Nabokov in Goal, Cambridge, 1919

I was crazy about goal keeping.

—vladimir nabokov, Speak, Memory

He loved to lose himself in the game opening before him. Breath slowed as play flowed and he fluttered in the goal, adjusting socks, knee guards, gloves, cap. Body checkered by the net’s shadow, he anticipated angles of attack and grew calmer as the action approached.

When the ball was downfield, he leaned against a post and closed his eyes sometimes, knowing teammates’ positions by their calls and cries. Nabokov spoke so many tongues that he rejoiced then in the plain sounds of a kicked ball, savored the nuance of a foot’s impact on leather. There was also wind to read, light to keep track of, and the softening autumn grass turning to mud at midfield.

Nothing that held still was of interest as he shifted within the goal, aware but not aware of poems taking shape in his mind tuned now to no language ever known. This was the moment of being lost. He rode its rhythms long enough to soar across the goal and catch a shot as it spun and dove on the arc of its own sizzling flight.