Iniesta and the Other Earth: Whatever happened to Cristiano and Fernando?

By Jordan Brown, who imagines an alternative world for our protagonist.

Andres Iniesta woke to a familiar pounding of his heart and a tense anticipation. It was a foreboding sense that came from a basic and instinctual part of himself, the same way someone might know, as they walk back to their just momentarily parked car, that they have just been given a parking ticket. Andres knew that today would be one of the perplexing days that seemed to drain him empty and leave his body with a whole crop of fresh scrapes and bruises—a kind of day that other logistics supervisors of other fluid pump & seal manufacturers do not have.

Each time he had this feeling, Andres was tempted not to leave his bed until he was absolutely sure the thing had passed, but he never did. It happened too often for him to miss work, almost weekly—sometimes it seemed to skip a few weeks in the summer every year or so, but the rest of the year it could even be two or three times a week. Middle managers, even in the unionized Independent Catalonia, did not have that many days to take from their jobs.

So Andres willed himself up, swung his legs over the side of his bed and stood to face the day. Just as he was about to take his first step though, his left leg buckled at the knee and his upper body flew violently back towards the bed, bouncing him forward to land with a fleshy slap on the hardwood floor. Breathing out a weary sigh, Andres pulled himself back to his feet and walked to the bathroom. With his first fall, the day had truly begun in earnest.

In his morning preparations, Andres would find himself thrown and tumbled three more times; once stepping into the shower, the second while attempting to put his right leg into his trousers, and the third—inexplicably—whilst he was sitting at his small kitchen table reading Vonnegut and slowly chewing on his pa amb tomàquet. He landed on top of his flung-off plate and smeared tomato bits and olive oil into his starched white shirt, forcing a quick change before heading out for work.

The extra minutes added to his morning routine made themselves known as he rounded the corner of his street, onto the Avinguda del Parl-el, and watched the 8:10 number 57 bus lurch from the sidewalk and away towards the Placa d’Espanya. He quelled the anger rising in his chest with a cold bucket of resignation—this was his curse, and he had lived with it ever since he was young. His constant spells of spasmodic falling made him more than an easy target for his early peers; their derision borne not only from the timeless tradition of cruel schoolchildren, but also because Andres Iniesta’s ‘curse’ seemed just that—supernatural, and it frightened them.

The curse sometimes worked in his favor though, just as often as he lost his legs, he would have moments that seemed like distilled inspiration. Two summers before, in early July, Andres was filled with a confidence beyond anything he’d ever felt. Even with the occasional trip and flail, he had a bright and determined mood. He would find himself going alone to bars and clubs—almost nightly—dancing and talking and drinking with people who found him strangely magnetic and eminently watchable. They followed his every word, eyes transfixed on all his motions and gesticulations, his presence a living beacon of something fundamentally collective and universal, representing a deep and important piece of their own natures.

That magic July, amongst all the late-found acceptance in all the spots long detoured, Andres even met a girl—Ana Casal—who at first looked at him with an adoring gaze. The few months they were together felt like a celebration to Iniesta. On warm nights sitting against the Columbus Monument, looking out into the Balearic Sea; Andres felt finally content, while Ana felt punch-drunk and somehow awed at the whole affair. It wouldn’t last though. Where Andres’ regular spells had once gone unnoticed, each new iteration gave her more and more visible discomfort. Andres could see it happening, but there was nothing to be done, this was him. Like a lifting fog, Ana Casal’s affection dissipated and left Andres Iniesta alone to his life and his curse.

Even friendless and loveless most of his life, Andres grew from a kind and genial boy into an effusive and almost relentlessly cheerful man. He thought that to balance his distinct ‘other’ nature for the world, he ought to greet it continually with a smile. A freak is avoided well enough, but an unpleasant freak is avoided altogether—Andres had become satisfied with being viewed neutrally, being politely overlooked, and being genially dismissed.

This is why, as he sat down on the bench in the covered bus stop, he was so unnerved to feel the staring eyes of two young homeless men who sat against a backlit advertising wall for Mattel Hoverboards. Andres was facing ahead, towards the busy street, but in his periphery the two men, who at first regarded him with what seemed like shock, were fiercely whispering to each other in Castillian Spanish—something Andres had not heard much of since the declaration of an independent Catalonia to the BEU.

“Andres,” Said the voice again. He looked straight at the two then. They both seemed to be in their mid-20’s, with frames and musculature beyond the average homeless of the city. The one on the right, in the corner of the stop, was the taller and more defined of the two. He had an angular face, olive skin, and messy black hair which he’d pushed together to make a sort of ridge down the center of his head. The other had the lighter skin of a central-Spaniard, bright blond hair he wore long but pushed back away from his face by a dirty rubber band, and a face which Iniesta guessed would look young forever. It was the second man who spoke again.

“Andres, it’s me—Fernando.” Iniesta didn’t know how to react. He’d never seen the pair of them before as far as he could remember, but there was intensity to this Fernando’s eyes that said he had no doubts.

“I’m sorry. I don’t think we’ve met before.” Fernando, who had been moving to stand, suddenly looked very distressed and turned back towards his companion.

“He’s not one of us,” he said, but the olive-skinned man seemed frozen still, and had since Andres answered. Fernando shook his shoulder, “Cristiano! Cristiano!” With no response, Fernando began to shake harder, shouting his companion’s name in a strained voice which to Andres reached more and more unstable tones. He quietly stood and moved towards the edge of the sidewalk, and spotting an oncoming cab some distance away, slowly extended his arm to hail it.

Fernando caught his movement and with a crazed and shouted NO, pushed himself off Cristiano’s shoulder and leapt towards the smaller Andres. As the taxi pulled to stop, Iniesta shouted Poligono and scrambled open the door. Just as he went to step inside, Fernando’s leg smashed into his, throwing Iniesta forward and slamming his head into the opposite door. Taking notice of the situation, the driver hit the accelerator, and pushed out into traffic, the momentum swinging shut the rear door. Fernando chased after, and in a daze, looking up from the floor, Andres watched him shout, “I’m not supposed to be here! I’m the wrong one! He doesn’t know what he’s about, neither does Cristiano’s! Andres—.” The rest fell off as the taxi gained speed and Andres lost all the light.

——————-

Outside of himself… looking down … the smell of wet grass and a slow rolling trail of sweat burning into his eye… the world not still but turning slow, so slow…a low roar of sound…thousands of voices… union… himself surrounded by men in blue and white…chasing, always chasing… leather and metal clawing his legs…pulling him down…no escape, no exit, no care to try… a ball out of reach, moments before just his… the air hot in his lungs and thick with water, tasting not of home but some foreign place… his body a deep wet red, wrapped like a flag around the wind…expectation…just him…a self he never was

——————-

He woke to the cab driver cursing and shaking him.

“Money, we’re here—Poligono Industrial Estate. Up.”

Andres pulled some amount of money and limply shoved it into the driver’s outstretched hand. Stepping out into the bright morning, Andres felt sluggish, like he’d just woken from a year-long sleep. He smoothed the lines from his shirt and straightened himself. On unsure legs, he walked towards his factory entrance marked overhead as ‘Rinus Solutions’.

His workday moved at a strange pace. He would get into a steady rhythm at his desk, only to have the sensations of his vision in the taxi rise up in his mind, or the manic shouts of Fernando and the lost eyes of his companion Cristiano.

Normally his work was the only thing he could count on to enjoy. He managed distribution and logistics—sending his company’s products to each order, maintaining a quick and steady flow of intake and output. He’d found a genuine talent for the job, and had become the head of his department that year—at the young age of 28. The money was better than decent, but he didn’t care much for that—it was the work he liked; moving pumps and seals across the world, crafting quicker and more efficient service to clients, anticipating problems and preparing for the unexpected. Other people might laugh, but he thought of his work as creative, and it satisfied him.

Not that day, though. Time seemed to speed, then lag, then speed again—with Andres’ mind ever with the confusion of his morning. When he finally left for the day, it was to a sense of relief—he’d go home, make a light dinner, read some more Vonnegut, and sleep early. He held a hope that the next day would be more normal, more routine—one of the curse free days and one without such strange excitements.

He lost his legs only a few times on the way to the commuter train home, the worst was at the tram entrance, trying to pay the turnstile. He caved and went forward onto his knees, chin striking one of the rounded steel arms of gate, cutting a small gash. He quickly tried to find the BEuero coin he dropped so as not to hold up the commuters behind him, but they just switched lines and moved on past, sparing only glances. He finally found it under the body of the turnstile, the light glaring off the raised silver motto of the BEU—Europa Unita Sub Maxima Brittania.

On the tram back towards the city, he used a napkin left in his pants from lunch to pad at his bleeding chin. About halfway home, he noticed a girl across the aisle watching his motions. He was looking at the reddening napkin to see if the bleed was slowing, when he caught her eyes surveying his work over the top of a paperback copy of Shogun. She looked to be in her twenties, and had dark and unruly pageboy hair that seemed to be all ends and pieces. Her face was a small, soft oval of tanned skin and her thin lips—the color of coral—were tight in what might have been concern. As he glanced over, she went back to the book—pulling the one side of her longish grey cardigan around the high waist of her denim shorts and blue oxford shirt—assuming an overall demeanor of casual but literate focus. This detente continued until his exit at Plaça de Sants, where Andres started his slow walk towards the Plaça d’Espanya and home. Minutes in noticed the girl from the tram a few yards behind him when he stopped at a crossing.

The walk would take a normal person on a normal day a half an hour, but with Andres’ spells, it could be considerably longer—depending on just how often the legs went. At each point along his walk that Andres fell, he would recover himself and find that the girl from the tram had stopped, always for some unapparent and unrelated reason, only to continue momentarily after he did. Whereas on another day he might have thought less suspect motives for her actions, the absurd and disturbing fiasco this one had become made it impossible.

When he reached his street, Andres stopped and turned sharply; catching the girl’s eyes while she was in mid-stride, which were already focused on him as she followed the line of his steps. When he started to speak, she looked suddenly away, drawn by a din of honking cars on the Avinguda del Paral-lel. He turned his head to see the two motley figures of Fernando and Cristiano weaving between stopped cars with shouting drivers, leveling into a dead sprint when they reached the crossing, which was clear to their path. Panic hit. Andres instantly felt aware—body tensing while his eyes darted about his entire surroundings fixing on spaces and gaps. With primal urge screaming up his spine, he leapt.

Andres moved with a surety that wasn’t his, driven by legs with muscles that weren’t his, choosing a path with vision he didn’t have. He felt like a spring that had been compressed for millennia—coiled and pressed to full with potential energy that was forcing its way out. As he shot past the girl from the tram, she turned with him—they sharing a short moment where each felt the other as distinct from everything else in the world—before he was gone, eating through yards of concrete, step-by-leaping-step.

When Andres cut right onto the Carrer de Tamarit, he saw in his periphery that Fernando and Cristiano were moments behind. He ran down the center of the tree lined street, cars honking and turning off to give way. He cut right again at the Carrer de Calabria, only to see the pair had gained on him. As he rounded the corner a sign stood out: La Queixelada D’en Xavi, the last word sticking to his eye and covering his mind. He stutter stopped his run as his surroundings melted and slowed. He smelled the grass again and felt the heat on his arms, his lungs thickened like damp sponges and water started to run from his mouth. It flowed warm down his chin and mixed with his blood and in that instant his body went rigid, like he was bridging a powerful electric current. Fernando and Cristiano reached him, arms outstretched, and when their hands touched his they were gone.

He fell then, like he had so many times, but the last in that way.

——————-

He woke to the girl from the tram leaned over his face, wide-eyed.

“How do you feel?”

Andres tried to move, and failed on the first attempt, his body still tense from—from what, he didn’t know. He took in and exhaled a deep breath, relaxing himself, and sat up on the second try.

“I’m okay. I think.” She was crouched down at Andres’ side, arm on his shoulder and carrying a look of genuine concern. Andres realized she wasn’t involved with whatever had just happened—she’d just shyly become intrigued by a man on a train. For a moment he felt pleasant satisfaction that she’d been so intrigued by him, before remembering what she’d just seen. “Did you watch—”

“I don’t know what I saw,” She said as she helped him to his feet, “I just know I’ve never seen it before.”

Andres looked at her and tried to form an explanation—for what she’d seen, for his falling, for everything, and nothing came. A breeze came in from the Balaeric Sea, flowing up the streets of the city, and down Carrer de Calabria where they stood under the arms of the trees. The wind a low roar in their ears, and Andres felt a rise inside that became a glorious swell; so he smiled, and she smiled back.