Hooligan Page 3

  “Are you a damn gangsta rapper now?!”

  “Nah, dude, but … I mean …” he said and took another pick-me-up. “Or look, how about Bloodhoundz? Get it? Because blood is red, like us. Just not such a faggy name.”

  “Come on, drop it. It is what it is.”

  “Look at it from the other side,” Jojo said. “Better than an old fucking rap group from Cologne.”

  “Which is also true.”

  Everything went so damn fast. Had to go damn fast because even if we were in the woods, we were still in the middle of the city. The cops could bust through the undergrowth any moment, lights flashing. Alerted by a concerned walker taking an evening stroll. Luckily enough, it was raining, which meant not many people were walking around. But you could slip on the wet ground, which was already covered with moisture, so you watch like mad so you don’t fall on your ass. At any rate, the Cool Hogs weren’t so cool when we beat the living shit out of them with just eight of us. They bounced off Ulf like the raindrops that kept pounding our faces. And the rest of us did a respectable job.

  I was going at it with one of them when I grabbed his lid and threw it at him. He was so distracted I had plenty of time to aim and knock him out. I hope I’ll never forget the sound of him splashing in the mud. They had more or less already lost when I saw one of them reaching for something hanging from his belt. He was going at it with Kai. I’m still of the opinion I saw something flash. So I went over. Just thought to myself, no fucking way, you butt-fucker, and kicked him in the back of his knee, and then wound up. All the way. There was plenty of time. And thumped a really brutal haymaker against the side of the guy’s head. Kai looked at me in surprise and at first I didn’t know why he was so wide-eyed. Must have been quite a punch. The guy from Braunschweig lay there. Lay there with his face in the rain-soaked glop, like a fish out of water. And twitched like crazy, and there was blood running out of his ear. Didn’t know what I should make of it. All the adrenaline and the rage over all that shit and the booze from before, at the game. All I can remember is how quickly Kai got Tomek. He’d seen the whole thing. Axel was busy with something and had sent Tomek as a minder, to report on how we did. Really gave them a beating. Tomek and Kai immediately carried him away. I just stood looking back and saw how two guys from Braunschweig took him, swung his arms over their shoulders, and dragged him off.

  Axel didn’t want to believe I’d seen a knife. But I’m still of the opinion there was one. Only no one thought to check the grass later. After all, everyone had to get the fuck out because you could already hear the sirens howling over the tips of the trees. But Axel was pretty impressed all the same. With two fewer. Against Braunschweig. He called it an important victory for Hannover and didn’t mean the match between the two second-string football teams. I told Kai about the knife too, and he couldn’t get over it, enthusiastically roaring my praises, and when I asked him if he’d seen the knife, he said something like, “Not directly, but I think something definitely fell into the grass. Definitely!”

  ———

  I take the causeway to reach my father’s house. It’s on the other end of Wunstorf, in a street with other former farms. The street is basically a dead end, even if the town is too lazy or broke—or both—to put up a sign. At some point the asphalt just stops and gives way to a field that stretches out into the plain. On a day like this you have such a view over the flat land that you could almost fall into the sky. Even on cloudy days, you can usually see all the way to Mount Potash, which looks different depending on the weather. Sometimes white like the salt on fries, sometimes gray like concrete.

  One time I broke in with Kai, Jojo, and Joel at the grounds of the potash and salt company there. Stomped up to the top where the salt is harvested. Jojo and Joel had brought a kite they wanted to fly, and it really soared. Kai and I didn’t know exactly why we wanted to go there. Then we got the wild idea to jump off, but it was a major fail. On one side it went down steep for what must have been at least a hundred feet, which would have been instant death. And on the other side, where we were, it was flat enough that we’d have been back on our feet within a couple of meters. At some point, Kai got going so fast from the incline that he lost his balance, staggered, and rolled down the slope like a barrel. He came to rest at the base of the hill, motionless, and the three of us were flipping out, but when we got close to Kai’s body, just lying there, he jumped up and laughed his ass off. His clothes were torn to shreds and he had bloody scrapes all over. A flap of skin was hanging off his shin. I can still remember how Joel immediately had to puke when he saw that.

  I press the doorbell, and before I can waste a single thought on immediately turning on my heel and getting back in my car, my sister is already opening the door.

  “Heiko. Nice. Finally. There you are.”

  She opens her arms, and I take a hesitant step toward her. Then she pulls me close. I feel stupid because I’m just standing in Manuela’s hug, my arms hanging at my sides. She squeezes several times, so I give up and place a hand on her arm too. This appears to finally satisfy her, and she lets go and says I should come in. I follow her into the main hallway, which leads to all of the rooms in the house. She walks ahead of me and disappears behind the kitchen door to the right. My eyes have to get used to the hazy lighting. Due to the sheer size of the space and because there aren’t any windows, with the exception of the glass front door, it’s usually shrouded in darkness. At the height of summer this was always the best place to be when I wanted to cool down. Stripped to just my underwear, I would lie down on the black floorboards and doze until my mother or Hans would rouse me with a kick, saying I shouldn’t be lying around where people walk. The old glassed-in cabinet is still against the right wall, next to the kitchen. It was already there when the house belonged to my grandparents. I pause right in front and look at the things behind the glass. If a stranger came in, they’d probably ask what kind of taste-impaired people lived here. Admittedly, I ask myself the same thing again and again, but at least I know the strange hodgepodge comes from the fact that three generations have lived here. My mother’s spooky porcelain figurines—angels, cats, and dogs—perch on top of my grandma’s placemats that she crocheted herself. The figurines were apparently not worth taking. Next to them stand little golden Buddha statues with fat bellies and wooden elephants decorated in purple and gold. Mie’s contribution to the jumble. Only now does the idea occur to me that it might not have been Mie who put them in. No real Thai thinks stuff like that is good. It’s more like the bullshit that’s hocked to Western tourists, making them pay through the nose. Maybe my father brought it back and set it up because he thought that way Mie would feel more at home.

  “Heiko, are you still there?”

  Manuela’s head peered sideways out the doorway. The glasses she didn’t need and only had to look more like a teacher were dangling from her neck. I hear Hans’s voice from the kitchen. He’s saying something. But I can’t understand him.

  “All right, Papa,” she said, and then again to me, “Come on. The coffee is getting cold.”

  How carefully she pronounced the words. So deliberately prim, just so she wouldn’t say it wrong. Made the hair stand up on the back of my ass. I almost hit my head on the low ceiling, that’s how long I hadn’t been there. Manuela bustles around the small kitchen. Sparse light falls through the window and the patio door. Mie is standing at the sink and washing dishes. My father is sitting at the table, left and right arms resting next to his plate, which is already full of large crumbs. “Hey,” I mumble. Mie briefly turns and whispers a hello. At least I assume so. It used to make me furious how quiet she always is. Today, because I don’t have to live here anymore, I couldn’t care less. Even though she’s discrete, I still see Manuela give our father a poke, and he too produces a “Hey” before he loads another piece of cream-filled almond cake on his plate.

  “Sit down, sit down,” Manuela asks and immediately pours me a coffee. I pull out my cigarettes and place the
m next to my plate. Manuela instantly produces the ashtray and sets it noisily in front of me on the table.

  The next minutes, in which no one at the table exchanges glances, are tortured. Mie places a dish with brown balls next to the plate with the cake. Then everyone is finally seated.

  “What is that, Mie?”

  “Kai nok …” and I don’t understand the rest because it’s Thai and fades into silence.

  She appears to ponder how you could translate it but doesn’t come up with a solution. Also because Manuela nods and says, “Aha,” as if she knew exactly what was in those steaming bull balls.

  I remove a cigarette from the pack, and while I light up, Manuela loads a piece of cake on my plate. Only then does she ask, “Cake?”

  I wave my hand vaguely and tap the ash off my cigarette. My father looks over for the first time. He stares at my cig and runs his tongue over his upper lip. Even though it’s been years since he shaved off his old porn stache, I still haven’t gotten used to the view of his naked upper lip, which is covered in beads of sweat.

  “Can I bum one?” he asks and didn’t look at me for a single second, speaking only to the pack.

  With relish, I take a long drag on my cigarette, knock off the ash, take another drag, and place it on my ashtray.

  Then I flick the pack. It slides across the table, past Manuela, and slams against Hans’s plate. He takes one out and pats down his pants pocket. Doesn’t find anything, and now he looks at me, the butt already between his lips.

  “Have a light?”

  His eyes are simultaneously watery and glassy. Like an ashtray that someone had accidentally poured liquid into. I flick the lighter right after.

  After the whole smoking thing is over and Manuela has quit her hacking, she finally gets to the point. Her disapproving gaze, which fits perfectly with the strict bun she’s tugged her hair into, remains unchanged. She can’t stand us puffing away but has to go along because she’s in the minority and not inside her own four walls. At least she’s learned to have an ashtray handy in situations like these, because neither Hans nor I give a rat’s ass where we put our ashes.

  “It’s nice to finally be sitting together.”

  No one reacts. Only Mie is smiling somewhere between embarrassment and approval.

  “But there’s also an occasion,” Manuela continued. “I was finally able—I have to say with the help of Andreas’s good connections—to secure a spot in rehab for Papa.”

  Hans lets loose a scornful grunt that sounds so vulgar, as if his mouth was an asshole. But Manuela doesn’t let herself be fazed. That’s from her years of experience.

  “And he has—,” she cleared her throat, “will be going to Bad Zwischenahn until November.”

  “Hmmm,” I murmur past the piece of dry cake in my mouth. I’m afraid she must have baked it herself.

  I’m wise enough to refrain from asking what all this has to do with me, because I have absolutely no interest in a full-on bargaining session. In a second, she’ll be getting around to saying why it’ll all be my business.

  “I’ll probably take him there personally next week,” because she wants to be truly sure that he’ll go, but of course she doesn’t say that.

  “Of course, someone will have to tend to Papa’s pigeons during that time”—aha, so that’s the way things roll—“and because I really won’t have any time to take care of that too, with my job—and the kids are so demanding at their age—and I have so much to prepare and get through before and after school, with corrections, I just can’t manage it, and because Mie’s terrified of the birds, we were thinking”—she looks at Hans, probably in the hope she’d catch his gaze, but he keeps staring at his cake—“I was thinking that you could do it, Heiko. You used to always help Gramps feed the birds, right? So you must still know how all that works.”

  It’s at least twenty years ago.

  “That would be a great relief for all of us, Heiko.” She appears to have repressed the reason why I never again set a foot in the shed, never helped my father with the feeding after he’d taken over the pigeon breeding from grandpa. Suits her agenda.

  While I’m busy scarfing down the last piece of cake, I mentally scroll through various excuses, none of which is substantial enough that Manuela wouldn’t throw it right back at me. The rock-hard corners of her mouth loosen, and her eyes, which seemed almost rectangular, relax a little. She probably noticed I couldn’t think of a good objection. I really, really don’t want to do it, but once again, some sort of important connection between my brain and my facial expressions is apparently MIA.

  “So it’s a deal,” she decides and is the first to take one of Mie’s meatballs. She bites down and is only barely able to twist her mouth into a smile. I can see her fake a smile for Mie. Mie smiles back, unsure. Then I look at my father, who’s having a staring match with his cake and probably thinking only about the next can. I can’t blame him. I don’t feel any different. Sitting here, at this table, in this house. With my biological family. Damn it to hell, what I want more than anything is to get drunk with the next best can of beer. Nothing here makes any sense, I think to myself, and pat the table, saying, “Good.”

  This pulls everyone else out of the thoughts they were just lost in. I down my coffee, get up, and reach across the table for my smokes.

  “Got to get movin’,” I say, “lots of shit to do.”

  No one was expecting that exit, not even my sister, who’s stuttering away, immediately searching for some random thing we could still discuss. No. Way. I turn on my heel, knock on the doorframe in parting, not looking back, and am through the hallway, out the door, maneuvering my VW hatchback down the driveway.

  ———

  Wotan Boxing Gym is a former factory building in Hannover’s Stöcken district. Uncle Axel once told me they used to produce fountain pens or ballpoint pens here. The company went belly-up. Axel, who owned part of a bar next to Steintor, had his share paid out and bought the joint for next to nothing and opened the gym. The clientele is mostly made up of less-than-successful martial artists, pals from the security scene, and bikers. And unfortunately, a good deal of right-wing riff-raff. You shouldn’t be too surprised at that if you name your gym after a Germanic god. If I had my way, none of the skinheads would be allowed in. But as the gofer I have next to no say. Adjusting equipment, sorting weights, wiping up sweat and blood here and there. Besides, you can catch wind of plenty of things you shouldn’t list on your résumé. I’ve already been doing the job for five years now. Since I flamed out of school after wasting my second chance. But despite the shit I’ve seen here and have to listen to, day in, day out, I can’t imagine anything else. No suit busting my balls. Axel usually lets me do my own thing. I can work out whenever I want. And I earn more than enough to pay the bills.

  Right now, I’m checking the protective covers in the corners of the boxing ring and tightening them as needed. We have a regulation-size ring and two smaller ones for sparring.

  “Mornin’, Heiko.”

  Gaul sticks his head, ponytail, and full beard through the ropes. His hands, holding tight to the ropes, are covered with skulls. Did it himself. With whichever hand was free. Gaul is a biker and part of the Hannover chapter of the Angels, the biggest in all of Germany. He’s the Angels’ tattoo artist. But we still all go to him. Of course, he doesn’t do our tattoos at their clubhouse, keeping to his kitchen table at home instead. But he’s used the needle on me in the gym’s locker-room, too. He doesn’t have outside customers because he works at the gym, in a manner of speaking. As well as several other clubs and bars. His main job is hustling stuff for the motorcycle gang. Anabolic steroids aren’t for me personally, but I’d be the last to dictate what others can or can’t do.

  I pull the knots tight, slip through the ropes, and sit down on the edge of the ring. We shake hands. I like Gaul because he’s a straight shooter through and through. And he’s not a big mouth. But I wouldn’t want to owe him anything. Not after one or t
wo involuntary tattoo sessions I’ve heard about him giving people who couldn’t or didn’t want to fork over something.

  “How you doin’?” I ask.

  “Draggin’ along.” I nod. “Hey, you already talk to your uncle today?”

  “Nope, why?”

  “We need the locker-room a little bit later for a couple minutes. Axel’s busy but said you could open up for us.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’d need you to stand in front of it and make sure no one disturbs us when we’re inside. Shouldn’t take too long. Quarter hour. We’ll come in through the back, you’ll lock up after us and then go up front so no one tries to get into the locker-room from the hall.”

  “No problem.”

  “Good man. Then I’ll just pop out and make some calls.”

  In the meantime, I’m scrolling through my Facebook news feed, even get so bored I sweep the entryway, and I chain-smoke at the back entrance. Axel’s office door is closed the whole time, and he doesn’t come out once.

  At some point I’m out back again, puffing away, and Gaul and two other guys from the gang roll up on choppers. They’re trailed by an unmarked delivery vehicle that expels four Turks or Arabs with faces that look like bulldogs. One of them is lugging two chunky black leather bags.

  Gaul and his colleagues nod to me. One of the Rabs stops in front of me when I get up from the folding chair and grind out my cig with my foot.

  “Who’s he?”

  I’d like to tell him it shouldn’t interest him a flying fuck, but Gaul says, “Works here. A friend.”

  I walk ahead of them, into the hallway with four doors along the walls. Axel’s office on the right, on the left the storage closet, service entrance to the locker-room, and straight ahead at the end of the corridor, the entrance to the gym. I unlock the door to the locker-room, hold it open for them, and lock it behind them. Then I go up front to the gym. I again check the door to the locker-room I’d just locked and remain standing in front of it.

  I can’t understand what’s being discussed in there. Don’t want to know either. Should have brought a chair in case this takes a while.