Hooligan Page 20

  Manuela came running into the living room and screamed at me, “Heiko, are you retarded? You’re making such a racket in here! I’m trying to study. Final exams. Hello-o-o-o!” she said, drawing out the last word. I hated her guts.

  She pointed to the empty bottles of beer on the table: “And what’s that about?”

  I’d stolen the beer from Hans’s stash.

  “Dad’ll kill you when he gets back!”

  “Now calm down a little, Manuela! People drink a couple when they’re watching football,” I said and stuck out my tongue.

  “You’re fourteen, you little dick.”

  She slammed the door.

  I yelled after her, “Hey! You don’t say ‘little’ and ‘dick’ to a man. Hurts my feelings!”

  I think I whipped out my pecker, grabbed it by my hand and used it to knock the beer bottle off the table, which fell onto the carpet with a thud.

  “What’s all this yelling?” All at once I heard my father’s voice.

  I put my little worm away. It wasn’t any more than that, after all. Then I quickly gathered up the bottles and pushed them under the sofa. I forgot about them later. May still be under there today. He was standing there when I came into the hallway. Tanned the color of leather. Welf, his best friend, was there too. Two weeks earlier, the two of them had flown to Phuket last-minute. And by last-minute, I mean at least he told Manuela and me while he was packing his suitcase.

  Welf bit the dust a couple of years later. Cirrhosis of the liver or something horrible like that. The thing just went out of service at some point, and he fell off his bar stool. Was years ahead of my father. Welf was already well lubricated when Hans had to retire and boozing slowly took the upper hand.

  “Hey, Heiko,” Hans said and grinned at me stupidly, “did you leave the house in one piece? Did you take good care of the pigeons?”

  I nodded. Didn’t say anything. Just stared at the two Asian women he and Welf were holding in their arms and who each had a big suitcase with an ugly flower pattern beside them. The whole hallway smelled of perfume.

  “Come on,” Welf said and snickered, “introduce the kids to their new mother.”

  “What? Oh, yeah.”

  Hans pushed the woman forward. She was half a head shorter than me. She looked at me, embarrassed, and held out the back of her hand. I looked at my father and then back at her.

  “Now don’t be impolite, boy. Shake the lady’s hand. For heaven’s sake.”

  I lifted my arm as if remote-controlled. My hand bumped against her and somehow we accomplished a bad imitation of a handshake. My open mouth went completely dry and sticky. Manuela jumped in front of me and bowed in front of the woman with the pitch-black hair that almost reached to her bottom.

  “I’m Manuela.”

  The woman bowed as well and laughed stupidly.

  “This is Mie,” Hans said proudly, as if she was a vacation souvenir.

  “My pleasure,” Manuela said, and I would have liked to yank her braid.

  “Well, come on into the sitting room,” Hans said and winked with exaggeration. And continued with an exaggerated accent: “Coam in, pleez. Welf, you old dog, you knows where ze beer is at.”

  “Aye, aye,” Welf joked, and saluted.

  Then he pushed his wife into the sitting room and went to get some cans for himself and my father.

  “I’ll show you our bedroom, Mie. Our little bed cave.”

  She looked at him with a questioning gaze while he pushed her up the stairs before him. Every now and then he stopped and turned around to me. All at once, he made a completely different face.

  “Bring the suitcases here. Pronto!”

  I watched them climb the stairs and saw the disgusting sparkle in Hans’s eyes and decided I’d never speak a single fucking word to that woman.

  ———

  Over two weeks, and Kai’s still stuck in the med school clinic. Indefinitely. For further examinations and treatment. If his eyes weren’t taped shut, he’d almost look like a normal person. The swelling has largely gone down, and the wounds have healed. But the way he was, he looked like a dead stick figure with Xs instead of eyes. I’ve made a tacit agreement with his parents. Which means I only go visit him when they’re not there. They come every afternoon after work for one, two hours. I’m there almost every noon and in the evenings. Mondays and Thursdays I bring along the new Kicker magazine and read him articles aloud. I’m pretty good at it my now. I also read to him out of the latest issue of 11 Friends, and he offers some commentary on each piece. Then we make our own sports talk show out of it, and I’ve never felt as well informed as now. I mean better than before, and not so focused on Hannover. A couple days ago, we discovered a reading plug-in for the internet browser. That way I don’t have to talk until I’m blue in the face, and we can go to all kinds of internet sites and get the text read to us in a robot voice. That usually works fairly good, but sometimes it makes really funny mistakes. Mostly, when it comes to the names of foreign football players. We make a game of it by looking for profiles of the most exotic or weirdest player names. Then we have it read aloud by the laptop and laugh our asses off. Though unfortunately, that doesn’t work all the time. Sometimes Kai’s just Kai, like always. Makes jokes. Even about his injury. For instance, he thought about going to New York to hunt criminals while dressed in a red devil’s superhero costume. And when the first movie interest came in, I should make sure that under no circumstances would he be played by Ben Affleck. But sometimes Kai isn’t the Kai I know. Then he seems pressed down into his hospital bed by an invisible weight, and I can see how it churns inside him and the rows of his teeth grind behind his cheeks. The Dutch doctor is often there and every now and then even takes the time to sit down with us. He told us he comes from the same villages as the former Ajax and Arsenal player Marc Overmars. I’ve already forgotten the name of the place. By now I even like the cheesy Dutch accent he speaks with. He’s fairly reserved when it comes to prognoses. But he’s also honest about not wanting to get our hopes up too soon. He also tried to explain all these surgeries and treatments they’re trying on Kai, but at some point Kai said he couldn’t remember all that crap anyway and it’d be better if they’d just do it and leave it at that.

  “Do you know what I miss the most?”

  “What?” I ask, but can already imagine the answer.

  “Being on coke.”

  Crap! I’d guessed watching porn.

  I pull off my shoes and sit on the other bed in the room, which has remained unoccupied the whole time. At least we’ve had our peace and quiet. We’re watching the draw for the round of sixteen in the German Football Association Cup. I mean, I’m watching the draw. The sound on the television can’t be turned on so the other resident patients aren’t disturbed. Even if no one else is in the room. And sharing the earbuds was a little too stupid for us. So I’m watching the draw and commenting on it for Kai. Steffi Jones, the star goalie for the women’s national team, has been hired as lady luck to pick the pairs of teams up from a jar in the tiny TV studio.

  “FC Lucky Bayern,” I say, “against Team ‘Peg-Leg’ Kiel.”

  The moderator takes the little ball with the club crest from Jones and makes it disappear into a tube. I picture a gigantic cellar under the studio building where all these little balls for the draw are sent with pneumatic dispatch and land on the pile of balls from years and decades past.

  The draw continues and I comment, “The football division of Tennis Club Hamburg.”

  Even if we have good relations with the boys from Hamburg, I still can’t stand their club.

  “Matched against Naked Baghdad!”

  “Oh, come on, Heiko, knock it off. Against who?” Kai asks while he tugs at his rustling bedding and holds his head toward the ceiling.

  He looks a little like Stevie Wonder, and I ask myself if people automatically get that head posture when they’re blind. Or temporarily blind, I mean.

  “Against Cottbus,” I corr
ect myself.

  “Dude, hopefully Hamburg will knock the East Bloc bitches out of it,” he says. It sounds deadly serious somehow, too serious.

  “Yeah,” I say, “and hopefully they’ll fling feces at them. Next match …”

  Steffi Jones runs her hand around in the bowl as if she were making cake dough or something with it. Then she removes the next ball and gives it to the moderator. He opens it, leaving two halves. He tosses the lid into another bowl and holds up the half with the club crest.

  I swallow and say, “Hannover 96.” We simultaneously sit up a little in the beds. There are still some attractive teams in the bowl. Jones picks the next ball. Passes it on. It’s opened. Lid gone. The moderator looks at the logo and pulls up his lower lip in appreciation, which makes his chin protrude slightly. Now, hold the thing up to the camera already! “Against,” I start, and then I briefly catch my breath. I stare at the television, mesmerized. It can’t be true! They made a mistake, or I didn’t see it right, or it’s another club. The computer graphics for the selected pair appear onscreen. In fact!

  “Against? Against who, Heiko?” Kai presses me.

  I let the two words melt on my tongue slowly and with pleasure: “Eintracht. Braunschweig.”

  “If this is just shitting me again, Heiko, then—”

  “No, really!” I yell, and choke on my own spit. Two messages, one right after the other on my phone. The first from Ulf: “Oh my God! Epic!”

  The second from Jojo: “You watching this???”

  I can’t believe it. I really have to control myself so I don’t suddenly scream and tear up the bedding for joy. Then I look over at Kai and the euphoria sticks in my throat like a fat, slimy toad. He’s slipped from his upright position back onto the bed. Lying on his side. His back to me. My palms radiate sweat. My neck goes cold, as if there was a draft right behind me. I bite my tongue, till the stabbing pain becomes a feeling of numbness. That lizard is gonna suffer so bad!

  ———

  I didn’t catch a wink of sleep all night. Then I drove my car to Wunstorf and sat in front of Yvonne’s building till morning, watching her shadow move across the sheet covering her window. At some point the light went out. I was completely awake and went over a thousand things in my head. Made plans for how I’d make the guys from Braunschweig pay. Considered whether I should talk it over with my uncle this time or just fuck it and continue doing my own thing. I smoke till I feel sick. I go to the all-night market at the gas station and drink till morning light.

  Then I helped Arnim feed the tiger. It seems to have slowly gotten used to its pit. Or maybe just resigned to its fate. At any rate, it doesn’t even try to jump out to tear Arnim to pieces. You couldn’t blame it. But it slips down the aluminum walls anyway. Animals can get tired of that pretty quickly. At least Arnim’s having fun. He’s in the basement almost all day preparing food for his favorite. He’s reactivated his rusty butcher skills and hacks away happily, whistling to himself. The stench of blood from the basement has already spread over the entire ground floor. Since the tiger’s been there, Poborsky and Bigfoot have grown unusually quiet. They probably sense something bad for both of them. I hope Arnim doesn’t get the idea of having a test run with the tiger before the next fights. I haven’t told anyone about all of this. Not even Kai. I’m saving it for a day when he’s slipped back into himself and his thoughts and we’re sitting across from each other in the clinic cafeteria and I can’t think of anything else. I climb into the car and slam it into reverse, turning in front of the house. I hope this isn’t the day.

  Kai holds onto my bicep with one hand. We’re strolling a few rounds through the clinic park. Jojo and Ulf are there too. Jojo’s running laps around me and Kai the whole time. His arms dart out repeatedly because he’s afraid Kai could stumble and fall somehow. Then he’d be there to catch him like a building-block tower that’s falling over.

  “Jojo, can you knock it off now? You’re getting on my nerves! I’ve got him.”

  Kai’s hair has never been this long. It falls in long strands over the sides of his head. The undercut is gone and has slowly grown out. Although I’ve brought along my clippers, Kai says it doesn’t matter what he looks like here in the hospital. He goes step by step. Completely shaky. I ask myself how quickly muscles weaken when you mostly lie around for weeks, even if it’s only one or two. Maybe it’s not even the muscles. It can’t go that fast, anyway. Most of all, he’s probably afraid the lights will go out any second or something. He also told me once he still hasn’t gotten used to the fact that he’ll have next to no spatial perception with just the one halfway good eye. Might sound harsh, but still. I can hardly stand watching. I’d like to let him slip from my arm, give him a little shove, and say you’ll manage, you’re no goddamn handicapped person. But I’m afraid he might misunderstand me.

  “That sure is a fucking awesome early Christmas present,” Ulf says, referring to the Cup match on December 18.

  “Should I order tickets?” Jojo asks and passes out a round of cigarettes. He lights the one for Kai himself and carefully places it in Kai’s mouth, as if he were feeding a baby. I want to tell him that Kai does in fact have his own mouth and hands he could use to light his own fucking cigarette, but then I let him do it.

  Instead, I answer, “We’ll probably have something else to do that day than sitting on our asses and watching the game.”

  “What do you mean?” Jojo asks, so slow on the uptake, as if we’d just met.

  “You pulling my leg, Jojo? The time is ripe for those bastards.”

  “So you don’t even want to watch the game?” Ulf asks.

  “If it can be organized, sure. At Timpen or something, but it’d really be stupid to go to the stadium and wait to be escorted out by the cops at some point. The entire opportunity to start something would be lost.”

  Ulf groans in annoyance and says curtly: “Just knock it off, Heiko.”

  I suddenly stop, causing Kai to stumble over his own feet. Of course, I catch him. But Jojo’s right there and stretches out his arms.

  I look at Ulf and say, “I’ll knock them on their asses. The fuckers should finally get what they deserve! And even if I have to do it alone. Don’t give a fuck.”

  “You’re just making it worse,” he says, but I wave him off. Try to simply wipe away his objections.

  “No fucking way, Ulf. And no one can talk me out of it,” I say and feel my throat swelling closed.

  Jojo asks if I’ve already discussed it with Axel.

  “Nope. Don’t know yet,” I say, “like I already said. Worst-case scenario, I’ll go it alone. If you guys aren’t behind me …”

  Now Ulf’s standing in front of me at full stature and casting a shadow over me.

  “You actually know what you’re saying? You want to end up like Kai?”

  He points to Kai. I look over. His head is dangling from his neck. He doesn’t say anything.

  “Have you given a little, even the slightest thought to how all this might end?”

  I take a step toward him, leaving only a finger’s breadth between our faces.

  “I. Don’t. Give. A. Shit,” I spit out and step back a little. “You have your family, your house, your white fucking picket fence. You all have something you can look forward to at the end of the day.” I can’t stop, even if it’d be better if I did. Instead, I keep on barking: “Jojo’s seeing this coaching thing through, and when Kai’s healthy again, he’ll finish his studies and get a well-paid job.” I don’t want to talk about them as if they weren’t there, but I’m just not able to hold back. “I’ve got nothing”—I form a circle with my fingers—“nothing. This here,” drawing a circle around all of us in the air, “is what I have. Nothing more. I don’t complain about it. And you know why? Because I live for this. Because I stand for it, and I admit it. If you don’t get that, then you’re a lost cause for me, Ulf. Then all of this, all those years were just a fucking game for you.”

  I take Kai’s hand off my a
rm and guide it to Jojo, who stares at me, stunned, and takes Kai’s hand. I slam Ulf with my shoulder as I pass by. Of course he doesn’t move.

  “You actually know how pathetic you are?” he calls after me.

  I turn my upper body, flip him off, and scream, “Fuck you, Ulf, for real. Go fuck yourself!”

  ———

  I still remember how I sat on Mom’s suitcase. Legs extended, I kicked the tips of my new football shoes against each other, and was already looking forward to showing them off to the others while kicking the ball around. The door separating the front door and the hallway was open. Mom maneuvered herself into her high heels. She even smiled. I’d come out of my room when she pulled the heavy suitcase behind her down the stairs and it bumped down every step. She didn’t answer my question about what she was doing. Where she was going. She just grinned at me. Held my head and gave me a kiss to my forehead that I wiped off, whining, “Mamaaaa,” in disgust. Then she walked past me. She smelled strongly of perfume and left a trail of flowery scent behind her like a bridal train. I followed her forward. Manuela stood in the open sitting room doorway and pressed against the frame. She had that ugly black neckband that was so tight around her neck and that all the girls were wearing back then. It made them look like their head was sewn onto their neck. Just like Frankenstein’s monster. She had her arm wrapped around her skinny upper body and was sulking. Pouting her lips. Today you’d probably call it a duckface. At the time, I didn’t understand why she was pouting. Was just a stupid little twerp.

  I heard a car’s motor. Groaning, Mom carried the suitcase to the front door and opened it. Then she retrieved a second bag and set it next to the first. They were still open. Clothing stuck out of the top. She waved someone into the driveway. Probably the driver of the car. Then she came over to me, bent over with squeezed together, bare knees poking out from under her skirt. She hugged me. I absolutely didn’t know what to do about it, and so I let it wash over me.