Good Men by Arnon Grunberg

Author:Arnon Grunberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Letter Books

6

During the volleyball match that morning, Beckers collided hard with the Polack. Beckers jumped at the net while trying to block a ball and smacked his head against the Polack’s. A headbutt is what it was, as if Beckers meant to block his colleague’s head instead of the ball. Or had it been a fist that hit him just above the eye, that made him gasp for breath and made him feel as though his body consisted only of those few square inches above his right eye? Beckers’s fist or Beckers’s head, the effect was the same. The Polack remained lying on the floor beside the net. He was dizzy.

“Christ, I’m sorry,” Beckers said, and he tried to help him to his feet, the way you try to help a friend to his feet who you’ve just accidentally knocked for a loop. In his black gym shorts, Beckers stood bent over the Polack. Was Beckers a friend? Yes, the men of the C squad were his friends. Whatever had taken place between Beckers’s wife and the Polack stood apart from their friendship, it had happened in a different world, a parallel universe.

“Sorry, I thought it was my ball. You okay?” Beckers asked, and his shock at what he’d done seemed to grow by the moment.

“Leave me for a minute,” the Polack said, “I’ll be okay.” He crawled off the court on all fours, like a dog, because he couldn’t stand upright, not yet. He felt himself getting dizzier and dizzier, and defeated, that too. Never had he felt so defeated. That he had made love to his dear wife in the vanished boy’s bed, that had confused him. The comfort Beckers’s wife had given was confusing comfort. But maybe all real comfort was confusing. He had never really felt defeated before, not when his father dealt with the loss of his wife by withdrawing from his former life and starting an entirely new one. Not when he had scraped his eldest son from the rails. Even then, as he’d stood on the rails, he had thought about the one remaining boy and resolved not to let himself be defeated, because that resolve was what life was all about. Now he felt defeated. The headbutt had defeated him. The punch. Beckers himself had defeated him.

He wiped his forehead gingerly, then wiped his hand on his pants. It wasn’t sweat on his forehead, it was blood.

The squad commander came over to him. The Polack was lying on the floor at one side of the gym. “You look pale,” the commander said. “He whacked you good.” A smile appeared on the commander’s face, the commander didn’t smile much otherwise.

“I think he hit me with his head,” the Polack said with difficulty. “I think he headbutted me by accident.”

“With his hand,” said the squad commander. “It wasn’t your ball either. What were you doing? You should have let him go. Oh well. That can happen.”

The men brought him a bag of ice and pressed it against the Polack’s forehead.

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