Philipp Winkler - Hooligan

We were supposed to meet afterward in Hannover’s city forest. In the central fir section, I think. At any rate, it had to be as far as possible from the street and, of course, the cops. Eight against ten, because we couldn’t raise more people. Young crew against young crew. Young Dogs against the Cool Hogs. It sounds stupid if you say one after the other. The bit about the Young Dogs was my idea. Supposed to be a kind of play on words. There are the Red Wolves, and so we were the Young Dogs. When Kai found out what I wanted to call us, first he burst out laughing and then he threw a fit.

“You can’t call yourselves that! Sounds like a group of fag Boy Scouts,” he tossed at me.

I just shrugged my shoulders and said it doesn’t make a rat’s ass bit of difference what we call ourselves.

“Y’could at least have made it Young Dogz! With a z at the end.”

“Are you a damn gangsta rapper now?!”

“Nah, dude, but… I mean…” he said and took another pick-me-up. “Or look, how about Bloodhoundz? Get it? Because blood is red, like us. Just not such a faggy name.”

“Come on, drop it. It is what it is.”

“Look at it from the other side,” Jojo said. “Better than an old fucking rap group from Cologne.”

“Which is also true.”

Everything went so damn fast. Had to go damn fast because even if we were in the woods, we were still in the middle of the city. The cops could bust through the undergrowth any moment, lights flashing. Alerted by a concerned walker taking an evening stroll. Luckily enough, it was raining, which meant not many people were walking around. But you could slip on the wet ground, which was already covered with moisture, so you watch like mad so you don’t fall on your ass. At any rate, the Cool Hogs weren’t so cool when we beat the living shit out of them with just eight of us. They bounced off Ulf like the raindrops that kept pounding our faces. And the rest of us did a respectable job.

I was going at it with one of them when I grabbed his lid and threw it at him. He was so distracted I had plenty of time to aim and knock him out. I hope I’ll never forget the sound of him splashing in the mud. They had more or less already lost when I saw one of them reaching for something hanging from his belt. He was going at it with Kai. I’m still of the opinion I saw something flash. So I went over. Just thought to myself, no fucking way, you butt-fucker, and kicked him in the back of his knee, and then wound up. All the way. There was plenty of time. And thumped a really brutal haymaker against the side of the guy’s head. Kai looked at me in surprise and at first I didn’t know why he was so wide-eyed. Must have been quite a punch. The guy from Braunschweig lay there. Lay there with his face in the rain-soaked glop, like a fish out of water. And twitched like crazy, and there was blood running out of his ear. Didn’t know what I should make of it. All the adrenaline and the rage over all that shit and the booze from before, at the game. All I can remember is how quickly Kai got Tomek. He’d seen the whole thing. Axel was busy with something and had sent Tomek as a minder, to report on how we did. Really gave them a beating. Tomek and Kai immediately carried him away. I just stood looking back and saw how two guys from Braunschweig took him, swung his arms over their shoulders, and dragged him off.

Axel didn’t want to believe I’d seen a knife. But I’m still of the opinion there was one. Only no one thought to check the grass later. After all, everyone had to get the fuck out because you could already hear the sirens howling over the tips of the trees. But Axel was pretty impressed all the same. With two fewer. Against Braunschweig. He called it an important victory for Hannover and didn’t mean the match between the two second-string football teams. I told Kai about the knife too, and he couldn’t get over it, enthusiastically roaring my praises, and when I asked him if he’d seen the knife, he said something like, “Not directly, but I think something definitely fell into the grass. Definitely!”

I take the causeway to reach my father’s house. It’s on the other end of Wunstorf, in a street with other former farms. The street is basically a dead end, even if the town is too lazy or broke—or both—to put up a sign. At some point the asphalt just stops and gives way to a field that stretches out into the plain. On a day like this you have such a view over the flat land that you could almost fall into the sky. Even on cloudy days, you can usually see all the way to Mount Potash, which looks different depending on the weather. Sometimes white like the salt on fries, sometimes gray like concrete.

One time I broke in with Kai, Jojo, and Joel at the grounds of the potash and salt company there. Stomped up to the top where the salt is harvested. Jojo and Joel had brought a kite they wanted to fly, and it really soared. Kai and I didn’t know exactly why we wanted to go there. Then we got the wild idea to jump off, but it was a major fail. On one side it went down steep for what must have been at least a hundred feet, which would have been instant death. And on the other side, where we were, it was flat enough that we’d have been back on our feet within a couple of meters. At some point, Kai got going so fast from the incline that he lost his balance, staggered, and rolled down the slope like a barrel. He came to rest at the base of the hill, motionless, and the three of us were flipping out, but when we got close to Kai’s body, just lying there, he jumped up and laughed his ass off. His clothes were torn to shreds and he had bloody scrapes all over. A flap of skin was hanging off his shin. I can still remember how Joel immediately had to puke when he saw that.

I press the doorbell, and before I can waste a single thought on immediately turning on my heel and getting back in my car, my sister is already opening the door.

“Heiko. Nice. Finally. There you are.”

She opens her arms, and I take a hesitant step toward her. Then she pulls me close. I feel stupid because I’m just standing in Manuela’s hug, my arms hanging at my sides. She squeezes several times, so I give up and place a hand on her arm too. This appears to finally satisfy her, and she lets go and says I should come in. I follow her into the main hallway, which leads to all of the rooms in the house. She walks ahead of me and disappears behind the kitchen door to the right. My eyes have to get used to the hazy lighting. Due to the sheer size of the space and because there aren’t any windows, with the exception of the glass front door, it’s usually shrouded in darkness. At the height of summer this was always the best place to be when I wanted to cool down. Stripped to just my underwear, I would lie down on the black floorboards and doze until my mother or Hans would rouse me with a kick, saying I shouldn’t be lying around where people walk. The old glassed-in cabinet is still against the right wall, next to the kitchen. It was already there when the house belonged to my grandparents. I pause right in front and look at the things behind the glass. If a stranger came in, they’d probably ask what kind of taste-impaired people lived here. Admittedly, I ask myself the same thing again and again, but at least I know the strange hodgepodge comes from the fact that three generations have lived here. My mother’s spooky porcelain figurines—angels, cats, and dogs—perch on top of my grandma’s placemats that she crocheted herself. The figurines were apparently not worth taking. Next to them stand little golden Buddha statues with fat bellies and wooden elephants decorated in purple and gold. Mie’s contribution to the jumble. Only now does the idea occur to me that it might not have been Mie who put them in. No real Thai thinks stuff like that is good. It’s more like the bullshit that’s hocked to Western tourists, making them pay through the nose. Maybe my father brought it back and set it up because he thought that way Mie would feel more at home.