Off Side by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

to feel your balls, feel them bouncing, OK? Hup! Hup!’
    He finally ran out of breath and ideas for things to shout, and gave the long-awaited blast on his whistle. The line of players broke up, and some of them ran ahead to get to the changing room before the others. Sometimes there wasn’t enough hot water for everyone to shower, even though Sánchez Zapico had presented the club with a powerful gas water heater, the inauguration of which had been attended by the whole team, the club directors, and their respective wives and children. The water heater was about the only thing on the premises with any future. The changing room was full of leaks and the walls were decorated with damp patches and flaking paint, and whether the players’ lockers were lockable or not depended on some arcane logic which no carpenter in the past ten years had ever succeeded in fathoming. Palacín took his boots off and put them on the floor. The two showers were already occupied, so he kept his shirt on in order not to get cold.
    ‘Sorry about that,’ Toté said, as he walked past, completely naked, and reached out to shake hands with Palacín.
    ‘He’s a decent sort of person when you get to know him,’ said a blond-haired player as he sat next to Palacín and began taking off his boots. ‘He’s not got anything against you. It’s just that his contract ends in June, so he’s got to put on a bit of a show.’
    ‘I see.’
    ‘My dad tells me that you were brilliant in your day.’
    The lad’s eyes consumed him as if he was an elixir, an alchemical residue of his former glory.
    ‘I’m a bit over the hill, these days.’
    ‘I was there when you scored in the match with Madrid Athletic, when the whole stadium was on its feet.’
    ‘Other times they were all booing me.’
    ‘You win some, you lose some. That’s what my dad says. He says you had a neck like a pile-driver. Boom, when you headed a ball it would go off like a rocket. He says you had as much power heading a ball as kicking it.’
    ‘That’s impossible, son.’
    ‘I know. But that’s what he says. I play midfield.’
    ‘Yes, I saw you.’
    ‘What do you think of the way I play?’
    ‘Very good. You play with your head up, and that’s very important for a midfield player. But you have to listen out more. Keep eyes in the back of your head.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘A midfield player has to be able to feel the waves of air coming off the player who’s following him, and when he’s got the ball and he’s looking for who to pass it to, he needs eyes in the back of his head, because that way he knows who’s coming up behind him. That’s the sort of thing you learn over the years.’
    ‘The trainer says I’m very intelligent.’
    The lad gave him a look that was obviously seeking confirmation, and Palacín laughed.
    ‘For sure. It shows.’
    Biscuter had tucked himself away in his kitchen; Charo was suffering an attack of indignation, and needing attention; Bromide was sick and scared — Carvalho’s family was falling apart, and he decided he needed to spend a bit of time putting it back together. He called to Biscuter to make his presence known, and when his assistant emerged from his lair, with his lank red hair bristling up in tufts and his large mournful eyes wide with surprise, Carvalho had a sudden revelation — that, in Biscuter’s case, time actuallystood still. Of all the members of Carvalho’s bizarre family, he alone had remained unchanged since the day Carvalho had first met him, thirty years previously, in Aridel prison. The little hair he had was red, and he still looked like a foetus that had been abandoned by its mother in horror at the ugliness of the creature she had brought into the world. For all that he disliked admitting the passing of time, Carvalho reckoned that Biscuter had to be over fifty by now. Time passes with its own inexorable logic, and only the artist’s technique can cheat it by freezing it in films and novels. Time was there,