“We saw you play in the semifinal, Amat. You’ve got heart. When you and the other juniors make it to the A-team, we can build something really good around here again. A real Beartown team made up of real Beartown guys. You get it? You, Benji, Filip, Lyt. Kevin.”

Amat knows that the expression on his face is being scrutinized by the men in the car when Kevin’s name is mentioned. That this was the whole reason why they stopped. His chin moves quickly up and down, their eyes meet very briefly. They know that he understands.

They wish him a pleasant walk and pull away.

*

Peter is sitting in his office staring at a black computer screen. He’s thinking about “the right sort of guy.” He’s said those words hundreds of times in hundreds of different rooms, and hundreds of men have nodded in agreement, even though he is certain that no one can explain exactly what they mean. It’s a pointless term to use in hockey, because it suggests that who you are off the ice says something about who you are on it. And that’s a difficult thing to acknowledge. Because if you love hockey, if you love anything, really, you’d really prefer it to exist inside a bubble, unaffected by anything happening outside. You want there to be one place, one single place, which will always be exactly the same, no matter how much the world outside might change.

That’s why Peter likes to say: “Hockey and politics don’t belong together.” When he said that during an argument with Kira a few years ago, his wife snorted and said: “No? What do you think gets rinks built, if not politics? Do you think it’s only people who like hockey who pay taxes, then?”

A few years ago there was an incident at one of the A-team’s away games. A Beartown player lost his temper and brought his stick down on the head of an opponent, a promising twenty-year-old. He was ejected for the rest of the game, but escaped a longer suspension. When he left the ice and was on his way to the locker room, he was confronted by two men: the assistant coach of the other team and one of their sponsors. An argument and a clumsy fight ensued. The player hit the coach in the face with his glove, and the sponsor pulled the player’s helmet off and tried to headbutt him, before the player smashed his stick into the sponsor’s knee and knocked him to the floor. No one suffered any serious injury, but the player was reported to the police and was fined several days’ wages. As for the player who got hit in the head while on the ice during the game, the resulting concussion and neck injury ended his career.

Peter remembers the incident because Kira brought it up again and again for the rest of the season. “So when someone gets into a fight three yards from the ice, it’s okay to report them to the police. But a minute and a half earlier when the same man hits a twenty-year-old over the head with a stick in the middle of a match, he just has to go and sit and feel embarrassed for a little while?”

Peter couldn’t win against her, because he didn’t want to say what he really felt: that he didn’t think what had happened in the players’ tunnel should have been reported to the police either. Not because he liked violence, and not because he was in any way trying to defend what the player had done, but because he wanted hockey to solve hockey’s problems. Inside the bubble.

He’s always felt that it’s impossible to explain that to anyone who doesn’t love hockey. Now he’s no longer sure he can even convince himself. And he doesn’t know what that says about him.

*

Hypocrisy is a damn hard thing to admit.

*

The club’s president wipes his hands on his pants and feels the sweat trickling down the base of his spine. He’s spent all day talking on the phone, trying to put this off as long as possible, but he no longer has a choice. The threats of withdrawn sponsors’ money and resigned memberships have grown too strong, and everyone is asking the same thing: “Whose side are you really on?”

As if a hockey club is supposed to choose a side. The president is proud to represent a popular movement that is independent of ideologies, religions, and other faiths. He doesn’t believe in God, but he does believe in hockey, and he believes in the unifying strength of a hockey club precisely because it only defines itself as a hockey club. The stands are unique—they contain rich and poor alike, high and low, right and left—and how many places like that does society have left? How many troublesome guys has hockey kept away from addiction and prison? How much money does hockey save society? How come everything bad that happens is “hockey’s problem,” but everything good is thanks to something else? It drives the president mad, that people don’t appreciate how much work goes on behind the scenes. You need more diplomacy here than in the headquarters of the United Nations.

The phone rings again. Again. Again. In the end he stands up and goes out into the hallway, where he tries to breathe normally in spite of the pressure in his chest. Then he goes and stands in the doorway to Peter’s office and says quietly:

“Maybe you should go home, Peter. Until this blows over.”

Peter sits on his chair without looking at him. He’s already packed his things away in boxes. Hasn’t even switched his computer on. He’s just been waiting.

“Is that what you think, or are you just scared about what other people think?”

The president frowns.

“For God’s sake, Peter, you know perfectly well that I think this whole . . . situation . . . is terrible! Just terrible! What . . . What . . . What your daughter is going through is . . .”

Peter stands up.

“Maya. You can say her name. You come to her birthday party every year. You taught her to ride a bike, do you remember? Right here, in front of the rink.”

“I’m just trying . . . Please, Peter . . . the board is just trying to handle this . . . responsibly.”

Peter’s eyebrows quiver; that’s the only physical sign of the unbearable firestorm raging inside him.

“Responsibly? Let me guess. The board would rather we had dealt with this ‘internally.’ That we hadn’t involved the police and the media, and just ‘looked each other in the eye and talked about it.’ Is that more or less what people have been telling you over the phone today? It was RAPE! How do you deal with that INTERNALLY!?”

When Peter picks up his boxes and walks out into the hallway, the president gets out of the way, then clears his throat unhappily and says:

“It’s her word against his, Peter. We have to think of the team first. You of all people ought to understand that. The club can’t take a position on this.”

Peter doesn’t turn around when he replies:

“The club has taken a position. It just did.”

He dumps his boxes in the back of his car, but leaves it in the parking lot. He walks slowly through the town without knowing where he’s going.