking away. Lindenau is actually smiling. Now look at our squad.”
The camera cut to the other half of the center circle. Masinas was moving among the players, desperately working to pump up morale. Yet Aldair and Gento were sitting staring at the ground, trying to be invisible. The coach, Badrenas, was holding Carlos Santayana by the arm, but Santayana was pulling away, shaking his head. Da Gama had his arms around Mano Elias, who was weeping uncontrollably.
“And you, my friend?” Faustino asked. “You look pretty calm there. How were you feeling?”
El Gato laughed, but not in the way a man laughs at a joke. “Exhausted,” he said, “absolutely exhausted. By now, it was pretty much three hours since we’d first walked out of the tunnel into that, that . . .
cauldron
of noise and light. I felt used up. Worse, I was losing a fight with myself. I wanted that thing,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder to the World Cup still burning in the lamplight, “more than I could imagine wanting anything else. I’d come within two games of it four years ago. Right through this game, right up to Elias’s last kick, I’d hung on to the belief that I’d get it this time. Now I’d lost that certainty. A part of me believed that after all I’d done, I’d never get there. I was trying to kill that part of me, the doubting part. And I couldn’t.”