Playing the Moldovans At Tennis Page 13

  'Mr Rotaru,' I continued with an external pluckiness which belied an underlying fear. Was winning the title an enormous personal achievement for you?'

  To my relief, I heard new sounds, not merely the begrudging 'Da' which my interviewee had produced up until now. For some inexplicable reason this question prompted an altogether more enthusiastic approach and he began to speak with some passion and with such speed that Iulian's translation could hardly keep pace. The floodgates had opened and suddenly we were awash with the torrents of his ego – yes, winning the championship had been a personal achievement, after all he had only formed the club five years previously, and entirely out of his own money. His was the only privately owned club in Moldova, and to see them playing in Europe after the championship win had made his heart swell with pride. They may have lost to Galatasaray but this was nothing to be ashamed of since the Turkish club had gone on to beat Manchester United in one of the later rounds.

  'Do you think that you can win the championship this year?' I asked, with an enthusiasm drawn not from any real interest but from signs that the bait had finally been taken.

  The Green One spouted facts and statistics about the coming season, clearly now having decided that this interview was for real and that the British public were about to see what a wonderful person he was. He began to enjoy being in the spotlight, even though we didn't actually have one. Fraudulent film crews rarely do.

  At one point I interrupted his boastful peroration by asking him how much he paid his footballers and he proudly replied that they received in the region of $3,000 a month. A generous figure given that the average monthly wage in Moldova was $30-40. Much of this sum, it turned out, was made up of generous bonuses earned when the team had good wins, but The Green One had his own spin on the bonus system. If his players lost a match that he felt that they should have won, he would fine them by exactly the same amount as the bonus would have been. For a man who had grown up under the Communist system he had a keen and almost brutal understanding of incentive. He did not motivate his players by seeking to engender any kind of team spirit, but rather he let hard cash do the talking. The winner takes it all. Evidently he and Mrs Thatcher had more in common with each other than not looking their best in a track suit.

  'How do you pay your footballers,' I asked, 'given that there are no gate receipts, sponsorship deals or sales of TV rights?'

  The Green One's answer was unashamedly frank. He paid for it out of his own pocket with laundered money. In this country, he maintained, you could not make money officially because then you would lose all of it in taxes. A shocking remark, not because it revealed anything that I hadn't already suspected, but because he was prepared to make it on camera for broadcast across the United Kingdom. No caution, no guilt, no fear, no conscience. He was too powerful for any of that stuff. This guy could pretty much do what he wanted. He was one of an emerging Ruling Class in Eastern Europe whose success appeared to be based on stretching the rules to their own advantage.

  The phone rang and the Green One excused himself to deal with the call, which he did with a brisk efficiency. I tried not to allow myself to think about what unscrupulous action he had just authorized and instead endeavoured to compose myself for the next question. The big one. The reason why I was here in his office.

  'As well as making this television programme,' I offered rather meekly, 'I am also in this country to try and win a bet. Have you heard anything about this?'

  'Nyet,' came the eventual reply.

  'Right, I will let Iulian explain.'

  I looked across and cued Iulian with a nod. Poor Iulian. I was providing fresh material for an answer to the question What was the worst job you ever had?'

  The Green One listened attentively, at one point bursting into laughter, surely at the mention of the nude singing of the Moldovan national anthem. Then his face recovered and returned to its factory setting of stern invincibility. He relit his cigar, which had not survived his previous ramblings on the greatness of his football club, and he just sat there quietly. I became worried by this lack of reaction. Was he suddenly suspicious of my motives? I felt a need to fill the silence.

  'Of course, the bet is just an excuse for me to find out more about Moldova and it's football.'

  I waited patiently during the Russian reply which still gave me no inkling as to his present disposition towards me.

  'Mr Rotaru says,' began Iulian's translation, 'that Moldova makes you welcome and he says that in this country we have always known how to greet our guests and how to say goodbye to them.'

  This sounded okay, but I was a little concerned by the ambiguity of the latter part of the statement How did Mr Rotaru say goodbye to his guests? Especially the ones he didn't like. Was I about to find out?

  He spouted some more Russian which left me anxiously awaiting elucidation from my humble employee.

  'Mr Rotaru says,' said Iulian finally, 'that you have his permission to play tennis with his midfielder Sischin, and that you can do this whenever you like once they have played their game against Roma Belţi.'

  If this was an immense relief, then even better news was to follow. Mr Rotaru thought it would be good exercise for Sischin to be playing tennis on one of his days off and that before we left he would give us his home phone number so that we could ring and arrange the game.

  Furthermore we could come and watch the match against Roma which which was taking place the following day, and I could meet Sischin afterwards if I so desired. I sat back in my chair unable to prevent a smug grin from forming. To think that this morning I had been close to giving up.

  Unexpectedly and unreasonably, I left the office of The Green One quite liking him. And it wasn't just because this man had given me what I wanted. He had charm. Once he had begun to relax he had been a genial host and it had become difficult to imagine him as having a cruel or violent side to his nature. Then it occurred to me that charm is an essential tool for the attainment of real power. The ruthless dictator needs to be able to manipulate, to lull his potential foes into a false sense of security, and he can do this easier behind the smokescreen of courteous affability.

  All ruthless dictators have the knack. Take Saddam Hussein. Whenever I watch him on TV he always strikes me as having the appearance of a rather benign fellow – cuddly even. He's the best. He can be the genial host one minute and then pick up the phone and order someone's assassination the next From good to bad in 6.4 seconds. That's what's got him where he is today. Those with the good grace to be consistently evil never really get on. But then it's a cruel world, isn't it.

  Dinner with the family provided further evidence to support that premise. Following a discussion in which I remarked on the extraordinary discrepancy between the wages paid to The Green One's footballers and the average Moldovan monthly wage, I discovered that for those who worked for the government it wasn't only the size of the wage packets, but whether you actually received one at all which was the real problem. Dina had not been paid since May. This I found difficult to believe since it was October now. Grigore also had received no wages for two months.

  'But how do you manage?' I asked.

  The patients look after my farver and my muwer,' explained Adrian.

  I learned that a primitive and unofficial social structure had developed in which patients brought gifts of food or money each time they made a visit to the doctor. They had to – all that was on offer from the government were empty promises and they are difficult to live off. Sometimes the government would pay workers in goods and commodities rather than money. Dina's mother, a pensioner in the countryside, was regularly paid in sugar, rice or flour. Once she even took a carpet instead of half a year's pension. It was quite common for factory workers to receive their salaries in the goods they produced, like boots, stepladders or light bulbs. I was even told of one poor fellow named Vitalie who worked in a factory which made bicycle pumps and all he received at the end of each month were hundreds more of these infernal things which he
had to try and sell at the market. Perversely, his survival depended on inflation.

  I went to bed feeling rather guilty about my life. Here were my good and kindly hosts working hard in run-down under-funded hospitals and not even getting paid for their troubles, and here I was swanning round the place spending my time stubbornly trying to prove a point by winning an infantile wager. As I lay in bed, drifting from consciousness, my somnolent mind filled with unanswerable questions. What was going on? Who had dealt us such contrasting hands? Had He shuffled properly? How was it all going to end? Should I buy some bicycle pumps to take back to England? So many questions and only the letter Z could provide the answer.

  'Zzzzzzzzzzz.'

  Not for the first time, sleep had come to the rescue.

  Today was to be my last with Iulian for four days. Right at the outset he had told me about this previous booking that he had – translating at a conference – but I had forgotten all about it.

  'It will be interesting to see how I manage without you,' I said as we strolled to the Republican Stadium. You have become my voice and my ears in the last two weeks.'

  Yes, it will be interesting.'

  The Republican Stadium was sensibly located for the home ground of a Chisinau football club. It was in Chisinau. This was where FC Zimbru had slipped up. They probably lacked the persuasive qualities of The Green One, who had managed to secure the national side's ground for his team's home matches. Iulian and I had somehow failed to find the proper entrance on to the spectators' terraces and found ourselves approaching the pitch by walking down the players' tunnel.

  For a moment I shared the same tingle of nerves that the players must get as they walk side by side towards the magic green carpet which awaits them. My imagination took hold and as we left the tunnel I was about to wave to the expectant crowd who were anticipating yet another tantalising performance from the wunderkind Hawks, when rousing music began to blare from loudspeakers and the real players ran into the centre circle and began waving to the crowd. Had there actually been a crowd the whole thing would have been far less tragic. All around us empty seats. Just a small pocket of around a dozen Constructorul fans who looked suspiciously like the fans I had seen shouting encouragement to FC Zimbru just days before. I began to wonder whether Moldova only actually possessed twelve football fans and that they had to move around the place in various disguises switching allegiance whenever required. Maybe they were mercenaries and they cheered for the highest bidder, and today The Green One had secured their services. Maybe he would fine them if they didn't chant loud enough.

  Constructorul, in their distinctive green shirts, began the game well, launching promising attacks which unfortunately came to nothing.

  'Mr Rotaru is expecting a big win today,' said Iulian. 'Anything else and he won't be happy.'

  I looked over to the Constructorul bench and there was the big man, his face filled with anxiety. He was dividing his time equally between shouting furiously at his team and taking long drags from his cigarette, and generally behaving in a manner unlikely to reduce blood pressure. He looked like someone who could suddenly clutch his heart and keel over at any minute. This would have bothered me more if I hadn't already been in possession of Sischin's phone number.

  The football match turned out to be just as bad as the one I had watched just days earlier. As the uneventful game drew to a close I realised that I had now watched over two and a half hours of Moldovan football and still not seen one goal. In the eightieth minute it fell to Sischin, whom three little boys had helped us to identify, to put this right. Constructorul had won a rather dubious penalty and it was Sischin – lithe, dark haired and handsome – who had been selected to take it. This was no surprise since he had been a class above the rest of the footballers on show. His deft touches and visionary passes belonged in an another arena. He deserved to have a crowd watching him play.

  Sischin stepped up to take the kick. The goalkeeper jigged and bounced up and down on his line like a puppet on a string and Sischin composed himself. Then he did something I suspect he hadn't done for years. The bastard missed the penalty. He hooked it wide of the left-hand post. Like me, he hung his head. I turned to Iulian.

  'Fucking unbelievable.'

  This is not good, certainly.'

  Football, as they say, is a funny old game, although funny wouldn't have been the adjective I'd have chosen on this day. Infuriating would have been nearer the mark. Following the missed penalty Sischin went on to get himself booked, and although Constructorul did scrape a 1-0 win with a scrappy last-minute goal, once again the post-match atmosphere was not likely to be conducive to effective socialising. In spite of this I still insisted that Iulian and I waited outside Constructorul's dressing room in the hope of meeting Sischin and letting him know about our intended phone call, but after forty unforthcoming and very cold minutes I conceded defeat on that one. The Green One's post-match team talk had outlasted my body's heating system. Maybe it was taking him so long because he'd become confused as to whether to give his players a bonus for getting a win, or fine them for playing like donkeys. Either way they'd be unlikely to come out of it with more than a bicycle pump each.

  'Have a good conference,' I said to Iulian as he left me at the stop for the maxi taxi. 'I'll see you on Monday. You will promise to keep trying Sischin's number, won't you?'

  'If I have time, I shall be very busy in the next few days.'

  Trust me to have hired somebody who had a life.

  'Do your best.'

  'OK.'

  And with those two letters, he meandered off into the uncompromising darkness of the Moldovan night. It was Wednesday evening and I had no realistic prospect of playing any footballer until at least Monday, especially now I'd lost my translator. I was faced with a new and in some ways more challenging problem.

  I had four days' holiday.

  11

  Living Like a Moldovan

  On the Thursday morning, the prospect of four totally free days seemed daunting. Predictably enough, there hadn't been a flood of suggestions at the Journalism Centre for how to pass this time.

  'Have you been to Orheiul Vecchi?' American Tom had said. That's great.'

  But that had been it. Period.

  Unfortunately it was a period I had to fill.

  Unlike Romania, Moldova has no tourist industry. Only one consideration has hampered its development and that is its total lack of anything whatsoever to offer the tourist. No mountains, no coastline, no water sports, no transport, no quaint little villages, no night-life, no streetlights, no cuisine, no smiles and no bloody idea. This place really was as unlike Venice or Ibiza as you could possibly imagine.

  I'd had one thought, that I could spend this time in St Petersburg trying to track down the player Alexandru Curtianu, but this had been dismissed when I discovered that the Russian Embassy took four days to issue a visa. I also considered visiting Romania, since the mountains of Transylvania and the resorts on the Black Sea were within reach, but both these trips would involve miserable twelve-hour train journeys as well as administrative problems given that I didn't have a re-entry visa.

  So, Moldova it was. Unless I went home, of course. Gave up and went back to England. Hard though I fought it, I just couldn't help but consider this as a very real option. I mean, what was I doing? Soon I would have been here for over two weeks and still not played one footballer. I certainly wasn't having fun, and that was something this adventure was always meant to be. Was there really any point in pursuing this absurd task any further? I felt like a dog hanging on to a stick, close to exhaustion, with its gums growing bloodier by the minute. I didn't need this any more – I was ready to go lie in my basket, have someone throw me a biscuit, wrap me in a blanket or pat me on the head. Did I really want the damned stick that much anyway? It wasn't worth anything, was it?

  At breakfast with the family, which somewhat disconcertingly involved the consumption of pasta, I put a brave face on things.

  '
What will you do today?' asked Adrian.

  'Oh, I have lots to do up at the Journalism Centre.'

  'And when will you play your first footballer?'

  'Soon.'

  Soon. A good word 'soon'. It sounds so much nicer than 'fuck knows'.

  Will you come to my English class at school?' asked Elena, pleasingly changing the subject.

  'What for?'

  'You can teach us and talk to us in English. I have told all the other children about you and they want to meet you.'

  'Really?'

  'Yes, please come. I have asked my teacher and she says that it is OK. Why don't you come tomorrow morning?'

  'Er . . . all right then, I suppose I could make time.'

  After the family had left the house and distributed themselves evenly among the city's hospitals and schools, I went for a run in a nearby park to try and figure out just what to do. Sometimes I find that the physical exertion and gentle rhythm of the feet on the ground can help focus the mind. On this occasion I both ran and thought hard.

  The reason ought to have been not wanting to lose my bet with Arthur, or that I didn't want to concede that my philosophy of optimism was hopelessly flawed, but in the end it was neither. Something else entirely made me decide to hold on to the stick. For the first time since I'd got here, somebody had wanted me for something. Elena wanted me to come to her school. Oh I know it was only a tiny thing but it meant so much. On no other occasion since I'd set foot in Moldova had anyone asked me or invited me to do anything. It had always fallen to me to make things happen. I had always been the instigator and this had become both exhausting and disillusioning. Now however, an 11-year-old girl had changed all that. By issuing the invitation to her school she had showed that someone cared. Elena cared about me. It didn't matter if no-one else did, this was reason enough to stay put. For the moment at any rate.

  As the day progressed things continued in the same positive vein. When I called the Journalism Centre and was given a message that Marcel had invited me to Orheiul Vecchi on Saturday, I was stunned. Nothing for two weeks and then two invitations in a day. I began to wonder whether this sudden upturn in my social life had anything to do with the fact that I was without Iulian now and that being alone meant that people made more effort. Maybe I should have done this earlier.