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“When I go see him I’m going to ask him to be your godfather.”
    Camilo still insisted that we teach him about soccer, and sometimes we practiced penalty kicks in the street. But my father would get fed up; he said that Camilo didn’t concentrate, that his interest wasn’t serious. Still, one weekend the three of us went to the Santa Laura Stadium to watch a double-header. First it was Universidad de Chile against Concepción. Camilo, to my father’s and my annoyance, had decided to root for the U, which had been his father’s team, although of course he didn’t even know the players’ names. He liked the way that everyone in the stadium criticized and shouted at the players, but was surprised to see thatthey got angry with the ref. He decided to come to his defense, and although at first people didn’t take it well, it was truly funny to hear Camilo, every time the ref called a foul or carded a player, stand up and yell, “Very well done, sir! Excellent decision!”
    Camilo kept cheering on the referee during the next match, which was between Colo-Colo and Naval, I think. I joined him for a while, even though watching Colo-Colo was to me a very serious matter. I had grown up admiring Chino Hisis, Pillo Vera, Carlos Caszely, Horacio Simaldone, and, of course, Roberto Rojas—“el Cóndor.” I had hated some players too: Cristián Saavedra (I don’t know why) and, during the period when the coach inexplicably used to make him and Rojas alternate as starters, Mario Osbén. That infuriated me. One of the great joys of my childhood was going down to the fence to yell at the coach, and I’d really let him have it. At home, cursing was strictly forbidden, but at the stadium I had free rein.
    None of those players were on the team anymore that day at the stadium with Camilo, but the one I missed the most was obviously Cóndor Rojas. All Chileans admired Rojas, but for me, because he was a goalie, it was also a roundabout way of admiring my father. What’s more, I knew the position perfectly, and I considered the goalie’s job to be without a doubt the hardest. Sometimes I played goalie too, trying to emulate Cóndor Rojas, or maybe my father (in all but the shouting). Still, when I joined the Cobresal Youth leagues, in Maipú, playing on the same field where Iván Zamorano began his career, I tried out as a midfielder and not a goalie. I was afraid, perhaps, that I wouldn’t be good enough.
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    Why did Camilo spend so much time with us? Because we loved him, sure. And because he didn’t like being at his own house. He fought with his mother about his religious beliefs and about the political situation. Before the 1988 referendum, Camilo went to all the demonstrations in favor of the “No” vote, and that led to severe arguments. He wanted “No” to win because he hated Pinochet, but also because he thought that, if it did, his father would come back to Chile. But Camilo’s father didn’t want to come back, or at least that’s what Auntie July always told him: “Your father has another family now. He has another country. He doesn’t even remember you.” But Camilo’s father still wrote to him, sent him money, and called him every once in a while.
    Auntie July was tough. Even so, she treated us very well the one time we went over to her house. She gave us bread cake and banana milk while we played Montezuma’s Revenge with Camilo’s halfbrothers. It was strange to see Camilo there. He didn’t seem to belong. I went into his room, and it was as if he didn’t live there. He used to give my sisters and me posters and pictures to hang on our walls, but there was none of that in his own room: I was impressed by those white, empty walls, without even a nail to hang a photograph.
    Oh, what did Camilo study? Administration or Management of Something, at the Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana, which back then was called the Instituto Profesional de Santiago. But he didn’t like to