Love in Revolution
Read Love in Revolution Online
Authors: B.R. Collins
Contents
When I was small, there was a house at the end of the town that had fallen down. We weren’t allowed to play there, of course, but we did sometimes. We’d play furious, clumsy games of pello against the one intact wall, and when we were tired out we’d collapse in the shade with tepid bottles of cherry juice that stained our teeth pink. We’d argue about the bumps and curves in the wall and the angles of our shots as if we were professionals. Or sometimes we’d be too out of breath to talk, and we’d lie there in silence, listening to the breeze in the gap-toothed stones.
But there was one room in the house – or something that used to be a room – that fascinated me. It still
looked
like a room, with wallpaper on the walls, a mirror that hung crooked, a sagging old sideboard that no one had bothered to move; but one wall had been torn apart. There was a vertical crack that went the whole height of the house, and between the ragged margins of wallpaper there was a dark gap, big enough to put your hand into. After we were tired of playing pello, I’d stand in the tumbledown doorway, just looking. I couldn’t help thinking about how long the crack had taken to appear – seconds? days? years? – and imagining the first moment when someone looked up from their everyday life and realised that their world was falling apart.
I always imagined that they would have screamed and run. But now, I’m not sure. I think the world can collapse around you very, very slowly, so you hardly notice it’s happening. I think it can start with something small, something tiny. That’s how revolutions start – with the first tremor, the first plume of dust. That’s how love starts too: a shiver and something snaps, too tiny to be seen with the naked eye, hardly even felt. And it’s only when the house is in ruins – when there’s nothing to keep out the weather, the cold, the bullets – that you look back and wonder how it happened.
But all the same, I think I can pick a moment when my world started to end. I can see it clearly, pinpoint the first slip of subsidence, the moment when the walls shook.
It was the day Pitoro Toros, the pello player, came to our town; the day I saw Angel Corazon for the first time.
It was also the day I fell in love.
It was June. I was fifteen.
The sun was streaming in through the church windows, casting red lozenges of light on to the floor and across the pattern of my dress. I squinted through my eyelashes, making the colours blur, and then, because I couldn’t help myself, I turned my head and stared at the man in the pew on the other side of the nave just behind us. He must have known everyone in the church was sneaking looks at him, but it didn’t show; he was praying, apparently, his powerful shoulders hunched and his thick, famous arms braced against the wooden ledge in front of him. I breathed deeply, as quietly as I could, wondering if the air smelt different just because he was there.
Martin kicked me on the shin with his heel. ‘You’re staring,’ he whispered, and then glanced over his shoulder, following my eyes. He bit his lip.
I rolled my eyes and kicked him back, a sharp strike on his ankle that made him wince and stifle a yelp. ‘Now who’s staring? Martin, you’re in lo-ove . . .’
‘He’s here,’ Martin murmured, ignoring me, with a note in his voice that was wistful and awestruck and envious all at once. ‘I can’t believe he’s actually
here
. . .’
‘And for his August and Most Beloved Majesty King Ferdinand . . .’ the priest said, and cleared his throat. He must have known no one was listening, but you had to give him credit for trying.
‘They say he can serve so fast you can’t see the ball hit the wall,’ Martin said. ‘In his match against Hiram Jelek, he didn’t lose serve once. Not
once
. And they say he can stop a ball dead, just with his chest. Oh, I’d love to see that . . .’
The priest slapped the altar with the flat of his hand, raising his voice. ‘That he may vanquish and overcome all his enemies, especially those who with blasphemous and irreverent thoughts incite us, his people, to violence . . .’
‘I know,’ I said. Mama looked round and frowned at me. I lowered my voice. ‘And when he played Old Man Ciro, he bounced the ball into his chest so hard it
killed
him . . .’ I turned to look again, willing him to raise his head. Pitoro Toros, the Bull, three times winner of the King’s Cup, one of the best pello players
ever
. And he was here, in our town, in our church . . . He didn’t look like the newspaper cuttings on Martin’s wall – but then, here he was in colour and not brandishing a trophy.
‘He doesn’t look like his photo,’ Martin said. ‘I wish he’d look up . . .’
‘Martin! Stop
talking
,’ Mama said. ‘And you too, Esteya. Don’t think I can’t hear you both.’
We turned our faces back to the altar, struggling not to giggle. I tried to swallow the bubbles of excitement that kept rising and bursting in my throat, but they were like an itch that I couldn’t scratch.
‘And for all his subjects,’ the priest intoned, ‘above all those for whom we your servants feel a justifiable affection and pride, those sportsmen who by their endeavours express the eternal fight of good against evil . . .’
‘He’s making this up!’ Martin hissed, half admiring, half outraged. ‘
That’s
not what he says normally . . .’
‘The son of our town, Pitoro Toros, known to all of us as the Bull . . .’
For the first time that morning our
amen
came promptly at the end of the prayer, and the priest’s mouth twitched at one corner. Martin and I smiled at each other. And everywhere in the church people were catching one another’s eyes and glancing conspiratorially towards the pew where the Bull stood, still doggedly pretending not to notice the attention.
‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with us all evermore. Amen.’
‘And the pello talent of our beloved brother the Bull,’ Martin added, but it was drowned out by everyone else saying
amen
and the creaks and rustlings as we closed our prayer books and shuffled our feet, so that I was the only one who heard. His voice was full of longing.
‘The Mass is ended, go in peace.’
‘Thanks be to God,’ I said, along with everyone else, and meant it. The noise swelled to a crescendo. The Bull looked up, finally, and glanced round. He had thick features, a nose that had been broken more than once and a mouth that didn’t seem to close properly. It was easy to believe that he’d killed a man on the pello court. He wasn’t handsome – well, actually, he was ugly – but there was a kind of glamour about him. People said he was one of the best players
ever
. . .
No one left the church until the Bull did; then we elbowed and fought to get as near to him as we could. He smirked a little – as if he’d only just noticed us – and swaggered out into the square, his hands in his pockets.
As we pushed forward Martin grabbed my arm. ‘Hey, there’s Leon. I thought he told Papa he was studying?’ He pulled me sideways, out of the flow of people, and we stumbled to a stop in the cool shadow of the church. Leon was rolling a cigarette, leaning in a doorway on the other side of the square.
‘I told you so,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t come to church, but I
knew
he wouldn’t be able to resist seeing the Bull . . .’
I was right. You could see from the way Leon jerked his head up when he heard the voices drifting across the square. Sunlight flashed off the lenses of his glasses. He was frozen for a moment, peering towards us; then he saw the Bull. The half-rolled cigarette bent and spilt tobacco between his fingers.
‘I hope Mama doesn’t see him,’ I said. ‘Lunch will be horrible if she does.’
Martin looked at me and grimaced, but all he said was, ‘Do you think I should ask the Bull for his autograph?’
The Bull was surrounded now. Someone had found a pen from somewhere, and I caught glimpses of the Bull’s muscled, damage-thickened hand, writing his name over and over again. One of the Ibarra girls danced away with a scrawl of ink on her dress, just above her left breast.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘why don’t you get him to sign your trousers?’
Martin grinned, and then tilted his head to one side, considering. ‘Do you think he would?’
Just then the hubbub of voices died away. The Bull was a little apart from the crowd of admirers, talking to someone in the shadow of the fountain. He was still holding the pen – between finger and thumb, as though he wasn’t used to writing – but his hand had dropped to his side: he wasn’t signing his autograph. He turned on his heel, shaking his head, and swaggered back to his fans. Someone asked him something, too quietly for us to hear the words.
‘Kid wants a lesson,’ the Bull said.
‘A pello lesson?’ the other Ibarra girl asked, girlishly pleating her dress, showing her best lace-topped stockings.
‘Lesson in manners, more like,’ the Bull said. He glared round at the crowd as if it was their fault. A couple of people took a step backwards. ‘Jumped-up little peasant. I
kill
people on the pello court. He really thinks he can survive a match against me?’
‘He wants to
play
you?’ I didn’t see who asked, but there was the same incredulous, flattering expression on everyone’s face.
The Bull’s scowl dissolved slowly. He nodded. It was like seeing a rhinoceros decide not to charge, after all. He glanced down at the pen in his hand, as if he’d suddenly remembered it was there.
‘Why don’t you humour him?’
Everyone looked round. It was Teddy, bouncing on the balls of his feet like a little boy, his camera poised to take a photograph for the paper. His pink English face was trickling with sweat. ‘It would make a splendid story,’ he added. ‘LOCAL HERO GIVES PELLO LESSON TO . . . no, wait, how about OUR HERO IS GOOD SPORT? Sporting in every sense of the word, old boy.’
‘Oh,
please
do,’ the Ibarra girl said. Her hand tightened on her dress and the hem crept even higher. ‘We’d
love
to see you play.’
‘I don’t really feel like . . .’ the Bull said, the words coming out so slowly it was as if he was trying to speak a new language.
‘Yes, it
would
be embarrassing to lose.’
The words were clear, ringing off the walls like the echo of metal hitting stone. We all turned to look. There was a quiet, communal hiss of disapproval; but the boy who had spoken sat quite still, poised on the edge of a windowsill at the side of the square, a smile in his eyes. I hadn’t noticed him before, but now I was looking at him I wanted to go on looking.