We Begin Our Ascent. Joe Reed Mungo

conversation. I read more widely, picked up books and newspapers and worked through them wondering how I would discuss them with Liz. It was hard to learn the dynamics of her group, the popular books they didn’t like, the unpopular ones they did. When I got a handle on this, Liz met my competence with suspicion, however. “That’s what Peter would say,” she told me, when I described the drawbacks of a popular literary novel. She wanted something different from me. Sometimes one of her friends would say something high-flown and impenetrable and she’d laugh and look at me for a reaction, as if sure that it should naturally repulse me. I was awed by her friends though, by the breadth of what they knew, how they could talk.

      “They are impressive, at first,” she said. “They want to give you that sense. They think they can do anything, but none of them do.”

      “No?”

      “Or they would be actually doing it,” she said. She nodded at me, as if to prove her point, as if I embodied this doing.

      * *

      When I return to the room I am sharing with Tsutomo, he is already in his bed, facing the wall, apparently asleep, his side moving with the rhythm of his breathing. The room is illuminated only by light coming from the half-open bathroom door.

      I quietly try to prepare for the night, stumbling in the dimness. When I make it into bed, I take time to think. I do not intend to sleep for these moments but merely to feel my body, to have some sense of my aches and pains. I am not always hopeful, but in this time I try to be. There are other men recovering in other rooms all over the city, thinking as I now am that tomorrow will be a better day than the one just past. The reality for most of us is that this will not be the case, and yet we will be on the start line tomorrow, and so we must disregard this fact. I stare at the ceiling. I try to think of what has gone well since I finished the day’s stage, of the ways in which I feel prepared. I look up, visualizing these points of strength, trying to draw them into a constellation.

       Chapter 3

      The new day is sheathed in cloud. The light outside is dim, but the air is warm. This muted weather suits the care with which we leave the hotel. We load our bags onto the bus slowly and silently.

      The day’s stage will take us out of the mountains. It begins tending lightly downhill and then runs flat across the plains. None of the other team leaders will be able to make time against the fierce efficiency of the peloton in such circumstances, and so the game is to keep Fabrice within the mass of riders, trying to work against the contingencies—the falls, punctures, and miscommunications—which could see him caught out.

      On the drive to the start, Rafael stands in the aisle and speaks, working hard for our attention. He does something with eye contact. There are rules, and he is as brazen in the breaking of these as any New Ager: holding gazes longer than should be bearable, really staring into us. “Be ready,” he says. He indicates Fabrice. “Keep him with the other leaders. Be ready every moment.” As he is finishing up, he looks at Johan. “Other than Sebastian,” Rafael says, “we won’t dedicate anyone else to lead you out in the sprint. Fabrice’s place is too precarious. Do what you can. Follow one of the sprint teams’ lead-outs. Get in their space.”

      Johan nods reluctantly.

      * *

      Shinichi is once more waiting when we disembark at the start line. He waves a Japanese flag, part-bundled in his fist, when Tsutomo walks past. “Good luck,” he says to me. I nod appreciatively but choose not to stop.

      We wear running shoes when not in our cycling cleats: brilliantly colored, with reflective piping and technical flourishes rendered in different polymers. Provided by a sponsor, they’re clumpy and incongruous beneath our tight shorts and shaven legs. We have no need for them, we who do not run or walk any great distance. Like the sneakers of the elderly, of young children, of Americans holidaying abroad, they accentuate our immobility. We cannot run, most of us. Our hamstrings have tightened to the minimal extension cycling requires. Our backs are used to being bent.

      I have pictured my inflexibility when B will be bigger, when he will play in our back garden and seek companions in this play: the awkward, loping stride, the hunched way in which I will kick a ball.

      Today’s stage begins on cobbled streets, and our rubber soles squeak across the polished bellies of the cobblestones as we congregate outside the bus. The mechanics do final checks on our bikes, working in order. Fabrice’s is looked over first, my own fifth. The Butcher comes by, pressed into another role: exhorting us to drink a concoction of electrolytes and syrup. Stationary cycle-trainers are assembled and we’re summoned one by one to begin warming up. Fabrice and Tsutomo stamp into their cycling shoes and start to pedal. The increasing fluidity of their movements, and the rising zip of the electromagnetic resistance wheels, makes me think of something taking off.

      Later, as I stand by the bus inventorying my kit, Fabrice wheels over on his bike. “Two men are in a bar watching the Tour,” he says.

      “Right.”

      “It’s raining, and the riders are going up a mountain.” Fabrice rubs at his hair and smiles. “Really filthy weather.”

      “I know the kind,” I say.

      “‘Why do they do that?’ says the first man. He does not understand. He shakes his head. ‘The winner gets half a million euros,’ says the second man.” Fabrice waits. Watches me with a faint smile. “ ‘I know that,’ says the first man, ‘but why do the others do it?’ ”

      I laugh. “It’s good,” I say.

      “Yes,” he says, chuckling. “It has truth in it.”

      “Yes.”

      He winks. “Luckily I am the winner.”

      Rafael has been chatting with the directeur of the German banking team, over by their bus. He turns, laughing, finishing his own joke. He points at his colleague, smiles. “Be good,” he says. He walks toward Fabrice and me. “Steady,” he says. “No fuck-ups today.” He stands over the front wheel of Fabrice’s bike, slaps Fabrice’s cheek playfully. Rafael has more faith in his team leader than anyone. Rafael discovered Fabrice, so the story goes, on a holiday to Corsica, coming across a skinny twelve-year-old coaxing a rusty mountain bike up a pass as he himself drove to a hunting lodge. He had his mentor, an ancient Italian, visit Fabrice to examine the boy and feel his legs. The mentor sucked his dentures, it is said, and declared Fabrice a future great. On Fabrice rests not just Rafael’s hopes for the Tour, but the validity of Rafael’s judgment and an uncharacteristic sentimentality: his belief in a lineage of talent conferred upon small boys in remote towns, as sure and unpredictable as the rebirth of the Lama.

      Riders are making their way toward the start now. Fabrice clicks into his pedals, rolls off toward the line with a little push of encouragement from Rafael. I put on my glasses. I climb onto my bike, and ride off in pursuit of Fabrice, offering my apologies as I cut through the crowds, past vehicles. I stop behind the line among the tight press of other racers. I smell sunscreen, saddle ointment, washing powder. Riders ratchet closed cycling shoes, do up helmet straps, adjust the placement of cycle computers.

      It is the period before the starting horn goes when to be still is harder than anything. We shift and fidget: energy spilling over into action, like water from a brimful glass.

      * *

      When Liz and I had been together for a couple of months, she brought her mother and stepfather to watch a race of mine. It was an evening racing series in London: laps of a small urban circuit on the streets of Bermondsey. Sebastian and I did it without team support. It was nothing, a training session, but I felt as I rode a desire to do well. It was dusk, and there had been rain in the day. The air smelled of wet concrete, and the streets were slick. I pushed hard around the last laps. There were semipros who wanted the victory, for whom beating Sebastian or me would have been a great coup, and they were testing us, taking risks. On the penultimate corner, I went into the bend in first place yet skidded over