PART II
"I always did what I wanted, that's why I've always been told that I have a shitty mood", says David Nalbandian in his home kitchen, while he smears, smiling, a toast with honey which he'll put entirely into the coffee mug his mom just made.
We're in Unquillo, Córdoba, a town with 18 thousand people without natural gas nor sewers, located 20 Kms away from the province capital. We're here, in the Nalbandian's all life home, at lunch time, watching tv, with the clock pointing 5:45 and with two friends who have come to visit.
The scene-this scene-is an overwhelming postal of the past: the same home, the same pictures and furnitures, the smell of so many afternoons after school, the same twilight coming through the window.
Alda, his mom, adorned with an apron, walks the 3 meters which separate the kitchen with the table and brings the toasts, the butter, and the homemade sweets. Darío, his older brother, a David clon with more forehead and less waist, talks with fanatism about cars. And asados. David always answers with some kind of rush, like he has no time to give himself to the others.
The house is a few meters from the center of Unquillo. It's the same house-the yellow paint in the front, the garden in the back-that Jorge Nalbandian built, the Armenian gandfather, who got here running away from the fear and the european hunger, with a fake passport and at the end of the '20s, to this town hidden in the remote Argentina
The hall hasn't changed as much either, except for a few new objects. There's a green vase made of ceramic, which fights with the '70s wooden furnitures: it's the Basel trophy, in Switzerland, one of the tournaments David won in his professional career; there's a trophy that evokes his consecrationas a junior in the US Open when he was 16 years old, beating in the final a swiss boy with some tennis full of future: Roger Federer: there's a plate he got after reaching the final in Wimbledon 2002, his best performance in a Grand Slam, which made him an international star. After reaching that final ( a feat for the Argentine tennis), Nalbandian went back to Unquillo, where he was recieved as a hero.
That's what always happens: it doesn't matter in which paradise he's in, it doesn't matter the sumptuousness which estimulate his vanity nor the high tech confort of the big hotels, Nalbandian manages to go back to this piece of land formed and in zigzag, placed in the ankles cordoba's mountains.
I ask him why, being able to choose Monte Carlo-like Vilas or Boris Becker did- or Miami-where Gabriela Sabatini lives- he keeps coming back not to Buenos Aires, but to Unquillo.
-This is the place that fullfills me, it gives me energies. It's where I put my feet on the ground, it gives me the calmness the circuit doesn't give me. I don't change this for anything. I think I'll never leave this place.
It's clear: Nalbandian comes back here to stuff himself from childhood.
Even at his 23 years old, when his name shines among the best 15 tennis players in the planet and after humilliating Lleyton Hewitt in the Australian grass, in a Davis Cup match which made him a pagan hero, Nalbandian comes back to these meadows which for him are like an amusement park, a bath of innocence and freedom.
-Here-he says, and points his chin to the window-when I was a kid I did everything: I played football and basketball, I practiced karate and horse ride, I swam and I rode bikes, rode a horse.
He also put speed to the first motos while he started to take tennis seriously, here he chased the present like someone who enjoys a hunt.
"I always did what I wanted, that's why I've always been told that I have a shitty mood", says David Nalbandian in his home kitchen, while he smears, smiling, a toast with honey which he'll put entirely into the coffee mug his mom just made.
We're in Unquillo, Córdoba, a town with 18 thousand people without natural gas nor sewers, located 20 Kms away from the province capital. We're here, in the Nalbandian's all life home, at lunch time, watching tv, with the clock pointing 5:45 and with two friends who have come to visit.
The scene-this scene-is an overwhelming postal of the past: the same home, the same pictures and furnitures, the smell of so many afternoons after school, the same twilight coming through the window.
Alda, his mom, adorned with an apron, walks the 3 meters which separate the kitchen with the table and brings the toasts, the butter, and the homemade sweets. Darío, his older brother, a David clon with more forehead and less waist, talks with fanatism about cars. And asados. David always answers with some kind of rush, like he has no time to give himself to the others.
The house is a few meters from the center of Unquillo. It's the same house-the yellow paint in the front, the garden in the back-that Jorge Nalbandian built, the Armenian gandfather, who got here running away from the fear and the european hunger, with a fake passport and at the end of the '20s, to this town hidden in the remote Argentina
The hall hasn't changed as much either, except for a few new objects. There's a green vase made of ceramic, which fights with the '70s wooden furnitures: it's the Basel trophy, in Switzerland, one of the tournaments David won in his professional career; there's a trophy that evokes his consecrationas a junior in the US Open when he was 16 years old, beating in the final a swiss boy with some tennis full of future: Roger Federer: there's a plate he got after reaching the final in Wimbledon 2002, his best performance in a Grand Slam, which made him an international star. After reaching that final ( a feat for the Argentine tennis), Nalbandian went back to Unquillo, where he was recieved as a hero.
That's what always happens: it doesn't matter in which paradise he's in, it doesn't matter the sumptuousness which estimulate his vanity nor the high tech confort of the big hotels, Nalbandian manages to go back to this piece of land formed and in zigzag, placed in the ankles cordoba's mountains.
I ask him why, being able to choose Monte Carlo-like Vilas or Boris Becker did- or Miami-where Gabriela Sabatini lives- he keeps coming back not to Buenos Aires, but to Unquillo.
-This is the place that fullfills me, it gives me energies. It's where I put my feet on the ground, it gives me the calmness the circuit doesn't give me. I don't change this for anything. I think I'll never leave this place.
It's clear: Nalbandian comes back here to stuff himself from childhood.
Even at his 23 years old, when his name shines among the best 15 tennis players in the planet and after humilliating Lleyton Hewitt in the Australian grass, in a Davis Cup match which made him a pagan hero, Nalbandian comes back to these meadows which for him are like an amusement park, a bath of innocence and freedom.
-Here-he says, and points his chin to the window-when I was a kid I did everything: I played football and basketball, I practiced karate and horse ride, I swam and I rode bikes, rode a horse.
He also put speed to the first motos while he started to take tennis seriously, here he chased the present like someone who enjoys a hunt.