If it doesn’t bleed

European champion! The news is such a surprise that they can’t even find a photo to illustrate the story that appears on the morning of her return to Bucharest. At the airport, arms piled high with red carnations, they are waiting for her, the one who has just dethroned the Soviets. A young woman finally emerges from the plane, wearing a navy-blue tracksuit. It’s NA-DI-A! Oh, isn’t she beautiful! But bizarrely, a huge moustachioed man hands her some plastic bags and then clasps a little girl by the shoulder, she must be his daughter. Where is our great athlete? enquires an official, looking for the outline of a powerful sportswoman. Then the little girl, Nadia, steps towards them, her medals forming a strange tribal necklace, a gold breastplate on her narrow chest, and almost in slow motion the photographers kneel down to be level with the child’s pale face.

Nadia shakes hands. A Party representative thanks her in the name of the entire country for having kept her word, for having achieved the good results she had promised Comrade Ceauşescu.

Everything that happens during the rest of 1975 – if one wanted to make up the story from scratch, one wouldn’t know where to start – the painstaking, exemplary climb to fame, is seen by Béla as nothing more than a confirmation. He was right. Nadia assuages his doubts, anticipates his fears, complies with everything, the ambassador of his dream, the subject of an experiment in which she is the Nearly Princess. Nearly. Because now he has to convince the authorities to make room for the girls from Oneşti in the future Olympic team.

Béla swears that his little girls will smash the Russians, look, he writes it in ink and signs it on the paper napkin of the restaurant where he has invited three members of the Federation: Comrades, if you take my girls, after Montreal no one will remember the Soviets!

This big fat guy makes them laugh, he is almost touching when he strikes up the Romanian national anthem, on his feet and keeping time with his hand as though leading troops: ‘Today, the Party unites us and on the soil of Romania socialism is being built by the efforts of the workers for the honour of the fatherland, we are crushing our enemies so that we can live with dignity under the sun among the other peoples, in peace, in pea-eace.’

All right, so there will be a preliminary competition between the two teams, the decision will be made according to results, the members of the Federation concede, amused at the spectacle created by the man they continue to call the Hungarian.

Summer in the capital, the fragrance of linden trees clinging to the concrete. The heat hangs from you like burning hooks, the air seems to solidify, stagnant and damp. Here, in the vast glassed-in gymnasium, there are no old mattresses strewn on the floor, but electric blue rubber mats. When the temperature soars above thirty-eight degrees, the Dinamo club coaches who insist their gymnasts call them ‘Comrade Coach’ take them to Constanța on the Black Sea. The girls from Oneşti drag themselves to the washroom between exercises, splash cold water on their faces.

Is it Béla who has suggested the Federation send someone that day? This general in charge of sports who enters the gymnasium and signals to Béla to continue the training while he sits down? Béla is over the moon. It couldn’t have come at a better moment. What does it matter that Luminița complains she has a migraine (Get back up on the beam, when you jump they can hear you as far away as Transylvania, you’re as graceful as a cow, come on, you can afford to lose a few grams of sweat), or that Dorina collapses four times on the run while attempting a double back somersault? The general will soon grow tired of the smell of sweat mixed with chalk that makes the atmosphere even drier. There is no need for Béla to do anything but wait for him to stand up, dust off his uniform and come over to ask, ‘Where are the gymnasts from the Dinamo club, Comrade Professor?’ To which he will reply innocently that they are ‘at the beach, as usual when the sun is shining’. The general leaves in a fury and orders to see the two teams’ representatives. The next day, the Dinamo coach excuses himself by claiming ‘the young girls need to rest in this heat’. Béla raises his eyebrows. ‘What’s that? Rest? Is rest part of the Olympic programme?’ The general appoints him director of the national and Olympic teams; Béla is the one who will choose the gymnasts.

Done. Everything has to be perfect. He instructs Márta to find a new doctor they can trust; this one from Bucharest doesn’t understand a thing about gymnastics, he’s impossible, the way he purses his lips disapprovingly, his paternalistic advice. The squirrels bounce back, get carried away, their backs bend double. If it doesn’t bleed, Béla assures the little girls, don’t worry, it’s probably nothing very serious.