Unai Elorriaga: Plants Don't Drink Coffee

Once inside, the sixty-seven started fixing the rugby field. The lines and markings they’d left behind on their previous visit were still there on the grass; all but a couple of them. The golf course was hardly ever used. All that grass.

They put the goalposts up first. Gur made the holes and the players lifted the railroad tracks and shoved them into the holes, perpendicular.

Afterwards they marked the lines. But they didn’t paint them; that was too much work to complete in half an hour. Gur had an idea to make it easier: they nailed firefighter tape to the grass. Three of Gur’s cousins were firefighters in Arbidas. And after marking the lines for the entire rugby field there were still three kilometers of tape left, which goes to show how excessive Gur’s cousins were. The firefighter tape was white, red, and blue and the word “DANGER” was written all over it in capital letters.

The rugby field was ready, nothing else was needed. The players started warming up and it was ten to twelve. Spectators started climbing up and down the ladders, and more than three hundred people went up and down the ladders on both sides of the stone wall, and there were more than three hundred people surrounding the rugby field. And it wasn’t too bad a scene to watch from a helicopter, all those people walking up and down ladders, and so many people walking around the golf course. And someone said This can’t possibly be completely legal, and someone else said I’d love to buy all this grass, and someone else said What for? And the one who’d said he wanted to buy the grass was a doctor from Lanta, from the health center.

The match started at twelve o’clock. But in minute 8 of the match two golfers appeared in a corner of the golf course, emerging amidst the trees. They were surprised to see so many people, particularly on a golf course. They got all worked up and called the guard.

The golf course guard arrived in minute 23 of the match, but he didn’t know what he could do all on his own against so many people. He didn’t know how to get so many people off of the golf course. And fear sent a tingle down his spine, and he called the golf course director, told him to come please, to the fifteenth hole.

The guard’s shoes were special for walking on golf courses; they didn’t squash the grass, the guard’s shoes.

The golf course director arrived in the fifteenth hole in minute 37 of the match, with three minutes to go before the end of the first half. And when he realized what was happening he got really angry, and furious, and lost his cool. And he asked the guard What is this, Jeremias, and the guard said I really don’t know, Sir, and the director said How did all these people get in, and the guard said I really don’t know, Sir, and the director said What have you been watching then, Jeremias, and Jeremias said Sir, I, and Jeremias was shaking. And the golf course director got more furious by the minute, and he said How could this happen and he said Shameful and he said In this day and age. And he told Jeremias to call the police. And Jeremias said Yes, Don Diego. And Don Diego’s shoes were not special for walking on golf courses and the grass was getting a bit squashed.

In the meantime the first half of the match ended. Wales was winning by a couple of points, but a small Irish player had done an amazing thing in the last minute and he made a try. A spectator said, Which one is bigger, Wales or Ireland? And another one said Ireland, and the first one to speak said Wales can’t win then. The one who said that sold coal in Arbidas for many years. He brought the coal in from Newcastle.

And because the match was interrupted for the interval, the golf course director, without realizing that it was no more than a break in the action, thought that things had stopped thanks to him, that these barbarians had seen the light of reason and listened to him. And he felt very proud. And he started talking to people, and said he was very happy they had stopped the match and they were clearly sensible people and had known to bring things to an amicable end. And he said he wouldn’t press charges against anyone if everybody left the golf course in ten minutes. And he said all that very loudly but in a very refined tone. And a spectator said Who is he? And someone else said Who? And the first one said The guy shouting over there, and someone else said Just some poor devil. And the golf course director, Don Diego, got very furious seven minutes later, because the teams started playing again. The second half.

The police arrived in minute 17 of the second half. But they only sent two from the station, two policemen. And the two of them had to stop the match and get three hundred spectators out of the golf course. And they thought it was too much for them, and they thought they would need one hundred policemen, at least, to do that job. But afterwards they thought that authority commands respect, here as much as in Dublin. And the two policemen walked into the rugby field with their chests puffed up and their arms in the air, telling everyone to stop the match because the whole thing was illegal and authority always commands respect.

But the Irish were on the attack right then, and had a chance to even the score. So they though it was very distasteful of those two creatures to enter the rugby field and attempt to stop the match, just as they were about to even the score with the Welsh. And two Irish players, number twelve and number fifteen, started running towards the policemen. And they tackled both policemen to the ground. And took them off the field. And the spectators went wild and gave a huge round of applause. And one of the policemen lost consciousness; not because of the fall, but because of the fright. He came around 23 seconds later, anyway. And the other one was shocked, but called the station to ask for more men to be sent to the golf course, to the fifteenth hole. And he gave the station a brief report of what was happening in the golf course. And it was a very chaotic report, and full of frustrated sighs.

And when there were two minutes left until the end of the match, in minute 38, twenty more policemen arrived in the golf course. And they decided they needed to surround the golf course to try to control the crowd. But the rugby match ended as they were beginning to surround the golf course. Wales won 27 to 25. And people cheered the players massively. And the players cheered the people back. And they even cheered the police. And afterwards the players mingled with the crowd, and there were hugs and back slaps and high fives, and they all headed to the stone wall together, players and spectators, and they all left the golf course together. And the police didn’t know what to do; they didn’t know who to arrest or who to let go, because they couldn’t arrest more than three hundred people. Almost four hundred. And some of the policemen started removing the goalposts, so that it looked like they were doing something. And only twenty-two policemen, the golf course director, Don Diego, the two golfers, and Jeremias the guard were left on the golf course. And Jeremias said We kicked them out in the end.

And the Irish and Welsh teams went to the beach in Landa with most of the spectators instead of going to their rooms. And they sang all the way there, mostly dirty songs. And at the beach they swam for two and a half hours. And they sang while in the sea too, mostly the Irish did, and mostly dirty songs. And some of them swam with their underpants on, and some didn’t. And one of the Irish guys, when he woke up the next day in Urtiko’s inn, thought he was in Limerick at his aunt Florence’s house.

Tomas. The last couplet

We finally caught it today. This morning, next to the soccer fields, at the ponds. The blue dragonfly. We caught the blue dragonfly at the ponds today. And now it’s nighttime and I’m the most intelligent person in the world, like a doctor. Because we caught the blue dragonfly. Because that’s what happens when you catch the blue dragonfly, Iñes told me. But it doesn’t happen immediately. You don’t become the most intelligent person in the world right after you catch the blue dragonfly. It’s not like that. Because lots of things happened today, in the morning and in the afternoon, because I went to the movies with Ismael and I came home and then I went to church as well, and with Aunt Martina for a walk. And now it’s nighttime and I’m the most intelligent person in the world, now I am, not in the morning when we caught the dragonfly. Now. And the dragonfly is in a glass jar now, I have it between my knees.