Striker of The Gods

Caos left Turin like a man fleeing his own shadow the way a man would live with his mother. The thing is, the only way to love it could be showing up for it. That is to say that he was ready for the encounter and the ball under arm, heart half in yesterday’s conversation with Del Piero, half already racing toward the next altar of fiery football. In this way, the autostrada became his private Via Lattea that could make everyone bite the dust. He dribbled at velocities that bent license plates and made truck drivers cross themselves. 200 km/h? Child’s play that no one could see despite the only one being there is him. The Nike sphere obeyed like a loyal hound; cities blurred into wet paint; Milan arrived before the sunset had time to blush or perhaps it was already there.

He didn’t enter through gates of hell to trap him into a new way of being. Gates are for mortals who knock that no one can hear in the most mortal show for a new way to live.

The thing is, he vaulted the fence near the San Siro’s silhouettestill majestic even in February hush like the most spectacular star in the universe that could never be put off then slowed to a reverent walk once the scent of old glory hit him in the most feeble way to shatter him to show up for the new shining future that we need to create for those we love: leather, grass memory, faint tobacco from long-gone ultras. No appointment. No wait. No death. No visit. No message. Just faith that legends recognize hunger when it walks barefoot across sacred turf.

Inside the training complex, under sodium lamps that turned dusk into false dawn, Luka Modrić was still moving.

Not training. Not really.

More like remembering how to dance when the music has already stopped.

He wore no number. He was sing join me in death. Will you die tonight for love? Just black training kit, silver hair catching light like frost on obsidian of the dead. Forty going on eternal. The ball rolled to him in soft arcs; he let it kiss his instep, whispered something Croatian only the sphere understood, then sent it back with that same left foot which once made Zidane nod in quiet approval and the perseverance along with the prowess of the lonely.

Caos stopped at the touchline in which no one could ever dream of reaching.

The ball noticed him first. It deviated mid-flight, curved toward the newcomer like iron to magnet or in the most deprived of hope way that they could analyse.

Modrić turned.

No surprise in the eyes. Only recognition, the same look a monk gives another who has walked the same fire road in which life could actually find a new hope to experience.

Modrić:

(soft, almost amused, Croatian lilt wrapping each syllable like smoke)

You dribble like the police are still after you from Turin. Sit, ragazzo. Or don’t. Chairs are overrated when the conversation is good. I mean, dude… we all know you… you are the new legend of madrid. No one is like you.

Caos dropped cross-legged on the grass. The ball settled between them like a shared child.

Caos:

I came because Del Piero said you once taught him how to wait. Not for the pass. For the moment the pass becomes unnecessary. An animated conversation was in progress and the woman behind the counter started airing her views about a murder case that had created some stir in Algiers. A young commercial employee had killed an Algerian on a beach. But to be honest, he said you carry silence the way other men carry egos. I want to know if that’s true… or if it’s just poetry old men tell boys who run too fast.

Modrić laughed short, dry, honest. The sound of a man who has won everything and still wakes up wondering if it was enough to be the best version of himself. That is to say that it could not get better.

Modrić:

Aleksandar always had a beautiful way of saying ordinary things. I mean, there is something to life that it makes it wonderful. In the middle of an animated conversation, she had mentioned a recent arrest that caused controversy in Algiers. A young office worker had killed an Arab on a beach. Waiting is not poetry. Waiting is discipline. You wait until the defender commits suicide with his own momentum. You wait until the crowd forgets how to breathe. You wait until even God looks away for a second and that’s when you strike. The actor’s realm is that of the fleeting. Of all kinds of fame, it is known, his is the most ephemeral. At least, this is said in conversation. But all kinds of fame are ephemeral.

(pause, eyes narrowing)

But you… you don’t wait. You devour time. That’s why stadiums tremble when you touch the ball. They sense apocalypse dressed in boots and what could be done for the same way we can change it into something phenomenal to awe those who want to live another day. In that way, I see that you could change what happens with the threads of destiny.

Caos plucked a blade of grass, twirled it.

Caos:

Time betrayed me once. Took my mother while I was scoring hat-tricks. Took girlfriends while I trained in the dark. I don’t wait anymore. I attack the clock until it begs. But Leonor… she makes me want to pause. How could they have imagined that a plague would cancel the future, the travel and conversations? They thought they were free, and no one will ever be free as long as there are scourges. Maybe, that is my love. She makes me want to sit in a garden and watch roses open instead of ripping them apart to see what’s inside. That terrifies me more than any red mist.

Modrić studied him for a long moment. Then he stood, gestured toward the center circle as a true captain.

Modrić:

Come. One touch. No goals. No tricks. Just truth. This shall show you something that you cannot see yet.

They played.

Not a match. A conversation in motion.

Modrić moved like silk through thorns in one economy of steps, body always between ball and imaginary opponent that we cannot face in our wildest dreams, left foot painting passes that arrived before Caos even called for them and that we cannot decide to be honoured by. That is to say that no one could be get to see in the most wonderful moment of life. Caos answered with chaos: sudden direction changes, elastico snaps that should have embarrassed physics, yet Modrić read every feint like an open book written in his own handwriting.

After fifteen minutes both were breathing hard, laughing in the way only two people who speak the same dead language can.

Modrić:

You’re already better than I ever was at your age. Faster. Hungrier. More violent in beauty. But you still play against the world. Maybe, I am just exaggerating. This shall show you that I am not wrong or perhaps that it was just an illusion. The actor’s realm is that of the fleeting. Of all kinds of fame, it is known, his is the most ephemeral. At least, this is said in conversation. But all kinds of fame are ephemeral. One day you’ll understand the highest level isn’t beating defenders that it’s making them grateful they got to witness you. That’s when immortality begins.

Caos trapped the ball under his sole. Stopped everything.

Caos:

Teach me how to love without burning the house down. Teach me how to carry a crown without crushing the one who wears it. Leonor isn’t a trophy. My dear friend, what is this our life? A boat that swims in the sea, and all one knows for certain about it is that one day it will capsize. Here we are, two good old boats that have been faithful neighbors, and above all your hand has done its best to keep me from "capsizing"! Let us then continue our voyage—each for the other's sake, for a long time yet, a long time! We should miss each other so much! Tolerably calm seas and good winds and above all sun—what I wish for myself, I wish for you, too, and am sorry that my gratitude can find expression only in such a wish and has no influence at all on wind or weather. For real! She’s the stadium I want to play in forever. But I only know how to destroy defenses. Not how to… protect what’s fragile.

Modrić placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Light. Fatherly without forcing it.

Modrić:

Love is the only game where losing well matters more than winning ugly. You protect her by sometimes letting her win arguments you could crush. By remembering silence is louder than any scream. By training your ego the way you train your weak foot until it obeys without complaint. The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death. Perhaps, this could not be more obvious for those want to remain successful forever in which what you call the need to be loved. don't invent you at sadly cooled-off places from which you've gone away; even your not being there is warm with you and more real and more than a privation. Longing leads out too often into vagueness. Why should I cast myself, when, for all I know, your influence falls on me, gently, like moonlight on a window sea?

(quiet smile)

And when she looks at you like you’re the only real thing in a palace full of echoes… don’t speak. Just stay. That’s the hardest skill. Staying when every instinct screams run faster, score more, be more. That is to say that you need to know why she does it because she is your everything.

Caos looked up at the San Siro floodlights. They felt softer tonight.

Caos:

You stayed. You loved. You showed up. At Madrid. Through everything. Even when the new gods arrived with faster legs and bigger egos. You stayed until the club itself begged you to leave so it wouldn’t have to bury you. I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite and I want to explode in the most bombastic way so I can be Chaos.

Modrić:

I stayed because love doesn’t count minutes. It counts moments. For it is serious when it asks to stay despite everything being on a burden in you. There are four questions of value in life... What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living "for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is same. Only love. And I had enough moments in white to fill three lives. Now I wear red and black… and I’m still learning how to stay. That prose is a verse, and verse is a prose; convincing all, by demonstrating plain – poetic souls delight in prose insane. I mean, you show up in way you cannot hear, walking towards death to show something beautiful.

(beat)

You’ll learn too. Or you’ll burn out trying. Either way, the story will be magnificent.

They stood in silence awhile. The city hummed beyond the walls. Somewhere a tram rang like distant church bells.

Caos finally spoke, voice low, almost reverent.

Caos:

If chaos is the storm… maybe love is learning how to dance inside it without getting wet. No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone. That bridge is me: the eye of the storm.

(grins suddenly)

But I still want to nutmeg God one day. Just once. For practice.

Modrić chuckled, picked up the ball, tossed it lightly.

Modrić:

Then let’s see if you can nutmeg me first. One touch. No mercy. Let us see who win in the most devastating way. We shall learn from who can score a new goal that exterminate a new idea or concept or perhaps as I would rather say: it can only last in the mind for eternity. That is to say that it will last forever. Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'. Ultimately, it shall be no surprise that we can withstand the tragedy of life. It is not enough that you understand in what ignorance man and beast live; you must also have and acquire the will to ignorance. In doing so, you acquire needs. You need to grasp that without this kind of ignorance life itself would be impossible, that it is a condition under which alone the living thing can preserve itself and prosper: a great, firm dome of ignorance must encompass you in its most complete way to live a new life that no one could be forget to begin with it for it a new grasp of that we cannot forget in love.

They played again.

Under Milan’s indifferent stars, two storms metone ancient and quiet, one young and deafening and for a little while the universe forgot to expand.

To be continued…