Skills from Brazil Page 7

  “Right,” said Jamie, his voice dropping. The last thing he needed was to sprain his ankle on a bit of rock and end up in hospital. His mum would have a nervous breakdown. “Well, can we at least watch for a bit?”

  “Of course,” smiled Rafael, taking out his notepad.

  Jamie and Rafael had watched the street kids playing for about half an hour. Jamie saw how they deftly evaded the rocky debris and admired their touches of street skill as they nimbly nipped past one another.

  Towards the end of the game, the smallest, thinnest boy wearing the same old, ripped Brazil shirt had once again spotted Jamie and approached him. Again, he had tugged at Jamie’s shirt. Again, Jamie had refused, but he had smiled at the boy and looked into his eyes.

  The boy’s face was so dirty and his frame was painfully thin and yet his eyes were clear and expressive. It was an image that had remained fixed in Jamie’s mind.

  “Rafa, can I ask you a question?” said Jamie, still thinking about the boy as they turned into the plush suburb where Bernard’s house was.

  “Go ahead,” said Rafael.

  “Well, if everyone in your country loves football, if the whole of Brazil is obsessed by the game … and if there are lots of rich people in houses like this … then why do those kids have to play … like that?”

  Rafael looked at Jamie. He seemed a little shocked.

  “You are right, Jamie,” said Rafael. “And you know, my mum always used to ask the same question.”

  All in the Notepad

  Jamie looked into Rafael’s room. His friend was sitting at his desk, lost in another world as he scribbled furiously in his notepad. In all the time that they had known each other, Jamie had still never seen him without it.

  Jamie was desperate to know what Rafael wrote in that notepad. He knew it was to do with football because when, yesterday, Jamie had asked Rafael if he ever played football, Rafael said that he used to when he was younger – and that he was an OK player – but that now he preferred to study the game. Jamie had noticed that when Rafael said the word “study” he had subconsciously tapped his notepad.

  It was all in there. Jamie just didn’t know what it was. Part of him was tempted to steal the pad for a minute when Rafael wasn’t looking just to sneak a peek at what was inside, but Jamie knew he would never do that. He would only ever see what was inside the notepad if Rafael let him.

  Jamie went downstairs, noticing immediately how springy his feet felt against the carpet. The burns were nearly healed and it was almost as if the outer layer of skin had evolved into a new tougher, harder membrane that now covered the inner, more sensitive part of his foot.

  “How’s it going?” asked Bernard, who was sitting in the kitchen, as Jamie helped himself to a glass of milk from the fridge. The milk somehow tasted different to home – a little sweeter, perhaps.

  “So, so,” said Jamie. “It’s been good and everything … but I haven’t actually kicked a ball yet…”

  It was only when he’d finished speaking that Jamie realized that Bernard might not have been talking about football. He might have been referring to Rafael’s stammer, wondering whether his son was any closer to speaking freely in public.

  That was a difficult question to answer. On the face of it, there had been no progress: Rafael still hadn’t spoken to anyone in public – or even his dad – without a stammer. Yet when it was just him and Jamie, it was now impossible to shut him up! The boy had turned into a complete chatterbox!

  “Oh, by the way,” said Bernard, changing the conversation. “You should go and get your jacket on. We’re leaving in ten minutes.”

  “Huh?” said Jamie. “Where we going?”

  “To watch some football,” replied Bernard. “Some real Brazilian football.”

  Really at the Game

  The sound hit Jamie like a wall.

  He was right in the middle of a sea of forty thousand football-mad Brazilians, all of whom were singing, smiling and banging their drums, all ready for the beginning of the game.

  As they took their seats, Jamie watched Bernard giving Rafael a big hug. It reminded him of when he and Mike went to watch Hawkstone. There was something special about going to football matches, something that brought people closer together. This must be the big event that they had to come home for, Jamie thought to himself. And he could understand why. To be here, at a top Brazilian football match, was well worth travelling across the globe for.

  Jamie looked around him. Men, women, boys and girls … all ages, all colours, all races – all singing and happy … all dressed in Palmeiras’s famous white and green strip. They had completely forgotten their normal lives. They were just here to enjoy the game. This is a carnival of football, Jamie thought. And I’m part of it!

  Jamie was shouting for Palmeiras just as loud as if he had been at a Hawkstone match back home. And almost from the very kick-off, there was a lot for Jamie to cheer; the match rained goals!

  It seemed as though each time one of the sides scored, the other would just go up the other end and equalize. It was everything Jamie could have hoped for: goals, skills and celebrations. He was up from his seat every five minutes, clapping, roaring his approval and giving Rafael a massive high five and hug each time Palmeiras scored.

  By half-time, the game was already 3-3, one of the highest-scoring forty-five minutes Jamie had ever seen. Rafael was using the break to update his notepad while Bernard went to get them some drinks.

  Everything was just about perfect. However, Jamie was not smiling. In fact, there was something that had really started to annoy him and it was beginning to make him angry too: practically all the fans around him had been taking the mickey out of him for the whole of the first half.

  Right from the moment they had arrived, just as the game kicked off, and all the way through the match itself, many of the people sitting around Jamie had been shouting “ginga” at him.

  Jamie hadn’t liked it when he thought that Rosária had used the word at the beach and he liked it even less now.

  He knew that there weren’t many people with bright red hair like him in Brazil and he accepted the fact that it made him look different to everyone else. But to single him out and shout “ginga!” at him really loudly AND laugh and clap while they did it … well, that was completely out of order. He could feel his anger rising again. He knew he had to say something; otherwise he might lose his temper.

  “Can you please tell them to stop?” Jamie asked Bernard as soon as he came back with the drinks.

  “I hate it. It’s mean and I can’t enjoy the game properly with them shouting ‘ginga’ at me the whole time because of my hair.”

  Bernard and Rafael both looked at each other and raised their eyebrows.

  “Do you want to tell him or shall I?” Bernard asked Rafael.

  Rafael pointed to his dad. He had started laughing.

  “OK. It’s not exactly what you think, Jamie,” said Bernard. Even he was nearly smiling too. “In Brazil, ginga is nothing to do with hair. It is a word which means something else here. It describes the skills, the joy, the personality needed in order to make beautiful football.

  “We say ginga when Ronaldo cheekily dribbles past three defenders and the goalkeeper before back-heeling the ball into the net. Ginga is when Ronaldinho smiles before flicking the ball over your head and volleying it in … and ginga can also be the way you sway your hips when you are dancing…

  “It is a rhythm, a feeling – a kind of joy – so when the fans are saying it, they are not talking about you, they are cheering for the players, to give them a mood to bring out the ginga in the air, to let it sweep from the terraces to the pitch.”

  “Oh, right,” said Jamie, suddenly feeling a little foolish. “Well, if it’s not about me … I guess that’s OK, then.”

  Once Jamie knew what ginga meant, he enjoyed the second half way be
tter … and so did the Palmeiras fans, because, having gone 4-3 down, they managed to come back to win 5-4 in spectacular fashion.

  When Arnaldo’s winning bicycle-kick goal went in, Jamie actually thought one of his eardrums might burst, such was the noise generated by everyone within the stadium.

  “Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Arnaldo!!!! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol!” shouted the commentator, who was sitting a few seats back from Bernard and the boys. The man was going completely mental.

  Jamie and Rafael turned to look; he was standing up, his face was bright red and he screaming into his microphone, still repeating: “Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Goooooooooooool!”

  He must have done it about a hundred times. Jamie and Rafael laughed and immediately tried to copy him. They got up to forty before having to stop through complete exhaustion.

  As they made their way back to the car from the stadium amidst all the other fans, Jamie felt as if he was floating across the ground. Back home, when he tried to explain to people (other than Mike and Jack) how he felt about football; how much he loved the game, how it was in his mind the whole time, they didn’t understand. They just told him things would change when he discovered girls. They had no idea.

  It was only now, only after he had been to see a real, live game here, that Jamie understood why Brazil was just about the best country in the world. Not only did everyone here understand his love for football, they all felt the same way!

  Opening Up

  “Thank you so much! That was the best game that I have ever seen in my life!” beamed Jamie when they got home.

  It had also been one of the longest car journeys of his life – nearly five hours all the way back to Rio from São Paulo – and it was now nearly three o’clock in the morning, but Jamie was still wide awake … and he wasn’t the only one.

  Sitting around the kitchen table, eating pastries filled with hot, creamy chicken (a dish called pastel frito de frango, Jamie had learned), the three of them were still talking about the incredible game they had witnessed. Or rather, Jamie was talking and the other two were listening because, while Bernard nodded and Rafael scribbled away in his notepad, Jamie unleashed a relentless review of every thought that was popping into his head.

  “Now I can say I‘ve seen a top match in Brazil! Mike is going to go ballistic when I tell him!” he said proudly, almost shouting, even though the other two people in the room were sitting at the same table as him.

  “And I can always say that I saw Arnaldo play when he was really young. You were right, Rafa – he was amazing! He’ll definitely get signed by a European club in the next transfer window. Talk about tekkers! That bicycle kick was insane. I mean, how do you actually become that good? He was literally ON ANOTHER LEVEL!

  “I’ll tell you what I want to know, though,” continued Jamie. “What did the Palmeiras manager do to change it when they went 4-3 down? It was like he switched the entire team formation and then they went and won 5-4. How did he do it?”

  Jamie finally allowed himself a breath and a big gulp of water. Then he suddenly noticed Bernard looking at Rafael.

  “Go on,” said Bernard to his son. “Why don’t you show him, Rafa?”

  Rafael stopped writing in his notepad and looked up. There was a second of silence as he looked at his dad, then at Jamie and then back down at his notepad. He seemed to be weighing up the most important decision of his life.

  And then, extremely slowly and extremely carefully, Rafael got up, came to sit next to Jamie, and held open his notepad for Jamie to see the pages.

  Jamie stared at what was in front of him. His eyes widened and his mouth hung open.

  He was looking at the most advanced, analytical and complex football sketches that he had ever seen.

  Across the pages were three images in total, representing the three thirty-minute phases that totalled the full ninety-minute match they had just watched. Each diagram depicted how the two teams were structurally set up for that period, detailing their formation, tactics and passing movements.

  Together, the three drawings faultlessly reproduced the entire story of the game from a tactical point of view and explained just how Palmeiras had pulled off a tactical masterstroke, enabling them to come back and win the game.

  It was just about the most beautiful piece of work that Jamie had ever seen in his life. It was science, art and football all combined.

  “Oh my God!” said Jamie, snatching the notepad out of Rafael’s hands. “Let me see that!”

  Jamie took hold of the notepad and flicked through the pages. Everything he saw was the same level. It was the work of a genius. Quickly, Jamie turned another page and saw himself. Or rather, a diagram of himself, with key analysis of all his strengths and weaknesses as a player.

  “Rafa! Can I keep this for the night? It’s ama—”

  But then Jamie stopped talking. Because he had seen Rafael’s face.

  “G-G-G-Give it b-b-b-b-b-back!” Rafael shouted, grabbing the notepad from Jamie, tearing one of the pages in the process.

  Jamie looked at himself in the full-length mirror on the inside of the cupboard door. He was in his bedroom. There was just a thin wall separating him from Rafael. He had knocked on Rafael’s door but it had been locked and Rafael hadn’t responded to Jamie’s pleas to let him come in. So Jamie had gone to his own bedroom instead.

  It was such a nice, spacious room with a high ceiling, big cupboards and a beautiful wide bed. If he had a bedroom this size at home he would feel so lucky and happy. So different to how he felt now.

  Jamie looked at his face in the reflection. The pale freckled skin. The darting blue eyes. Why did he hate himself sometimes? Why? Because he ruined everything.

  Rafael was the kindest, most gentle boy he had ever met. He had trusted Jamie enough to open up to him like no one else and he had invited Jamie into his world; made it possible for Jamie to come to Brazil, made a dream come true.

  And how had Jamie repaid him? By trying to take too much. By snatching the notepad away when Rafael had only wanted him to look at it and breaking every element of trust that they had established between them.

  Jamie could hear Rafael crying next door. He knew he had ruined it all now. Just like he ruined everything. Anything good that ever happened in his life, he had to ruin it. No wonder his dad had left. He had been right to; right to get away from Jamie … right to get as far away as possible.

  Jamie looked again. Looked again at his own face and watched as, in his mind’s eye, it began to turn into his dad’s face. Then he felt the anger coming again … building like a tidal wave. He forced himself to look again – just one more time. It was disgusting. He hated his own face. He wanted it gone.

  The glass shattered upon the impact of Jamie’s first, venomous kick. The shards flew everywhere and, before he knew it, Jamie was sitting on the bed, watching Bernard rush in to pick up the pieces.

  “I bet you’re wishing you’d never invited me here. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I broke the mirror,” said Jamie, helping Bernard to pick up the splinters of broken glass. His anger had gone now. Just sadness about what he had done remained.

  “Look,” Bernard said. “Forget about the mirror. There are just some things … that you don’t know. That notepad is very precious to Rafael. Just before she died, Stephania gave it to him because she knew how much he liked writing and drawing his football notes … so that’s why he reacted like he did when you took it. I think he felt like you were taking a bit of her away … and I’m not sure he’s ready to let her go yet.”

  Jamie shook his head. He knew about letting parents go – or, in his case, a dad letting him go – but that was still no excuse to have smashed the mirror.

  “In fact, I think you should be proud,” continued Bernard. “It’s a very big deal for Rafa
to open up his notepad and show it to someone. Aren’t the drawings incredible?”

  “Incredible,” Jamie repeated. “And I ruined it.”

  “No,” responded Bernard, shaking his head. “You’re being too hard on yourself. You’ll only ruin it if you stop or change now. Just get him talking again. That’s how you can make up for it. When he is hurt, this is when he stops talking … but we can’t let him go into his shell again. Now more than ever is the time for you to encourage Rafael to talk again.”

  Brothers

  Tuesday 27 May

  “Your dad told me about the notepad…” said Jamie, hesitatingly. “That your mum gave it to you.”

  He and Rafael were walking to the beach as normal, but neither of them had said a word to each other yet today.

  They had both eaten their cereal in silence, Jamie stealing covert looks at his friend in the process. Rafael had dark bags under his eyes and Jamie suspected that he might not have slept all night.

  He’d been trying to work out what to say to Rafael, how to earn his trust again, but it was difficult. Jamie had never been great with words so he hadn’t said any. Until now.

  “I should never have tried to touch it,” said Jamie.

  Rafael nodded but he didn’t look at Jamie. Bernard was right. He had gone back into his shell. They carried on walking in silence.

  Just one word. That was all Jamie needed. Rafael had been talking so much since they had got to Brazil … if he would just start talking again, Jamie was sure that they could pick up where they’d left off.

  He reached deep into himself to look for something that might bring Rafa back. Then he remembered something that Mike always said: the more you give, the more you get.