Playing the Moldovans At Tennis Read online

  In the dark, one is so much more conscious of sound. The footsteps, the rustling of nearby coats and the sudden sharpness of voices seem somehow amplified. In this suddenly spooky and threatening atmosphere, it felt like everyone was closing in on me. I became aware that I was enormously vulnerable. I was easy picking for anyone with even the slightest criminal bent. The only thing I had going for me was that no-one could see how shit-scared I was, and there was a good chance that I might be just as terrifying a prospect to the others in the street with my suspiciously slow gait and fear-induced heavy breathing.

  I heard a loud voice from a doorway to my right, the intonation of which suggested that a question was being asked of me. All I could understand was that I should keep on walking and pray that a rogue arm was not extended, yanking me into the doorway for some swift and violent wealth redistribution. Fortunately, I was left untouched and as the yards began to develop between me and my potential assailant, I began to wonder whether it had been entirely my imagination that had invited in this sense of the sinister. The question I had been asked may well have been completely innocuous – 'Have you got any spare change?' or 'Do you have the time?' or 'I'm having some trouble with 4 down, I don't suppose you happen to know what's the capital of Poland?'

  I was turned away rather unceremoniously by the man on the door at the Barricuda because I had not made a reservation. I could see by looking through the windows into the basement restaurant below that the establishment was completely empty, but this fact seemed to have no bearing on the executive decision taken by the arse-hole at street level. I did not bother to argue, my life experience up to this point having taught me that arguing with doormen is as likely to be as successful as a Mancunian Olympic bid.

  Undeterred, I stumbled back through the darkness to Stefan cel Mare where I continued my night on the town, only to find that the few bars and restaurants I passed were completely empty. It was Friday night for God's sake – what was going on? I recalled the pop song written in celebration of this particular day of the week – 'Friday on My Mind', and that there was an entire restaurant chain called Thank God It's Friday!' It was clear that in the West, Friday night has come to represent the end of the week's toil and drudgery and is in itself a mini festival heralding in the freedom of the weekend. From the evidence I was assimilating on the ground, Friday night appeared to have acquired no such status in Moldova. So, having shunned at least four establishments which barely passed as restaurants, on the grounds of being empty, horrid-looking, or both; I took a beer in a quiet bar and resolved to dine in the next restaurant I happened upon. Regardless.

  'I'll have a Big Mac and fries please,' I said to the uniformed girl behind the till.

  Yes, I'm afraid it had come to that. My search for night-life and culture had led me to McDonald's. I pray for the people of Moldova that this is not an omen for their cultural future.

  'O zi buna,' said the girl, this neatly turned out servant to multi-national profit

  This, I took it, meant 'Have a nice day'. What else? That anodyne platitude which has come to so irritate me. I have nothing against common courtesy and manners, but surely Thank you' and 'Goodbye' suffice. Whenever someone in a fast food restaurant says 'Have a nice day' to me, I want to go back to that establishment the next day and tell them exactly what kind of a day I had – in great detail – when they're really busy.

  I made my way over to a characterless synthetic table and planted myself on the standard McDonald's plastic seat, designed in such a way as to provide adequate comfort for the consumption of a meal but not to nurture any desire to sit back and relax after its completion. You can imagine some ambitious American go-getter standing up to speak at the 'Profit Maximisation' meeting: 'Every second that a table is occupied by a non-eater costs us dollars and cents. Remember – time is money.'

  I walked home, as unsatisfied with my meal as by what it had come to signify for me. I found it upsetting that however hideously wrong their previous economic system had been, countries like Moldova were so eager to replace it with one which was also so manifestly flawed. They wanted to be capitalists, and they wanted to be capitalists fast This was to be the answer. Now all they had to do was work out what the question was.

  That night I became ill. My stomach erupted like a mini-volcano and my bowels were evacuated as thoroughly as wartime London. I had begun to feel the nascent rumblings earlier in the day but had chosen to ignore them in the hope that they would go away. This very rarely works (not just with regard to ailments but in other areas too – mortgage lenders, stalkers and occupying foreign troops), but somehow I feel it's always worth giving it a go. The tactic had once again failed. The stomach was having its say – finally revolting against the melange of Eastern European foodstuffs to which it had been submitted in recent days. The irony was that the meal which appeared to have triggered the releasing of the sluice gates was as Western as they come. A Big Mac and fries. That bloody gherkin.

  Up until now my stomach had stood up pretty well to the rigours of world travel, certainly having performed considerably better than the intestines of an erstwhile travelling companion of mine Tim, whose stomach would flush out the entire contents of his body as soon as the ferry docked in Calais. Of course being such a sufferer, the contents of his baggage always included an entire medicine cabinet containing potions which could regulate the speed at which he bad farewell to his food intake. My problem was that I was hopelessly unprepared. I didn't want to disturb the two sleeping doctors in the house so I had a quick rummage through my bag in search of medication, but was only able to produce some Strepsils. Damn. Oh well, I took one anyway, thinking that not to take anything at all would have been negligent.

  It was a miserable night. For eight interminable hours I lay in my bed shivering, knowing that it was only a matter of minutes before the house's dubious plumbing system was subjected to another deposit from mine. I tried to convince myself that this experience wasn't entirely negative.

  It's OK. It's character building, I thought to myself.

  But did I really need any more character built? And even if I did, hadn't I reached a point in my life where I could get character builders in? A reputable firm of character builders, with references and everything, who'd do a good job and not let me down?

  At 4 am, in a weakened state close to delirium, my mind began to run further out of control. I imagined a beer-bellied foreman standing before me, from just such a company.

  FOREMAN: And you say you want us to do something with your pain threshold?

  TONY: Yes, it definitely needs building up. Perhaps you could add an extension?

  FOREMAN: Could do, but an extension's a big job. It'd take us at least four weeks.

  TONY: Oh, I was hoping you could do it quicker.

  FOREMAN: Not a chance. They're tricky numbers – your pain thresholds. You look like you've got some cracks appearing in your resilience.

  TONY: Really? Is that expensive to put right?

  FOREMAN: Not really. We can just concrete over them.

  TONY: Good. Talking of concrete . . . and cracks – you couldn't concrete over my arse could you?

  FOREMAN: We could, but not until Tuesday week.

  TONY: That's no good, I need it done now. Can't you see that it's urgent?

  FOREMAN: Oh dear. Your patience is in a terrible state. Who put that in for you? Cowboy character builders, I bet. They give us lot a bad name.

  *

  Morning finally arrived. I could confidently state that, other than my vital organs, there wasn't a single solid left in my body. The only consolation was that my throat wasn't sore, and that throughout the long and hellish night, I hadn't coughed once. Those Strepsils really are terribly good.

  Still feeling shaky, I made my way down to join the family at breakfast. At last here was an opportunity to take advantage of the fact that I was in the house of two doctors whose counsel I could seek on the subject of my ailing stomach. Even in a country like Moldova, which is
n't known for its stockpile of the world's latest drugs, surely they would be able to offer a more effective treatment than Strepsils. The problem, as ever, was communication. Adrian was still asleep and Elena had absolutely no idea what the word 'diarrhoea' meant. (She had obviously not paid attention in the English class which had covered bottom disorders.)

  While I struggled to make myself understood, Grigore went about the business of offering me food. My polite refusal only served to make him re-double his efforts to find me something I wanted. And so here was the scene: an Englishman trying to describe the nature of diarrhoea in simple words for the comprehension of an 11-year-old Moldovan girl, while her father ransacked a fridge in order to hold a range of dairy products in front of the said Englishman's nose for his immediate rejection. All my life had been building to this. Finally I nodded to a yoghurt, thinking that not to do so might have serious consequences for Grigore's health. There was no point in two of us being ill. The Status Quo thus prevailed, which involved my being ill and nobody else knowing about it.

  At one point I excused myself and went to my room to see if my Teach Yourself Romanian book could be of any assistance. Of course it couldn't. According to its authors, 'Acrobat' is a far more important word than 'Diarrhoea'. Not a lot of use unless I wanted to be prescribed a cure for cartwheels. And so I returned to the breakfast table with only one option open to me. Unfortunately that option was mime.

  I looked at Elena, a little girl desperate to know what it was I was trying to tell her. I shook my head at Grigore for a final time as he waved what looked like a pig's head in front of me. Then I did something that I didn't want to do, especially to a host family happily engaged with breakfast, but my hand had been forced. I stood up, walked to the middle of the room, pointed to my bottom and then ran out of the room in the direction of the toilet. It was brief, it was unsubtle, but it was successful – because seconds later, when I returned to a room full of people desperately suppressing laughter, there was a small bottle of medicine waiting for me at my place setting.

  Thank you so much,' I sighed, immensely relieved at the sight of the drugs.

  The junky had finally got his fix.

  8

  The Television

  The plan was uncomplicated. Go to the match and make friends with Testimitanu, Miterev, Rebeja, Romanenko and Fistican. Easy. Provided Zimbru had the big home win which was expected of them, I could see no reason why the players wouldn't be absolutely delighted to meet the man responsible for giving them the T-shirt which had so enhanced their wardrobe.

  'At home', for FC Zimbru Chisinau, meant playing at a stadium in a small village thirty miles out of the capital. Quite why they did this, the football expert Leonid had failed to explain, but I had accepted it as just another of this country's many anomalies. Like Moldova's night-time streets, I was to remain in the dark.

  I had hired a car (well, to be more precise a Lada) and a driver, and as I climbed into the back seat I prayed that Grigore's magic potion would ensure that the yoghurt I had eaten at breakfast would remain inside me. I did not wish my first meeting with a Moldovan footballer to coincide with a small accident in my trousers which left them thinking:

  'My goodness, he is nervous.'

  We were looking for a small village called Speia and, naturally enough, we got lost Iulian was involved in the now standard map reading quarrel with the driver, a pasty fellow called Iura. I resisted the strong urge to point out that we would get there quicker if we worked from the assumption that Iulian was always wrong. When Iura realised this for himself, he got us on to the right road and finally to Speia which was no more than an ugly spread of a few small apartment blocks with all the community atmosphere of Croydon. We drove around in search of the ground but found the streets to be deserted but for the occasional stray dog. Where were the hordes of fans making their way to the game? After all this was Moldova's premier football club we were attempting to find – there ought to be a fan or two on show.

  Twenty minutes later, after having visited a school, a doctor's surgery, and the Moldovan equivalent of an industrial estate (a lockup garage), quite by chance we found ourselves driving towards the stands of a surprisingly big ground. All around it were fields and gently rolling hills. It was bizarre to see such a big stadium in so emphatically a rural setting. No doubt it had been one of the absurd decisions taken during the years of communism by the People's Committee for Absurd Decisions:

  COMRADE 1: Comrades, the Proletariat must have recreation, and the Workers must be rewarded for attaining the levels of production specified in Comrade Brezhnev's last Five Year Plan – therefore it is proposed that we reward them by building a stadium with a capacity of 22,500 in the middle of sodding nowhere.

  COMRADE 2: Excellent idea Comrade.

  COMRADE 3: Nice one.

  COMRADE 4: (Aside) He talks a lot of sense, but he will spoil it by swearing.

  There was no admission fee to enter the ground. It was unclear whether this was because of a continued adherence to the philosophy that this was a stadium which belonged to the People, or because nobody could be arsed to build a wall around it. Maybe turnstiles were considered to be a bourgeois Western idea – or maybe they were just bloody difficult to get hold of. Either way, it didn't matter given that no-one turned up anyway. Zimbru Chisinau may have won the domestic Championship five years out of the last six, but they appeared to have acquired only three loyal followers for each of the years that they had done so. It was only down to our last-minute arrival, which bolstered the attendance by three, that the crowd outnumbered the 22 footballers who were warming up down on the pitch.

  In my view, not charging an admission fee, however nominal, is always a mistake. It's a psychological thing. If the punter parts with some money then he commits. He's more likely to have a good time because he'll work harder to try and get his money's worth. Even if he hates what he has come to see, he has the satisfaction of being genuinely aggrieved because he has paid to see it. Had it been something free which had irked him so, then the punter would be forced to accept that the blame lay with him for having been mug enough to have used his time so wantonly. Therefore I conclude that the old adage The best things in life are free' is erroneous, and should be replaced by The best things in life are £12.50, £10.50, £8.50, and £6.00 for concessions.'

  Whatever the best things in life are, and whatever they cost, I was not experiencing any of them on this particular Saturday. My stomach still threatened treachery and my entire body felt weakened by the exertions of, to put it poetically, The night of a thousand poos'. Furthermore, the dire football which I was watching was rendered even more tiresome by my translator's spectacular ignorance.

  That was a good kick . . . Oh. What did he blow the whistle for?'

  'Because he was off-side.'

  'Oh . . . what is off-side?'

  It wasn't as bad as explaining the rules of cricket to an American, but bringing Iulian up to speed with the nature of the off-side laws wasn't a breeze. My initial attempt at keeping it simple left him utterly confused, and in my next effort I made the mistake of providing far too much detail. This still left him utterly confused, but somehow feeling obliged to give the impression of comprehension. This took the form of him asking pointless follow up questions throughout the afternoon, beginning with:

  'Do you think they are going to use the off-side trap?'

  'I don't know Iulian.'

  And then, twenty minutes later:

  'Did you say that you cannot be off-side from a throw-in?'

  Yes Iulian.'

  Concluding with:

  'Shouldn't the defence be pushing out now?'

  I didn't reply to this one. I felt this was a better option than saying what I was thinking.

  *

  To our right, behind one of the goals, a group of some fifteen youths were gathered in a huddle chanting enthusiastic support for their team.

  'FC Zimbru! FC Zimbru!' they shouted, somehow believing this to be
a worthwhile activity.

  It said something for the drabness of their lives that what was unfolding before them appeared exciting. It was one of the worst football matches I had ever seen.

  At half time the score remained 0-0 with neither goalkeeper having been troubled by anything other than wayward backpasses. As the players traipsed off the pitch for their half time team talks ('Look, for God's sake – be better!'), I noticed that the president of Zimbru with whom we had spoken earlier in the week, didn't follow his players into the dressing room.

  'Let's go and talk to him,' I suggested to Iulian.

  You think we should? I imagine that he does not want to talk right now.'

  Well, there's only one way of finding out'

  'I don't know – he looks anxious.'

  'Come on Iulian. I'm never going to win this bet if I do things by half measures.'

  Iulian, who even on a good day was only a quarter measure man, followed me reluctantly down to the touchline where we cornered Nicolae Ciornii and asked if I could meet the players after the game. He told us that this would not be a problem, news which lifted my spirits for the second half.

  According to Iulian, Zimbru meant Zebra. Of course it did, and no doubt that was why the team played in those well-known zebra colours of yellow and green. The highlight of the second half was when an Olympia Belţi defender went to clear a ball and his boot flew off. I might have found this funny if I hadn't felt so ill, bored, and pissed off that Zimbru couldn't score. A nil-nil draw would be a disaster for me since the players, who had been expected to win easily, would be depressed and in no mood for socialising.