Past East (provisory)

Football

Chapter 1: Football

Monotonous. Our town is monotonous. Summer. By the noon, the asphalt smells like burnt rubber. The green of the trees is scorched. We are boring. I and my friends. George wants to go fishing.

“Nah…” somebody says.

I am too bored to turn my head to see who answered. Maybe Daniel. He’s the laziest of us. In this case, he’s right. Nah is the right answer. I see Jedi scratching the sidewalk with a stick. His name is not Jedi. We nicknamed him from Yoda. They have the same ears. Sitting on the curb, the four of us, we spit in the dust. For how long we don’t have to get up in the morning for school, spitting on the dust it’s just fine.

‘Who plays soccer?’

Nobody says no: perhaps it’s a good idea. I climb the seventeen steps to my apartment door. I take out the key from around the neck and open it. I grab the football game and I go downstairs. I don’t lock the door. There are no thieves in my neighborhood. Nor in my town. My mother has to come soon.

We open the game’s box and set the pieces on the battered cardboard. When I bought the game was all green and smelled like typographic ink. Now it was dirty white at the field’s center and had dog ears. They don’t do games like this anymore. The last one I bought, the pitch vas a shame. The pieces were better. We use the old field with the new players. The buts are plastic squares with lateral nets only. I used some old pieces of curtain to make back nets. When a player shoots too hard, the small white button representing the ball flies too fast and we argue. Sometimes the ball still passes under the nets, but we see clear the goals. We did improve a lot the game from the box. I ransacked my father’s office desk and I collected confetti from the perforator. I used them to mark numbers in the top of the players. We changed the rules. We made it more realistic. I used an old school book to write tops and championships. I have an old sport almanac from 1986. I copy the qualifications stage again and again. And we re-play the old championship endlessly. We never get bored. Bulgaria had won already the World Cup several times. So did Iran. The absolute champion is West Germany. They won it like fifteen times. They are my team. Karl-Heinz Rummenige has more than one hundred goals.

I’m not playing this turn. The flipping coin chooses Daniel against Jedi: Romania against Denmark. I am the referee and I keep the score sheet. Will be Daniel winning. He plays more tactical. We make our bets. No money or toys on risk. Just bets.

“Romania will win,” says George.

That’s my bet too. We can choose the same team to bet. I see Jedi determined to prove us wrong.

“Three-one,” I make my prediction. “But Denmark will score first.”

That last part came out from nowhere. I only say it. I never thought. Everything is set. I blow the first whistle. Each period has five minutes. With three minutes on the watch, Denmark scores. Sometimes we argue about the time, because we have no chronometer. I use a scratched Pobeda: my mother gave it to me. Not this time. Larssen is the goal scorer. I mark it in my book. Just before the break, Lacatus makes even: 1-1. I write him down. The players turn the cardboard: they are changing halves. In the seventh minute, Lacatus makes 2-1. In the eighth minute, Laudrup gives away a penalty and Hagi scores the final result: Romania-Denmark: 3-1. I note the score.

Next game is Uruguay against Belgium. I have no favorite. George chooses Belgium. He likes Enzo Scifo. I don’t know the almanac by the hart, but I don’t think Uruguay has any world class player. We play. Uruguay is playing better, but no goals. The game is suspended by UEFA. The supreme authority in cardboard football is my mother. She enters the hall of the flats and I think she said “Good afternoon”. Then she’s talking to me: