The Book of My Lives

IF GOD EXISTED, HE’D BE A SOLID MIDFIELDER

By Bosnian standards, I’d been an athletic person. Even though I’d for years smoked a pack and a half a day, had started enjoying alcoholic potions at the ripe age of fifteen, and was fully dependent on a red-meat-and-fat diet, I’d played soccer on the gravel and parking lots of Sarajevo once or twice a week since time immemorial. But soon after my landing in Chicago, I gained weight due to nutrition based on Whoppers and Twinkies, exacerbated by a series of torturous attempts to quit smoking. Furthermore, I couldn’t find anybody to play with. My Greenpeace friends deemed rolling joints as physical exercise and only occasionally arranged a lazy softball game, where no score was kept and everyone was always doing great. I couldn’t get past understanding the rules, but I did stubbornly try to keep score.

Not playing soccer tormented me. I didn’t really care about being healthy as I was still young enough — for me playing soccer was closely related to being fully alive. Without soccer, I felt at sea, mentally and physically. One Saturday in the summer of 1995, I was riding my bike by a lakeside field in Chicago’s Uptown and saw people warming up, kicking the ball around while waiting for the game to start. It seemed they might have been getting ready for a league game, for which you had to have registered as a member of a team. But before I had time to consider the humiliating prospect of rejection, I asked if I could join them. Sure, they said, and I kicked the ball for the first time after an eternity of three years. That day I finally played, twenty-five pounds heavier, wearing denim cutoffs and basketball shoes. In no time I pulled my groin and quickly earned blisters on my soles. I humbly played defense (although I’d preferred to play as a forward) and strictly obeyed the commands of the best and fastest player on my team — one Phillip, who had been, I’d learn later, on the Nigerian 4 × 400 relay team at the Seoul Olympics. After the game, I asked Phillip if I could come back. Ask that guy, Phillip said, and pointed at the ref. The ref wore a striped black-and-white shirt and introduced himself as German. He told me there was a game every Saturday and Sunday and I could always come.

German was not in fact German — he was from Ecuador, but his father was born in Germany, hence his name (Hermann) and nickname. He worked as a UPS truck driver, and was in his mid-forties, suntanned, wearing a modest pompadour and a mustache. Every Saturday and Sunday, he’d arrive by the lake around 2:00 p.m. in a decrepit, twenty-some-year-old van, on which a soccer ball and the words “Kick me make my day” were painted. He’d unload goalposts (made from plastic pipes) and nets, bagfuls of single-color T-shirts, and balls. He’d distribute the shirts to the guys who came to play, put a board on the garbage can, and, on top of it, a number of cheap cups and trophies, little flags of different countries, and a radio blaring Spanish-language stations. Most of the players lived in Uptown and Edgewater and came from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Belize, Brazil, Jamaica, Nigeria, Somalia, Ethiopia, Senegal, Eritrea, Ghana, Cameroon, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, France, Spain, Romania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, USA, Ukraine, Russia, France, Vietnam, Korea, et cetera. There was even a guy from Tibet, and he was a very good goalie.

Normally, there’d be more than two teams, and they all had to rotate, so each game lasted for fifteen minutes or until one team scored two goals. The games were very serious and contentious, as the winning team stayed on the field for the next game, while the losing one had to wait on the sidelines for its turn to come back on. German refereed and he almost never called a foul. He’d follow the game with glazed eyes, as though watching soccer made him high; it seemed he needed to hear the sound of a breaking bone to use his whistle. Sometimes, if a team was a player short, he’d referee and play simultaneously. In such a situation, he was particularly hard on himself and once gave himself a yellow card for a rough tackle. We — immigrants trying to stay afloat in this country — found comfort in playing by the rules we set ourselves. It made us feel that we still were a part of the world much bigger than the USA. People acquired their nicknames based on their country of origin. For a while, I was Bosnia, and would often find myself playing in the midfield with, say, Colombia and Romania.

Ever hurting to play and fearing that I’d be left out if I was late, I’d often be the first one to arrive before games. I’d help German set up the goals and then hang out with him and others, talking soccer. In his magic van, German had albums of photos in which people who had played with him were recorded. I could recognize some of the guys when they were much younger. One of them, whom everyone called Brazil, told me he had been playing with German for more than twenty years. German had been the one organizing games from the beginning, although he’d had some drug and booze problems and had taken a few years off at one point. But he came back, Brazil said. I understood, for the first time since my arrival, that it was possible to live in this country and still have a past shared with other people.

It wasn’t clear to me why German was doing it all. Even though I like to think of myself as a reasonably generous person, I could never imagine spending every single weekend putting together soccer games and refereeing, subjecting myself to verbal and other abuse, dismantling the goals and loading up the van long after everybody had left, then washing a large number of T-shirts stinky with worldly sweat. It was clear that without German those pickup games would not be happening, but he never asked for anything in return from us.

I abused for years German’s inexplicable generosity. As we often played in the winter in a church gym in Pilsen, which was beyond the reach of my bike, I’d catch a ride in his clunky “Kick me make my day” van, holding the passenger-side door, whose lock didn’t work. On the way back, I often feared for my life, as German was prone to celebrating the successful completion of yet another game with a few beers — he always had a well-stocked cooler in his van. He’d talk incessantly, driving and sipping beer, telling me about his favorite team of all time (the Cameroon of the 1990 World Cup) or about his search for an heir, someone who’d continue organizing the games once he retired and moved to Florida. He had a hard time finding the right person, he said, because few people had the guts to commit. He never suggested that I take over, which slightly offended me even if I knew that, gutless as I was, I’d never be able to do it.

Once, during a bloodcurdling ride home on the icy streets of Chicago, I asked him why he was doing it all. He was doing it for God, he said. God had instructed him to put people together, to spread His love, and that became his mission. I was uncomfortable, afraid that he might proselytize, so I didn’t ask him anything beyond that. But he never asked people about their religion, never flaunted his faith, never tried to call them to the Lord; his faith in soccer was unconditional; people’s belief in the game was enough for him. He told me that, after his retirement, he was planning to buy a piece of land in Florida and build a church, and put a soccer field next to it. He was planning to spend the rest of his life preaching. After the sermons, his flock would play and he would referee.

A few years after that conversation, at the end of the summer, German retired. One of the last weekends before he stopped showing up by the lake, we were playing in sweltering heat. Everybody was testy; hummingbird-size flies were ravenous; the field was hard, humidity high, humility low; a few scuffles broke out. The sky was darkening over the line of skyscrapers along Lake Shore Drive, rain simmering in the clouds, about to boil over. And then a cold front hit us, as if somebody had opened a gigantic cooler, and rain arrived abruptly. I’d never seen anything like that: the rain started at the other end of the field and then moved across it toward the far goal, steadily advancing, like a German World Cup team. We bolted away from the rain, but it quickly caught up with us and in no time we were soaked. There was something terrifying about the blind power of the sudden weather shift, about its violent randomness — as rain washed in waves over us, nothing depended on our minds or wills.

I ran toward German’s van, as toward an ark, escaping the flood. There were other guys there already: German; Max from Belize; a man from Chile (consequently known as Chile); Rodrigo, German’s mechanic, who miraculously kept the van alive for more than twenty years; and Rodrigo’s droopy, bare-chested buddy, who didn’t seem to speak English at all, sitting on the cooler, occasionally handing out beers. We took shelter in the van; the rain clattered against the roof, as though we were in a coffin, somebody dropping shovelfuls of dirt on us.

So I asked German if he thought he’d be able to find people to play with in Florida. He was sure he’d find somebody, he said, for if you gave and asked for nothing in return, someone was bound to take. Suddenly inspired, Chile rambled off something that seemed to be a badly learned lesson from a New Age manual, something vapid about unconditional surrender. People in Florida are too old and they can’t run, I said. If they’re old, German said, they are close to entering eternity, and what they need is hope and courage. Soccer would help them on the way to eternal life, he said.

Now, I’m an atheist man, vain and cautious. I give little, expect a lot, and ask for more — what he was saying seemed far too heavy, naïve, and simplistic. It would have, in fact, seemed heavy, naïve, and simplistic if the following was not taking place:

Hakeem, the Nigerian who somehow found a way to play soccer every day of his life, runs up, soaked, to the van and asks us if we’ve seen his keys. Are you out of your mind, we say, as the rain is pouring through the window. Can’t you see it’s the end of the fucking world, look for your keys later. Kids, he says, I’m looking for my kids. Then we watch Hakeem running through the rain, collecting his two terrified kids hiding under a tree. He moves like a shadow against the intensely gray curtain of rain, the kids hanging on his chest like little koalas. Meanwhile, on the bike path, Lalas (nicknamed after the American soccer player) stands beside his wife, who is in a wheelchair. She has a horrific case of fast-advancing MS and cannot move fast enough to get out of the rain. They stand together, waiting for the calamity to end: Lalas in his Uptown United T-shirt, his wife under a piece of cardboard slowly and irreversibly dissolving in the rain. The Tibetan goalie and his Tibetan friends, whom I’d never seen before and never would after that day, are playing a game on the field, which is now completely covered with water, as if running in slow motion on the surface of a placid river. The ground is giving off vapor, the mist touching their ankles, and at moments it seems that they’re levitating above the flood. Lalas and his wife are perfectly calm watching them, as if nothing could ever harm them. (She has passed away since that day, somebody rest her soul.) They see one of the Tibetans scoring a goal, the rain-heavy ball sliding between the hands of the goalie, who lands in a puddle. He is untroubled, smiling, and from where I sit, he could well be the Dalai Lama himself.

So this, ladies and gentlemen, is what this little narrative is about: the rare moment of transcendence that might be familiar to those who play sports with other people; the moment, arising from the chaos of the game, when all your teammates occupy an ideal position on the field; the moment when the universe seems to be arranged by a meaningful will that is not yours; the moment that perishes — as moments tend to — when you complete a pass. And all you are left with is a vague, physical, orgasmic memory of the evanescent instant when you were completely connected with everything and everyone around you.

After German left for Florida, I played in a park at Belmont, south of Uptown. It was a wholly different crowd: a lot more Europeans, thoroughly assimilated Latinos, and a few Americans. Often, when I got too excited and demanded, shall we say, that other players stay in their position and play for the team, someone would tell me, Relax, it’s just exercise…, whereupon I’d suggest that if they couldn’t play the way the game’s supposed to be played, they should fuck themselves and go and run on a fucking treadmill. No Uptown player would’ve ever said a thing like that. Relaxation never played any part in our game.

One of the Belmont people was Lido, a seventy-five-year-old Italian. Even the slowest ball was capable of outrunning him, so when the teams were picked he was never counted as a player — we just tolerated his being on the pitch, safe in the assumption that he would have little impact. Like many a man over fifty, Lido was totally delusional about his physical prowess. He truly believed he was still as great a player as he might’ve been some fifty years ago. Topped with a lamentable toupee he never failed to wear, which would turn to cover his eyes if he headed the ball, he was prone to discussing, after he lost the ball, all his brilliant intentions and all your obvious errors. Lido was a good, decent man. (He passed away in 2011, somebody rest his soul.)

I’d retained the habit of showing up early for games, forever tormented by the possibility of not being allowed to join in. Lido lived nearby and was often there before everyone else. Now and then, he’d arrive flustered and annoyed because he’d seen one of our American fellow players hiding in the park, careful to stay away from us in order to avoid the pregame chitchat. What kind of people are they? Lido grumbled. What are they afraid of? Such a thing would never happen in Italy, he said. Lido was originally from Florence and proudly wore a purple Fiorentina jersey. In Italy, he said, people are always happy to talk to you and help you. If you’re lost and ask them for directions, they’re willing to leave their stores and houses unattended to take you where you need to go. And they talk to you nicely, politely, and not like these—and he flung his hand dismissively toward the trees and bushes behind which the shy Americans were cowering. When I asked him how often he went to Italy, he said he didn’t go too often. In Florence, he kept a beautiful Ferrari, he explained, and there were a lot of jealous people there: they would steal his wheels, smash his blinkers, scratch the doors with a nail, for no reason other than sheer malice. He didn’t like to go, he said, because people in Italy are not very nice. When I cautiously reminded him that just a few sentences ago Italians had been incredibly nice, he nodded and exclaimed, Yes, yes, very nice! and I gave up. It seemed that Lido was able to hold in his head two mutually exclusive thoughts without inner conflict — a quality, I realized in a flash, not uncommon among artists.

Lido had come to Chicago in the fifties. In Florence, he and his brother had a business restoring Renaissance frescoes and old paintings, apparently a dime a dozen over there. After they’d arrived in America, they figured there were a lot of paintings in need of restoration over here and they started a business. He’d been doing pretty well since, which allowed him to enjoy life to its full extent. He’d been spotted with a young, endowed beauty or two clinging to his forearms or enjoying a ride in his American Ferrari. Besides the beauties, he seemed to have had several wives. The most recent wife was eighteen or so and was, rumor had it, a mail-order bride who came from a small town in Mexico.

Once, while waiting for the Americans to overcome their shyness, Lido explained to me how dilettantes and buffoons had ruined, under the pretense of restoring it, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo’s masterpiece. Despite my rich ignorance on the matter, he outlined for me all the errors they had committed — they had, for example, used solvent and sponges to take the patina off the frescoes. Lido insisted that I imagine that, and I did: I obediently imagined sponging the helpless Michelangelo. Lido got all worked up and, at that moment, cleaning up the Michelangelo with sponges and solvent verily appeared to me as a grievous act — I pictured a God far too pale to be omnipotent, or even moderately powerful.

But the idiots in charge of the restoration, Lido went on, did eventually realize they had screwed up the creation of the Universe according to Michelangelo and they begged Lido to come over to fix it. Instead of coming to their aid, Lido sent them a five-page invective, in essence suggesting that they shove the sponges and solvent up their asses. What they didn’t understand, Lido said, was that the patina is the essential part of the fresco, that the world the Almighty created on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was incomplete until the mortar fully absorbed the paint, until the inchoate universe turned a little darker. It wasn’t a sunny day when God created the world, Lido thundered; devoid of the patina it was all worth shit.

As he told me this, Lido was sitting on his ball (size 4, overinflated) and, in his righteous ire, he made the wrong move and slid off it, tumbling onto the ground. I helped him get up, feeling the wrinkled, worn-out skin on his elbow, touching his human patina.

Then the sheepish Americans finally emerged out of the bushes and trees, the rest of the soccer players arrived, and Lido — the man who took any disrespect toward Michelangelo and the Creation as a personal insult — installed himself in the attack, ready as ever to score a spectacular goal.

Whoever created Lido ought to be satisfied: Lido was one of those rare humans who achieved completion. The rest of us had no choice but to roll in the dirt, get weather-beaten, and accumulate a patina, hoping to earn our right to simply, unconditionally be. And when I passed the ball to Lido that day — fully aware that it was going to be miskicked and wasted — I had the pleasant, tingling sensation of being connected with something bigger and better than me, a sensation wholly inaccessible to those who think soccer is about exercise and relaxation.