An incident like the murder of Colombian soccer player Andrés Escobar after he had scored an autogol for the U.S. team in the 1994 World Cup reminds us that modern sports differ significantly from “play,” defined by Allen Guttmann as “nonutilitarian physical or intellectual activity pursued for its own sake” (From Ritual 3). Sport is an activity that seems innocent and straightforward on the surface but that often surprises us with its capacity for laying bare serious human problems, fears, and desires. In this paper I analyze the role of sport and physical competition in the development and potential resolution of juvenile identity crises as represented in two short narratives, Mario Vargas Llosa's “Día domingo” (1959) and Julio Cortázar's “Final del juego” (1964).

The scarcity of Spanish American stories in which sport is a primary thematic element might suggest that writers of the region for the most part accept the notion that sports, detached from real life and its more profound problems, do not deserve the attention of serious literature. There are, of course, exceptions, particularly among writers of the Post-Boom or the novísima narrativa who are more inclined than writers of most earlier generations to incorporate in their fiction phenomena of popular culture, among them, sports.¹ If one were to scan anthologies, course syllabi, and Ph.D. reading lists in Spanish American literature, however, s/he would find precious few references to sport. Maybe sport and physical competitions are underdeveloped as literary topics (in Spanish America and elsewhere) because as children too many writers fell, like Umberto Eco, into:

… that category of infants or adolescents who, the moment they kick the ball—assuming that they manage to kick it—promptly send it into their own goal or, at best, pass it to the opponent, unless with stubborn tenacity they send it off the field, beyond hedges and fences, to become lost in a basement or a stream or to plunge among the flavors of the ice-cream cart.

(167)

Broad stereotypes aside, we might simply state that among those scholars and writers who think about sports at all there is a considerable amount of bias against considering sport a meaningful activity. Others go even further, seeing sport as not merely an activity that lacks meaning but as a substitute for meaningful activity. Sociologist Ellis Cashmore summarizes sport as represented in the work of Paul Hoch and other Marxist thinkers as a pursuit that “siphons off potential that might otherwise be put to political use in challenging the capitalist system” (85). Since the texts I analyze below are both short stories, I should note that some writers, many of them also from a Marxist approach, have critiqued short narratives in terms similar to those used to develop Marxist critiques of sport. As late as 1970, for example, Edward Hyams was still maintaining that short story writing was “like painting conventional water colors: it calls for as much skill as ever and it can convey considerable pleasure, but it has nothing to do with the age we live in and cannot say much about our predicament” (91).

Taking into account, therefore, that one body of scholarly work suggests that sport “siphons off potential” and another maintains that the short story is a frivolous form that “has nothing to do with the age we live in,” it is necessary that I develop at least a brief justification for spilling so much ink analyzing sport and physical competition in two short stories. Two primary observations form such justification and provide a point of departure for my study. First, sport functions in both stories as an important developmental tool that allows the young protagonists to arrive at crucial understandings of their positions in specific groups. In both stories, a result of physical competition is the destruction of one self-image within a group and the construction of another and, furthermore, both texts imply that this early adjustment of self-image will have lasting repercussions for how the characters will understand their social roles in later adolescence and as adults. As for the short story form, brevity itself is an important structural factor in the reading I will suggest. In the same way that each pitch of a baseball game or each shot of a soccer match is intensified by both its proximity and its potential cause-effect relationship with the final outcome, in many short stories similar in structure to the two I consider in this study, each detail is intensified by its proximity and potential cause-effect relationship with the ending. On the short story, May writes, “there is no way to deny that the shortness of the form seems inevitably to require some sense of intensity or intensification of structure and emphasis on the end—a requirement that is absent in the novel” (116). Norman Friedman maintains that “a story binds us more closely to the sentence than a novel and less closely to the word than a poem. Since the end is pushed closer to the beginning, each sentence carries a special urgency and calls for a higher level of attention” (27).

The measured time and space of the sporting event (nine innings, four quarters, ten rounds) also suggest a link with the short story, reminding us of the length parameters that have been debated ever since Edgar Allen Poe's famous definition of the short story as a tale in which the artist has “deliberately conceived a certain single effect to be wrought” (123). The debate has continued in the Latin American context through, among others, Horacio Quiroga's mathematical limit of “3.500 palabras, equivalentes a doce o quince páginas de formato común” (“3,500 words, or twelve to fifteen traditionally formatted pages”²; “La crisis” 94) and Julio Cortázar's insistence on the importance of a story's brevity in producing the intensity that resides, he states, “en la eliminación de todas las ideas o situaciones intermedias, de todos los rellenos o fases de transición que la novela permite e incluso exige” (“in the elimination of all intervening ideas or situations, of all fillers or transitional stages that the novel permits or even demands”; “Algunos aspectos” 10).³ Indeed, when Quiroga and Cortázar wrote in metaphor about the effects particular to the well-written short story, the images they chose were almost invariably from the world of sport. Quiroga, for example, saw the well-crafted short story as “una flecha que, cuidadosamente apuntada, parte del arco para ir a dar directamente en el blanco. Cuantas mariposas trataran de posarse sobre ella para adornar su vuelo, no conseguirán sino entorpecerlo” (“an arrow which, carefully aimed, leaves the bow and goes directly to the target. Any butterflies that might try to light on it to decorate its flight, will only throw it off course”; “Ante el tribunal” 137). Cortázar's oft-cited metaphor borrowed, he tells us, from a friend, is that “la novela gana por puntos, mientras que el cuento debe ganar por knockout” (“the novel wins by points, while the story must win by knockout”; “Algunos aspectos” 6). There seems to me, therefore, a set of significant links, as I will detail below, between an event of physical competition and the short story and, more specifically, between the posture taken up by the reader of the two texts I analyze here and that of a spectator at a sporting event.

To begin my analysis of the texts themselves, I go back to the importance of ending, where in these two stories, characters and readers can finally attempt to identify winners and losers. At the end of Vargas Llosa's “Día domingo,” Miguel has defeated his rival, Rubén, in a swimming race and can thus look forward to “un porvenir dorado” (“a golden future”; 83). The most tangible product, then, of the swimming race that makes up the second half of the story is Miguel's profound self-confidence that he “había vencido esa prueba histórica” (“had conquered that historic test”; 83). The weight of this self-confidence after victory and its meaning for the reader/spectator depends heavily on what we know about the competitor from earlier in the story, specifically on Miguel's confusion, fear, and lack of control represented at the beginning. Well before Miguel can engage his rival in athletic competition, we see, as the story opens, his private side. As he walks along with Flora, he struggles to find the courage to declare his love to her: “Aterrado. Sintió que la confusión ascendía por él y petrificaba su lengua” (“Terrified. He felt the confusion flow up through his body and petrify his tongue”; 62). When he does manage to speak it is only with painful self-consciousness: “la piel cedía como jebe y las uñas alcanzaban el hueso. Sin embargo, siguió hablando, dificultosamente, con grandes, intervalos, venciendo el bochornoso tartamudeo …” (“his skin gave way like rubber and his fingernails dug to the bone. But he kept speaking, slowly, with long, pauses, all the time fighting off an embarrassing stutter”; 63). Finally, we learn that Miguel is so nervous about declaring his love to Flora that he has spent the night before crying, sharp contrast to the toughness he will put on when interacting with his group of friends, the pajarracos (“the Ugly Birds”), and when challenging Rubén for Flora's love. For Miguel's nervousness and confusion, victory in the swimming race, then, represents a dramatic remedy.

The chaos at the story's beginning is worth exploring further in order to better examine the steps Miguel takes toward fixing his sense of identity. As I will demonstrate more thoroughly further on, it is clear from the beginning that the boy's daring declaration of love is, in fact, as important—if not more important—in defining his relationship with Rubén and the other pajarracos as it is in defining his relationship with Flora. Similarly, the relationship with Rubén, based on rivalry for a girl then later on drinking and swimming contests, is much more significant in Miguel's process of forming self-confidence than is the relationship with Flora. This relationship between Miguel, Rubén, and Flora reminds us, of course, of René Girard's “triangular desire” in which “[t]he impulse toward the object is ultimately an impulse toward the media-tor” (10). For Girard, the subject's rival for the love object's affection mediates desire, given that the subject's desire is based on imitation of the rival who, by definition, desires the same object. Imitation of the rival is a crucial aspect of the story inasmuch as Miguel's victory in the swimming race allows him to take on as part of his identity that tag which so prominently figures in Rubén's: swimming champion. By beating his rival at the rival's own game, Miguel not only conquers Rubén, but also completes a perfect act of imitation, adopting as his own an important piece of the rival's identity. The subject's hatred or jealousy for the rival is in reality based on subconscious admiration, all of which, for Girard, produces profound tension for the subject (10-14). It is perhaps not too risky, in fact, to attribute some measure of Miguel's confusion on the story's first pages to just this sort of contradictory feeling for Rubén given that his rival is from the start bound up in Miguel's declaration of love for Flora. As he tries to work up courage to tell Flora he loves her, for instance, the young protagonist thinks, “Al llegar a la avenida Pardo. Me atreveré. ¡Ah, Rubén, si supieras cómo te odio!” (“When we get to Pardo Avenue. Then I'll do it. Oh, Rubén, if you only knew how much I hate you!”; 62). Moreover, this initial confusion related to Flora, an entity out of his control (something he can not conquer), is what makes necessary the athletic competition that will follow, an experience which Miguel hopes will bring about a victory that he can not achieve directly with Flora. The opening episode with Flora can be read as an indirect confrontation with Rubén which prepares Miguel for the more direct encounter that will occur later. The two episodes even follow similar sequences, inasmuch as nervous hesitation followed by a daring, hate-motivated decision to leap forward is precisely the same pattern as occurs later in the story when Miguel accepts Rubén's challenge to a swimming race:

—¿Qué te has creído?—balbuceó Miguel—. Maldita sea, ¿qué te has creído?

—Pajarracos—dijo Rubén, abriendo los brazos—, estoy haciendo un desafío.

—Miguel no está en forma ahora—dijo el Escolar—. ¿Por qué no se juegan a Flora a cara o sello?

—Y tú por qué te metes—dijo Miguel—. Acepto. Vamos a la playa.

(73)

“Who do you think you are?,” stammered Miguel. “God damn it, who do you think you are?”

“Pajarracos,” said Rubén stretching out his arms, “I am making a challenge.”

“Miguel's in no shape for that,” said el Escolar. “Why don't you two just flip a coin to decide who gets Flora?”

“Why do you have to butt in?” said Miguel. “I accept. Let's go to the beach.”

Defeating Rubén in athletic competition, therefore, is the key element in the transition represented in the story from Miguel's weakness and hesitancy at the beginning to his arrogance at the end. Flora is apparently the very crux of the matter in the story's introduction but then moves quickly to the margins, a mere mediator in the boys' dynamic with each other.

These two areas of contrast, confusion and nerves at the beginning and arrogant self- confidence at the end, are key in the story's development of the notion of the private male who contends timidly with his own emotions versus the public male who moves confidently among male peers and challenges them to contests of strength or endurance in lieu of facing his own insecurities. Michael Messner makes reference to sports sociologists like Ray Raphael who maintain that:

modern societies lack the masculine initiation rituals which so often characterize tribal societies. As a result, […] today's men are confused about what it means to be a man, and they find in athletics an inadequate but nevertheless extremely salient, substitute for such initiation rituals.

(7)

It would be easy enough to read Miguel's crisis and corresponding need for competition as a natural, almost physiological response to Flora's frustrating coyness:

—Esta tarde no puedo—dijo ella, dulcemente—. Me ha invitado a su casa Martha.

Una correntada cálida, violenta, lo invadió y se sintió herido, atontado, ante esa respuesta que esperaba y que ahora le parecía una crueldad.

(64)

“I can't this afternoon,” she said sweetly. “Martha has invited me over to her house.”

A hot, violent current invaded him and he felt hurt, bewildered by the answer he had expected but that now seemed a horrible cruelty.

After all, his confusion begins to be dispelled as soon as Miguel joins his male friends, the pajarracos, in the bar where he “[r]ecuperó el aplomo de inmediato: frente a los hombres sí sabía comportarse” (“immediately recovered his poise: he knew how to act around men”; 66). Miguel's nerves are eased and his confidence built in this group that enforces a strict and clear code:

Entre los pajarracos no hay secretos.

(67)

Between pajarracos there are no secrets.

Los pajarracos no pelean nunca.

(71)

Pajarracos never fight.

Cuando un pajarraco hace un desafío, todos se meten la lengua al bolsillo.

(73)

When a pajarraco makes a challenge, all the others keep their mouths shut.

Applicable then to Vargas Llosa's story is the observation that Jacque Joset makes in his study of games in Cortázar: “El final del juego se inscribe, pues, desde el principio—incluso desde antes del principio—en las reglas que, se supone, conocen los jugadores” (“The end of the game is already registered from the beginning—even before the beginning—in the rules that all the players supposedly know”; 7). The solution to the chaotic lack of control Miguel feels as the story opens begins when he arrives at the bar with his close male friends and culminates in the athletic competition. In both contexts, strict rules apparently make everything, including winning and losing, clear and restore Miguel's sense of balance and self-worth. Messner and other feminist and pro-feminist writers on sport might tend to critique the story's implication that the young boy's introduction to the adult male world implies strict separation from females and ritual feats of strength and endurance like those that sports provide. For Messner, “sport is not an expression of some biological human need; it is a social institution” (8). With its given and unquestionable rules, sport can provide a zone of comfort in which the athlete escapes direct confrontation with interpersonal issues. One notes, for instance, how Miguel and Rubén decide the issue of Flora. Rubén says, “Te apuesto a ver quién llega primero a la reventazón […] Si ganas […], te prometo que no le caigo a Flora. Y si yo gano tú te vas con la música a otra parte” (“I'll bet you on who gets to the breakwater first […] If you win […], I promise that I won't ask Flora out. And if I win, you'll go sing your song somewhere else”; 72). When Miguel wins the race, therefore, the question of Flora for both boys is definitively settled and Miguel is confident of the aforementioned “porvenir dorado” (“golden future”). The final resolution of the problem is, nevertheless, a false one. Miguel's confidence and supposed bright future with Flora—“Flora lo estaría esperando con los ojos brillantes” (“Flora would be waiting for him with her sparkling eyes”; 83)—are based on his conquest over Rubén. The story gives us no indication at all that Flora will actually accept the boys' arrangement and happily pair off with Miguel. The part of Miguel's identity crisis related to interaction with girls has thus been artificially resolved through sports but, returning for a moment to Girard, the sporting competition becomes truly significant for Miguel's sense of identity primarily as it takes shape amidst other young males.

As has already been discussed, Flora nearly disappears as an issue in the story even before the competitions in the bar and the swimming race cement Rubén solidly as the point of the triangle of desire on which Miguel's attention and obsession is focussed. I would argue, then, that there are two competitive moments represented in “Día domingo,” the first constituting a mere prelude to the second. In the first, the opening scene in which Flora is physically present, Miguel competes against his own nerves, Flora's evasiveness, and Rubén as a rival for Flora's love. Miguel ultimately loses on all three fronts due in large part to the unfair advantage Rubén gains through his sister Martha. Martha has invited Flora to her house where Miguel knows she will leave Flora alone with Rubén, leading Miguel to think, “Era posible competir con un simple adversario, no con Rubén. Recordó los nombres de las muchachas invitadas por Martha, una tarde de domingo. Ya no podía hacer nada, estaba derrotado” (“It was possible to compete with a regular adversary, but not with Rubén. He remembered the names of all the other girls invited over by Martha on Sunday afternoons. Now there was nothing he could do. He was beaten”; 65). On the fourth page of twenty-two, this phrase, with the words “competir” (“to compete”), “adversario” (“adversary”), and “derrotado” (“beaten”), simultaneously signals a false ending of the story (the end of the first competition) and prepares the way for the other competition both by prompting the reader to assign Miguel the underdog role, thus heightening the tension of his conflict with Rubén, and also by using figurative sport language that we will see used more literally when applied to the swimming race.

The relationship between this false ending and its inversion in the story's real ending is structurally significant because, as I have argued, the false ending divides the story into two parts: 1) Miguel's interaction with Flora, the competition he loses and 2) Miguel's interaction with Rubén and the pajarracos, the stage he eventually wins. Immediately after losing in the story's first phase, Miguel consoles himself daydreaming about receiving an honor in front of a large audience:

Vestido de paño azul, una amplia capa flotando a sus espaldas, Miguel desfilaba delante, mirando el horizonte. Levantada la espada, su cabeza describía media esfera en el aire: allí, en el corazón de la tribuna estaba Flora, sonriendo. En una esquina, haraposo, avergonzado, descubría a Rubén: se limitaba a echarle una brevísima ojeada despectiva. Seguía marchando, desaparecía entre vítores.

(65)

In dress blues, a wide cape floating from his shoulders, Miguel marched forward, fixated on the horizon. He turned his head toward one side: there, in the middle of the reviewing stand, was Flora, smiling. Back in a corner, in rags, with an embarrassed look, was Rubén: Miguel paused only long enough to give him a quick contemptuous glance, then marched on, disappearing among the cheers.

This passage is also directly linked to the end of the story where winning the race apparently makes real this dream image that, as the narrator tells us, always saves Miguel when he suffers a defeat or a frustration (65). To use the common sport term, then, Miguel begins his comeback immediately following defeat, first by imagining himself a triumphant hero, then by seeking motivation to become one. The passage that follows the one above is rich with language that demonstrates how consequential the competition to follow will be for correcting Miguel's damaged sense of self and for establishing a new identity. The heroic image of victory first disappears “como el vaho de un espejo que se frota” (“like vapor wiped from a mirror”; 65). Miguel must wipe away the vapor of the fantasy image in order to see himself clearly and understand his current situation, but before looking directly into the mirror he cowers in bed and sees another mental image in which “los ojos de Rubén se torcían para mirarlo burlonamente mientras su boca avanzaba hacia Flora.” (“Rubén's eyes turned to taunt him as his mouth moved toward Flora.”) Miguel then leaps out of bed and, significantly, confronts himself before going to challenge Rubén: “El espejo del armario le mostró un rostro ojeroso, lívido. «No la verá, decidió. No me hará esto, no permitiré que haga esta perrada.»” (“The closet mirror showed him an angered face with dark circles under the eyes. ‘He will not see her,’ he decided. ‘He can't do this to me. I won't let him get away with his dirty trick”; 66). In this passage, all three figures of the Girardian triangle mentioned above appear in rapid succession. First Rubén and Flora in the unbearable kiss, then Miguel.

All of this is followed, of course, by Miguel's Girardian move toward the rival and the corresponding marginalization of Flora. The nature of this particular athletic competition allows, however, a bond between rivals that takes us beyond the terms of Girard's discussion and into a realm in which we might be better informed by Eve Kosofky Sedgwick's work on desire between men in British literature. I am not proposing that we must necessarily read latent homosexuality into Miguel and Rubén's race, only that the outward physical signs associated with athletic competition are, especially in this case, ambiguous enough that we should consider a wide gamut of the race narration's suggestive possibilities before stating any conclusions on sports as a tool in Miguel's identity search. For more reasons than one it is noteworthy that the boys race in the nude. First, their nudity is an important component in developing the sexual undertones of a sport that is already somewhat charged with eroticism.⁴ We note, for example, that in the passage which describes the boys as they have just disrobed for the race, the subject of the verb, “descendieron” (“they went down”), is ambiguous since grammatically its subject could be the boys or the veins on Miguel's stomach: “Cuando estuvieron desnudos. Tobías bromeó acerca de las venas azules que escalaban el vientre liso de Miguel. Descendieron.” (“When they were naked. Tobías joked about the blue veins going up Miguel's smooth torso. They went down”; 76). Juxtaposed with the verb “escalaban” (“they went up”), whose subject is “las venas” (“the veins”) and dangling for just a second before the reference to stairs in the following sentence makes it more probable that the boys are to be understood as its subject, the verb “descendieron” invites the reader to focus downward along the veins to the area just below Miguel's stomach. Written as a one-word sentence between two grammatically and logically feasible subjects, therefore, “descendieron” contains the potential for bringing the reader's attention momentarily to Miguel's genitals without ever mentioning them by name. The two boys are, thus, confronting each other with their athletic bodies in an episode that also makes very much present their sexual bodies.

The suggestiveness of the episode continues on the viscous wood of the stairs “lamida incesantemente por el agua desde hacía meses, […] resbaladiza y muy suave” (“incessantly licked by the water for months, […] slippery and very soft”) where Miguel feels a nearly orgasmic “estremecimiento que subía desde la planta de sus pies al cerebro” (“shuddering that traveled from the soles of his feet to his brain”); (76). Furthermore, the space in which the competition is carried out is private, as fog and darkness separate the two competitors from the pajarracos on the beach. While plainly contributing to the sexual overtones as well, the isolation of the space also functions to permit the boys to develop their own rules that are independent from those of the social group. Miguel's winning and Rubén's losing are, in fact, not so much determined by the standards of the game agreed upon by the group but rather by some innovative adjustments that the boys make after Rubén suffers cramps and Miguel saves him from drowning. That is, Rubén has arrived first to the breakwater but Miguel hears Rubén's screams and pulls him to safety all the time caressing the knot in his stomach (another somewhat suggestive form of contact the boys might not permit themselves under normal circumstances). Independent of the group that would likely enforce a stricter interpretation of the rules, Rubén agrees to concede victory to Miguel and Miguel agrees not to tell the group that Rubén screamed helplessly. This agreement is for my analysis of sports and identity a significant feature of the story since it brings us once again to the notion of the bond with the rival and the importance of the rival in the subject's emerging sense both of victory and of self. In his famous study on game theory, Anatol Rapaport writes,

It seems that in a fight, the opponent is mainly a nuisance. He should not be there, but somehow he is. He must be eliminated, made to disappear, or cut down in size or importance. The object of a fight is to harm, destroy, subdue, or drive away the opponent.

Not so in a game. In a game, the opponent is essential. […] In a way, therefore, the opponents in the game co-operate.

(9)

Janet Lever in Soccer Madness takes Rapaport's notion one step further when she writes that “[u]nlike rivals in the real world, who have opposing political, economic, or social aims, sport competitors must be protected, not persuaded or eliminated. In fact, a strong opponent is more valued than a weak one” (4). Lever's statement is instructive for my reading of “Día domingo” inasmuch as, although I am not prepared to argue that Miguel saves Rubén solely because he is a sports rival, it does seem significant that the eventual outcome of the race for Miguel, his “futuro dorado” depends in large measure on Rubén's survival. Victory means little in the absence of the vanquished. In other words, if Rubén drowns, Miguel is not so much the winner of a struggle and consequently “un hombre verdadero” (“a real man”) as he is simply a survivor of a stupid dare. When Miguel preserves his rival at the end of the story, he demonstrates Rapaport's concept of competitive cooperation but, even more importantly, he preserves his victory and thus preserves his new sense of self. It seems unlikely that he would have been able to preserve either in a more institutionalized sport setting where the presence of spectators would have constituted a difficult obstacle against the special type of bond between rivals suggested by the narrative.

Although I will develop much more briefly my commentary on identity in “Final del juego,” Cortázar's story both serves to confirm a number of the observations I have made about “Día domingo” and also provides some notable points of contrast that merit consideration. It might be argued that the girls' game in which they perform “estatuas y actitudes” (“statues and poses”) for the passengers of passing trains, is not a sport at all. I would argue, however, that the physical challenge of the game, especially for Leticia, makes it decidedly athletic and that the formalized rules make it more similar to the institutionalized games we unproblematically call sport than to informal play. In “Final del juego” we once again find a group of youngsters for whom a competition functions to address difficult issues of identity. Like the swimming race, the girls' game takes place in a space characterized by 1) its separation from spaces associated with everyday life and 2) its special set of rules that dictates behaviors. Compare, for example, the following passages that describe entrance into the respective spaces of competition in the two stories:

Abríamos despacio la puerta blanca, y al cerrarla otra vez era como un viento, una libertad que nos tomaba de las manos, de todo el cuerpo y nos lanzaba hacia adelante. Entonces corríamos buscando impulso para trepar de un envión al breve talud del ferrocarril, y encaramadas sobre el mundo contemplábamos silenciosas nuestro reino.

(“Final del juego” 170)

We slowly opened the white door, and upon closing it once again we felt something like a wind, a freedom that took us by the hand, that grabbed our entire bodies and threw us forward. Then we ran, getting enough of a head start to leap up on top of the railroad slope. From there, elevated above the world, we silently contemplated our kingdom.

Corrían contra el viento y la delgada bruma que subía desde la playa, sumidos en un emocionante torbellino; por sus oídos, su boca y sus narices penetraba el aire a sus pulmones y una sensación de alivio y desintoxicación se expandía por su cuerpo a medida que el declive se acentuaba y en un momento sus pies no obedecían ya sino a una fuerza misteriosa que provenía de lo más profundo de la tierra.

(“Día domingo” 74)

They ran against the wind and the thin mist than rose from the beach, engulfed in a frenetic whirlwind; through their ears, their mouths, and their noses the air penetrated their lungs and a feeling of ease and cleansing spread through their bodies as the slope became steeper and at a certain point their feet obeyed nothing more than a mysterious force that sprung from deep in the ground.

Clearly both competitions develop in spaces that are marked by an air of magic, alternative spaces that provide an environment for confronting identity issues difficult to face in other places. Furthermore, each space is physically separated from everyday life, in “Final del juego” by the white door, and in “Día domingo” by the stairs and the slope to the beach. Each group confronts its crisis in a space different from that in which the real problems reside, the girls by closing the white door and the boys by making what we could easily read as an archetypal descent to the ocean.

Not only the competitions' spaces but also their rules work to allow types of interaction that would be difficult in other contexts. In “Día domingo”, as discussed previously, the special rules of the swimming race allow contact, both physical and emotional, that would be problematic elsewhere. The difficult and chaotic conditions under which the boys race also work in Miguel's favor by neutralizing the apparent athletic advantage Rubén would enjoy in a more controlled institutionalized sporting environment. The same sort of equalizing effect exists in the game the girls' play. Leticia, who suffers an unnamed condition that severely restricts her movements is as capable as the other girls of performing the statues and attitudes: “Leticia era muy buena como estatua, pobre criatura. La parálisis no se notaba estando quieta, y ella era capaz de gestos de una enorme nobleza” (“Leticia was a very good statue, poor thing. Her paralysis wasn't noticeable when she stood still, and she was capable of exceedingly noble gestures”) and at another moment: “Leticia estuvo magnífica, no se le movía ni un dedo cuando llegó el tren. Como no podía girar la cabeza la echaba para atrás, juntando los brazos al cuerpo casi como si le faltaran” (“Leticia was magnificent. She didn't move even one finger when the train passed. Since she couldn't turn her head, she threw it back, holding her arms so tight to herself that they were almost invisible”; 174).

The literal game, then, is an alternative version of the other game played among the members of the family: “en una casa donde hay alguien con algún defecto físico y mucho orgullo, todos juegan a ignorarlo empezando por el enfermo” (“in a house where someone has a physical disability and a lot of pride, everyone pretends not to recognize the defect, especially the one who is disabled”; 176). In the house, everyone pretends Leticia is not differently abled but secretly recognizes that she is; within the rules of the game played by the train tracks, she has no less ability than the others. The game, therefore, is a space and a moment in which Leticia's identity is unmarked. The girls, ironically, play the game in order not to have to play the game of ignoring Leticia's difference. Like the race in “Día domingo,” then, the game is, to a certain extent, a substitution for a potentially more painful but perhaps more durable confrontation with real interpersonal issues, in this case, the problems related to Leticia's marked identity as the disabled member of the family. As the story's title suggests, however, the game can not go on forever. When Ariel, a passenger on the train, starts to critique the statues and attitudes on pieces of paper he drops as the train passes, he introduces competition into the game and, simultaneously, takes the first toward ending the game altogether. Leticia's paralysis is, of course, only negated through the game when the spectators pass by too quickly to see her in motion. Later, when Ariel drops a note to tell the girls that he intends to get off the train to meet them, all three girls immediately understand that the game is over.

At least for the fictional worlds represented in these two stories, the Marxist sport sociologists are only partially correct. Sport does sometimes occur in place of another activity that might be rationally more meaningful or practical. If, for example, Miguel's problem is timidity with girls, he would do better to seek genuine interaction with girls rather than challenging the young boys who are his rivals for their attention. Similarly, Leticia, Holanda and the narrator of “Final del juego” might better confront their discomforts in the context where they suffer them rather than inventing a make-believe world for playing a game that seeks to erase the discomforts. The stories show us, however, that sport even as substitute for one form of meaningful activity itself contains meaning with serious implications for its participants. As Miguel saves Rubén the two call each other “hermanito” (“brother”; 81) and Rubén reminds Miguel, “hemos sido siempre amigos” (“we have always been friends”; 83). In Cortázar's story, on the last day of the game, Holanda and the narrator admire Leticia's last statue as “la estatua más regia que había hecho nunca” (“the most wonderful statue she had ever performed”; 182) and later compassionately help her pick up her props. The nature of sport is that multiple competitors struggle for an objective that only one can obtain, but since a winner is nothing without a loser and vice-versa, the sport activity creates a group in which each subject's identity depends heavily on that identity assigned to the other. Whatever resentments or hatred there may be between competitors, therefore, there is always also an undeniable and inescapable bond. This is the bond that in “Final del juego” is broken when Ariel breaks the rules for spectators and that in “Día domingo” is strengthened when Rubén and Miguel arrange their deal. As much as we may question the real value of the race for Miguel's relationship with Flora, the athletic bond with Rubén changes completely Miguel's feeling of self. In an optimistic reading of “Final del juego,” the girls' abandonment of the game played by the tracks signals that they will now be able to abandon the other game of pretending to ignore Leticia's infirmity. That sort of speculation notwithstanding, it is clear at the story's end that Leticia's competitive relationship with her two rivals for Ariel's admiration has forced her to take an enormous step toward situating her physical difference among the other components of her identity. Thus, heavily marked in both stories as occupying a space and time cut off from daily life, sport ironically acts as a vehicle for radical change in the respective protagonists' emerging sense of self.

Notes

1. Antonio Skármeta, Osvaldo Soriano, and Manuel Puig are among the best examples. In Skármeta's Desnudo en el tejado (1969), Soñé que la nieve ardía (1984), and Match Ball (1989), Soriano's Cuentos de los años felices (1993), and Puig's Sangre de amor correspondido (1982) sport is a primary thematic element.

2. For further examples, see May 120.

3. All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.

4. I refer the reader to Guttman's discussion of a “literary as well as psychoanalytic precedence for this aquatic eroticism” and to his examples drawn from, among others, Walt Whitman, Kate Chopin, and D. H. Lawrence (Erotic 106).

Works Cited

Cashmore, Ellis. Making Sense of Sports. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1996.

Cortázar, Julio. “Algunos aspectos del cuento.” Casa de las Américas. 15 (1962): 3-14.

———. “Final del juego.” Final del juego. 1964. Madrid: Alfaguara, 1982. 169-182.

Eco, Umberto. “The World Cup and Its Pomps.” Travels in Hyperreality. Trans. William Weaver. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986. 167-172.

Friedman, Norman. “Recent Short Story Theories.” Short Story Theory at a Crossroads. Eds. Susan Lohafer and Jo Ellyn Clarey. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1989.

Girard, René. Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure. Trans. Yvonne Freccero. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins P, 1965.

Guttman, Allen. The Erotic in Sports. New York: Columbia UP, 1996.

———. From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports. New York: Columbia UP, 1978.

Hyams, Edward. “England.” The Kenyon Review 32 (1970): 89-95.

Joset, Jacques. “Finales de ‘Final del juego.’” Coloquio internacional: Lolúdico y los fantástico en la obra de Cortázar. Centre de recherches Latino-americaines, Université de Poitiers. Madrid: Fundamentos, 1985, 7-19.

Lever, Janet. Soccer Madness. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983.

May, Charles E. The Short Story: The Reality of Artifice. New York: Twayne, 1995.

Messner, Michael A. Power at Play: Sports and the Problem of Masculinity. Boston: Beacon P, 1992.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “Nathaniel Hawthorne.” Selections from Poe's Literary Criticism. Ed. John Brooks Moore. New York: F.S. Crofts, 1926. 111-125.

Puig, Manuel. Sangre de amor correspondido. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1982.

Quiroga, Horacio. “Ante el tribunal.” Sobre literatura: Obras completas de Horacio Quiroga. Ed. Roberto Ibáñez. Montevideo: Arca, 1970. 135-138.

———. “La crisis del cuento nacional.” Sobre literatura: Obras completas de Horacio Quiroga. Ed. Roberto Ibáñez. Montevideo: Arca, 1970. 92-96.

Raphael, Ray. The Men from the Boys: Rites of Passage in Male America. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1988.

Skármeta, Antonio. Desnudo en el tejado. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1969.

———. Match Ball. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1989.

———. Soñé que la nieve ardía. Barcelona: Plaza & Janes, 1985.

Soriano, Osvaldo. Cuentos de los años felices. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1993.

Vargas Llosa, Mario. “Día domingo.” Los jefes. Los cachorros. Alianza: Madrid, 1991. 62-83.