Hooligan Page 5

  My uncle turns to me. Back at normal volume: “Me and Dirk. We used to be the best. Always at the front of the pack. What am I talking about? Leading the way! Together we made that tired bunch into a hard-hitting squad. I couldn’t have done it without Dirk.” He briefly ponders, looking at the ground, then back at me: “A little like you and Kai. Dirk and me. We were always that tight.”

  “Understand.”

  “You, Dirk. We’re no spring chickens anymore, hey?” Axel doesn’t wait for an answer. We could be sitting here till the month after next. “And at some point, you really have to let go, right? That’s when I thought of Heiko here. My nephew. The best of all.” He swipes his hand in the air between the three of us in emphasis. I have to look away out of embarrassment. The rain has stopped. Individual drops slip heavily off the leaves of the flowers and onto the soil. A neon-yellow butterfly flies past the wooden hut. I watch it go, till my gaze snags on the two warhorses in front of me.

  “But of course, none of that happens unless Dirk gives his blessing, right? You’re okay, Dirk,” he literally croaks in his ear. I notice how my uncle’s voice flutters, but just slightly, so you hardly notice. Dirk’s face pans toward the source of Axel’s voice like in slow motion. The black bulges also protrude from the collar of his jacket, up his neck.

  “All right?”

  Axel appears to be out of patience. I repress the impulse to light one. Then finally a reaction. He nods. His goldfish mouth forms an: “Okay.” Strings of drool connect his lips.

  It’s enough for Axel: “I’m glad. Well, we’re all cooled down after that rain. I’d better bring you back inside. So you don’t catch anything out here. Say good-bye, Heiko.”

  I say bye and watch the two of them go. I want to pull one out of my pack as Axel and Dirk have turned onto the path toward the main entrance, when Dirk yelps all of a sudden. At first I don’t get that it’s him, but it absolutely doesn’t sound like Axel. It can only be Dirk’s voice. I hear him caterwauling the metro song, but unbelievably off-key, till they disappear past the sliding doors of the building. That he wants to build a subway from Mannheim to Auschwitz. My forehead is buried in my palms and I spew as much vomit between my feet as I possibly can.

  ———

  The meal was over. I’d just accompanied Yvonne back to her car. She had to go to her night shift. “Nice that it finally worked out for us to meet,” was what Manuela had said in parting, and she gave me a sideways glance, “I was afraid that we’d never get to know you. Heiko is such a tough nut to crack. Never opens up.”

  Yvonne smiled, unsure whether or not to take it as a joke. She apologized again that she’d come in her work clothes: “We can’t change at the hospital because the nurses’ locker-room is being remodeled at the moment.”

  Manuela assumed a generous smile and shook her head. Her long, dangling earrings made her seem at least ten years older.

  “Don’t worry about it. I hope you have a quiet shift. I bet it’s hard work at the hospital.” She went back to the patio to help Andreas and his parents clean up the picnic table. Damian was kicking my birthday present through the garden, which was bathed in evening light. I had even gone to the trouble to get him the official ball from the ’98 World Cup in France on eBay. Best ball ever.

  I kissed Yvonne on her pale forehead and watched her climb into her Ford KA hatchback and drive away. Once again, she’d hardly eaten a thing all evening.

  I wanted to light another cig on the patio.

  “Heiko,” Manuela said, “can you please not smoke around Damian?”

  I flipped the pack shut.

  “But he’s playing on the grass way over there,” I snapped at her and pointed at my nephew, who was at least five meters away.

  “But it blows over to him.”

  Which wasn’t true. From the trees beyond the property, I could see the wind was blowing in exactly the opposite direction. And even if it wasn’t, we’re outdoors, damn it, I told myself.

  “Besides, I don’t want you to set a bad example for him. If he sees that his uncle smokes, then he might want to, too.”

  “He’s six!”

  “Heiko, please,” Andreas butted in.

  So I went around the corner, where Damian couldn’t see me, and crouched down, leaning against the wall, smoking in silence. At least the evening was almost over now. It was cooling down.

  For me, it felt like the meal had lasted forever. The most exciting thing was Damian’s torrent of words. They just bubbled out of him, about the first grade and who his best friends were, and so on and so forth. The business chitchat between Andreas and his father, who’d sat across from each other in their checkered shirts, looking more and more like clones and less like father and son, made the time go by all the more slowly. Manuela wasn’t much help either, not missing a chance to praise Andreas’s many varieties of salad. She couldn’t produce something edible if you put a gun to her head, I’ll admit that. The food was actually good. Electric grill. But you don’t really need to eat outside if you’re not going to use charcoal.

  Hans’s place at the table opposite Yvonne had remained empty the whole time, so Mie sat there alone and smiled silently at the circle. My father had made her load up a plate and carry it to him in the living room because he wanted to watch TV. I could see him from the patio, through the window, the bluish reflection of the tube flickering on his face and then disappearing again.

  I heard voices from inside. Only then did I realize I was sitting right by the kitchen window. Andreas and Manuela were talking. It sounded like they were loading the dishwasher. Andreas’s parents joined them.

  “We’d better go. I have to leave early tomorrow morning,” Andreas’s father said.

  Manuela and Andreas thanked them emphatically for coming and for the generous presents for Damian, and I just thought, Good lord, how long do people need to say good-bye? At some point Andreas walked his parents to the door. The kitchen fell silent moments later. Manuela had stopped loading the dishwasher. And then I heard her suddenly start to sob. She sucked up the snot. Then another moment of silence. Then it started again. She seemed to be holding her hand in front of her mouth. I tried not to move so she wouldn’t know I was accidentally listening in.

  Andreas returned.

  “Dear, do you …?” He stopped. Must have noticed she was crying. Then nothing. It took me a minute to get that he’d simply turned on his heel and left my sister alone in the kitchen. No clue where it came from, but I stood up next to the kitchen window, but without showing myself, and whispered, “What’s going on?”

  Manuela didn’t seem at all surprised my voice was suddenly coming in from outside. If she was, I couldn’t tell.

  “It’s just … Heiko. I just can’t stand it sometimes.”

  I wanted to press about what she meant exactly, but she added: “Seeing Andreas’s parents. And us in contrast. How Papa doesn’t even come to the table. And Mama …” My molars ground together so hard my jaw hurt. “Heiko. I hate Mama for it. I hate her for just running away. I hate her for not caring about us at all.” I wanted to tell her I felt the same way. That it wasn’t a family. And it never had been. At least not as long as I could remember. I wanted to tell Manuela she was my sister. I mean: of course she is. But, saying it, I wanted to say something else actually. But instead of saying that and more, what I could have said, I said nothing at all. ’Cause once again I couldn’t manage to find the words. Then it was too late, because Mie came into the kitchen with the rest of the dirty plates. We haven’t spoken about it since.

  I went back around the corner of the house. My knees were soft as sponges. Damian called from the patch of lawn, asking if I could play another round of football before he went to bed. I said I’d come right away.

  Andreas sat at the picnic table. There were red splotches on his cheeks, which didn’t fit with his otherwise tidy appearance. He just looked at me. Took a swig of his nonalcoholic beer and looked at me again from beneath his eyebrows. I walked by
him without saying a word.

  ———

  The week’s almost done. I can’t put off feeding the pigeons anymore. They’re free-flying and might be less than stupid about finding something to eat and drink along the way, but, after nearly a week, I still have to make sure everything’s in good shape. Otherwise, they’ll shit the coop full to the brim. Besides, Hans is in withdrawal. Or as Manuela calls it: rehab. At least that way I don’t have to cross paths with him.

  I parked a little ways down the street. I don’t want Mie seeing the light from my headlamps when I turn into the drive. I have no clue if she’d ask me in or anything, but she’d certainly come out to say hi, and then we’d be standing there and looking at each other, and no one knowing what to say, how to end it halfway okay.

  From the front, no light is visible in the house. But what if she’s in the kitchen right now and looks out? Well, then I can’t do anything about it. But maybe I’ll get lucky and she’s in the living room or already asleep. So I slip through the narrow space between the shed and the fence. There used to be a well-worn path you could take to go from the driveway to the garden. Today it’s overgrown with weeds a meter high, growing from the wall of the shed to the gutter on the roof—stinging nettles and thistles. I was smart enough to dress in long pants, though it’s brutally hot. Even after sunset. The heat of the day is so heavy and oppressive the plants just sag to the ground at night and lie there till the next morning, only to start up again.

  The garden is surrounded by the house on one side, the neighbor’s property on the other, and the shed next to the street. It extends out back at least twenty meters in a rectangular shape. Judging by the high grass, which covers the entire garden like the thick fur of a huge animal, Hans hasn’t mowed for months. Wouldn’t be possible now either. All you could do would be to go in with a scythe. The one place trampled flat is the area between the patio, the coop, and the house, where a garden hose is attached to a faucet.

  I wade through the hip-high grass, which keeps wrapping around my legs as I go. I’m lucky. There’s no light coming out of the kitchen. And because there’s a clear sky with a moon that’s nearly full, I don’t need a flashlight to see. In the twilight, the coop seems like a bulky, black torture chamber where people get locked away or suffocated or something. The monotonous cooing of the pigeons only reinforces this impression. Can’t get over the fact I’m doing this. Just hope none of the neighbors looking over the fence sees me sneaking around the garden. They’d call the cops because they’d think I was breaking in.

  All at once, the grass in front of me rustles and something scurries away. It causes a very slight furrow to form that closes soon after. Then, at the end of the garden, a cat jumps onto the fence and looks back. The pair of eyes glow at me. Then it hops down over on the other side and disappears. “Fleabag,” I whisper, and though I don’t believe in that kind of bullshit, I can’t help but see it as a bad omen. I want to walk over to the patio because I assume the bucket with pigeon feed is there, when something squelches under my foot. I raise it. A black, formless blotch is visible.

  “Oh, no way.” I whisper a curse because I think I’ve stepped in a pile of shit. The stench creeps into my nose, but it’s not the stench of feces. It smells of rot. I risk a glance into the kitchen. Everything’s still dark. Then I whip out my phone and light up the pile.

  “What the hell?” I bend lower so I can better make out what I’ve stepped in. Then my phone nearly flies out of my hand when I see it’s a dead mole I’ve squeezed the innards out of irreversibly.

  “Holy shit,” I say and have to gag because I get a full dose when I inhale. I take two quick leaps out of the high grass and over to the flattened area in front of the coop. I spit a couple times and scrape the sole of my shoe on the patio flagstones. Bits of the mole still cling to it.

  I quietly curse my sister and father, and most of all myself for agreeing to this, but there wasn’t any point. I’m here now anyway. And I don’t want the birds to have to crouch in their own filth and catch something from some bacteria or something. It’s not the pigeons’ fault, any of that.

  And still, with the feed bucket I found on the patio in hand, I take a couple deep breaths and grab my crotch to reassure myself I still have the necessary balls before opening the door to the coop.

  The pigeons look at me with their beady, seemingly dead eyes. All of them focused on me. As a kid, I never noticed how one of those tiny, black eyes can make you pretty nervous. Then all this calm cooing from every side. As if they were scheming something. I try not to think about it anymore and let my gaze sweep over the rows. All sitting in their roosts. None of them croaked yet. I shine the light from my phone on them, and then I notice my mistake: how the hell can I clean out the roosts when the pigeons are sitting in them? There aren’t any newspapers on the ground I can just change in. I’m a fucking idiot!

  “Fuck it. You can take a couple more days the way you are,” I say and decide the coop isn’t too full of feces. I bend over to reach the water and food trays, and that’s when I make the next mistake. My gaze hits the opposite wall. At that spot. That very goddamn spot. For a moment, I can’t move anymore. Like I’m frozen. I will myself on with some sort of inner strength, reaching for the tray. Spilling water and some of the feed. Whatever. Just get it done! I quickly fill the long tray with feed. Set the bucket back down. Go over to the side of the house. Dump out the old water and put in new. Put it in the coop. Close the door. It sticks. The old rusty hinges catch somewhere. I push against it with all my might. The brittle wood creaks and finally gives way. I slam the door. Simply leave the bucket standing in the coop. Just get outta here. Get the images out of my head. I cross the grass and weeds with long strides. The tops of plants are hanging from my jeans, and I hear my beating heart in my throat. Only when I’m sitting in my car does my heartbeat slow.

  ———

  That weekend, while we were at Timpen watching the Bundesliga live scores, like every year we had a discussion about whose turn it was to get the wreath or bouquet. And just like every year, we’d all forgotten who’d taken care of it the year before. I thought it was me, but I couldn’t prove it. So this week I called up our regular florist to order a wreath in green, white, and black. Even though 96 was always called the Reds, because that’s what they took the field in, those were the team’s official colors. I picked Kai up at the station and together we drove to Luthe. To the cemetery on the edge of town, near the fields between Luthe and Wunstorf.

  Jojo and Ulf are already waiting at the gate. We greet each other, and I get the wreath in 96 team colors from the trunk.

  Why’d you dress so fancy?” Ulf asks Kai, who looks down at himself. He’s wearing a tight-fitting black shirt. Sleeves rolled up. Black pants and black Lacoste shoes.

  “You’re not gonna get started on that. Heiko was saying the same thing in the car.”

  “He’s not getting buried again, right?” Ulf joked.

  “You should be able to dress up for once to honor a deceased friend, you fucktard. Am I right, Jojo?”

  We turn to Jojo. He’s standing at the edge of the field, one hand forming a canopy for his eyes, looking over the fields at the sky.

  “Something’s brewing over there,” Kai says and peers in the same direction. We’ve been having heat thunderstorms nonstop since the beginning of the month, but unfortunately they only bring brief periods of cooling. It’s still so unbearably hot you could change your sweaty clothes three times a day.

  “The shoes are still hanging there,” Jojo says, without shifting his gaze.

  We follow his gaze. Only when you protect your eyes against the sun and look very closely can you see the shoes hanging from the power lines in the glaring light.

  “That’s unbelievable,” Kai says. We’re standing in a row at the edge of the field and shielding our eyes, “that they’re still hanging there.”

  “Almost ten years,” I say.

  “And they haven’t fallen down,”
Ulf says.

  “Or no one took them down.”

  “Almost ten years,” Jojo murmurs to himself. Maybe just to realize for himself what an eternity has gone by.

  I kneel down and place the new wreath in front of Joel’s grave. In the meantime, the sun has retreated somewhere behind the clouds. There’s a creaking sound in the distance. I rejoin the semicircle made by my friends and clasp my hands over my crotch like the others, head bowed. No one says anything.

  Even after nearly ten years, I feel strange standing here like this. I’m guessing the feeling won’t ever go away. How bizarre is it to stand in front of a polished slab of stone representing a person six feet underground? I feel the sweat collect between my fingers, and I stare at the tombstone. Joel Seidel. Seventeen years lay between his birth and death. Seventeen pitiful years. Out here in the cemetery, I’m always aware of how long Joel’s been dead. Precisely here. When we come together to memorialize him. Whenever I come here, he dies again. Because out there in my normal life I think he’ll call any minute, come over with Jojo, or we can go see him at practice. Admire his dribbling skills again. Bernd Schneider. Ansgar Brinkmann. The white Brazilian … my ass! Joel Seidel, that was the white Brazilian! The dribbling machine from Luthe. Here in the cemetery, his face disappears before my eyes.

  No one says anything. Maybe others mourn differently. Someone says something to the deceased. Gives a speech. Reels off an anecdote. We do that too. But not here. We can’t think of anything as soon as we walk through that gate. No one dares say anything. And so we’re standing here, hands clutched in front of our balls as if we were forming the wall on a free kick. He could do free kicks like no other. Direct free kicks. Bent into the corner. Roberto Carlos from Lower Saxony. I could say all of that. But I don’t. I don’t know why. I just stand there, stare at the ground, and feel strange.