Philipp Winkler - Hooligan

He does what I tell him, without any back talk.

When we find a spot in the clinic parking lot, I wait for him to get out, walk to the illuminated entrance, apologize for going missing, and go to bed so I can drive back to Wunstorf. But he makes no move to do so.

“All right then,” I say, and knead my thighs to help the circulation.

He turns toward me slightly in his seat, saying, “Here’s a suggestion, Heiko.”

I’m tired, say, “I’m not even thinking of taking you home with me.”

“I don’t want you to either.” He sounds as if he was keeping a hiccup down. “Your sister would wring my neck.”

“And mine with it.”

“No, what I wanted to say—” He draws up his legs. “I’ve been watching matches again since I’ve been in here. Goin’ pretty well for the Reds, right?”

He looks up at me.

“Decent,” I say and lay my head against my extended finger. I have the elbow supported against the bottom of the window.

“Away game tomorrow against Werder Bremen.”

“I know.”

“What do you think? The two of us? Like we used to. That’d be something. Against Bremen, Heiko.”

I feel the pressure rising behind my eyeballs. Don’t know where that’s coming from.

“I don’t think that—”

“Oh, come on. Don’t be a wuss. Go to the game again with your old man. You can buy yourself a Coke. Just for you.”

He winks at me, but a little too slowly, making it seem like one side of his face was nodding off.

“Man, Dad,” I groan.

“Do you have something planned? A fight? Gonna hit the field tomorrow, right?” he asks.

“No, that’s not it. Come on, let it drop.”

“Heiko. Please. One match.”

Instead of looking for a hotel room somewhere, I spend the night in the clinic parking lot. Surrounded by thickening fog that makes the interior of the hatchback very damp. Luckily, I find a couple of blankets in the trunk, so I’m able to wrap myself in them. Around three in the morning, I finally send a message to Manuela, telling her I’ve found Hans and everything’s fine, but that I’m going to stay another day because it’s so late. Then I sack out.

I spend most of the next day at Mickey D’s and bakeries, charging my battery and waiting to be able to pick Hans up from the clinic. Then we drive to Bremen together.

I’m not interested in knowing and don’t ask whether he got official leave or just vanished again. We spend the drive talking about football, even though I notice his knowledge basically stopped around the end of the last century. He can’t believe it when I tell him about the appalling millions of euros thrown around for players, some very young, by teams like Barcelona, Real, or English Premiere League clubs run by Arabic sheiks.

“So much money,” he repeats, “so much money. Imagine that.” And “Where the hell is Dubai again?”

The fact the Ajax Amsterdam and Steaua Bucharest haven’t been top European clubs for ages appears to be news to him.

We bypass Bremen, which seems enclosed in a single massive cloud bank, only exiting the autobahn at the Arsten interchange. Then we cross Werder Lake, the choppy Weser River, and drive to the familiar Osterdeich Avenue. Weser Stadium protrudes before the gray sky like a gigantic petri dish from biology class. It’s fairly quiet in the open space in front of the stadium entrance. The cops standing around in protective vests and with their hands near their batons cause a nervous shiver to run down my spine, and we disappear into the crowd. It lasts even when I buy our black-market tickets from a guy who seems too friendly for a scalper, but anyway I don’t have a choice.

Weser Stadium is full, every last seat. There’s a tifo being prepared on the East Curve, where the Werder ultras are located. They’re unrolling a banner that covers almost the entire corner. On the opposite side, the Hannover fans are making a racket, yelling insults in the direction of the Bremen fans. I’m glad we’re in neutral seats and aren’t sitting in the visitors’ section. Wouldn’t have been too keen to cross paths with certain familiar ultras. One of the Capos, the oldest ultra group in Hannover, is probably still a little sore at me since we tangled by the urinals at the traditional Marksmen’s Fair, which ended with him getting a black eye and his face shoved in the trough. Not that he could do anything to me. But it wouldn’t be a chill stadium experience.

“What, did they run out of Coke?” Hans jokes when I return to our seats with two cups of beer. Before taking a seat next to him, I have a view of his old man’s receding hair line through his thinning, brown hair. Soon it will meet up with the increasingly large spot on the back of his head and merge.

The game is fucking disgusting. No goals. The Reds, along with Bremen, all lose a handle on balls somewhere in the midfield because no one can make a decent pass. Or someone sends it long and they go for it like in amateur league—one bungled header after another. Because the Bremen defense has a tradition of being a pile of incompetents, several chances for 96 do materialize during the course of the match, but they’re all wasted, as commented on by my father with a throaty “crooked foot!” He also keeps bringing up the Cup-winning team’s finals in ’92, when Hannover’s first-round draw was Werder Bremen, of all teams, which meant their European adventure was over before it started.

“Still hurts, you know. Still hurts, I’m telling you.”

Then he pats me on the knee with his fist if I can’t pull it away fast enough.

“Are you taking good care of the critters?” he asks, and I confirm it monosyllabically and swallow the stadium beer.

“How’s Mie doing?”

“Yeah, good, I think,” I say, and he says: “She’s a good woman, Mie is. Good woman.”

“Aha.”

“And the boys? What are they up to? Kai, Ulf, and the two brothers?”

Something goes down the wrong way and I start hacking. Hans is about to pound me on my back when he notices how deeply he’s put his foot in his own mouth and withdraws his hand.

Several errant passes and botched headers, and I say out of the blue, “Was at the psychiatric clinic with Axel. We visited one of his old friends. Somehow seemed familiar to me.” I keep watching the game, occasionally catching Hans numbly staring straight ahead. “Must have been a huge guy.”

My father mumbles something indefinable into his beer while taking a sip.

“Sat in a wheelchair. Dirk was his name.” Now I notice Hans is rocking back and forth, barely perceptibly. I have no clue if he’s been doing it the whole time and I only noticed now. “You remember him?”

Hans coughs into his cupped fist, and I have the feeling he hasn’t blinked for several minutes. Then he says, “Hey, let’s watch the game, okay?”

Without another word spoken, a miserable North German rivalry comes to a close.

Just before Bad Zwischenahn, Hans tries to apologize while the rain begins to beat down hard on the windshield. I say he should forget about it and that it didn’t matter.

“Thanks, my boy. Really had fun. Horrible match… but, oh well.”

I nod and turn the key in the ignition. “Gotta go.”

“Yep,” he says, “take it easy. Drive safe and give them my regards back home.”

He closes the door, turns, and stops for a second. He looks over at the clinic, and I can hear his deep sigh even through the car door.

Something was banging against my door like crazy, making me sit almost bolt upright in bed.

“Heiko! Heiko! Fucking hell, you open up now!”

The wooden door is just barely hanging on its hinges. It vibrates with each of Arnim’s blows. When he hears me turn the key, he stops the pounding.