Keeper (6 page)

‘You know why I call you “Professor”?’ he asked.

‘You like to tease me, Uncle,’ I said.

‘No. I call you Professor to please your mother. To help you with your deceptions.’

I suddenly felt my insides clench up. I said nothing, hoping for an escape from the conversation. I knew there wouldn’t be one.

‘It is unusual,’ he said, ‘for a boy with such big hands to be good at drawing. In your hands, the pencils look like straws in a pig’s fist. Your drawings are surprisingly good, considering this. And it is not just your hands. You have become big in many ways. Your family thinks this is normal. I do not. I remember the conversation we had when we watched the boys play in the plaza. You hid from me then, and you are hiding from me now. Boys do not change as much as you have changed by drawing flowers and insects. You do not get big, strong hands and buffalo shoulders doing that.’

I swallowed, and said, ‘I cannot help having big hands, Uncle Feliciano. It’s just the way I am.’

He stared straight ahead of him at nothing in particular. I was a little shocked when he leaned forward and spat into the darkness. He was angry with me because I was being dishonest with him. Or that’s what I thought. So I was very surprised when he stretched out his arm and rested his hand gently on mine and spoke to me in a voice that had nothing but kindness in it.

‘I am not upset in any way that there are things you cannot tell me, or things you cannot tell your family,’ he said. ‘People who have nothing private, who have no secrets, are empty people. I meet such people every day. This town, like all towns, is full of them. But it might be useful for you to know that you are not the first person who has discovered how to live by immersing himself in a dangerous place.’

I could think of nothing to say.

‘You know now what you want to be?’ Uncle’s voice was very quiet now. ‘You have found out? You are sure?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

Uncle Feliciano picked up my notebook. ‘Have these anything to do with it?’ he asked. ‘All these books of yours your mother is so proud of?’

‘No.’ Saying that little word was like dragging a bone out of my throat.

He sighed. ‘I won’t tell her,’ he said. He still held my notebook in his hand. He looked at it for quite a long time and then gave it back to me.

‘I would look after these books anyway,’ he said. ‘You never know. Life changes. One day you might look around for these, and if they have been lost, you might feel lost as well.’”

“M
Y FIFTEENTH BIRTHDAY
was racing toward me like the shadow of a dark cloud running over the forest. I hadn’t talked to the Keeper about it. I suppose he must have known that I would soon have to leave school and go to work, that these afternoons were coming to an end. But we didn’t discuss it. I never admitted it to myself, but I think I was hoping that he could somehow prevent it. That he would perform some miracle to rescue me. Perhaps that was why he never spoke about it. Perhaps his silence on the subject was evidence that he had a plan.

By now, I had made that goal web my own. My eyes were good at knowing where the ball was and where it was going to be. I was big and strong and fast.

The Keeper was not satisfied.

‘You are doing only one thing with your body when you make a save,’ he said.

‘And that is wrong?’ I asked the question resentfully; I had made a number of good saves from difficult positions that afternoon.

‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘That is what good keepers do. But it is not good enough for you.’

‘I don’t understand.’ How many times had I said that to him? And how many times had he been patient with my ignorance?

‘A good keeper,’ he said, ‘gives all his body to making the save. Every muscle, every nerve, goes into the save. You do that. But it is not enough.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because a save, even a very good save, does not always
end
anything. You may reach a ball that should be impossible to reach, but that does not mean your job is finished. You could get injured, and you have to know how to protect yourself from that. And the ball may remain in play. So, while your body is flying through the air, even at the moment when you know you will get to the shot, even at the moment when you are congratulating yourself for getting to it, your body should be adjusting itself for what might happen next. This has nothing to do with
thinking.
It’s important that you understand this. It is not a brain thing we are talking about here. Your body must know what to do. Your body must know what to do
by itself.
’

‘How is that possible?’ I said, feeling lost. ‘My body can only do what I tell it to do. You have taught me to believe that I can make my body do what I want it to do. You are confusing me.’

The Keeper was silent for several moments. I began to fidget. I had never liked these silences.

Then he said, ‘Instinct. I am sorry that I cannot think of a simpler word for it. Come, give me the ball.’

He took it out to a position about thirty-five yards down our field, in line with my left post.

‘Here is the situation,’ he instructed me. ‘I am a midfield player for the other side. Looking toward your goal, I see that one of your defenders is out of position, so that for just a moment there are three of my players against two of yours. I send a long, high ball, a good one, which goes over the heads of my attackers so that they will be facing your goal when they run onto it. I’m aiming at the penalty spot. One of your defenders might be able to head it clear. What do you do?’

This wasn’t difficult. ‘Defensive headers are always risky,’ I said. ‘So I scream like hell for the ball and go out and take it.’

‘Very well,’ the Keeper said. ‘Do it.’

He sent the pass exactly as he had described it. I knew that he would put some backspin on it, to deaden the bounce when it landed in my penalty area. I came roaring out of the goalmouth, jumped well, took the ball cleanly, high, pulled it down onto my chest, and landed, well balanced, facing up the clearing. Nothing wrong with that, I thought. I looked at the Keeper, pleased with myself.

‘You put yourself in danger, collecting the ball that way.’

‘I do?’ I said. ‘How?’

‘You show too much of yourself to attacking players. Your speed is good and your jumping is good, but you always have the front of your body facing players coming in at you. This makes it easier for you to get hurt. And it makes it easier for you to be obstructed. Understand that when you are making a catch like that, there is a dangerous moment. That is when you are high in the air, with your hands on the ball, but before you get it down to your body and under control. Opposing players will be very close to you, jumping at you with their arms high, and if you lose balance at that moment, you may lose the ball, even though you have big, strong hands.’

I understood this. ‘So what should I be doing?’

‘Your body must turn so that it meets oncoming players with the shoulder and the hip, not the chest and stomach.’

‘Show me,’ I said.

We changed places, and I sent in the long pass, not as well as he had done, but well enough. From a standing start he came out of the goal like a tiger, in great strides: no more than four of them before he leaped. At the instant he took the ball, his body swiveled; by the time the ball had been clutched to his chest, he was descending sideways, left shoulder down, weight thrown forward. I would not like to have been in his way. He looked as though he could have smashed through a brick wall. His leading left foot touched the turf first. As soon as both feet were grounded, he was in a half-crouch, the ball held slightly away from his body, so that he was perfectly balanced to make either a long throw or a kick.

It seemed so easy and natural that I thought I must have missed something.

‘Again?’ I needed to be sure he hadn’t done something too quickly for me to see.

‘Very well,’ the Keeper said, and rolled the ball out to me.

This time I pitched the ball a little shorter, so that he had farther to go to reach it. It made no difference. Again, the tigerish run and leap, the hands behind the ball when he caught it, the pivot in the air, the shoulder-first descent, the landing in perfect balance and readiness. And this time an overarm throw the instant his feet touched the ground. The ball flew true to me, and I took it on my chest.

‘Okay.’ I trotted over to the goalmouth while he went to the ball.

He sent the long pass to exactly the same spot as before. I took the ball high in the air, my hands well positioned. I pulled it down to me and swung the balance of my body sideways as the Keeper had done. I immediately lost control of my legs. My hips were out of line with my shoulders and didn’t know what to do. I was still trying desperately to get my weight in the right place when I hit the turf. To save myself from injury, I got my left hand to the ground and threw myself forward, rolling awkwardly. I had no idea where the ball went. I ended up on all fours, facing the wrong way, feeling stupid.

I stood up to face the music.

All the Keeper said was, ‘Goal.’

I looked behind me and saw that the ball had come to a stop exactly where an intelligent forward would be. Yes, goal. No doubt about it.

‘Let me try again,’ I said.

The same thing happened. I couldn’t understand it. It was such a simple thing. Just a turn in the air. So why did I get it so hopelessly wrong?

‘Because you still have to
think
about it,’ the Keeper said. ‘You still have to
picture
what your body must do. There is no time for that. There is no time for your head to send messages to the rest of your body and for your body to turn these messages into actions. It must be automatic. It must be
instinct.
’

I was discouraged. ‘I don’t think I have this instinct,’ I said miserably.

The Keeper’s reaction to this was so quick and fierce and out of character that I think my mouth fell open.

‘Do not say that. Never say that! Are you telling me after all this time that I was wrong about you? I am not wrong about you. I
cannot
be wrong about you. If I am wrong about you, we are all . . .
stuck.
’

He turned away from me. His shape seemed to wobble, to look frail.

I thought,
All? Stuck?
What does he mean?

He turned back to me and became more solid. He seemed to be keeping himself visible by sheer willpower. I could see that he was struggling.

He steadied and said, ‘You have this instinct. I see it in you. It’s just that you do not see it in yourself. It is because you think you are still that awkward boy who walked into this clearing long ago. You think you are still that boy, except that you have learned things from me.’

He was right. Deep inside of me, still, that clumsy Cigüeña lived. All legs and struggling wings and shame. Laughed at.

‘You are not that boy any longer,’ the Keeper said. ‘He has gone. You have become someone else.’

He turned away and walked toward the shadow wall of the forest. Before he disappeared, he faced me and said, ‘Tomorrow I will show you who you are now.’”

“I
STEPPED INTO
the clearing and saw him right away. He was standing, motionless, at the very edge of the sunlight, where it was broken into fragments by leaf shadow. When he stepped forward, my eyes played a strange trick: some of that complicated shadow seemed to come with him. A piece of that patchy yellowish shade became solid and slouched beside him as he moved. It rippled. It kept pace with the Keeper as he walked calmly down toward me. A light wind was blowing into my face that afternoon, and I smelled her at the same moment she turned her pale muzzle and cold, yellow eyes toward me.

A jaguar.

I saw her beauty while I struggled not to wet myself from fear. I saw how she carried the broken light of the forest on her fur, the dark markings against the pale gold, and I saw that these markings gathered themselves into circles like the petals of black roses. Her shoulder blades almost met at the top of her back, sliding against each other as she paced. Her feet were huge, and she placed them on the turf with a lazy precision. Her pale, narrow belly swung slightly as she walked. She carried her tail in a stiff curve just above the grass.

The Keeper strolled beside her as calmly as a man walking his dog in a city park. But there was nothing tame about her. She was alert in this unfamiliar open space. Her eyes were fixed on me; her nose read whatever scents were on the wind.

The Keeper stopped fifty feet from me, but the jaguar came on. She came toward me with the same slow, loose stride, but I thought there was a tenseness in her now, a slight lowering of her body. The trembling that had begun in my legs took complete control of me.

‘Don’t move,’ the Keeper said.

As if I could! As if my body would do what I told it to!

The great cat stalked past me, just a yard away. Then she turned and stopped where the breeze carried my scent to her. She lifted her head and narrowed her eyes. What she smelled, of course, was my fear, and this seemed to satisfy her. She sat. She was close enough to rip open my legs with one sweep of her claws. I had a mad desire to reach out to her and stroke her head, as if she were an ordinary cat, a domestic pet.

‘Keep still,’ the Keeper said, beginning to walk toward me. The jaguar turned her head and watched him approach. Then she stood and ambled off to the shaded side of the clearing, where she lay down and began to wash the underside of her right foreleg with her tongue.

If the Keeper knew that he had terrified me, he gave no sign of it. ‘She recognized you,’ is all he said, looking at her, not me. Then he said, ‘Come.’ I was surprised to discover that I could walk. We moved to the edge of the clearing opposite the jaguar. I felt her yellow gaze on my back. When we stopped, she returned to her grooming. The light seemed to be concentrated in her: she glowed; she burned. The silence was intense; I could hear the soft rasp of her tongue against her fur.

Then, suddenly, I saw her ears lift and twitch. She became absolutely still.