Hooligan

  I say, “Yes, that’s exactly the way it is. You’re abandoning me. Leaving me to take care of it alone. If Kai isn’t even ready to take revenge on the motherfuckers, then it’s even more our job to stand up for him.”

  “Have you ever considered that Kai might not want that?”

  “He’s just saying that because he’s so fucked up right now!”

  Jojo closes his eyes and slowly shakes his head of curly hair.

  “I don’t believe that. No. I’m sorry, but … No. Besides, I’ve finally found something that I really want to do and do it right. And the brawling just doesn’t fit in anymore.”

  “Yeah, great. Fantastic. The ungrateful little shits will either move up to the next age group or quit. Maybe a couple will even make something of themselves, but most of them will stay weekend warriors and move on and you can coach the next load of brats.”

  “Exactly. I don’t want it any other way.”

  I get up, adjust my jacket, and pull my pants up to indicate that I’ve had enough and I’m leaving.

  “All right,” I say, “then I know where you stand.”

  “Heiko—” but Jojo’s mother calls from below: “Jojo, our crime show is about to start. Does Heiko want to watch?”

  I respond myself: “No, thanks, Mrs. Seidel. I have to get going.”

  One after the other, we walk down the stairs in silence.

  “You don’t need to see me out,” I whisper to Jojo, and he looks at me with his face like a sad fucking dog, and I could just about spew. Then he sits down on the sofa next to his mother.

  “Take it easy, Mrs. Seidel,” I say.

  She waves and smiles and says, “Nice that you came by again. You boys all have to come around for coffee when Kai’s feeling better again.”

  “We sure will,” I say and nod, but don’t mean it.

  I’m already on my way out, but something makes me pause again between the hallway and the living room. I turn around. The show’s intro is playing on the television. For the two remaining Seidels, I’m already out the door. Now that they assume they’re alone again, the two of them seem to deflate. Their cheeks sag, as if they’re filled with gravel. Both appear powerless. Mrs. Seidel’s hand moves over and for a moment strokes her son’s hand lying between them on the sofa. All around them, shelves and cabinets are filled with Dieter’s carved figurines. Joel’s trophies. The whole thing reminds me somehow of a documentary I watched once with Yvonne when nothing else was on TV. It was about ancient Egypt. Specifically, the pharaohs and how they had themselves buried with all their nearest and dearest possessions. Sometimes, even with their most loyal servants, who were simply tossed into the graves alive, together with the mummified rulers. That’s about how that living room seemed. Or Joel’s old room, which is more like Jojo’s private altar. All at once, the air in here feels too heavy. I have trouble breathing and the sight of the leftover Seidels marinating amid their memories drives me right out the door and into the cold night. I look up. The first snowflakes of winter are falling from the dark-blue sky but hardly touch the ground before they melt to water.

  ———

  I’m already pretty wasted when I get up from the bench in the locker-room, stumble over the beer cans on the floor, leave the gym without locking up, and climb into the VW hatchback. In the night, the thick clouds look like steel wool dunked in ink. I drive to the hospital parking lot, piss next to my car in the shine of the lights, and climb back inside. The digital clock under the speedometer says it’s ten till two. An ambulance drives by with flashing lights and sirens and stops in front of the hospital’s main entrance. I could try to slip inside. Wake up Kai. Hear him ask what the hell I’m doing here in the middle of the night and if I’ve completely lost my mind. I slam into reverse and drive from the parking lot. I myself don’t really know why I got up in the first place and drive through the night like a madman. Maybe because I wanted to arrive someplace where I had the feeling I belonged. I don’t know. Maybe I was just too drunk. Definitely to drive. But I was lucky. And have enough experience at inconspicuous drunk driving. Which is why I arrived safely in Wunstorf. I let the car roll slowly while I drive past the country road that leads to Arnim’s farm and try to spot lights through the trees in the woods and the darkness. But there’s nothing. Just a dark splotch in the middle of barren fields. I drive past and into town and end up in front of Yvonne’s apartment. The light is on in her bedroom. I turn off the car, and before I can think twice, I open the glove compartment and remove the set of spare keys.

  It still fits in the front door. I climb the stairs without turning on the light. Two steps at a time. I press my ear to Yvonne’s apartment door. Not a sound behind the door. I bend down to the lock and place two fingers around it so the key doesn’t slip in my state and betray me. This key also fits. I carefully push it all the way in and turn till it clicks and I can push open the door. The lamp from the bedroom, on the other end of the hall, casts a beam of light down the hall. Something scurries across the floor, and I remove the key and shut the door. The cat prances around my leg and nudges with its head and purrs like a model-sized moped. It smells of litter box from the kitchen. I crouch down for a second and pet the cat. Once she’s had enough and I want to get up again, I feel dizzy. The beam of light splits before my eyes, and I have to steady myself against the wall. I walk into the bedroom. Taking care to place every step very consciously and quietly roll off the balls of my feet. Not so easy when you’re that drunk. I push the door open and whisper so quietly I’m definitely the only one who can hear it, “Sweetheart, I’m home.”

  The ceiling spotlight next to the bed is on and produces a gentle humming sound. She’s lying there. In nondescript, pale underwear, the color of which disappears next to her skin. Her not-at-all knobby knees she’d always been ashamed of and that I’d always kissed, precisely for that reason, to wake her up when I was allowed to sleep at her place. Between her narrow thighs, her vagina is visible under her underwear. The childish belly button. She has one of those belly buttons that don’t go in, pushing out in a little ball of skin instead. I only saw something like that with her. I can count her ribs from the door, and the bones of her collarbone can be clearly seen, shimmering under the skin. My breathing is shallow. The cat purrs behind me in the hallway. She cut her hair. A strand of her bangs is dyed red. Her eyelids are closed. She sleeps like a corpse. Her eyes don’t move beneath her eyelids. Her cheeks, flat as saucers, don’t budge a fraction of an inch. Her mouth is open a crack and I can see the white of her front teeth. And above it her closed eyes. On the brows I love so much there are two thin, black dashes, and they disfigure the beautiful face. Why’d she do that? Why’d she scrawl those lines? I’d like to pounce on her. Press her arms down with my knees so she can’t fight it, lick my thumbs, and rub those ugly black dashes off. Till she looks like she used to. Till she’s my Yvonne again. And then I’d lay my finger on her lips and say, “Hush,” and then we would fall asleep next to and inside each other. And early in the morning I’d wake up before her and throw away all the empty vacuum packs and morphine syringes and I’d make her a strong coffee she’d have to finish completely, and then we’d look through furniture catalogs and mark things, but never buy them, and at some point, before we’re old and gray, we’d die together.

  I turn on the light in the living room next door and sit down at the coffee table. I smoke slowly but can’t enjoy the taste of the tobacco and quietly cough into my fist. Before I go, I take a look in the fridge. Behind the plastic door of the fridge compartment where the eggs go lies a handful more disposable syringes. How lucky it is for you, Yvonne, that you work at a hospital. And how lucky you are they haven’t caught you yet. I close the refrigerator door again. The door sucks tight. I place the spare keys in the bowl in the hall and pet the cat, which was just coming out of the kitchen looking satisfied, one last time. There’s cat litter still hanging on its fur. I block its path out of the apartment with my foot and then step back into the dar
k staircase.

  ———

  We spent a lot of time at Grandpa and Grandma’s place during vacation. That was only great when Grandpa was feeling good and he wasn’t lying up in bed all day, his thin strings of hair sticking to his head, and tossing and turning like a walrus because of the pain. Because that’s when Grandma was in charge of the place any you couldn’t touch anything, couldn’t be loud, and only drank that disgusting sweet fruit tea. I think that’s why Gramps was usually back in the garden, when he was fit. When he didn’t want to hear Grandma’s nagging, preferring to have his ears cooed full by his pigeons, and didn’t have to answer, Yeah, I’ll do it in a second. No, I haven’t yet. Just putt, putt, putt, come my bird, putt, putt, putt. There was nothing happening with Manuela. She’d quickly found friends her age down the street. I didn’t have anyone and was far from knowing Jojo, Joel, and Ulf. We were only allowed to bring Kai along sometimes, but then it was also too boring in the small town. It was surrounded by fields that blandly flowed into the horizon. I liked it. Mainly because of my Grandpa. When we played football in the garden and he was in goal and I was easily able to dink the ball past him. Then I ran my rounds in front of him, across the lawn, and he provided the play-by-play and yelled, “Bandura in possession. Ladies ’n’ gentlemen, feast your eyes on that technique. Takes it round the center-back. Passes to Heynckes, who’s kept up with play. Takes a look, sees Rodekamp, he’s calling for the ball. Great position. Heynckes back to Bandura. What are they planning? Cross. Rodekamp has it, shoots, and goal, goooooooooal!”

  After our little game and before the meal, I helped him feed the pigeons and give them water, and he held out particularly beautiful specimens in his large hands. Then they kept very still because they knew that nothing would happen to them in the boss’s hands. And then he stroked his finger along the feathers and I think that pleased the birds, and he showed me the beautiful play of the colors. And I listened attentively and nodded, but I didn’t really understand because they were gray. Maybe a couple turquoise feathers in between. Mostly on the neck. But otherwise it was just gray leading to a darker or lighter gray, but whatever. And I listened to my gramps, how he told stories and gushed over his pigeons, which he never called critters. Just his little, dear birds. And his voice sounded as warm as a simmering stew and calmed me when I was worked up from playing football.

  And then there was this one day in summer, where Gramps might not have been in bed, but you could see he was in pain. But he never said where it hurt. Much less told me. And on this particular day, because he hardly spoke and even Grandma held back with her throaty clucking and didn’t fill his ears with it, and I also didn’t ask when we could finally play some football because I saw his eyes were very heavy and he walked with the stiffness of a furnace. I was inside, and Grandma forced me to drink the fucking disgusting tea and said I couldn’t get up till it was drained clean. So I held my nose when she wasn’t looking and drank it in big gulps. I’d seen Mom do that when her friends were visiting and they knocked back clear drinks in small glasses that stank like gas. And holding my nose actually helped.

  My grandma said, “Go outside and see if you can help your grandpa a little with the critters,” and pulled her hair net a little tighter around the curls that were the color of snow that’d been under a car for days.

  I went out into the garden. The door to the coop was ajar. The upturned trough was already lying on the grass. I called for Gramps. Then something knocked on the kitchen window, and when I turned around I saw Grandma strictly holding her finger to her lips, meaning I should be quiet. I opened the door to the loft. The pigeons had flown away, and it smelled of freshly spread straw. I blinked a couple times because it was so bright and so hazy. And when I was done blinking, I had to blink a couple more times because I saw that something wasn’t right. Not completely right. But as much as I blinked with my eyes, till they hurt terribly, they didn’t change the picture in front of me. On the contrary. It burned itself into my fucking brain and I knew there wouldn‘t be any fun kick-around anymore and no petting the birds and no mischievous jokes behind Grandma’s back.

  My grandpa was lying there, motionless, against the back wall of the coop. The straw had been scraped together in a pile at his feet. On his fat belly, which had always frustrated the buttons of his shirt, were the contents of the upended trough. A pigeon was picking away at him. I shooed it off, eyes moist, till it finally found the exit and flew out of the coop and I yelled after it, “You stupid critter!” There was a dark, moist splotch in the crotch of his checkered pants and it smelled strongly of piss. I didn’t touch him. I didn’t have the nerve. Just saw his face. Just waited for him to wink at me any second and get up and shout, “Got you!”

  But that didn’t happen. I didn’t fetch Grandma. I must have stood there so long it got on her nerves, and because the kale for dinner had already gone cold, she came storming into the coop, but her nagging stuck in her craw when she saw us there. Surrounded by the stacks of roosts. She silently pushed me out and closed the door behind her. Then she came out, and I looked at her and she didn’t look at me, and closed the door again and pushed me aside.

  The ambulance came and Grandma led the EMTs to the garden. I sat in the kitchen between my parents and secretly tried to cast glances into the garden. One of the EMTs went into the coop and almost immediately returned, and shook his head. The hearse came. Because they couldn’t squeeze through the path between the garden fence and the shed with my gramps on the gurney, they had to go through the kitchen and the hallway. And when they carried him through the hallway, my father pushed me into the sitting room. And closed the door. I could still watch everything from the window. How they slid him into the bulgy, black can. Like an oven. How they spoke to my grandma and my father, and everyone looked grim and nodded and shook each other’s hands. Then they drove off with my grandpa. I stayed sitting in the chair under the window and thought I could still feel his body’s warmth on it. Then the door opened and my father bent over me and said, “You stay here, then, right? Don’t come out till someone gets you.” I sat there till supper time. There were liverwurst sandwiches. The kale and meat were on top of the compost.

  ———

  Torrents of water pour over the windshield as if from buckets. The wipers do their best to keep up but don’t make headway against the flood of rainfall. The streets are covered in puddles, and the spray flies left and right every time I steer my hatchback through one. I drive past the German Air Force base halfway to Neustadt. To the hospital from my voluntary service days. The bulky, greenish Transall cargo planes are blurry on the runways. They used to circle over Wunstorf daily and descend on the Klein Heidorn Air Base. Maybe I should have done my military service in the army, just like Hans expected. Really enlisted. I might have gotten out of here then. Might have been able to see something different. The Middle East, Somalia, or the former Yugoslavia. The only thing is, it wouldn’t have stopped at that. At getting out and seeing the world. Nope, that’s bullshit. Going into other people’s countries, forcing our democracy, our values, and our system on them with assault weapons? And also be able to enjoy McDonalds and Starbucks? Because everything works so wonderfully here? Thanks, but no thanks. I only think of it now when I see a plane like this. And because now, if someone offered it to me, I’d climb in at the drop of a hat, regardless of where it’s heading, instead of going to the hospital to visit Hans. However, I couldn’t run off now. Not before I get the Braunschweig gang in my fists. If there ever was something I really had to do, it’s that. My phone lights up. I guess it’s Manuela making sure I’ll really come. I let it ring. I’m almost there anyway.

  After waiting for ages at a railroad crossing for a single engine to roll by at walking speed, I finally arrive at the hospital in Neustadt. There are no parking spots left, so I have to park next door at the nursing school. The hospital hadn’t changed a bit, only I’m not having to see it in early morning twilight for once. Can remember it exactly. How I
always smoked in front of the door, and the block-like hospital building seemed like a huge monster in the bluish light. If Yvonne hadn’t have been there, I’d have wanted to blow my brains out every morning. But she hasn’t worked here for years either. Transferred to the regional hospital in Stadthagen. Can only hope none of the other coworkers from then is still here and recognizes me. I go to reception and ask where Hans Kolbe is at. Without looking up once, the reception lady says I have to go to the second floor. Room 202. Sure, I know how to get there, I say as she starts to explain the way.

  I come out of the elevator, and the first thing I see when I turn to the left is Andreas. He’s sitting in the hallway with his legs crossed and is swiping away at his smartphone.

  “Hey, Heiko, you decided to show up?”

  I ignore him and open the door to room 202. It smells like a mixture of iodine and freshly served hospital grub. I see Manuela straight ahead, wearing a light purple polo shirt. She has a sweater tied around her hips.

  “Well, that sure is good news,” she says and places her hand on the chrome bar at the foot of the bed. “Then you can get out of here next week.” I walk around the corner of the bathroom that cuts into the room and briefly greet the group. “Hey,” Hans says and blinks at me over his fork, which is planted in a large piece of gray meat.

  Mie sits on a chair between Hans’s bed and that of an elderly man of Turkish or Arabic origin who’s wearing headphones and staring at the television, hypnotized. Mie smiles at me. I walk past Manuela and lean against the windowsill.

  “Everything okay here?” I ask.

  “The doctor says the operation went well and, with the screws in the bone, Papa will already be able to put weight on the affected side.”

  “Great,” I say and tug at my sleeves.

  “He’s a quack,” Hans mumbles under his mustache, which covers his upper lip in all its bushy glory. “Have you taken a look at him? That’s a fag, guaranteed.”