Philipp Winkler - Hooligan

I throw the tennis ball I’d found outside in the backyard and washed in the sink against the wall in my room. It bounces off and flies back to me in a precise arc. I throw it again. It bounces off. I catch it. Throw.

Arnim bellows up the staircase, “What the hell is all that noise?! I’m trying to call someone here!”

The dogs start barking.

He yells, “Shut up, you curs!”

They keep on barking. This time I didn’t aim good enough. I don’t catch it and it ricochets right into the ashtray beside me on the mattress. Cigarette butts and ashes made soggy by the still-moist tennis ball scattered over the sheet.

“Oh, shit!”

Arnim comes rumbling into the room. He has his phone in one hand and covers it with the other.

“Heiko. What’s the ruckus about?! Trying to sort something out right now.” He looks at my dirty bed. “You spilled something.”

What, you don’t say! He disappears back into the hallway. I can hear that he’s speaking an odd mishmash out of German and English. Instead of scraping up the mess and putting it back in the ashtray, I pull the sheet off the mattress. Then I pull up on the four corners so that the ashes slip into the middle of the resulting bag and stuff the whole thing into the trash can.

I go downstairs. A stack of old papers that are usually on the table in the living room are spread out on the floor. In their place, there are three open envelopes and a fucking mound of cash. Hundred-euro bills of a poisonous green hue stacked, fanned out, and countless fifties are spread out on top. I can’t even guess how much cash is lying there. The kitchen door leading to the yard squeaks, and I hear Arnim come in from outside.

“Yes. Yes. Ja. I will da sein. Okay. All klar. Ja, good-bye. Later.”

I join Arnim in the kitchen. He glances at his watch, the leather strap digging into his thick arm. No wonder his hand is dark and swollen. He reaches for a greasy dishtowel covered with coffee stains and uses it to wipe his dome, as if he was polishing a bowling ball.

I swipe one of his coffin nails and take a seat next to him at the table.

“Hey, you showing your face again, my boy?” he says. His lungs produce an annoying whistle in his throat. He clears his throat. He sounds like an old moped.

“What’s up? Who were you chattering with?”

“Well, I was just about to talk to you about that.” He lays his knobby hands on the surface of the table, making the pack of cigarettes jump about an inch.

“Listen up. You have to help me. Those were the guuuys”—drawing out the ‘i’ sound—“who have the tiger for me. They drove all the way across Eurasia with the creature. Tomorrow morning, so somewhere between four and six, they’re behind the border with the Polacks.”

I flick the ash from my cigarette, look him in the eyes because now I’m completely serious, and say, “That pit and all wasn’t just a fucking pipe dream. You’re really getting a tiger, right?”

“You can bet your bony ass on that, my boy!” He makes such a satisfied face, as if he’d just received the gold medal in wrestling. “Finish that cig. Then it’s time to go.”

“Sure, have fun,” I say, getting up, and want to retrieve a can from the fridge.

His hand wraps around my wrist. Tightens. I automatically flex my muscles, but I don’t pull away.

“You’re coming along, my boy. Doing a little tour. Doesn’t work solo.” He pulls something from beneath the table and says, “I let you live here, and I also want something in return.”

He’s lost it!

I say, “I already take care of the critters when you’re traveling in Eastern Europe. That’s compensation enough!”

He pulls his hand out more. Now I can recognize the black, ribbed transition from the grip to the barrel of a pistol. All these fucking years there was a gun under the table and I didn’t catch that.

“You’re coming along. No discussion. I like you, my boy, but don’t ruin that for me. My dream. I won’t let that slip through my fingers just because you don’t want to play ball.”

I can see he’s actually serious. That he’d actually put that gun to my head and force me to get into his fucking car. I’ve always considered him fairly crazy. Even back when we met. He used to hang out in Midas, alone, and everyone kept out of his way. Then he sometimes came over to me and just started talking, probably because he needed someone to chat with. And I also thought his stories were interesting. Maybe completely wacky, but funny in a sick way. But now I recognize he’s just a fucking lunatic. I could try to pull myself away now. Run up to my room, pack my stuff, and run off. If I’d even get that far. I feel dizzy. The kitchen starts to spin around me.

I say, “All right already. We’ll drive there and pick up your fucking tiger.”

He lets go of me. Says, “That’s my boy. Good man.”

I take out a beer and hand him one too. Then I take a seat.

“Don’t expect I’ll keep living here after that stunt,” I say, with complete sobriety, opening the can and knocking back a long, deep sip.

“Only fair,” he says, and raises his can.

I don’t clink my can with his, just keep on drinking. He shrugs his shoulders, his old man chest briefly becoming visible under his oversized muscle shirt. He empties the can in two slugs. There’s a dirty blue van in front of the house. Bremen plates. Who knows where he dug that up. The half-scratched-out vestiges of some carpentry company’s logo can be seen on the side of the vehicle. Arnim bangs the hood. It sounds like he banged against a kettle.

“Off we go! Gonna get my tiger!” he shouts eagerly.

We climb inside. Slams it into reverse and turns the van around. We rumble out of the woods and over the field lane. Then we turn onto the country road toward the autobahn.

Arnim lets me take the wheel for about two hours. It’s already dark. We’re somewhere in the Brandenburg wasteland before Berlin and Potsdam. At the last rest stop, I stocked up with around twenty iced coffees and Red Bull cans. I knock back one after another, till I feel nauseous. Arnim is completely worked up and babbles away to himself nonstop.

“And where are we meeting with your tiger people?”

“They’re Lebanese or some shit. Not tiger people.” He coughs into his fist and wipes it on his seat. “In Landsberg on the River Warthe. A little town just behind the Polack border. Worked something out where we could meet. Always good to know people everywhere, I tell you. You still okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” I say, “enough.”

“Hey, Heiko. About what happened. Didn’t mean it that way.”

“Aha,” I say, and focus on the illuminated surface of the road in front of us. Otherwise everything around us is pitch-black.

“I really appreciate it, you know, my boy? That you help an old warhorse like me fulfill his dream.”

“That’s all right,” I say. “Let’s just get this thing done.”

I can’t imagine how it’ll work out, loading a fucking tiger like a load of kebab meat. But there’s no going back now.

“Sure is crazy, the way life goes, right?”

“Mmmm,” I mumble and roll down the window a crack. I think Arnim cut one.

“Back when I was doing my butcher apprenticeship. That I go to jail for murder. Man, oh man. Fucking vet,” he mumbles, “and when ya get out. Then no one’ll hire you, my boy. Be glad you’ve never done time. Well, did work out all right in the end. But that I’d end up doing something with live animals, I wouldn’t have imagined it. Back then. And that I’d get rich, to boot.”

“Rich?” I ask and look at him.

“Well, I mean for our kind, my boy. Ass-load of cash. Yep. But I’ll tell you what: There’s more than that. Than dough. Live your dreams. I read that somewhere, I think. It’s true, for sure, yep.”