Philipp Winkler - Hooligan

“Davai,” I hear someone say, then some kind of quick mumble I don’t understand.

The cone of light on the wall downstairs remains still now and becomes smaller and smaller.

“Shit,” I whisper and turn back. I twist the handle of the door to Siegfried’s room, slip inside, and close it behind me. I hear the sound of the steps on the stairs. Since my eyes had already adjusted to the darkness, I’m immediately able to make out Siegfried’s large shape. Like always, he’s sitting on the edge of the chair, and his head is stuck between his wings.

“It’s just me, old boy,” I whisper. “I just have to hang out with you. Everything’s fine,” I say to myself more than to him.

I slip between the rows of paper, continuing to whisper comforting words to him and myself. The footfalls outside become louder. He must be standing on the other side now. Siegfried peeks at me from below his wings and rustles his feathers.

“Just want to get comfortable behind you for a second. No problem. Just keep on sleeping. I won’t bother you.”

Crouched down, I waddle around the chair, keeping an eye on Siegfried. I really don’t need him to start hacking away at me. But he keeps cool and lets me pass. I press very close against the armchair, under the pitch of the roof in the corner of the room and try to keep my breathing flat. The doorknob turns and the door opens. The caustic stench of fresh vulture shit makes my eyes water. I make myself as small as possible and look between the legs of the chair, straight through the room. The black outline of a man stands in the doorway and looks inside. A quiet click. He tries to turn on the light, but the switch hasn’t worked for years. Then a louder clicking follows. The man’s shaking his flashlight. I can hear the batteries sliding around inside. He clicks away on the flashlight. Then he finally gets it and turns the light into the room. The cone of light falls in the corner, to the left of us, where I always dump Siegfried’s food. The guy is quietly carrying out a conversation with himself. He’s probably asking himself why there’s a pile of bones on the floor. Then the light continues inspecting the room. The floor, the newspapers, and the bright piles of shit. Then it wanders over in our direction. From bottom to top. Shit! He saw me, but then the yellow circle of light stops on the chair and Siegfried. The guy is saying something to himself again. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! Now he has me. The coarse feathers rustle in front of me. Siegfried pulls his head out, beats his wings, taking over the room. The man in the doorway emits a surprised sound. Siegfried answers him. I’ve never heard him make a sound. In all the years I’ve been living here. Much less a noise like that. It almost sounds like a hacked-off rooster’s crow. If the rooster were the size of a dog, a chain-smoker, and had swallowed a live rattlesnake. Something between a rattle and a hiss. Siegfried pushes off from the chair. Jumps forward as effortlessly as a gazelle. The huge wings extended threateningly as if he wants to shoo off a bear. The guy, who by now must have halfway grasped what was rushing toward him, yells and slams the door shut in panic before Siegfried can reach him. Too bad. The vulture stops and stands behind the door, waiting. I hear the man yelling something through the house. There’s no answer from below. Then the man yells something back, sounding pretty pissed off. His colleagues probably didn’t believe that a real fucking vulture wanted to rip him to pieces. I can hear him walking down the hallway, cursing, and can only hope he won’t find anything in my room that might indicate someone’s still at home and hiding somewhere in the house right now. I remain seated in the corner, motionless. I feel pins and needles in my legs, which are slowly falling asleep, but I ignore it. Siegfried hops through the room, rewarding himself with something from the pile of bones, and returns to the chair. He jumps onto the seat, then onto the arm. Either he’d already forgotten I’m there or he simply doesn’t care. Maybe he’s just cool with me hanging with him. He shakes himself into his usual position and tries to sleep. The steps come back to our room a short while later, pausing for a moment. Let it go, boy. Siegfried will hack your eyes out. Then steps that go down the stairs. My body immediately relaxes and I exhale all at once. A splotch of feces splashes onto the arm of the chair in front of me. I wouldn’t even be upset if he’d shit on me.

I wait for several minutes and listen. At some point the voices and the moving of furniture leaking through the wooden floor dies down. I slip out of my stiff crouch once I’m relatively sure no one will find their way up here. I thank Siegfried many times. He doesn’t even look up from his bed of wings. While I creep through the hallway and back to my room, I think I can hear the dogs are briefly riled up. As soon as I’m in my room, I slowly lift my head from below the window and peer into the yard. I can hardly make out anything through the holes in the camouflage netting. Even with a full moon, it’s actually supposed to allow very little light. I guestimate there are about five men in the yard, but I’m not sure. They seem to be discussing something. Then sudden movement under the netting and I hear the metallic clack of the makeshift cage and how the men yell at each other. Two more shots are fired, and a little later it’s oddly quiet again. A couple of them come back into the house. I immediately lie down flat and press my ear to the floor. It doesn’t help much, but at least I can hear them walking around down there. Then the front door rings and the door closes. I stay there, lying motionless. Several uncomfortable minutes pass. The sound of motors. Then absolute silence.

After at least a half hour, I dare to move again. I pull on some socks. I carry the shoes in my hands. In the hallway I listen again, but there’s nothing to be heard. I go downstairs. The living room is completely destroyed. Cabinets and bureaus are emptied and demolished. The floor is covered with odds and ends. The sofas are slit open from end to end and the filling spills out like innards. No trace of Arnim. I risk a glance in the kitchen. The same sight as in the living room. I carefully open the front door, immediately reaching up for the doorbell so it isn’t jostled. Arnim’s pickup is still parked next to my VW hatchback. In my socks, I walk to my car and climb inside. I don’t waste a second thinking about who might be stopped at the end of the road, waiting for someone to come from the house. I just want to make sure I get away from here. I could care less that I’ve turned on the brights, just so I don’t run into anything. Once I come out of the woods and see the abandoned fields before me, I breathe a sigh of relief. I’m hardly back on the country road when I hit the gas in my socks and don’t take my foot off till I’m back in Wunstorf.

I drive to Yvonne’s after I’ve made a stop at the gas station, where the only person there’s the night clerk, and loaded up on cheap liquor instead of beer. I spend the night in the car, in front of her house. Starting tomorrow, I’ll have to figure out what to do, but right now I don’t want to think. Although I’d like nothing more than to be with her and feel her presence, always beyond reach, the light in her bedroom is out and I don’t want to wake her.

The first weeks and months after our move out to Wunstorf were terrible. And by terrible, I mean nauseatingly boring. I hadn’t become friends with Jojo and Joel yet. Jojo was just a quiet boy with a head of curly hair among all the boys in my new class. I automatically couldn’t stand any of them at first. And so I spent most of the time in the garden, as far from the coop as possible, pounding the ball against an imaginary goal on the garden fence. Till the neighbor shoved his face over the fence and bellowed at me, saying I’d better knock off the racket. If my parents hadn’t taken away television privileges, I’d lounge a lot on the sofa in the sitting room and watch all my favorite cartoons. I was so bored to death, I even stayed when Manuela came in and wanted to watch her girly cartoons, like Mila Superstar and Sailor Moon . I didn’t have anything better to do, and I was too small to jack off. The girls in my class all had little, pointy mice fists under their tops at most, and I used my dong exclusively for peeing or stretching it out in boredom and making doing-doing-doing.