The Southwest _

The story by its author

In the final line of Borges' short story “El sur”, Juan Dahlmann wields a knife and “goes out onto the plain”. When I read it for the first time, the choice of the verb to go out caught my attention and it made me remember a childhood experience: “the way out” that the boys from Villa Celina used to do when we crossed San Pedrito street. On one side were our houses and on the other side the pastures. Of course -it occurred to me-, as in Borges' story, we also "went out" to the plain and there we also fought a duel, not with knives but with our soccer balls. Thus, the first sentence came out: "We kicked the ball hard and went out to the plain." Later, it was remembering some moments of those matches at any time, when we were young –divine treasure–, invincible against the inclement weather, and when, more than soccer players, we were adventurers on a true safari where the playing fields were reality wild areas full of plants of thorns, anthills, barriales, ditches that crossed the areas and trees in the middle of the field. The most famous for us was one that we baptized “Nine fisherman”. We threw walls at this beloved tree and once even scored a memorable goal that both teams celebrated, hugging its trunk of peeled bark and hearts etched with knives by neighborhood couples.

THE SOUTHWEST

We kicked the ball hard and went out onto the plain.

Outside, the sun cracked the earth and it seemed impossible for someone to leave the shade, but across San Pedrito street, summer cooked Argentine soccer soldiers. It was the time of our happy poverty, before compulsive building.

We played so much that it got dark. Then we ran after a fuzzy ball, which shone dry like a bad light. In each head floated the aura of the saints, clouds of mosquitoes eager to suck our blood.

One night in January, they came looking for us in our own little field. They appeared out of nowhere and got in the middle. They were three strangers, our age, fifteen or sixteen years old.

—What's up? we ask them rudely, and surround them.

“We have come to support them,” they answered, without losing their cool.

They told us that they lived in a neighborhood near the Riachuelo, one that we didn't know, and that they said we had a great team there. The truth is that our fame surprised us, because we never thought that those impromptu matches in the pastures could have any kind of repercussion. But now they had come to gild the pill and us of the most enlarged.

“Yeah, that's right,” Tidei said, “we recently beat Lugano.

—We know, they won seven to five on the CAMEA court.

We couldn't believe it.

—And how did you find out?

"Everything is known," said the most talkative, cutting his losses.

We look at it with respect. He seemed very boss.

—What's your name? -asked.

—They call me Zamora, and you?

—Juan Diego.

We arrange a return trip. We would play the first one at home the following Saturday and the rematch in their field, a week later. When the occasion came, they would explain to us how to go. In the event of a tie, we would define by penalties.

Although there was very little to see, I got the impression that there was something off about their looks. All three of their hair was very shiny, even their eyebrows and eyelashes, as if they were all platinum. This made me laugh a little, but I held it back, because seriousness was in order at that moment. Our fame preceded us and we had to act professionally.

Once everything was agreed upon, they left the way they came. We continued playing for a while longer, motivated because the future held great events for us. We were dead tired, but just thinking about how the ball would run through the neighborhood, the force came to us and we ran like crazy in the middle of the dark, after any idea, because the ball had been conspicuous by its absence for a long time. , lost among the weeds. The hour of the little bugs of light had arrived and that is why the field and the sky seemed the same thing.

We spent that week training. Triple turn. In the morning, we did gymnastics. In the afternoon, we invented prepared plays like the First Division teams do. As the days went by, the plays were more and more complicated and they never turned out the same. There was one called "The Killer Trap", a name that, to tell the truth, did it too much honor, because in reality the trap was suicidal. It consisted of all our strikers, upon reaching the opponent's area, turning around and running with the ball towards our own goal. Supposedly, when half of the field was passed, the defenders would take the post and attack, displacing the rivals. In theory, we had about twenty plays, one crazier than the other. They were all annotated and neatly drawn in a notebook that my mother had given me. At night, we would go to Richieri and there we would go up and down the hills next to the highway, to "strengthen our muscles." We were the kids from San Pedrito and Giribone, Tidei and his friends and my cousins ​​the Cogornos, whom I invited, because they broke it.

The day before, we took care of the preparation of the court. We had to choose which part of the field suited us best. Like other paddocks, ours were also full of obstacles and unevenness. Each game became a kind of rally; to win it, you first had to defeat nature. Luckily, so many hours of play had given us a lot of work. There were kids that looked like acrobats. They jumped over holes, climbed hills, dodged thorny plants, and the ball never left their feet. El Chavo, for example, who was in his sauce. When I played soccer, I was a guerrilla in the jungle. One time I went to guard him and he stopped plowing the ball on purpose in a puddle, blinding my eyes from the mud. He was one of the best players I ever met. The old people said that Chavo played the same as a certain Corbatta (a wing that I later met through the books), that he had to go try out at some club, that they would surely catch him. But Chavo never left Villa Celina. We called him Chavo because he didn't have a home, he was a street kid. Sometimes he slept in the parish, sometimes at a friend's house, or he simply disappeared at night inside any barrel he found, to reappear with daylight in the field, where he was an important person, a player who everyone wanted on their team.

They say that there is no evil that does not come for good. That is why we thought that it was best to choose the most complicated terrain, to get the most out of it, since we knew all of our paddocks by heart and the opposing team did not, so we decided on the plot that was attached to the dead street. That field was the physical map of Argentina. It had all the geographical accidents there were and could be.

Near one side —which we painted with lime— ran a rotten ditch that ended in a swamp at the edge of an area, and on one side, between the corner and the other area, a tree interrupted, one with a small crown, but with a thick trunk. Over time, we knew how to use it well. At first, it was an advantage for the team he was defending, because the cross shots bounced off him and it seemed that there were no crosses that could beat him, but as time went by, the forwards grabbed his hand. El Chavo, to cite one case, threw walls at him and not only that: once, he holed the ball into a branch with all his strength and the shot deflected so well that it ended in a goal. I remember like it was today. To fuck, we ran to the tree, hugged the trunk and congratulated him on the conquest. From that moment on, his matches as a defender ended and we kids baptized him "nine fisherman".

On game day, we meet directly on the field, an hour before. Soon, our rivals arrived. They brought a couple of removable bows, the kind that have two uprights and a rope as a crossbar. Zamora and the two who had come the week before came forward to greet us. The afternoon light showed them as they were. As he had intuited that night, the color of their hair was a detail that he did not overlook, but the most surprising thing was that, behind them, the rest of the team looked the same. They all had platinum hair, so blonde they were, blonder than the Swedish National Team players. We had never seen anything like this in Villa Celina. It was a team of albinos.

We were surprised, but we didn't ask them anything. We talked about it among ourselves and we wound up. As one thing leads to another, someone remembered the stories of the little field surgeons, that near the Riachuelo there was so much pollution that you could see miniature forests, animals petrified by acid rain, little birds that had hair instead of feathers, two-nosed dogs and people blonder than the gods of books.

—There is no doubt —we said, while we looked at the opposing team—, if we are seeing it with our own eyes.

Our imagination soared and when it came time to play we were totally distracted. At the end of the first half, they beat us three to zero.

It was a big deal to lose at home like that. Although they did not have great individualities —neither a Chavo nor a Tato Cogorno—, their team, however, was compact and well standing. In addition, they hit him well from a distance, and they had Cabezón, our goalkeeper, as a son. All the goals they scored against him were from long distance. The complications of the terrain had not affected them as much as our minds.

But in the second half we got our act together. After the fascination, now it didn't matter if the opponents were blond, black or green, the only thing we thought about was saving our honor.

As soon as we started, Tato overflowed and shot a past cross that I connected on a volley. I gave it full. It was one of those balls kicked to chance. He could throw it into the other little field or nail it at an angle. Luckily, I sent her inside.

Afterwards, we were a whirlwind. We could have scored about ten goals for them, from so many dangerous plays that we created, but they defended themselves tooth and nail and the goalkeeper got almost everything. I say "almost" because there were two others that we sent them to keep. The second was made by Tino with a header, thanks to another cross from Tato, and the third was defined by Chavo with a strong, low cross shot to the mousetrap. Unreachable.

The lift at the end left us happy, although the draw was a result that was more convenient for them, who were visitors.

—Good game. A time for each one —Zamora told us, repeating that phrase from sports journalists.

Before saying goodbye, we arranged that the next Saturday he would come to pick us up at noon, to take us to his neighborhood, since we had no idea where exactly it was.

The week that followed was traced to the week before. We trained and practiced more set pieces, which didn't really make sense, because when it came to game time we played instinctively.

Over the days, all the neighbors caught up and always cheered us on when they saw us jogging down the street.

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— Mr Mihajlo Bogdanović Wed Aug 22 08:50:28 +0000 2012

—Come on kids, practice that we have to beat the Swedes!

It's that among so many versions that were going around, one said that our adversaries were from a Swedish colony, which I don't know who had founded, after their ship ran aground I don't know when, in an arm of the Riachuelo.

We didn't know what to think, but the fantasy of playing against a European team motivated us more than anything else, so the idea stuck in our heads and some of us started campaigning to get videos of teams from Sweden, but no matter how hard we tried, in video stores or channel surfing, we couldn't see anything.

They all gave us advice, taught us cabals or gave us amulets, but the old man from the hardware store, a very ominous guy, said we better stay home.

—They're not going to get anywhere like this, this reminds me of the disaster in Sweden.

We didn't give it a ball. Also, at the time we had no idea what she was talking about.

On Saturday at noon we met in front of Juanita's store, and once the entire team was there, we walked to the little field. Everyone came out to say goodbye to us and to continue telling us things, even the hardware store owner showed up. Shouting, he asked if they were playing it on the radio.

No one could agree. Some said that we should wait and play counterattack; others, that we attack them from the beginning; these, that we make personal marks on them; and those, that we concentrate on our own game. We felt very pressured. Villa Celina and Argentine Soccer had to be left standing well.

We crossed the little field and we met Zamora, who was waiting sitting in the shadow of the “nine fisherman”.

—Are you ready? She stood up.

“Yes,” we said. Where is it to?

—Come on.

We walked cross country to the dead street. Once there, Zamora led us to a parked, open-bed truck.

“Get on the box,” he said, inserting a key into the cabin door.

We were surprised.

—Get in —he repeated—, it's my old man's truck. He lent it to me to pick them up.

We stare at it in fascination.

—You —he faced me—, do you want to come forward with me?

—Well.

I climbed into the cab and the others into the box. Zamora started the engine and off we went. Slowly, we advance to the roundabout and there we turn to the right. The sun gilded the last fields of the Banco Hipotecario club. Through the window, I heard that my friends behind me sang "look, look how crazy, look, look how exciting...", but suddenly sooooooooooo! Zamora, joining in, began to honk, which sounded the same as the mooing of a cow, a cow at full volume, so I didn't know what else the lyrics said except the word "champion", but when he stopped playing it, the kids, without being left behind, answered "sound, sound the horn, we are the band from Villa Celina!", and then the driver played it again and so we continued, honking and chanting along the dead street, crossing garbage dumps and burned fields until the entrance to Las Achiras, where finally everyone fell silent and the sky began to cloud over. .

Before the descent, we turned left onto a dirt road that was littered with burnt-out cars. One by one, Zamora was avoiding them, with great skill. Then the street opened in two. One —the left one— advanced over a bare field; another—the right—looked like a cave, because it was bordered by two rows of trees that, on one side and the other, bent their branches over the path, forming a roof. For the latter it was us. It was broad daylight, but the glasses were so thick that everything went dark and that's why Zamora turned on the lights.

Ahead, the floating dust shimmered from the truck's lights and gave me the impression that it formed figures of running players, Primera players. Some looked like Loco Gatti, another like Maradona. Seeing them hypnotized me, although every time I became attached to one, soon the same speed undid it, and we ran over it.

At one point, Zamora stopped suddenly, because a person came out from one side, a real player, who crossed the street. He searched for something on the shoulder, until he caught a ball. Then he greeted us, showing it up high. Zamora answered the greeting by honking his horn, and the player returned to the same place he had come from, disappearing into the trees.

We started again and after two or three minutes the tunnel of trees came to an end. Once again we were in the open sky. All around, the field was painted with plots of different colors and football was played on all of them. There were people everywhere.

—Where did they come from? -I asked for.

—They come from the neighborhoods in the area.

All kinds of games were seen. In some, there were a lot; in others, they had the whole field to themselves, because they were one on one, goal by goal. Boys and adults played. There were common parties, but also "heads", "media" and "soccer-tennis". Each one was in their own, although sometimes the balls fell on neighboring courts and people mixed. Then it seemed that a single soccer match was being played, with a thousand players, with a hundred balls, throughout the entire field.

Little by little, as we advanced, the paddocks gave way to built-up areas, and we no longer saw anyone playing. At first, they were loose houses, but after a while we found ourselves inside a neighborhood.

"We're almost there," Zamora said, "the field is just a few blocks away."

There was not a soul on the street. There weren't even any dogs or cats to be seen. All was still and mute. It was as if we had entered a photo.

—Where did everyone go?

—Half is taking a nap and the other must be on the court.

We crossed the neighborhood by a boulevard and went out again to the little field. The sky had turned black. After the last corner, the court appeared. The opposing team practiced crosses. To the sides, a lot of neighbors watched. They were all albinos. Zamora entered playing the lowing of the cow, and the people began to sing.

Just like our paddock, theirs also had a tree inside the field, a huge rubber tree right in the middle. But the most striking thing was the grass, because it had no color, it was transparent grass. I could not believe it. It looked like a glass court.

—How can such a thing be?

"It's because of the sewage from the Riachuelo," Zamora explained. They eat the chlorophyll of plants and the pigments of hair.

I didn't ask him anything else. We separated and each one met with his team. As had happened to us in the first half of the previous week, once again we started losing three to zero. It is that the landscape distracted us and that is why we did not grab one. To make matters worse, the man from La Gomera had such a big cup and it fell so low that he couldn't see what was happening in the other half of the field. The players appeared and disappeared, as if they were ghosts between two worlds, defense and attack. They were used to it and they made it count. Their forwards stung the void and dislodged us. After a while, the ball fell from the sky, above the tree.

In the second, we came back through force of will and thanks to the ability of Chavo, who grabbed the court's hand and dribbled anyone who got in front of him. He scored two goals, one prettier than the other. In the first he made a double hat, for a player and then for the goalkeeper. In the second, he passed the defenders with the dead ball on the back of his neck, advancing half crouched. The markers didn't know how to get it off, because it was too high for the foot, too low for the head. In the blink of an eye, Chavo was hand in hand with the goalkeeper, and he did not forgive. We all cheered, even the albinos who were watching.

It looked like we had them. One more goal and we tied.

Almost at the end, the opposing goalkeeper took a strong shot and hung it on the rubber. Wasting no time, one from each team climbed up to lower it. The climbers were Zamora and Tidei. It was not worth touching it with your hand, because the ball was still in play. You had to move the branches or something. Downstairs, the rest of us couldn't see what was happening, because the leaves covered everything. It took a while. The teams encouraged their climbers, who, in addition to having disappeared, were completely silent. Suddenly, a ball burst from inside the tree. Zamora had arrived first. He kicked over, standing on some thick branch, a long shot across the court. We all followed the trajectory of the ball, which first took flight with a strange effect, high above, and then descended, drawing a curve that closed and closed until our goal. The big head was ahead and paid dearly. The ball entered through the middle of the arc. We wanted to kill each other.

The goal had lowered the curtain on the game. Tidei appeared first, and he sat silent. Then Zamora did it and all the albinos invaded the field. They lifted him up on a litter and began to do the Olympic lap. They sang and fired rockets. Someone got into Zamora's truck and played the lowing of the cow, which echoed. The noise was so big that it woke up the rest of the neighbors who were taking a nap. Little by little, they went down the hill and joined the celebration. To the side, the Riachuelo dragged the garbage. Above, the sky, as black as the waters, was finally unleashing the storm. The drops bounced off the thick river or immediately steamed up on the banks as they fell on the burns. The Villa Celina players were left alone, against a winger. Petrified, we look at the glassy floor for I don't know how long, mentally reviewing the plays that could not have been, the victory that could not have been in that southern Sweden, in the south west, where we played the World Cup one month of January, over holes and elevations , thorns and trees, mud and transparent grass.