The Planets Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Club Atlanta’s stadium, it’s famous.” He wanted to know whether, given how close it was to his house, he could hear the goals, the chanting of the fans, or even the announcer. M said, with affected confidence, that he could; too emphatically to conceal a swell of pride. The other vacillated, saying that he had thought it would depend on the direction of the wind. Even if he lived nearby, he might not be close enough to hear everything. M conceded that of course he couldn’t hear everything, that wasn’t what the other had asked, but he did live close enough to the field to hear the goals and the chanting, regardless of the wind. When it blew toward his house he heard better and when it blew the other way, not as well, but he could always hear it. In any case, he continued, you couldn’t say that he didn’t live close enough: “My house is five blocks from the stadium if you follow the streets, but only two hundred meters if you follow the tracks,” he explained. The train was the clearest indication of proximity, perhaps even of contiguity, but at the same time, on match days the train’s whistle made it hard to hear the sounds of the stadium and so, he acknowledged, sometimes the distance wasn’t ideal. The other listened silently. The truth is, continued M as he walked, that even if they are playing an important game on a Sunday, it can be hard to hear anything if it’s really windy. Of course, this has nothing to do with the distance; everyone knows that it is impossible to hear in strong wind unless you are very close, even right alongside.
    When the match is over, M continued, the fans disperse right away along the surrounding streets. If you’re still in the stands you don’t notice this: the wait to leave the stadium seems endless. But, at the same time, a crowd has suddenly filled the street. This diffusion is similar to the way the chants, shouts, and noises of the multitude spread through the air, only slower, almost as if each of the spectators were going off in search of the final destination of his own voice. And so they set off on their separate ways. Even the tracks filled with people, the fans covering the whole embankment, walking as a single turbulent mass, surging like a scene from a proletarian epic. So, whether far away or nearby, I live in the stadium’s zone of influence, which means hearing what can be heard. M wanted to end the conversation there, but there was still something the other wanted to know. It seemed that M understood this; before the other had a chance to ask him anything, he conceded that, despite its size, the shadow it cast, and the matches that were played within it, the field was not really the center of anything. The noise that swells up from the grounds and the silence—despite the match—beneath which everything seems submerged and that allows no indication from inside to pass, demonstrate the ambiguity of the gaping space, at once receptive and manifest, that is the stadium. The funereal silences that fill the air when the stands suddenly fall quiet imbues its rudimentary architecture with a sense of absence proportional, though inversely, to its size. At first one thinks about it and says, for example, Well of course the stadium is the center of the neighborhood, the place that gives life to its surroundings, the building that gives the neighborhood its character, and things like that, referring to the green patch of turf toward which all the surrounding streets and sidewalks seem to be oriented. But the opposite is actually true—the crust of the field is precisely that: an empty space erected on an arbitrary site.
    They walked on. Game days, M continued, are saturated by an incongruous mood and sense of time. One hears the noises and is able to identify each one: the cries of joy and indignation, the encouraging cheers, even the gasps—sudden and unanimous—of disappointment or relief at a missed goal; you can hear the din but it is obvious that