The leap

It had its charms, living in the countryside. The quiet, the trees. The long days of liquid, languid sunlight. The merry splash of the stream, two miles north of the cottage. But it all became terribly dull after a while. Purposeless. Boring. He remembered it, how after a few days of marvelling at the beauty of nature and running through the family estate’s fields and thickets of trees, he would eventually find himself restless and irremediably bored. Especially as a younger teen, he would almost immediately long for the company of boys his age, the friends he had left in the city. As they got older, they would regroup at one’s place and drink and party for a few days. That never got old.

But this summer… this summer the countryside presented an invaluable opportunity.

He had never thought himself too much of a sportsman. Sure, he enjoyed playing soccer as much as the next bloke, and he did have a lot of energy to let out all the time, but… he had never seen the point in training endlessly and tirelessly, and agonizing over minimal marginal improvements. It just did not sound all that appealing, and to be honest it felt a little bit like a waste of time. Like chasing after windmills, if you will.

He didn’t use to think too much about his future, either. After all, it was already laid out quite neatly in front of him, ever since he had been old enough to grasp the concept. Finish school with high grades, cultivate the important friendships he had been introduced to early in his life, get admitted into a reputable university. Learn how to manage his finances, how to network. Become halfway decent at golf, or sailing, or riding, or some such. Find a good-looking wife from a wealthy family, or from a poorer but nobler one. Have several children with blond, curly heads to pass on his fortune and name. Preserve, possibly increase the family assets after a few years of luxuriant youthful squandering. It was going to be comfortable, though perhaps not quite as easy as it seemed from where he was standing.

It had been all swept away, as though someone had ripped a veil, gold-incrusted though it might have been. He remembered the day with astounding clarity. He had been sitting on his couch, absent-mindedly watching the Olympics with his mates. Some of them were budding athletes, and although the deeper reasons of that choice escaped him, he considered himself a decent enough friend to concede to their passions. He was pleasantly buzzed, and only paying attention with a small portion of his mind, drifting in and out of the conversation. Had you asked him, he probably wouldn’t even have been able to tell you where exactly the event was being hosted. Somewhere in Brazil?

Then, as the camera shifted, he found himself looking at the screen. He saw someone, a young man about ten years older than him, leaping through the air. He remained suspended for an impossibly long time, longer than he had thought humans ever could, only to come down on his hinds with his legs in front of him. One after the other, they ran, leapt, landed in the sand. And held. That was the most incredible part, the time they spent in the air. It was beautiful. It must feel like flying. He was thrown. Transfixed. He remembered it, the way he instantly snapped at attention, that feeling of something important, something momentous, rising, soaring inside him. Three jumps. They were allowed three jumps each. And after each jump they would get up, dust themselves of, and clear the area for the next athlete. Become uninteresting and human again.

Suddenly hunched forward in his seat, he could not hear the droning of the commentary, or the remarks his friends were making. There was no room in his mind for that. There was not enough room for anything other than the scene unfolding in front of his eyes.

He had not even known, at the time, what point in the competition it was. There weren’t any celebrations, afterwards. No medals, or gold, or champagne. Nothing to confuse him. Only a table with the record of the jumps, highlighting who had passed on to the next round and who had not; a few close-ups on the faces of those who had performed exceptionally well, or unforeseeably poorly. As a matter of fact, if anything those few images should have deterred him: furrowed brows, shaken heads, expressions of either grim determination or frustration or resignation. Agonising slow-motion frames of faces twisted with strain and effort. The chilling realisation that even the most elite of competitions had losers and twentieth places.

And then, the camera had flickered again, to some other specialty. The spell was broken. Sound returned to his ears. Slowly, not to disrupt the quiet, he had turned around to look at his friends, to see if others had been thus affected. In no small part, to check if they had noticed how he had been affected. He wasn’t sure he would have been able to live that one down. They were all chatting amiably, as usual. No one seemed to be paying him any mind; after all, they knew he was not really into this sort of things. They probably thought he had been spacing out the whole time. He thanked himself for choosing to sit in the back of the room, so he would be able to inconspicuously make himself scarce and take a walk around the house should he get bored.

As he finished scanning the room, his eyes landed on the one real athlete in the group. She was a rower, one year his senior. A lean, quiet girl who always seemed to be humming with restrained energy. They were not particularly close. He used to wonder why she would do that, why anyone would do that, waking up at five and practicing twice a day and all that. She was sitting on the windowsill, looking at the screen with mild interest and a pinch of something else, some sort of pensive envy, occasionally offering a few words, a burst of laughter. She noticed him staring and eyed him quizzically. I know, he almost found himself saying. Now I know why you do it. It was preposterous, of course. I want to fly, too.

So here he was, one year later, looking forward to his countryside break. To his month surrounded by fields and quiet, and devoid of distractions. To isolation. Had anyone told him a year ago, he would have laughed in their faces. But this month of isolation was just what he needed: he needed to build up his stamina, his flexibility. His resistance to pain.

Finding an athletics club had been extremely easy. He was young and fit, and eager. If anything, the problem had been selecting the right one, because for all his newfound passion, he had no idea of how to go about that particular process. Luckily, his mother had made a few calls and found a club that had sprouted a few World-class athletes in the previous five years.

She had been surprisingly supportive, if truth be told. It must be because nothing had ever quite caught his interest like this, she must think it healthy of him to have finally found a hobby. She was probably afraid she had generated a drifter. But that was part of the problem, was it not? A hobby was a fine thing, normal, natural. Everyone was expected to have one, or a few, lest they resign themselves to an entirely colourless existence. She thought he would be doing something to occupy his time during his last few years of school, perhaps even college, maybe win a few competitions. Make some friends, meet some girls. This… hunger, this hysterically ambitious dream he was feeding, had been feeding for months now, was probably not contemplated. Letting it consume him, the way he knew he would need to be consumed if he wanted to have a single chance, however small, of reaching what he wanted – well, that was simply inappropriate now, wasn’t it?

His experience at the club had been… humbling to say the least. First of all, it had taken him little to realise that he was not as fit as he liked to think, to the point that even the younger kids were better than him. That was the worst part. The children. They made him think that perhaps he had waited too long. That he was too old to improve enough to do something significant. To become relevant at all in this sport, not to mention an Olympian. Perhaps this would remain a hobby after all. He’d had to force himself to push through it, to silence that nagging voice in his head.

Another thing he had failed to take into account going in, was the sheer consistency of the work. It was not about practicing when he wanted to, when the sun was shining and he was full of energy and really wanted to do something, it was about practicing every day, even when he was still sore from the other day, or had not slept, or felt moody, or had got piss-drunk the night before. Which was something he had been doing less and less, because it was just not feasible. And that was another thing, not being able to do what other kids his age did anymore. What he himself used to do until a few months ago. But it got better. It became more and more normal. And when he started to improve, when he became good enough to practice with the right age group, it did feel as though he was in the right place. Like it was all worth it, like he was doing something incredible. And he was going to do something even more incredible in the end.

So eventually, when on Saturday nights it was him and rower-girl leaving before everyone else, and probably way too sober, he did not mind as much. Sure, it still bothered him from time to time, just… he had come to the conclusion that it was what he wanted to do.

So this summer, in the fields around his estate, he was going to be working on his physical prowess even during the one-month break everyone in his club had been allowed. So that when they all came back, he’d be one step closer to that leap.