LAST CALL | Football and tulips

Football and tulips

by Gabriele Romagnoli

A kid plays football alone. A fence separates his courtyard from the garden next door. Slender but determined, he looks to be about 10. As he runs, he narrates each play, as if a sports commentator.
‘Giordani slips past his opponent and crosses to the centre, where Martin delivers a push kick, but goalkeeper Valenti deflects it, resulting in a corner kick…’
To beat him, he lifts the ball on the tip of his foot and sends it flying:
‘It’s high! Over the crossbar!’
The ball lands in the garden beyond the fence. The kid sits down, dejected.
Clouds, and time, pass.
A man appears off in the distance, carrying a pair of shears in hand. The kid tries to get his attention.
‘Hey, groundsman! Mr groundsman!’
The man doesn’t react.
The kid yells louder this time:
‘Groundsmannnn! Can you toss me my ball?’
The man keeps going about his work, while the kid keeps shouting at him. After a while, his mother’s voice resonates from a window:
‘Well then, Luca? I’m practically hoarse by now! Last chance! Go on, it’s late!’
The kid stops yelling, and when he turns around the groundsman has disappeared. He goes indoors, head bowed in defeat. Later on, he sits at a table set for two. His mother talks to him from the kitchen.
‘Did you have fun playing in the courtyard?’
Silence.
‘Did you do your homework?’
Silence.
‘Do you want breaded cutlets or cheese pockets?’
‘I’m not hungry’, he murmurs.
The kid fishes a prayer card and a footballer figurine from his pocket.
He walks over to the window; it begins to rain. He goes to his room and shuts the door.
The doorbell rings. His mother goes to see who it is. Drops of rain fall from a hat on a man’s head. He extends his hand out, holding a football. She recognizes it instantly: it belongs to her son.
‘Thank you’, she says.
The man looks up to read her lips. He nods in comprehension. Then, like an embarrassed magician, he reveals five freshly cut tulips.
He ventures a smile.
‘Do you want to come in and wait out the rain?’,
the woman responds, clearly enunciating her words.
The man removes his hat and steps inside. From the kid’s bedroom a beam of light appears: the end of a rainbow.