Playing the Moldovans At Tennis Read online

  Iulian returned from his secretarial duties in time to see the last point of the tie-break in which I served and Fistican, with racket held out with both hands in front of him like a begging bowl, scooped the ball up into the air. He was oblivious as to its whereabouts until it landed rather unceremoniously on his head, seconds later. A fitting end to a truly comic performance. Oleg the clown shook his head, laughed and then skipped to the net to shake my hand. What a splendid fellow. My fourth hero.

  I was able to recognise my fifth hero with no help from Sergei, since he'd been the one footballer I had met before, albeit very briefly outside the coach after Zimbru's disappointing draw with Olimpia Belti. The distinctive shaven head of Ion Testimitanu glistened in the autumn sun as he made his way across to our court.

  'Hello Tony,' he said.

  Wow, he remembered me. Still, I suppose you would.

  Ion was proudly sporting a Bristol City FC track suit. With Mian's help, he explained that he'd had recent trials with the club and he was hoping they'd sign him soon.

  'Bristol is nice,' I said, 'although it rains a lot.'

  Ion had to do without this vital information because Iulian didn't bother to translate it. He had standards, and 'Bristol is nice although it rains a lot' had clearly dipped below that which was worthy of his skills.

  Ion, like all his colleagues so far, had no tennis racket but said that he had played a little tennis while on holiday one year. This experience was reflected on court where he gave the best performance to date, but still offered pretty feeble resistance, losing 11-4.

  Thank you so much for helping me to try and win my bet,' I offered as we shook hands at the net. 'Maybe I will see you in Bristol.'

  'Maybe,' he said, trying to give the impression that he'd understood.

  Maybe I really would see him in Bristol – when he'd learnt English, and I could take him out for a meal as a way of saying thank you. A thank you which would probably have to do for all the team.

  Rodica, however, would have to remain unthanked. Iulian's attempts to get her on the phone had only resulted in repeated and fruitless conversations with the drunken Russian.

  'Maybe this is not so bad,' said Iulian. 'If you had met her then I think she may have become hopeful. Many girls are looking to Western men as an escape route from this country.'

  'Ah, so she may just have seen me as her Bristol City.'

  'Exactly.'

  Maybe it was best for her this way. There's nothing worse than having a couple of trials and not getting picked. It's happened to me enough times.

  The third day of tennis was to follow the exact pattern of the previous two – charming and co-operative footballers turning up with no racket, succumbing with magnificent ease on the tennis court, wishing me luck and then wandering out of my life forever.

  Today I claimed the scalps of Oleg Sischin and Vitalie Culibaba,' I announced back at the Journalism Centre after the victories had been secured.

  'Great, so that's seven and 0,' said a genuinely thrilled Big Jim. You got these guys on the run, Terry.'

  Well, it sounds good Jim,' I replied, 'but I've just done the relatively easy part. The seven players I've played so far, all live in Chisinau. Forgetting about the one in Russia and the one in Israel, I've still got two to get in Transnistria.'

  Well, I'm sure Iulian can organise that. He's a very able guy.'

  'I hope so. He's trying right now.'

  We both looked across to an earnest Iulian who was in the closing stages of a telephone conversation, the result of which he was about to relay to me.

  That was our old friend Grigorii Corzun,' he said, hanging up the phone.

  The Arsehole of the Universe?'

  The same. The trouble is he's living up to his name. He says that he was deeply insulted that you did not stay at his hotel. He says you drank his brandy and then you just left. He says that you want something for nothing, and that he thinks you are not sincere about wanting to go into business with him. Why should he let you play his footballer? He says that you can forget it. There is no way.'

  This was shattering news.

  Those were his exact words?' I enquired. 'You can forget it – there is no way.'

  Iulian nodded, and my heart sank.

  There's gotta be a way,' said Jim. There's always a way.'

  He was right, there is always a way. The trouble was I just couldn't think of one. Jim hadn't met Corzun and he didn't know what a determined, powerful and bitter individual he was.

  The prospects were bleak. I'd got used to being on the receiving end of bad news but this seemed so final. Had this setback come earlier in my trip then I might have felt better able to deal with it, but now, after weeks of drawing on all my reserves of energy, enthusiasm and resolve, this new problem felt like one hurdle too many. I slumped in my chair, winded. The heroic figure who had just beaten seven footballers in three days, now a picture of defeat.

  This is not good,' I said, in homage to Mian's gift for understatement.

  'You gotta get the press to help you on this one,' suggested Big Jim, who had assumed the mantle of lone positive voice. 'You gotta use the media to expose this guy as a wrecker of dreams, as a killjoy.'

  Ah yes, the Moldovan press and media, who make appointments and never turn up. They'll really make things happen, I thought, dejectedly.

  'Maybe Jim. We'll see,' I said, putting on the bravest face available. There's got to be a way round this one. There always is.'

  But in my heart I knew the bet was lost.

  13

  'My Muvver has had

  an Idea'

  Dear Mr Grigorii Corzun,

  I am sorry that you think everyone in the West is a millionaire, and that you have built a hotel in the middle of nowhere. I regret too that I will not be able to persuade anyone from England to spend something in the region of $200 a night to sleep in your plush but ultimately tasteless bedrooms, but I'm afraid that other than yourself, I don't know anyone stupid enough. Furthermore I am disappointed that your small-minded revenge for my unwillingness to become a partner in a business bringing tourists to one of the shiftiest places on earth is to refuse to let Sergei Stroenco play me at tennis.

  You should know that I have christened you 'Arsehole of the Universe', a sobriquet which you consistently live up to. (By the way, if you don't know what 'Arsehole' means, look it up in the dictionary where it says; ARSEHOLE: Person who spends £25 on a beer and a sandwich in Manchester.) As a result of your asinine ways I have to concede that I have lost my bet, and I now have to face a seventeen-year-old boy whose faith in a better future had somehow become inextricably linked with the success of my project. You have not let me down, but rather one of your young people. Not a first for you, I shouldn't wonder.

  I wish you no ill, but I do hope that one day you stub your toe quite hard on the corner of your bed and suffer acute pain, albeit momentarily. Please think of me when this happens.

  Yours with a Mancunian beer and sandwich in hand, (cost £3.90).

  Tony Hawks.

  I didn't send the letter, partly because I couldn't be bothered to go and get the stamps and partly because Iulian told me it only had a 50/50 chance of reaching its destination, such were the vagaries of the Transnistrian postal service. Nevertheless writing it had been a cathartic process and one in which I'd needed to indulge. I felt better for it, if only marginally so. I still had to tell Grigore, Dina, Adrian and Elena that I had failed, and that was not a prospect I was relishing.

  The blame for failure didn't lie wholly at Grigorii Corzun's door. Shortly after his rebuff, the other Transnistrian club, FC Sheriff, had called to say that they would not allow their player to indulge in extra-curricular tennis activities either, thus rendering Sergei Rogaciov totally unplayable too. Transnistria had not been kind to me.

  Drawing on the last vestiges of fighting spirit within me, I put one more suggestion to an exhausted Iulian.

  'Maybe our friend the goalkeeper Denis Romanenko
could help? He may know the home phone numbers of the two players and we could side-step their pig-headed clubs.'

  Two hours later we had discovered that Denis had no number for Stroenco and the one he had for Rogaciov was his parents' number, and they told us he was staying in club accommodation and could only be contacted through official channels.

  Game over.

  'Iulian, it's time to go shopping' I said. We're going to buy my flight ticket home.'

  'It's all over folks,' I said rather sheepishly at the dinner table. The bet is lost. I've tried everything but I just can't get the two players in Transnistria.'

  When Adrian translated, Grigore and Dina looked shocked. As shocked as they'd looked on my arrival when I'd first told them what I was intending to do. I'd been so relentlessly positive throughout my stay that seeing me so resigned to defeat was difficult for them to comprehend. Eyebrows were raised and little shrugs of the shoulders were accompanied by short bursts of Romanian which remained untranslated. The mood was sombre.

  'I'm sorry, Adrian,' I said as I got to my feet at the end of the meal.

  'It's OK,' he replied. 'I think that it is not your fault'

  It probably wasn't, but that didn't make it easier for any of us to bear, and subdued goodnights rounded off an uncomfortable evening.

  In my room I did my best to fend off the gloom, telling myself that I'd done well to beat seven footballers when I'd been on the brink of giving up without a single player defeated. I had made interesting discoveries about a new and challenging part of the world, and somehow I'd become part of a warm and wonderful family. It was just too bad I hadn't managed to be their Tony cel Mare.

  It was now Thursday morning and the earliest flight I'd been able to get back to London was on Saturday, so whoopee, I had two more days of holiday. On the first of these I decided to have another crack at Orheiul Vecchi, but this time doing it the easy way by getting lulian to book a taxi to take us out there.

  What exactly is Orheiul Vecchi?' I asked lulian as the car moved from the greys and blacks of the city into the soft shades of autumn countryside. 'I never bothered to find out before. I wanted it to be a surprise when I got there.'

  'It is a monastery built into some cliffs.'

  'What's it like?'

  'I don't know, I have never been.'

  Many had spoken highly of this place, which was only 45 minutes by car from Chisinau, and yet lulian had never bothered to pay it a visit. lulian's dream, I suspect, was not to look for beauty within his country, but to secure a way out of it. For me this was flawed thinking. Wouldn't it be better to look for what we want where we are, and not in some other place? Nevertheless, it must have been painful for lulian, only the day before, to have watched the ease with which I'd purchased my ticket out of Moldova. Maybe I should have been more sensitive and done it alone.

  As the taxi drove us further from human life along dirt tracks instead of roads, I began to realise how crazy I'd been to try and reach this place alone, and by public transport. Orheiul Vecchi was not a town or village as I had originally imagined, but little more than a small church perched on a clifftop, towering above a fertile river valley. Disappointing it was not, however, such was the drama of its location – a remote pin-prick of civilisation precariously balanced atop a wild, rocky and expansive terrain.

  We stopped at a solitary house at the foot of the cliff where Iulian secured the services of Lilia, who became our personal guide for as little as ten lei, the equivalent of £1. Her lengthy tour was interesting, informative, and in Romanian. Had I made it here alone, days before, I would not have benefitted from Iulian's translation and would have missed out on a truly fascinating history. Humans had lived on this site since the days of the cavemen, and later the Dacians had built a large town in the valley below, now completely buried under the debris and waste of subsequent centuries. Lilia took us to an ancient arrangement of stones which the Dacians used as a sacred site to worship their myriad gods. She explained that every five years the elders of the community would have brought the most accomplished and well-respected member of society here and sacrificed him to the gods by pushing him from the cliff edge on to spears which were facing upwards in the valley below. To die in this way was considered the highest honour. For me, it has shortcomings as an incentive scheme. If the reward for success is being impaled on sticks, then I'm sorry, but aren't most people just going to call in sick for another week?

  The highlight of the tour was the cave monastery which had actually been carved inside the limestone cliff in the thirteenth century by Orthodox monks who had sought a hermit-like existence in an attempt to get closer to God and avoid persecution. A dozen or so monks had been holed up in here, in the crampest of conditions, each of them having little more than a tiny cell to sleep in. To have willingly chosen living arrangements like this, either required exceptional faith or downright stupidity – or both. Day after day, night after night, they prayed earnestly in an attempt to commune with God and hear His voice, a voice which was almost certainly saying, 'Look, you really don't need to go to all this trouble you know. Have a pizza and chill out.'

  That evening the family were in buoyant mood. It was difficult to fathom what could have brought about such good cheer.

  'My muvver has had an idea,' announced Adrian at the dinner table. 'Earlier today she was in a car with the muwer-in-law of one of the national team players, and this lady was talking of the qualifying game which is coming up for the European Championships. They have a match in Belfast against Northern Ireland in just a few weeks.'

  'Yes. So?'

  Well, just now my parents and I have been talking-'

  'And me too!' piped in an affronted Elena.

  'Yes, and Elena too,' continued Adrian. 'And we thought that it would a very good idea if you went to Belfast and played the footballers there that you cannot play here.'

  I was stunned. A quite brilliant thought, and one which had simply not occurred to me.

  'What a fantastic idea!' I cried out, almost overwhelmed. 'Dina, thank you so much. Thanks to all of you. Thank you. Thank you.'

  'My farver says that we should drink Moldovan champagne, because tonight your bet is alive once again.'

  And we did too. Quite a little celebration we had. A beaten-up guitar was produced from somewhere and Grigore sang and played with an unexpected proficiency. As he launched into an old Russian ballad, I noticed a glint in Dina's eye which suggested to me that this song was special to them both, and one which had probably played a part in their courtship many years ago. They exchanged knowing looks and for just the briefest of moments, they were two medical students again, young and in love – their progeny and the odd English guest merely onlookers, privileged witnesses to that special force which had brought them together and sustained them through the years. As the drink hit its mark I sat back in my chair and observed the scene before me. The troubadour Grigore and his beautiful wife surrounded by two wonderful children.

  Together they shared something special, and for a moment I found myself wanting what they had. A little surprising. I hadn't thought I'd say that about anyone in Moldova.

  It wasn't until much later, when I finally stumbled into bed, that I was struck by the full significance of what had happened that night. Not only had the family's plan set my task back on track, but it had been the first time in my entire stay that anyone from Moldova had been anything other than reactive. Up until now I had always been the one making the suggestions, inventing hairbrain schemes or pushing for this or that. Finally someone else had come up with something, and bloody good it was too. It seemed odd that this moment hadn't arrived until I'd actually given up on things. Maybe it was because this was the first time that I'd appeared vulnerable and really in need, and this was something with which Moldovans could empathise. Or maybe the help arrived because they didn't want me to fail, and they didn't want me to fail because they cared.

  With the bet resurrected, it was back to work, and my last day
replicated my first, with a visit to the Moldovan Football Federation. Andrei, the team's translator, looked pleased to see me.

  'How are you?' he asked. 'And how have you got on?'

  'OK thanks,' I replied perkily. 'I've had some success. In three weeks, guess how many players I've managed to play?'

  Andrei became pensive and did not rush his response.

  Well, I suppose,' he finally ventured, 'that you have played seven.'

  'Extraordinary – that's exactly right Andrei, how did you know that?'

  'I did not know. This is just what I supposed that you may have achieved in this time.'

  How disappointing – he'd got it dead on. Somehow this lessened my sense of achievement.

  I explained to Andrei about the Northern Irish leg of the plan and he took me to meet Vasile Vatamanu, the team's PR officer, who was rotund in physique and robust in speech. It was pure speculation, but I got the impression that over the years he might not have been averse to the odd glass of vodka.

  'Mr Vatamanu says,' translated Andrei, 'that the national coach is sympathetic to this kind of thing, and he thinks that we will be able to help you in Belfast.'

  It struck me as unusual that my desire to take on the players at tennis could be described as 'this kind of thing'. Did Mr Vatamanu deal with similar requests on a regular basis? If he did, then this might add weight to my initial prognosis that he showed a keen interest in vodka.

  The best news of all was that my elusive Transnistrians, Stroenco and Rogaciov, were both in the squad for the match, as was Alexandru Curtianu, the guy who played in Russia for Zenit St Petersburg. If things went to plan in Belfast, then I would have the scalps of all but one of the players, Marin Spynu, who'd been dropped from the national team since the Wembley match, and was now playing his football in Israel. It just might be that a trip to the Holy Land would be needed to see the bet to a successful conclusion.