Hooligan Page 4

  Tall-boy Töller came in, duffel bag slung over his shoulder. Came to the hooligans the same time as my uncle. He’s even a little taller than Ulf but more of a beanpole. Not a wall of granite like Ulf. I can’t completely get behind Töller. Everything he says sounds like a provocation. It can really get on your nerves long-term. But we actually do have similar points of view. Regarding keeping your political views to yourself on the field, for instance. He has just as little patience as I do for the brown diarrhea a lot of guys spew. And Töller knows his football. His general knowledge doesn’t stop in the midnineties. He’s still a true Hannover 96 supporter. Of course, all of us are, but with a lot of our boys—and this isn’t just the case in Hannover—sometimes you hardly know it’s about football and representing your hometown, so to speak. But what he pulled against the boys from Cologne recently, that’s one of the reasons I can’t really stand him.

  I step to the side and block his way because he wants to slip past me. Hold up my hands.

  “Sorry, can’t go in there right now.”

  “Huh, what? Why not?”

  “Just can’t do it right now. Have to wait a couple minutes.”

  “Kolbe, I have to be back at work in an hour. So let me get changed now so I can pump a little.”

  “Can’t. Just. Right. Now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Töller, I said you just can’t right now. Closed. You just have to wait a minute.”

  He runs his free hand through his dark blond hair and groans in annoyance. Then he pushes past me and turns the knob on the locker-room door. Nothing happens.

  “Fuck this shit!” Then he tried the knob once more and spoke toward the door: “Who’s in there? Open up.”

  Fucking idiot, I think, and push him aside. I can hear some kind of metallic click behind the door. Then Gaul’s voice: “Heiko? Heiko, what’s going on out there?”

  Töller looks at me. His forehead is wrinkled and his nostrils, big as boreholes, flared.

  “Nothing! Everything’s okay!” I call back. Then to Töller: “Now get lost. Go smoke a cigarette. I’ll let you know.”

  He finally seemed to have caught on that he’d better knock it off with the macho act. He shoves the front door open as hard as he can and steps out for a smoke. But doesn’t take his eyes off of me and the locker-room.

  A couple minutes later someone knocks on the door. I say I got the message and go around to the back door. I open the door. The Mulachos leave without a word and walk past me without a single glance, climbing into their van and revving around the curve.

  Gaul and the other two, whose names I might know but can’t think of right now, come out with backpacks that hang low and heavy. Gaul keeps standing by me while the others are already in the back.

  “What was that all about?!” Gaul hissed through tightly clenched teeth. I can actually feel how he’s pulling himself together so he stays peaceful.

  “I’m sorry. To—” I just barely manage to shift it. “Someone came in and wanted to go into the locker-room.”

  “That’s exactly why you were supposed to be standing there, so something like that doesn’t happen. The thing almost went to shit.”

  “I’m really sorry, Gaul. Didn’t take my hands off the wheel.”

  He stares deep into my eyes. Probably is trying to find out if I’m serious or if it happened because I didn’t give a fuck.

  “All right, we’re good. After all, nothing happened.” He pats me on the shoulder. Then they drive out of the yard, machines producing a deep base gurgle. His hand left a faint sweaty palm print on my T-shirt.

  I go into the locker-room and look around. Everything back to normal. I unlock the door to the gym and wave at Töller, who’s still standing outside, that he should come in. Then I go back to the back door. Ask myself if Axel’s even there or if he was sleeping the whole time in his big boss leather chair. I knock twice and push the door open. He is, in fact, sitting on his massive office chair made of black leather. The surface of the oak desk is cleared in the middle. Three lines of blow are lined up in a row.

  “What’s up, Heiko?” he asks in a sharp tone of voice. The two skinheads with hollow faces turn in their chairs in front of his desk and toward me. A third is leaned over the desk, straw in hand. At the sight of me, he straightens up and interrupts his sniffing session.

  “I’m busy right now. So if it’s nothing important …”

  I forget to answer him and, one after the other, examine the bozos, whose faces I recognize from somewhere. I just can’t place it.

  “Nah … um … it’s okay,” I say and want to move my body back into the hallway.

  “Hey, Heiko, wait a sec,” Axel says and snorts the remaining coke that’s still hanging on his nostril. “Let’s chat about Cologne sometime soon. A little debriefing. Okay?”

  He winks conspiratorially, which confuses me so much I only stupidly nod and leave an “um” hanging in the room. The drugged, wigged-out eyes of the three skinheads follow me out. I close the door.

  ———

  It just wasn’t working anymore. Much as I wanted it to work, for us to work. It was equally clear I couldn’t change myself and she wouldn’t change. No question. That’s what we’d told ourselves from the beginning of our relationship. Sure, other people wouldn’t see it as real, but that’s what it was. Which was also fine by me. Me and my bros were just starting to learn to play the third half—as people rightly call it—and I wasn’t about to let something mess it up. Least of all a woman. On the other hand, it’s Yvonne and not just any girl.

  At first I kept thinking how perfect it would be. She needed plenty of space too. I never thought it’d be possible to meet anyone so compatible with my lifestyle. And then it wasn’t as it seemed, but for reasons I couldn’t have imagined. Goddamn! It’s almost funny, but after a while I guessed she had another poker in the fire besides me. Poker … how fucking fitting. Always talking through everything took forever. I was never good at things like that. At least with words. And saying what’s going on inside yourself, and all that emotional crap. But the conversation always heads in that direction. Without me really being prepared for it. She said it wasn’t as bad as all that. That she just needed it. She has everything under control. I just have to leave her alone. After all, she accepted me just the way I was too. With the brawls and the “football crap,” as she called it. Such a goddamn fucking crock of shit!

  She threw all my clothes she could gather into the hallway and locked the door. I didn’t even do anything about it. Like stick my foot between the door and the frame or yell she should cut it out. She said I should go, and I accepted it. I collected my clothes, went into the kitchen, and ate the meal we hadn’t finished that evening. Could have just left right when she said it, but I think I was trying to draw it out. Maybe she’d reconsider and come out of her room. But, of course, she didn’t. She never did. Never once in my experience did she change her mind when she’d made a decision. Not even with the smallest, least important things. I went into the living room, turned on the tube, and sat on the couch for a bit. Pet the cat next to me, which was having a hard time finding a comfortable sleeping position and was punishing the slipcover. I tidied up a bit. Put dishes in the dishwasher, carefully stacked her stupid magazines on the glass coffee table, and washed the backup utensils and hypodermic needles and syringes in the bathroom sink, returning them to their leather case. Then placed the case in its spot in the drawer in the living room cabinet. I would have preferred to slam the case against the wall. Actually, why not? For some reason, I was cleaning up like a zombie, with my head empty and stuck on straightening up. I took my things, pausing in the open doorway to the apartment, listening to Yvonne’s place one last time. Then I closed the door behind me. As I went down the stairs and ran my thumb over the jags of the key in my bag, our two-year relationship shrank with every step into a tiny, compressed ball.

  ———

  Kai’s done with his classes. Even though that means he
has to take an ass-load of finals on balance sheets, human resource management, and some other business crap, he still prefers to hang out with me all day at the gym and starts drinking around noon. I always skip a round of beer so I’m halfway able to do something when necessary. But there’s nothing to do. And Kai’s presence distracts me from the dull bits of conversation I overhear all day long. We’re just sitting next to the front door, smoking, drinking, and Kai shows me pictures from Aztec stadium in Mexico City. His big dream. Just once in that ginormous stadium which used to hold more than 110,000 people. These days it still has around 95,000 seats.

  “Sure, but seats, dude,” I say, “it’s fucking lame.”

  “You don’t really believe the hombres stay seated, resting on their asses. There’s a real fiesta!” he bellows and accidently knocks ash on his new, snow-white Le Coq shoes.

  “Oh, fuck.”

  He licks his thumb and tries to wipe away the ashes. Gaul comes around, greets us, and goes in. We watch him go. Inside, he’s approached by Latze, the six-foot-six bouncer who’s smiling like a fat kid in a candy shop, and they go into the locker-room together.

  “If Latze swallows any more bull shark hormones his biceps will explode someday,” Kai says and giggles.

  I laugh. Wave him off.

  “Nah, it’s only hot air anyway.”

  “You think? I can go in there right now and tell Latze you want to challenge him to a round of arm wrestling. Won’t take long at all. Wham bam, thank you, ma’am.”

  He acts like he would really get up any second and do it, but then he sits down again and continues sipping on his can of beer.

  “But even if the stadium is awesome,” I say, “and I do have my doubts, I have to believe some of the atmosphere gets lost in a huge arena like that. Even if, who would play there anyway?” I don’t wait for an answer: “Nope. Celtic versus Rangers. That,” I point my raised index finger at him, “would be something! The oldest, longest-standing fucking derby in the world. That’s where religions collide.”

  “But then the Rangers would have to move up to the top league.”

  “You’re right about that, too,” I say.

  The beer almost slips from my hand when my uncle rips open the door and bellows, “Can you step into my office, Heiko?”

  “Where’d he come from all of a sudden?” Kai says in a whisper, though Axel’s already back inside.

  “I shrug my shoulders, drain my can, and toss it to Kai, who catches it and sets it down next to him.

  On the way to Axel, I try to decide whether I should ask what those Nazis were doing in his office the other day. The question had been rolling around my brain the whole day, but I just couldn’t think of an answer that would be any of my business. After all, I keep my nose out of everything else that concerns the gym.

  I open the door to Axel’s office.

  “Hey, hey, hey. Don’t people knock these days or what?”

  I apologize and want to close the door.

  “No way. You’re going right back out and doing it the right way.”

  You gotta be kidding me, I think to myself, but do as ordered: go back out in the hall, close the door, wait a second, knock, he says, “Yes?,” I open the door, my uncle says I should come in, and I close the door behind me and plant myself on a chair and just think what the point of the preschool show was?!

  Axel sorts through some documents on his desk. Acts as if nothing had happened. He actually praises me for the good organization of the Cologne match. It could have run a little more smoothly here or there, without going into detail about what he means exactly, but it was really quite good for the first time. In the end, everything turned out all right. We took home a win. No cops. Bottom line, a success.

  I’m about to interrupt him and ask about the right-wingers when he says he’s proud of me. I think I wasn’t hearing right, but he takes a deep breath and says, “As you probably already know, I can’t do this forever. It’s a pity, even so, but at some point things come to an end. I’m not so shortsighted to think that I can stay fit forever. There are enough idiots out on the field that tell themselves who gives a damn what happens afterward, but not me,” and he rapped his knuckles on the table. Maybe it was supposed to be some kind of superstitious knock-on-wood thing. “Heiko”—he moved so close to the desk that the edge pushed into his stomach muscles—“we’re starting to build something. For Hannover. Put the city on the map, once and for all. So that no one talks about Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Dresden, Magdeburg, hell if I know, without having to mention Hannover.” He balls up his hands into fists that immediately go red because of how fast the blood shoots into them. It’s like he’s the leader of the bodybuilding political party or something with this little motivational speech. He pulls back from the table again, leaning backward and making the chair squeak under his weight. “I hope I can pass the whole thing on to you someday. That I can hand the reins over to you and not any old Johnny-come-lately. What they’re missing. What we have. That’s brains, Heiko”—he taps his finger against his temple, where veins ran like pipes—“brains.”

  I take it all in. I filter out how absurd it all seems because I’ve never heard Axel talk this way. So I take it all in and almost ovulate for joy or enthusiasm or the hell if I know. Finally, really start something. Show all of those goddamn son-of-a-bitch operations in Germany they’d better pay attention to Hannover. Must pay attention. Maybe he wouldn’t be such a bad politician.

  “Listen up. I want to introduce you to someone. We’re gonna just drive over to Wunstorf and visit an old friend of mine. Who you can learn plenty from. I’ve learned plenty. From him. All right?”

  Once again, I don’t open my mouth, and I’m just smiling and nodding like a true brownnoser. Even if I know it’s not really me, only the simple fact of sitting there and listening to it all, even if I’m truly happy about it, I’d like to slap myself upside the head and tell myself I shouldn’t be acting like a hypocritical yes-man.

  “Then you can call it a day. Your car is parked at the train station in Wunstorf, right?”

  And again, I just nod.

  “Just give me a call when you’re finished with your royal audience or whatever kind of faggy stuff you’re up to,” Kai had joked, and I climbed into Axel’s plush Audi.

  We rolled down the autobahn at two hundred kph. Axel’s way of driving doesn’t leave room for questions, although there’s probably a big, fat, red question mark on my forehead when we turn off into the parking lot at the branch of the regional hospital in Wunstorf. The local funny farm. I’m supposed to wait outside, and Axel says he’ll bring out his friend.

  “Then he can get a whiff of fresh air.”

  I take a seat in a wooden shelter set aside for breaks in the hospital’s park.

  I’m already smoking my third cigarette and there’s a scent of freshly spread potting soil and summer thunderstorms. It hesitantly begins to rain. Here a drop. There one. Then more. All around me, the rain falls in thousands of spider legs. I flick the glowing cigarette butt into the already soggy bed of flowers. The automatic doors to the front entrance open. Axel comes out. He’s pushing someone in a wheelchair.

  Through the rain, which was already letting up, I hear him: “Oh, oh, oh, we’re gonna get so wet.” He’s pushing the wheelchair and its jockey out in front at a trot. It rattles a lot over the cobblestone path. As if the sight of the guy in the wheelchair wasn’t bizarre enough in itself. This guy is huge. I’m talking about Ulf and Latze proportions. A goddamn fridge of a guy. Or rather, he must have been at some point. Now he looks like his skeleton and inner organs shrank but his skin stayed the way it was. I don’t mean he looked all wrinkly. I’d guess he’s roughly my uncle’s age. It simply looks … wrong. Off, somehow. As though it wasn’t a natural process. At any rate, even in his state, he still seemed far too large for the wheelchair, which is probably a completely standard model. But he still gave me the impression of a sad clown on a kid’s tricycle. This was heightened by t
he puffy orange bomber jacket he almost disappeared into.

  Once they’re nearly under the roof with me, I’m able to make out the guy’s sunken face better. On the cheek more than anywhere else, it’s like one of those beat-up plastic bottles you can massage as much as you want but you’ll never get the dents out. I suddenly have a kind of déjà-vu feeling. I ask myself if I’ve ever seen this guy somewhere, but try as I may, I can’t picture it. His head is pocked, strangely pointy, and looks like he would normally shave it, judging from how the hair’s sprouting from his scalp. Only it doesn’t grow evenly but in thin, isolated bundles.

  Axel pushes him under the roof. I don’t know if I’m supposed to stand up or not. I just stay seated.

  “Dirk, this is my nephew. Heiko.” Axel pronounces the words clearly and distinctly. Emphasizes every single syllable.

  It feels like Dirk needs years to lift his face in my direction. Two shimmering pools of spittle have gathered in the corners of his mouth. For some reason, I feel nauseous. His eyes pan slowly and imprecisely in my direction. They’re topped by bushy eyebrows that look like those fat, hairy caterpillars you can see in documentaries on the Amazon.

  I say, “Hello,” and wave without lifting my arm, as if he weren’t sitting directly in front of me.

  The sight of this ghost made my testicles contract. I’d already seen plenty in my day, but him … A taste of soggy cardboard spreads through my mouth.

  Axel crouches down between us so anyone who walked by here would think we look like a conspiratorial group. He rests his hand on the puffy sleeve of Dirk’s washed-out bomber jacket, from which a hand with scabby yellow fingernails protrudes. And the back of his hand. Only now do I notice it. On the back of his hand up into the sleeve, and as I assume, probably even farther up his arm, there’s a blackish, tumor-like crust growing rampant that looks like a smoker’s leg kneaded into a lump.

  “My nephew here. Heiko,” Axel emphasized loudly once again, “he’s really talented. One of our best.” I briefly squint over to Axel and then back into the milky eyes of Dirk, which don’t seem to have any spark, from my perspective. “Has proven himself multiple times. He’s capable of stuff, Dirk. He’s a good one.” Axel gets really close to Dirk’s ear, but doesn’t reduce his volume. Dirk begins to nod very slowly. His mouth opens and closes to a hardly visible degree, like a goldfish. I hope I don’t look like that when I’m nodding in agreement because I can’t think of anything better.