An aspiring footballer’s obsession with his former hero becomes an all-consuming quest for revenge in Aniela Rodríguez’s cerebral short story “A General Treatise on Counter-attacks,” our pick for this week’s Translation Tuesday. Our narrator is a small-town youth who idolizes football star Güero Hidalgo, but what begins as adoration quickly turns to loathing after a tragic accident. Years pass, Hidalgo’s greatness falters, yet our protagonist never strays from his mission to murder the disgraced footballer, a task that becomes less a heroic act of justice and more an unmerciful act of a disappointed fanatic. Rodríguez’s mature and emotionally complex subversion of the revenge genre forces us to connect the meaning of “pathos” with the varied meanings of “pathetic,” demonstrating the dangers of meeting your heroes—and the dangers of meeting your fans.
In this story Güero Hidalgo dies. I told my mother when I started writing, but she didn’t believe me: she rolled her eyes and looked at the ceiling, wondering aloud when she should turn off the soup. What a shame, she said, indifferent, and kept moving the spoon in circles. Nobody wants to hear a story in which the biggest football star that this country had ever produced is stabbed to death with an old knife blade.
In the story, Güero crashes his Cadillac into a bus full of passengers, delaying a good number of people. The bus has come from la Merced; atop it ride vendors who head for Chiapas every week in search of Zoque handicrafts at the best prices. So, the best part: Güero gets out of his impeccable latest model, expecting to fix everything with an autograph. But that’s not how it goes down. He has words with the driver and in amidst the irate vendors the commotion gets serious. Tempers flare, women shout. A man in a leather jacket steps forward. Nobody pays attention. He walks towards Güero, looks him in the eye and plunges a dagger into his chest. Nobody does anything. Silence. Before sticking the knife into him, the man says: Thanks for the penalty, moron. Güero lies face up on the ground, trying not to hear the words that will curtail his existence forever. The story ends like this, with my mother reaching for the wooden spoon to stir the noodle soup. But this story isn’t about Güero Hildalgo now, is it?
*
Mamá says I was twelve when I grabbed a ball and went out into the street to start my own team. I fell in love with the pitch early in life, when the ball brushed my left foot and I knew that the only thing I wanted was to find the concluding shot that would take me to the ranks of professional football. My technique as a striker was impeccable. Over the years I built up my discipline, which earned me the deference of all my mediocre schoolmates except one. Faisán was my lifelong brother, and the best defence in the neighbourhood. His agility in that area contrasted perfectly with his ineptitude for numbers. To tell the truth, both of us preferred the magic of the everyday, that certainty that only comes with a miraculous pass or a corner kick. Back then we were two morons that football had tied together with an imaginary thread. The ’74 World Cup changed everything. I was thirteen, old enough to be a complete idiot. But when he appeared, things became one long stretch of joy. We’d found the idol for our temple, a man unlike most. His name was José, and everyone called him Güero.
*
Güero Hidalgo was the sensation of the seventies. He was hardly a wonder when it came to technique, but he’d come to fame with a few impressive plays that would go down in the annals of national football.
His career started with a goal against Yugoslavia at the beginning of ’71. He’d played for some time as a substitute striker. One day, without anyone realising it, the goal arrived that would change things for him: he nutmegged a defender and followed up with a memorable shot, one where the ball seems to be crying out to be kicked into the net. Since that match’s victory, the technical director took note. His name started sounding in households all over the country and the image of his shock of hair became an important icon. Güero shone in enormous newspaper headlines as a giant of the game.
He was chosen as the selection’s frontman for the World Cup; there he got the ball six seconds before the finish in a game against Sweden, which would define our position in that fearful ’74. Güero dreamed of scoring the goal that would change things for Mexican football fans. That’s what he did moments before the end of the game. The Swedish defence couldn’t do much: Güero sped past the opposition like a bullet and with his right foot shot the ball in the goal. The screams of applause were all that was needed to seal the triumph. Güero’s career was written in letters of gold.
When I was fifteen I met Güero Hidalgo outside the sports club where he trained. I waited all afternoon for him to sign my football shirt, which, after so many matches, was showing the marks of time. Ever since, I’ve known he’s just a regular guy. His irritation was more than apparent; he came over cautiously, hoping I wouldn’t be one of those lunatics who end up climbing all over celebrities. I had memorised the ins and outs of his best goals and the only thing I could say when he was standing right before me was, You’re a badass, brother. After that I handed him a newspaper clipping that announced his debut as the best striker in the country. He looked at me with an expression of pity. He signed the shirt, next to the blurred image of his face in the paper. Güero Hidalgo turned away and forgot my face forever.
He didn’t know it yet, but his luck was about to turn sour. His sudden inclusion in the ranks of professional football made the most prestigious clubs in the country fight for him. He was contracted by a celebrated team that had won the championship two years in a row, and he played for them for a while. We followed all his matches; he was our idol, and like good fans, we learned all the stories that orbited his legend.
By then we’d turned sixteen. Faisán and I took charge of the matches in the neighbourhood sports hub; we had the necessary strength of a good defender and the precise agility of a striker. Nobody could deny that we had what it took to put up a good fight. Our legs were well trained; we looked for spots in a junior division of an important team. One day we’ll be much better than Güero, said Faisán. I paid him no attention. I just worried about myself, training every day and not taking my mind off the ball even for a second. The pitch was the only place where we could get down on our knees and look to the sky, awaiting the blessing of a penalty that would grant us eternal life.
*
At the end of the year I went to visit Güero Hidalgo again, this time when he was training with his new team. He’d changed his latest model car for a luxurious hummer driven by a man with a stern look and a red tie. Faisán and I tried to catch up to him when he left the club, but he stole away and managed to evade most of the fans awaiting him. I saw him from afar; I grabbed Faisán by the shirt and we ran to catch up.
I don’t really remember how it went down. Faisán says that I was spurred by euphoria and started sprinting with a shit-ton of strength. I planted myself in front of him, wanted to tell him how many goals were needed to sketch a man’s life; to tell him that the greatest goal had been his and that it, though he didn’t know it, had granted me the certainty of knowing I was alive.
I’ll never forget the way the hummer rammed me. The black monstrosity embedded itself in my chest, making me fly five metres. You don’t know what terror tastes like till you’re right on the edge. My heel broke in three pieces. I already knew the pain of sprains on the field, of spider bites out of nowhere. The thirst that comes when the referee blows the whistle and we turn into beasts. I knew sadness: the kind that’s measured by the shots for goal that bounced off the crossbar. This for me was a calamity.
The accident cost me the longest months of my life. The injury meant I had to stop training. The doctor ordered me to retire from football. My hopes were crippled forever.
I was laid up in a public hospital that smelled of antiseptic and serum. The qualifiers were about to start, and the patients were dying to know the result. One day, the nurse turned on the radio and I heard his name. There he was, the son of a bitch. He wouldn’t leave me in peace, he turned my stomach, made me squirm between the sheets. I asked the nurse for a bit of silence, but nobody gave a shit. Hope was public property; it was Güero’s second World Cup and he would surely repeat the feats that the country had celebrated for the past few years.
Nobody believed that a hero like him was capable of committing such an atrocity against a poor sucker like me. The nurses barely greeted me, probably imagining that, underneath, I was one of those fanatics who loses control at the drop of a hat. Mamá spent little time by my side, trying to be invisible. My teammates refused to come see me, except Faisán, who showed up every afternoon with two balls of gum so we could compete to blow the biggest bubble. But nothing that he could say worked: time was marked by the qualifiers, and Güero became a hanger-on in everyone’s hearts.
In this story Güero Hidalgo is killed, I told Mamá. She didn’t pay attention; she kept moving the knitting needles at an incredible speed. The slippers were ready two weeks later, when the doctor authorised my discharge and ordered physiotherapy for six months. By the end of that period there was nothing left of me: my hopes of a career had gone to the dogs. Mamá didn’t ask. She held out her hand, agitated and nervous. Two large protuberances had formed on her middle and ring fingers: the steel of the needles that she had held all this time, so as not to forget how her only son gave up cleats to climb onto crutches.
My life, till then, had been marked by modest victories. I had the number 9 tattooed on my back till the moment of impact; then everything faded. What’s called the magic of the everyday doesn’t exist; Faisán and I invented it on the playing field, so we wouldn’t die when others crushed us. The doctors had no idea how long I would be crippled. They didn’t know anything, they assured me I’d soon regain control of my body and return to normal activities. They didn’t understand the times that the ball sprung from my instep to the sky and spun like a comet. Sometimes I managed to catch it in the nape of my neck. I could jump two metres if I felt like it, could calculate the exact angle, find a way through the defenders. I wasn’t looking to usurp Güero Hidalgo’s throne. It would have been impossible to reach a royal box like that; I preferred to make my own way. To let the world know how much is lost with a poor pass, and how much is gained with a good shot.
*
The next few years Güero went from a figure on the field to a pop icon in the media. His name was everywhere at all hours of the day. If the country had a place in its Rotunda of Illustrious Men, it was reserved for the remains of Güero Hidalgo. Blessed be the fandom that gives life to our heroes.
From then on, fame eroded his performance: he started getting caught up in scandals and his on-field performance didn’t offset the effects of drunken all-nighters. The light of Güero Hidalgo started to look like a flash fire. In the ’78 World Cup, he finally made the leap that dislodged him from fans’ hearts. In the match against Germany, Güero missed the penalty that would have secured the selection’s place in the quarterfinals. In the long run, it would cost him the chance to belong to any of the most prestigious clubs and would attract the resentment of the country’s fans. His teammates turned against him for ruining their most valuable shot at victory. People spat at his feet, left intimidating notes on his car and called day after day to insult him endlessly. It was nuts. I came face to face with anger once, and it had his name.
*
Tomorrow we’re going to kill Güero, I told Mamá. She didn’t believe me. She rolled her eyes and then kept them on the news about how the pope blessed the faithful. With no expression, she said to take care and not to forget the umbrella that night. A downpour had been forecast.
Mamá didn’t get up from the bed. I left with an old dagger I’d inherited from my grandfather. I liked to tune the radio to hear the lament of thousands of fans who dreamed of seeing better days. There wasn’t one man who didn’t want him dead. I was one of them.
Faisán and I bought a bottle of tequila and we let the matter take all the time it needed. We’d prepared everything: I’d sheathed the dagger in my backpack. Its wooden handle had been eaten up by time. The blade was a whole other story. It shone so much that you could see yourself reflected in it, and it was as large as one of those knifes that butchers use to quarter carcasses.
We found him leaving the sports club; that day the sun was a ball of fire ready to fall on our heads. In the wide-open eyes of Güero you could see the penalty that had taken everything away from him. The country didn’t know forgiveness, wasn’t even moved by the press conference in which he apologised to his fellow Mexicans and started crying like a little boy. His career was screwed. It would be no more: his contract with his club would end and not even the second division would want anything to do with the undesirable striker. Doors would be closed to him forever.
They say he was on his way to his parents’ house that day. He hadn’t seen them for several months, when he’d had the decency to open a small eatery for them. They also say that he had a son he didn’t talk about, who has been damaged by the death of his father. I didn’t care; the knife went in clean. I thrust the blade, which slipped so smoothly, into his back. His muscles were no longer tense like they’d been when he was a god who made girls’ hearts flutter. He was balding, and the wrinkles around his eyes were streams that had broken their banks.
Mamá, I drove the dagger into his guts. Güero didn’t complain, only turned his back on me and let out a squeal we barely heard. Faisán laughed; I had the decency to stay and watch how the man collapsed on the ground. I made a sign so he would understand we were even, the two of us and the country that he’d fucked over with his cockups. Thanks for the penalty, moron, and I pulled out the dagger in my great escape act. I left him shaking with cold on the ground, which little by little was being covered with the brown vomit that strained through his teeth.
I was still holding the warm dagger in my hands when I opened the door to my house. My mother was waiting, seated, her hand hovering over the bag of sugar. Serene as anything, I went into the kitchen, missing the times when Güero Hidalgo was the monument to our hopes. The newsreaders announced the fall of our hero in no time. National football is in mourning, read the presenter from the teleprompter, taking care to put the right amount of pain into his words. Güero Hidalgo is dead, he said. I took a bowl from the cupboard and looked at my mother, who was making huge waves in the noodle soup. In this story Güero Hidalgo dies. She left the hot cooking pot on the dancing flame and, not saying anything, took the spoon and filled my bowl.
Translated from the Spanish by Elizabeth Bryer
Aniela Rodríguez (Chihuahua, 1992) holds a Master’s degree in Modern Literature from Universidad Iberoamericana. She was awarded the 2013 Chihuhua Prize for Literature for El confeccionador de deseos (Ficticia, 2015) and the Comala National Prize for Short Fiction by Young Writers for El problema de los tres cuerpos (FETA, 2016). She was a recipient of FONCA’s Young Creators program in the short fiction category (2014–2015) and of the Chihuahua Stimulus Program for Artistic Development (2016). She has also published the poetry collection Insurgencia (ICM Chihuahua, 2014). Her short story collection El problema de los tres cuerpos is about to be published in Italy and has recently been published in Spain.
Elizabeth Bryer is a translator and writer from Australia. The novels she has translated include Claudia Salazar Jiménez’s Americas Prize–winning Blood of the Dawn; Aleksandra Lun’s The Palimpsests, for which she was awarded a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant; José Luis de Juan’s Napoleon’s Beekeeper; and María José Ferrada’s How to Order the Universe, which will be published by Tin House in early 2021. Her debut novel, From Here On, Monsters, was recently named joint winner of the Norma K Hemming Award.
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