The second day of training was worse than the first.
Not because the drills were harder, though they were.
Not because Fonseca spoke more Portuguese, though he did.
But because the novelty had worn off and the reality had settled in.
This was not an adventure anymore.
This was a trial.
A long, grinding assessment that would end in a verdict he could not predict and could not control.
Bishal played left back again.
He was beginning to think he would always play left back.
The position was becoming familiar in the way a stone in your shoe becomes familiar.
You never stopped noticing it.
You just learned to walk anyway.
Fonseca’s notebook came out three times.
Twice while Bishal was defending.
Once while he was recovering a ball he had lost.
He could not tell if the notes were good or bad.
The assistant coach’s face revealed nothing.
It was like being evaluated by a wall.
By the time the session ended, Bishal’s legs were trembling with a fatigue that went deeper than muscle.
It was the tiredness of constant adjustment, of trying to read signals in a language he did not speak, of wondering whether every small mistake was being recorded and weighed against him.
He walked back to the accommodation alone.
Diego had stayed behind to talk to one of the reserve players, something about a party in Lisbon that weekend.
Kiala had disappeared as quietly as he did everything else.
The streets were busy with evening traffic, cars and bicycles and people walking home from work, and Bishal moved through them without being seen.
His room was exactly as he had left it.
The bed unmade.
The phrasebook on the desk.
The suitcase still half unpacked in the corner because he had not been able to bring himself to fully move in.
As though leaving things in the suitcase meant he could still leave quickly if he needed to.
As though he was not really here yet.
He sat on the bed and looked at the phone.
He had not called home since the first night.
Two days of silence, after promising his mother he would call every day.
The guilt of it had been accumulating quietly, another weight on top of the others.
But he had not known what to say.
He still did not know.
How to explain the isolation, the confusion, the feeling of being slowly dismantled by a man with a notebook and no opinions.
His mother would worry.
His father would offer practical solutions that did not apply.
Neither of them could change anything about his situation, and talking to them would only make the distance feel wider.
But the distance was already wide.
And his mother was probably sitting by the phone, pretending not to wait for it to ring.
He picked up the Nokia and dialed.
The international calling card still worked, which was a small mercy.
The line connected after four rings, and his mother’s voice came through with a crackle of static that made it sound as though she was calling from another century.
“Bishu?”
“Hi, Amma.”
“Two days.
Two days you didn’t call.”
“I know.
I’m sorry.”
“You said you would call every day.”
“I know.”
“You said you would call when you landed.
You didn’t call.
You said you would call after training.
You didn’t call.
I was starting to think something happened.”
“Nothing happened.
I’m fine.”
There was a pause.
He could hear her breathing, the slight wheeze that came when she was upset and trying not to show it.
Then her voice returned, softer now, the anger already fading into something else.
“Tell me everything.”
He told her what he could.
The flight, edited to remove the loneliness.
The accommodation, described as simple but comfortable.
The training, explained without mentioning left back or Fonseca’s notebook or the feeling of being constantly watched and constantly found wanting.
He told her about Diego, about the café, about the grilled fish.
He told her the small, safe things that would not make her worry.
“Are you eating properly?”
“Yes.”
“What did you eat today?”
“Fish.
Rice.
Salad.”
“Not enough.
You need proper food.
I should have packed more.”
“Amma, you packed enough to feed a football team.”
“A football team needs feeding.”
He laughed, and the sound of it surprised him.
It was the first time he had laughed in two days.
“Your father wants to talk to you.”
There was a shuffling sound, the phone being passed across the room, and then his father’s voice came on the line.
“How is the training?”
“Hard.”
“Good.”
Bishal smiled.
Of course.
Good.
Everything was good.
“You’re enjoying this.”
“I’m not enjoying anything.
I’m asking about your training.”
“The training is hard.
The coach is…” He searched for the right word.
“Difficult.”
“Difficult how?”
“He doesn’t talk much.
He watches everything.
He writes things in a notebook but he doesn’t tell you what he’s writing.”
“So he’s thorough.”
“He’s something.”
His father made a sound that might have been a laugh or might have been a cough.
“Good coaches are usually difficult.
If he was easy, he wouldn’t be paying attention.”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that.”
“That’s why you called.”
The line went quiet for a moment.
Then his father spoke again, his voice slightly different, the way it got when he was about to say something he had been thinking about for a while.
“You know, when I was in the Army, there was an officer who everyone hated.
He was strict.
He was demanding.
He never gave praise.
Everyone thought he was trying to break them.”
“What happened?”
“He wasn’t trying to break anyone.
He was trying to find out who would break and who wouldn’t.
The ones who didn’t break became better soldiers than they would have been otherwise.” A pause.
“I didn’t break.”
Bishal sat with the phone against his ear and thought about his father as a young officer, facing down a man like Fonseca, refusing to break.
It was strange to imagine.
His father had always seemed so solid, so complete.
It was hard to picture him as someone who had to prove himself.
“I should let you sleep,” his father said.
“I’m not tired.”
“You sound tired.”
That was true.
He was tired.
He had been tired since he arrived.
“Maybe a little.”
“Then sleep.
Call your mother tomorrow.
She’s been cleaning the pooja room again.”
“Tell her I said thank you.”
“Tell her yourself.
Tomorrow.”
The line went dead.
His father had never been good at goodbyes.
Bishal sat with the phone in his hand for a moment longer, then dialed another number.
This one he knew by heart, had known it for years, had called it a hundred times before everything changed and a hundred times after.
Sohini answered on the third ring.
“You’re alive,” she said.
“I’m alive.”
“Your mother has been calling my father every day asking if we’ve heard from you.
My father has been calling me every day asking the same thing.
You’ve created a small international incident.”
“I called her just now.”
“Good.
Now she’ll call my father and he’ll call me and the crisis will be resolved.”
Bishal leaned back against the wall.
Her voice was exactly the same as it had been in Bengaluru.
The same sharpness, the same warmth underneath.
For a moment he could almost pretend he was still there, still in his old room, still looking at the same ceiling fan.
“How’s Portugal?” she asked.
“Hard.”
“Good.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that?”
“Because easy would mean you made a mistake.
Hard means you’re in the right place.”
He told her more than he had told his mother.
Not everything, but more.
The left back position.
The notebook.
The feeling of being constantly watched and never evaluated.
The strange isolation of being surrounded by people and understood by none of them.
The way Fonseca had said “Too slow” and walked away, as though the verdict was so obvious it did not need explanation. This story is hosted at g.com.
Sohini listened without interrupting.
When he finished, there was a brief silence.
“You know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think Fonseca is paying very close attention to you.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Because he’s writing things down.
If he wasn’t interested, he wouldn’t bother writing.
He’d just let you run around and then send you home.
The notebook means he’s thinking about you.”
Bishal considered this.
It was the same thing Diego had said, more or less.
The notebook was not a punishment.
It was a sign of attention.
“Also,” Sohini continued, “he put you at left back.
That’s not random.
He’s testing something.”
“Testing what?”
“How would I know?
I’m a physicist.
I test particles.
But I know a test when I see one.”
The confidence in her voice made him smile.
Sohini had never been short of confidence.
It was one of the things he admired about her, and one of the things that drove him mad.
“How’s CERN?” he asked.
“Still there.
Still full of people who are smarter than me.”
“That’s not possible.”
“It’s very possible.
I’m surrounded by geniuses.
It’s exhausting.”
“You’re a genius.”
“I’m a hard worker.
There’s a difference.
Geniuses don’t have to try.
I have to try constantly.
It’s very undignified.”
He laughed again.
The second time in one evening.
Perhaps the calls had been a good idea after all.
They talked for another twenty minutes.
About her research, which was apparently stuck on a calibration problem that nobody could solve.
About her father, who had started giving football opinions to anyone who would listen, despite knowing nothing about football.
About the weather in Bengaluru, which was apparently unbearable.
About the food in Portugal, which Bishal admitted was better than he had expected.
When the calling card began to run low, Sohini’s voice changed slightly.
The sharpness softened.
The warmth came through.
“Bishu.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re going to be fine.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know that.
You’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever met.
It’s hard, and you’re still there.
That’s not nothing.”
He did not know what to say.
The words felt too large for the small room, for the parking lot outside the window, for the phone in his hand.
“Go find out,” she said.
“That’s all you have to do.
Just go find out.”
“I’m trying.”
“Then you’re succeeding.
I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
The line went quiet.
Bishal put the phone on the desk and sat in the dark.
The church bells had stopped ringing.
The parking lot was silent.
Somewhere in the distance, a motorcycle engine turned over and faded away.
He thought about his mother, cleaning the pooja room, asking God to look after a son who was six thousand kilometres away.
He thought about his father, who had faced down difficult men and refused to break, and who believed his son would do the same.
He thought about Sohini, who was surrounded by geniuses and felt like an imposter, and who still found the time to tell him he would be fine.
He thought about Fonseca’s notebook, and the word the assistant coach had written after the interception.
Whatever it was, it had been earned.
Tomorrow there would be more drills.
More Portuguese.
More mistakes and more corrections and more small, grinding adjustments to a game that was the same as it had always been and completely different.
But tonight he was not alone.
The voices were still in his head, still warm, still present.
He opened the phrasebook and read the bookmark one more time.
Then he closed it and lay down and let the exhaustion carry him under.
Sleep came easier than it had since he arrived.