Philipp Winkler - Hooligan

People for as far as the eye can see. Many were crying, embracing one another. Joined by the press, which caused the bile to rise in my throat, leaving a sour taste in my mouth, and made me pull the hood of my windbreaker down over my face and draw the zipper up over my chin.

Kai put words to what I was thinking: “People, there’s way too much press and piss here for my taste. It’s giving me ulcers and making my sphincter pucker.”

It sounded like a joke, but even Kai had lost his gift for levity. He pulled his hoodie tighter over his noggin so his eyebrows disappeared beneath the visor.

“Jojo,” Ulf said, and tried to grab him by the shoulder.

Some kind of Jackie Chan sense let him guess that Ulf wanted him to turn around. At any rate, he pulled in his shoulders and said, “Just wait a second,” and then wriggled his way into the sea of mourners. We could see him for quite a while because of his mop of curly hair, which was still quite long then, twisting through countless shoulders. A short time later, he was out of sight, even for Ulf, who stuck up over the mass of heads like a shiny bald lighthouse.

So we waited for Jojo to come back after whatever it was he wanted to do. But because even Ulf had grown restless in the meantime, we separated completely from the herd. We were waiting for him on Robert Enke Street which was still part of the Arthur Menge Shore Drive, and from the other side of the street we watched the slideshows of Enke that were being projected on screens in front of the North Curve bar.

“Best keeper we ever had,” Ulf declared, arms crossed.

“Together with Sievers, you mean,” Kai answered and spit to the side without watching out for people passing by.

“Sure,” I said, butt between my lips, “Sievers was a beast on the line. The best at the time, controlling his area”—I weighed the situation with my hands—“definitely Enke. And not only that. The best damn keeper Germany ever had. He was calm like no one else and had reflexes like fucking Superman.”

Ulf clucked and said, “Besides, he wasn’t a pampered sports car–driving idiot like most of the pros these days.”

We nodded in unison, and at some point a “Best man” slipped out of me. Without my really consciously wanting to pronounce it.

“This is all so fucking sad,” Ulf added.

Jojo joined us just as Kai was returning from North Curve bar with three cups of beer. Judging from Kai’s gaze and the fact that his nostrils were flared like he’d been caught picking his nose, I guessed he hadn’t just been taking a piss in the bar’s toilets. Kai was passing out the cups when he saw Jojo and wanted to give him one of the three beers.

“I’ll be right back. Getting another.”

“Forget it. Here.” Jojo returned the beer. “I want to go. Can we go?”

We asked what was wrong and tried to keep up with him as he led the way with slow strides and swinging hands. He eased off just enough so we could catch up, then pulled out his phone and showed us a photo he’d snapped of the thousands of candles and bouquets. They seemed to stretch for hundreds of meters on the stadium grounds, and in the picture they morphed into a single indefinable mass of dots of light.

I pressed Jojo on why he wanted to get out of there so soon, and in the effort to keep up with him, my beer sloshed out of the thin plastic cup, spilling over my fingers and dripping on my pant leg.

“Maybe,” Jojo said, “I just kneeled to put my candle down. But maybe then I had to think about Joel as well. And maybe a little raindrop fell on my face. And maybe, just maybe, I smashed one of those press fuckers who thought it’d be a great shot.”

Kai and I briefly stood in shock and then had to make up two strides to catch up with him.

“What’s going on?” Kai asked. I couldn’t miss the way his voice went higher with excitement.

“I just told you. I was back in the crowd quickly and vanished. Before anyone really caught on to what happened.”

I think Kai wanted to pat him on the back, but I silently made him understand that he should control himself.

And so we padded back, zigzagging via the narrowest alleys all the way to the city center. We looked around and behind us, but no one was there, of course. There’s legitimate caution that can become paranoia—which necessarily make it less legitimate—and there’s just being wet behind the ears. Which we were, in a sense, I have to admit. As if anyone could have found us in that mass of people, if they would’ve even tried.

On the ride back from the city, I sat on the backseat with Jojo. He was looking out the window the whole time. The cold early-winter wind hissed through the slits of the cracked windows and made Jojo’s curls bounce excitedly. I could simply have looked away, but for some reason I didn’t. And the constant twirling of his hair was driving me crazy.

I asked him if everything was okay, quietly enough so Ulf and Kai in the front wouldn’t have to hear. Kai had put on a personally mixed dubstep CD, but we only had to tolerate it at half-volume because Ulf was able to control it, thanks to the knob on the steering wheel.

“Yeah,” he said without looking over, “yeah. You know…,” then silence for a while.

I thought about what I could say. Fucking hell, I was never good at this kind of thing. Can’t even do it today. Express my feelings, as Manuela would say. I just can’t think of anything, my brain gets blocked, and instead of producing something sensible, I just get angry. But not in that moment, strangely enough. I wanted nothing more than to be beamed out of the car or something, but fuck it, I thought, Jojo’s your friend, and that means more than just hanging out and getting drunk.

I was growing more and more impatient, and if Jojo hadn’t said something, I bet it wouldn’t have been long before I became typically enraged. All at once, Jojo bent forward so his head was floating over the middle console. He looked straight ahead through the windshield and spoke so loudly everyone could hear.

“I want to go to the spot.”

“What kinda spot?” Kai asked.

The music was turned down. In the rearview mirror I saw Ulf glance back every couple seconds.

“To the train crossing. You don’t have to come along if you don’t want.”

“Wait up, wait up. What the hell are you talking about?” Ulf stammered. I’d known as soon as Jojo had said the word “crossing,” but I didn’t make a sound. Couldn’t.

“Where he killed himself.”

“Who?” Kai asked, and turn around for a sec. Maybe to make sure Jojo hadn’t gone crazy. Had a mad stare or something.

“Enke.”

The station wagon bumped into the curb and briefly howled in pain when Ulf shifted into the wrong gear.

“Sorry, Jojo, I don’t really mean what I’m about to say, but”—Kai raised his voice—“are you fucking nutso or what?!”

Jojo slumped against the door. His gaze wasn’t obviously crazy. So not at all. But strangely calm and very focused. I can’t really remember exactly. But it definitely seemed spooky to me.

We were out in the country. In Walachia. In the middle of the night. Dark as a bear’s backside. The station wagon’s headlights were the only source of light far and wide. The nearest lights were more than a mile away. Some random villages close to the suburbs. We followed the paved road that for its part roughly followed the train tracks. At any rate, we guessed we were still close to the tracks because every now and again we could make out the swaths that cut through the fields and meadows. We passed through some woods. No one said anything for a while, with the exception of Ulf’s increasingly annoyed groans. Well, and of course the approximate directions from Jojo, who had Ulf turn here and there. From one nameless road to the next. When we came out of the woods and Jojo craned his neck to see if the tracks were still nearby, we saw it all at once. Various headlights that melded into a single, frayed cone. A couple hundred yards to the left of us. In the middle of nowhere. Accompanied by some flashing police lights making silent circular patterns in the broad fields.