Following on from the previous post, in this entry I am delighted to present my own translation of an extract from the novel discussed there, El hijo del hincha, with many thanks to the author J.M. Isasi for his support and permission. The extract features as the epilogue to the book, but can stand on its own as a short story. I hope you enjoy it.
Athletic and the Chocolate Brownie
When I was my daughter Nerea’s age, which is to say, ten years old, what I liked most in the world was going hiking with my Dad on Saturday mornings. We didn’t go to mountains that were high or far, but to small hills close to home. I always brought my football in a net and so, while I walked, I could kick the ball again and again without it getting away from me. A few times I hit the ball so hard the net escaped my grasp, but I never lost the ball.
After a long hike, near the summit, we used to stop in a clearing where we could have a kickabout. We’d make a goal with two jumpers on the ground and my Dad would let me score a load of goals past him. I always called dibs on being Iribar, as although he was a goalkeeper and I a striker, he was my favourite. I liked him so much because thanks to him I could say the swearword cojonudo without anyone punishing me. I felt all grown-up when I sang that one that goes ‘Iribar, Iribar, Iribar es cojonudo, como Iribar, no hay ninguno’.
After playing football, in that same clearing, we played at catching small animals, crickets and grasshoppers above all, although my favourites were the cockchafers.
A cockchafer is a beetle that looks like a gigantic fly, half bumblebee, half cockroach. But what I liked about the cockchafer was that it had wings and when it flew it made a huge noise, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, which scared the girls in my class. Because of this, a few times, without my parents realising, I took a cockchafer to school in a small jar, and when the teacher wasn’t looking at me, I released it during class. It made so much noise and provoked so much fear that all the girls shouted and hid under the tables scared that the cockchafer might bite them. Even the teacher was scared and asked the bravest of us to catch it.
To hunt cockchafers, first my father fashioned a small flute from the branch of a tree. He used a red penknife that I was allowed to look at but not touch. I always asked my Dad to show me the whole thing, opened out, because it even had scissors and a saw. The flute my father made was magic, and when he played it a cockchafer would immediately come flying along and I’d catch it in my ball net. Then my Dad would put it in a small box with the grasshoppers and crickets. I’d cut some bits of grass and give them to the bugs so they could eat on the way back home.
But before returning we’d sit on the spread-out jumpers and rest for a while. Then my Dad would tell me stories he made up, but in the end I always asked him to tell me the same true story: how he came to marry my mother.
I liked that story more than any other and never tired of hearing it.
My mother and father, Nerea’s grandparents, met at church, many, many years ago. Back then everyone went to mass and around the parish they organised many activities, including hillwalking trips. My Mum and Dad were in the same hiking group, but my Dad rarely spoke to my mother because he was very shy and it embarrassed him. On Sundays, at mass, my Dad sat just behind my Mum because he loved the way she sang. My Mum had a beautiful voice and sometimes the priest asked her to sing solo. That was what my father enjoyed the most.
One summer my father decided to invite my Mum to a concert. In those days the London Symphony Orchestra used to visit Bilbao, and my father spent all his savings buying two tickets. The concert took place in the Arriaga theatre and was brilliant. My mother came out delighted and asked my father to walk her home. In the doorway my father asked my mother if she would marry him, but she told him no. She was still young and, also, had just started working and didn’t want to lose her position.
My mother and father continued being friends in the hiking group, and my father continued to sit behind her at mass to hear her soprano voice.
In the autumn my father took my mother to the cinema a number of times, and one night, after seeing a film called The Quiet Man, he became very nervous and asked my mother, for the second time, if she would marry him, and, for the second time, she said no.
Later, winter and the Christmas holidays arrived, and at the end of January my father found another opportunity to take my mother to a great show. On this occasion he left to one side music and cinema and invited my mother to the cathedral of football, San Mamés. It was a European Cup match, Athletic Club Bilbao against Manchester United, a huge game.
The match was spectacular, amazing. Athletic won by five goals to three, to the delight of their supporters, my parents amongst them. Many of the fans had obtained special permission to leave the factory early to go to the stadium since the game kicked off at one in the afternoon. As if that wasn’t enough, on that day it snowed and the pitch looked beautiful covered in snow. On leaving San Mamés it was absolutely freezing, but my father was so excited by the game that again he dared to ask my mother, for the third time, if she would marry him. So, my mother, shivering with cold, instead of answering, hugged him with the intention of warming up a bit. And then, in the arms of my father, little by little, the cold disappeared. So it was third time lucky and my Mum said yes, she would marry him.
My Dad often told me this story on Saturday mornings, when we went hillwalking, and before returning home he always reminded me that I was his son partly thanks to Athletic, because perhaps if they hadn’t gone to that match my mother wouldn’t have accepted his proposal. Ever since he told it to me for the first time I’ve been an Athletic fan, and today, as if it could be any other way, I’m still a club member.
My daughter Nerea complains now and again because I always want to watch Athletic’s games on television when they play away from home, and she, not caring much for football, prefers watching Doraemon.
Furthermore, when Athletic concedes a goal, I get mad, shout and swear. Well, to be honest, that is what she likes most about watching the games with me: that I sometimes swear without realising. That is when she turns, gives me a scolding stare, and reproaches me, ‘Dad, please…’ and when I beg her pardon she smiles proudly.
When Nerea asks me who the best player in the world is, I tell her Leo Messi, but when she asks me which is the best team in the world, I always tell her Athletic, even though they don’t win every game.
Nerea doesn’t really understand my reply. In addition, some of her classmates assure her that Barcelona are the best team in the world, because Messi plays for them and because they win almost every game and almost every title.
Recently she asked me how Athletic could be the best team in the world if Barcelona were a better team than Athletic.
Then I gave her the following example.
I asked her what her favourite food was. After thinking on it a while, and mentioning pizza and ice cream, she professed that her favourite food was chocolate brownie. The brownie her mother makes with help from Nerea herself and that contains nuts she collects in Lezama. She also helps beat the eggs and mix the chocolate with the butter.
When I asked her next what the best food in the world was, she knew she couldn’t say chocolate brownie, because she had learnt at school that vegetables and pulses are more important and better than chocolate.
And however, despite everything, no lettuce or chickpea could stop her favourite food continuing to be chocolate brownie.
I explained to her that with Athletic something similar happens. Athletic only plays with local players and that peculiarity makes them unique amongst the top teams in the world, very close, very familiar, like the brownie her mum makes with the nuts they collect in the village of Lezama.
Sometimes the best isn’t your favourite, but your favourite is always the best.
At least for you. Because, as Jock Stein said, ‘football without the fans is nothing’.
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By J.M. Isasi (translated from the Spanish by Andrew McDougall).