By then I’d met a Catalan woman who would soon become my wife and I think that influenced my decision not to leave. I don’t regret it. That season we were champions in the Spanish League again, but in the Champion’s League we came up against Buba’s team in the semifinals and we were eliminated. They beat us three-zero in Italy and Buba scored one of the goals, one of the most beautiful goals I’ve ever seen, from a foul, or a free kick, as you guys say, more than twenty yards from the goal, what the Brazilians would call a dead leaf, an autumn leaf, when the ball looks like it’s heading over the top and then suddenly it drops like a falling leaf, Didí could pull it off, so they say, but I’d never seen Buba do it, and after that goal I remember Herrera looked at me — I was in the wall and Herrera was behind me, marking an Italian player — and when our goalkeeper went to get the ball from the net, Herrera looked at me and smiled as if to say, Well, what do you know, and I smiled too. It was the first goal for the Italians and after that Buba virtually disappeared from the game. They took him off in the fiftieth minute. Before leaving the field he hugged Herrera and me. After the match we spent some time with him in the passage to the locker rooms.
In the return match on our home ground we tied with the Italians zero-zero. It was one of the strangest games I’ve ever played. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion and in the end the Italians eliminated us. But overall it was a memorable season. We won the Spanish League again, Herrera and I were both selected for our national teams for the World Cup, and Buba went from strength to strength. His team won the Italian League (the famous Scudetto) and the Champion’s League. He was the star player. Sometimes we’d call him and chat for a while. Not long before we left for summer vacation (it was going to be shorter than usual because that year the international players had to start preparing for the World Cup almost right away) the news hit the front page of the sports papers: Buba had been killed in a car accident on the way to the Turin airport.
We were stunned. What more can I say? Honestly, we were just stunned. The World Cup was terrible. Chile was eliminated in the quarterfinals, without having won a single match. Spain didn’t even get to the quarterfinals, although they did win once. My performance was appalling as I’m sure you remember. The less said the better. Buba’s team? No, they were eliminated in the qualifying round by Cameroon or Nigeria, I can’t remember which. Even if he’d been alive, Buba wouldn’t have been able to go to the World Cup. As a player I mean.
The seasons went by and there were other championships and World Cups and other friends. I was in Barcelona for another six years. And four more years in Spain after that. Throughout that time, I had other days and nights of glory, of course, but it was never the same. I finished my soccer career with Colo-Colo, playing as a midfielder, not a left winger (left wingers have an expiration date). Then I set up my sports store. I could have been a trainer, I did the course, but by then I was tired of it, to tell you the truth. Herrera played for a couple more years. Then he retired at the height of his fame. He played more than a hundred international matches (I only played forty) and when he quit, the Barcelona fans paid him a really exceptional tribute. Now he has I don’t know how many businesses there, and he’s doing well, as you’d expect.
We didn’t see each other for many years. Until recently, when they made a TV program, a nostalgic kind of show, about the team who won the first Champion’s League. I got the invitation, and although I don’t like traveling any more, I accepted, because it was an opportunity to meet up with old friends. What can I say? The city’s just as beautiful as ever. They put us up in a first-class hotel and my wife went straight off to see her family and friends. I decided to lie down on the bed and take a nap, but after a quarter of an hour I realized I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Then a kid from the production company came to get me and took me to the TV studios. I ran into Pepito Vila in the makeup room. He was completely bald and I almost didn’t recognize him. Then Delève turned up and that was the killer. They were all so old. But my spirits rose a bit when I saw Herrera, before going onto the set. Him I would have recognized anywhere. We hugged and exchanged a few words, enough to make it clear that we’d be having dinner together that night, whatever else happened.
The program was long and detailed. There was stuff about the Cup, what it had meant for the club, about Buba and his first year in Europe, but there was also stuff about Buzatti and Delève, Palau and Pepito Vila, and me, and especially about Herrera and his long sports career, an example for the young. There were six ex-players, three journalists and two celebrity fans: a movie actor and a Brazilian singer who turned out to be the most fanatical supporter I’ve ever come across. She was called Liza Do Elisa, though I don’t think that was her real name, and when the interviews were finished (I said hardly anything, a few dumb remarks, my stomach was all in knots) she came to dinner with us, with Herrera and me and Pepito Vila and one of the journalists, maybe she was a friend of journalist’s, I don’t know, anyhow, suddenly I found myself in a dimly lit restaurant with all these people, and then in a disco, which was even darker, except for the dance floor, where I danced, sometimes on my own, sometimes with Liza Do Elisa, and then, some time after midnight, I ended up in a bar near the port, sitting at a grimy table, drinking coffee with a shot, along with Herrera and the Brazilian singer — the others had gone.
I don’t remember which of them brought it up. Maybe Liza Do Elisa was talking about magic, she could’ve been, or maybe it was Herrera who got her onto it, I think she mentioned black magic and white magic, and then she started telling stories, true stories, things that had happened to her as a child, or when she was young and making her way in the world of show business. I remember looking at her and thinking she was a formidable woman: she was speaking in the same forceful, vehement way as she’d spoken in front of the TV cameras. She’d had to struggle to make it and she was permanently on guard, as if she could be attacked at any moment. She was a pretty woman, about thirty-five, with a nice rack. You could tell her life hadn’t been easy. But Herrera wasn’t interested in her life story, I realized that straightaway. Herrera wanted to talk about magic, voodoo, Candomblé rituals, black people’s business, in short. And Liza Do Elisa was happy to oblige.
So I finished my coffee and let them talk, and since, to be honest, I wasn’t all that interested in the topic of their conversation, I ordered a whiskey and then another, and when daylight was already beginning to shine in through the windows of the bar, Herrera said he had a story a bit like the ones Liza Do Elisa had been telling, and he was going to tell it and see what she thought. Then I shut my eyes, like I was sleepy, although I wasn’t sleepy at all, and listened to Herrera telling Buba’s story, our story, but without saying that Buba was Buba and pretending that he and I were some French players he’d met a while back, and Liza Do Elisa went quiet (I think it was the first time she’d been quiet all night) until Herrera came to the end, to Buba’s death, and only then did she speak up and say yes, it was possible, and Herrera asked about the blood that the three players spilled into the glass, and Liza Do Elisa said it was part of the ceremony, and Herrera asked about the music that came from the bathroom when the black guy shut himself in there, and Liza Do Elisa said it was part of the ceremony, and then Herrera asked about what happened to the blood when the black guy took it into the bathroom, and about the sponge and the bucket of water with bleach, and he also wanted to know what Liza Do Elisa thought the guy did in the bathroom, and the Brazilian singer replied to all his questions by saying that it was part of the ceremony, until Herrera started getting annoyed and said obviously it was part of the ceremony but he wanted to know what the ceremony was. And then Liza Do Elisa said, Nobody raises his voice to me, especially not — and I quote — if he wants to fuck me, to which Herrera replied with a laugh that reminded me of the good old days — the Herrera of the Champion’s League and the two Spanish Leagues we won together, I mean, the two we won with Buba and the five we won overall — and then he said he hadn’t meant to offend her (Liza Do Elisa took offense at the slightest little thing), and repeated his question.