Philipp Winkler - Hooligan

The whole area behind the house is covered with multiple layers of camouflage netting from which water is dripping. The netting is draped over wooden posts and, along with the oak and the other trees on the property, offers perfect visual cover. Arnim is the most paranoid guy I’ve ever run into. But he has to be with his “hobby,” as I like to call it, although he does earn money from it. One corner of the shed is still full of acoustic panels he’s been meaning to attach to the cages since forever.

The shed is another one of Arnim’s masterpieces of manic-paranoid underground architectural art. Everything here he’s put together himself. Everything except the house. He inherited that ages ago. Even though the shed was already here, he completely redid the interior so his little arena would fit inside. Everything done by hand. He only has to close the shed doors and no one outside of a hundred-yard radius would have a clue what’s going on in there. And no one just happens to come by either, because he owns the surrounding land. Inherited that too.

I push the huge shed door open wide enough to slip inside. It’s not a joke like the one at my parents’ place. But my grandpa had only had little tractors. There must have been some massive equipment in here. I fill the salad-sized bowls with food and water and set them outside. The dogs go crazy as soon as they pick up the scent. I pull two steaks as thick as my hand from the cooler in the kitchen and inject them with hell-if-I-know-what from the syringe in the “morning” box. Don’t even want to know what the stuff is. Use the steaks to lure the dogs out of their kennels and into their cages. I toss the steaks through the window around head level. Then I can use a rope setup to close the doors to the fenced run area so I can safely go inside and change out the dishes. Also one of Arnim’s DIY numbers. Everything in exactly that sequence. You don’t go inside the cage to change out the bowls when the mutts are running around free in there. Otherwise you’re short of at least two limbs in no time flat. After changing out the dishes, checking twice to see if the cage doors are really closed, and hastily rinsing out the used dishes, I reopen the doors. The two of them race out in tandem, broad muzzles straight to the food dishes, which they scrape across the floor against the mesh fence. They’ve already scarfed down the steaks.

After the second round of coffee and cigarettes, I go down into the basement, which extends beneath the entire house and stinks of moist mildew and rot. Down there I fill a bucket full of pig and cattle bones. I use the electric mortar and pestle to smash the bones into bite-sized pieces. I garnish the meal with a clutch of dead chicks and bring it all the way up to the second floor along with a deep bowl filled with fresh water. I knock on the first door on the left, saying, “Siegfried, are you awake yet? Yummy, yummy.”

Something in the room rustles. I open the door. A narrow beam of light falls through the space between the window and the cloth hung in front of it, hitting me eye-level as I enter. I duck underneath it. Avoiding it.

“Siegfried?“ I toss the question into the room. There’s more rustling. The sound comes from the corner between the window and the slope of the roof. Siegfried’s favorite spot. My eyes have readjusted to the darkness. I can see him now. He’s sitting on the back of an ancient armchair completely covered in shit. It was already there before Arnim’s time. Siegfried hardly moves. He still has his head hidden under a wing. Just peeks out a little to see who’s talking and bringing him breakfast.

“It’s me, old pal,” I say, my voice like a refrigerator’s monotone hum, “brought you some treats.”

The floorboards are almost completely covered with newspapers where Siegfried can relieve himself. But he still prefers his armchair. Only a hint of its turquoise color remains after years of gathering dust and all that bird shit. I take a big step over the middle stretch of papers and dump the contents of the bucket in a pile in the far right corner of the room. Then he can pick out whatever he feels like. Then I step back, careful not to walk in the piles of crap, and approach the window. Taking care not to make any rash movements. I continue to reason with Siegfried. The meaningless chatter is more for my benefit. To be honest, I don’t think the old bird gives a damn. I always lay out the papers so I have about one and a half feet of free space to the window. The whole time, my gaze stays glued to Siegfried, who shakes out his feathers. Maybe it’s like when people yawn. Although I don’t know if birds are able to yawn. At least I’ve never seen Siegfried do it.

“Sleep okay, old boy?” I ask and carefully lift the heavy blanket from the nails that keep it in front of the window. Thousands of dust particles float through the tilted rectangle of cloudy daylight. Siegfried pulls out his head and immediately has a closer look at me with his healthy, red-rimmed pupil while shaking out his wings, big as sails. I let the blanket slide to the ground and take a couple steps back. Keep my hands waist-high.

“Okay, everything’s okay.” We look at each other. “It’s just me.”

In the course of our acquaintance, Siegfried and I have tangled only once. It’s certainly very different than with the silly pigeons. I was new here and hadn’t worked out yet how to handle him. He probably viewed me as an intruder and thought what the hell does the dweeb want. He tried to snap at me. And that’s no joke. When a huge, old bearded vulture grabs at you, then you shouldn’t be surprised if your hand’s gone. I was so startled I almost fell over. But I reflexively pulled back and whacked him with the back of my hand. Not everyone can claim they’ve bitch-slapped a fucking vulture. It’s still one of Kai’s favorite stories. For weeks I refused to set foot in the room. But because Arnim threatened to kick me out or make me pay rent, I did it again. And since then we’ve been cool with each other. What’s more, I like the old buzzard.

He jumps from the back of the chair onto the floor with a thump and hops over to the pile of bones. When he’s moving around on the ground, ’cause there’s not much chance to fly in here, then he doesn’t walk but hops instead. By getting up some momentum and jumping forward with both legs at once, but somehow he always stays slightly sideways. I stand still for a second. Smile. I like watching him when he moves around like that. Because his body is covered with thick, rusty feathers down to the talons, which are almost as large as human hands. It looks like he’s wearing pants. Only the outside of the wings and his head have a different color. His face is black all the way to his beak, where there are the beard feathers he’s named after. The underlying red tones shine through. He pokes with his beak among the pile of bones and starts with a chick.

“Tastes pretty good, right?” I say and begin pushing the papers together and balling them up so I can replace them.

When I’m done spreading them out, he’s sitting up on the back of the chair again and looking out the window. I ask myself if birds—or animals in general—can feel bored. I hope not, because his life here is even more dreary than before. I decide I’ll ask Arnim when I have the chance why he doesn’t build him an aviary. Then he’d at least be able to fly a couple yards, assuming he hasn’t completely forgotten how. It’s probably like riding a bike. He’s already had to spend fifteen years staring out this window. There’s nothing interesting to look at. At least as far as the one eye can see. Arnim tells me he lost the other one to a monster of a raven that some Bulgarian brought over: “That was a brute, all right. I’d never seen anything like it, my boy. About this big.” Then he spread his thick arms. “I had no clue they could get that big. Thought it just couldn’t be, that it must be a Lilliput he stuck in a black costume.”