NUMBER SIX

The rainbow shot was my childhood obsession, and it went something like this. The ball was struck from just outside the penalty box, from barely a dozen inches above its right corner, and, after making a beautiful curling movement over the wall, it landed perfectly in the left upper-ninety of the goal. The size of the wall was immaterial as the ball barely registered its presence with the swooshing sound of a snide dismissal. The hapless goalkeeper was reduced to a spectator, a pathetic mannequin, who could either make a late jump or watch it unfold in still agony. And all the while my heart would freeze or else skip a dozen beats as it followed, quite religiously, the rainbow trajectory of the ball.

It was a shot I could watch for hours, in dreams as well as in real life. I would sit on the bench with the best view and gaze at him practicing that shot again and again. Meanwhile, I would be careful not to clap or express any visible signs of admiration. It was enough to know that he noticed my stooped presence and even smiled at me a few times when the ball was struck particularly well. Barring an occasional sound of subdued delight and equally subdued disappointment, the ritual was performed in total silence. I think I preferred it that way.

There were of course regular training sessions conducted by a disinterested man with a weight problem. The man coached both teams, senior and junior, drove a battered old Volkswagen Golf and often entertained us by saying the names of teams where we would be playing in the future. (Later, I would discover that he committed suicide by hanging himself in the garage.) So he was mostly doing it on his own, with no props and no coaches, even though once in a while he was joined by another player from the senior team who either stood between the goalposts or tried his luck with the free kick. Inevitably, he would fail miserably at both and would end up lamenting the odds of a foul being committed at that precise spot on the pitch. A remark that would be dismissed with an awkward yet defiant shrug, the kind that I would try to emulate at home and during the few interactions with my classmates.

The remark was of course well-judged as the odds were indeed quite low. In fact, while I never missed a single game of the senior team in all those endless seasons of outdoor football, I could only remember one such instance when the free kick was supposed to be taken from that particular edge of the penalty box. However, the fateful substitution had already been made and somebody else wasted the opportunity by hitting the wall with a shot lacking any teeth or incision. Otherwise, the fouls were committed outside the danger area where the free kicks were taken by somebody else on that senior team.

Nobody said this to my face, but I think he was considered a competent first-team player with just the right set of skills. He could pass and he could spread the pitch, and his position on the left wing of the diamond-shaped midfield was never in doubt. Having said all that, there was of course a small matter of him being given number six, that least charismatic of all numbers on a football pitch. And in those days we believed in the numbers, and everyone on the junior team had it all figured out. 'Seven' meant creative, 'eight' was a playmaker, 'nine' denoted a goalscorer, 'ten' spelled a genius. 'Six' was neither here nor there. 'Six' was donkey work. 'Six' was average. In fact, the best thing you could say about 'six' was that 'six' was underrated. Which I believed he was, because even without the rainbow shot (I was actually the only one who called it that way), his passing was smart and cut through the opposition's defence with the elegance and the ease of a still-water vessel, and because his ability to create space was spectacular. So that when the time came to pick my number on the junior team, I chose 'six'. The boy who was distributing the shirts looked at me like I was insane, or defective, and said 'four' was still available. Hiding my embarrassment, though not quite as gracefully as I wanted, I took 'four'. 'Four' was the backbone. 'Four' was good.

I tried that shot, too, at all those times when it was raining or the weather was scorching hot and there was no one else at the stadium. However, the trajectory was all wrong and the ball barely reached the elevation it needed to hit the top of the net. I did get the result once in a while, but there was no way I could tell everyone else on the team that from that time on I would be taking those free kicks as this was my shot. Because it was not my shot and I was as bad at it as everyone else who was not wearing the number six shirt on the senior team. Which is not to say that he always scored it himself. There were long afternoon sessions (his favourite time was between three and four) when he missed one or two shots out of ten. This was both disheartening and oddly encouraging. It meant he was human, even if I did not know whether I wanted him to be just that.

And then it came, the football match that should have happened long ago. Two senior teams from two neighbouring towns contending a local cup as well as a sizable money award. Naturally, the game generated quite a bit of interest and for once it was not reduced to the junior team and a handful of family members. This time, there were tickets and an old scoreboard that a travelling team from some English town had brought to us three years before. As ever, I chose the best bench at the stadium, the one where I watched all the games as well as his practice sessions. It would be worth noting here that nobody else knew about my obsession, which was for the best as it spared me the embarrassment of the whispers.

For me, this match (as well as any other match played by the senior team) was all about that shot. Victory and defeat were no more than a marginal interest, an afterthought, but I cared deeply about that free kick. Because I knew that if the chance came, he would just do it and there would be no end to people talking about it for weeks and even months. Oh I had it all in my mind, running like a fevered dream: the short run-up, the smooth strike from under the bottom of the ball, the rainbow trajectory that glanced over the wall, the torn cobweb from the top left corner of the goal. I knew the routine and I knew the outcome.

What I did not know was that the opportunity would come in this particular match, at the very end of the regulation time, with the score tied, following a dramatic comeback from our team. And yet here it was, at that precise spot on the pitch, seconds after a cynical tackle. It was emotional to see how the other players turned their heads and looked at the one man who could score it with his eyes closed. The moment was tense and the spectators were breathlessly looking on, even though nobody at the stadium (or in the town, for that matter) felt it the way I did; how the tension was licking my heart dry, how the air got sucked out of my lungs. He looked calm, though, and he did the whole thing as if it was a training session with no else at that stadium except for a skinny boy on a bench nearby, with clenched knees and stooped shoulders. The short run-up, the smooth strike... In fact, there was just one thing which did not go according to the plan: the ball did not touch the net. I guess I could blame my eyes or the racing heart that blurred the vision, but there was the whole stadium to confirm. There was an old man gasping on that bench by my side: there was no goal. There was, however, a sense of hushed and rather cautious jubilation as moments ago the referee had given a penalty.

The brain was too disbelieving to process what had just happened but the vague impression was slowly giving way to the clear-cut image at the back of my mind: one of the players standing in the wall had raised his arms as the ball was about to fly over his head (lower than expected but just enough to make it) and the shot got horribly deflected. This image had been supported by the referee flashing the quickest red card in memory and pointing to the penalty spot. Everything that followed is a bit of a blur, although the memory does hold the proven 'number nine' burying that shot, ruthlessly, down the middle, and then the final whistle that came seconds later, and then the wild celebration from everyone on that senior team. Including him, the one who left me with a sick feeling in my mouth.

Somehow, the rest of that summer disintegrates in other matches and other experiences and memories that have little to do with football and more with the fact that we were moving to another town. From then on, I would only be coming to this place for my summer vacations.

It was during one such summer that I was alone at the stadium and saw a familiar face. It was a player from that senior team (a defender and a 'number three', two facts that I should have forgotten long ago), and I did not expect to see him that day. It was a scorching morning and very few people stepped onto the yellow and slightly hollowed out pitch at that point in August. Besides, I knew that the current senior team was more or less the junior team from the past (which I was no longer part of) and he was not playing much anymore. Still, he was passing by in his frayed blue jeans and his shiny shoes, and he said he recognised me vaguely. He said he had thirty minutes to kill and suggested being my goalkeeper for a while. 

I did not mind being on my own, but suddenly there was a flicker in my eye, and at some point I mentioned how nobody was coming to the pitch anymore. He agreed. He said that most of those senior players had grown up and moved on. They still reunited for a game each Friday (I knew that) but most of them had other things in life. "So what do you do?" I asked him, and it turned out that he was working at some local production site and not really enjoying it. In the meantime, I was scoring goals left, right and centre as he was in all honesty a very poor excuse for a goalkeeper. In fact, the whole thing must have looked ridiculous, with him in his blue jeans, with a cigarette end dangling from his mouth, with a small black leather bag lying by the right goalpost.

To distract him from all the cursing he was doing when he could not catch the ball (which was most of the time), I said that he used to be a good defender. He said he agreed, rather earnestly, but this was me trying to get to the one subject that mattered. And so I mentioned that I had always liked the way their 'number six' was playing. "Number six?" he said, visibly confused. This was also the moment when I realised that I never actually knew the name of 'number six'. And so I described him: the light green T-shirt with rough outlines of New York City, the black shorts with grey stripes at the bottom, the white Nike boots with spikes, the clean-cut mop of blond hair, the rainbow shot. He was a little taken aback by so many details, but then he said yes, yes, of course, he remembered Alex. It was awkward to be talking about all this with someone I hardly knew, but this was the opportunity I needed and so I asked him why he never came to play in these Friday matches. "Who, Alex? Well, like I say. We all have a fucking life now. Some are married, some have girlfriends and the rest of it." Interestingly, he did not remember much about that shot ("Yeah, he did fuck around with something like that") and, naturally, he had no idea that somebody called it a 'rainbow shot'.

"So you do not remember that match? Or the free kick which led to the penalty that won the game?"

There was a pause as he was lighting his fourth cigarette and trying to think several years back. In the end, he did remember it, although he insisted the penalty was the result of a bad tackle well inside the box. I tried to argue, but there was no point as he said his memory on that was 'hundred percent'. That we were talking about two different games was out of the question as every other detail checked out. He did mentioned, however, that a similar free kick took place in that game but that it must have happened at a different point in the match.

After which he picked up his bag and left, back on his way to wherever he was going. While I stayed on the pitch to keep trying that shot that seemed so elusive. After all, I still could only practice it when there was no one else around.