Philipp Winkler - Hooligan

Of course, in front of her I can’t really talk about how I need him to beat the living daylights out of those Braunschweig sons of bitches, and I say I just want to hear it again. When he doesn’t get it, I nod my head to the side, as much to say: Let’s talk about it upstairs.

We make some small talk while I’m pushing the pieces of bread in with some effort but still trying to make it look somewhat enjoyable. I usually have trouble chatting, but Mrs. Seidel moderates the whole thing with great ease and asks how Kai and his eyes are doing. I’m surprised how well-informed she is, but at the same time I ask myself what Jojo told her about why Kai’s in the hospital in the first place. She even knows I work at my uncle’s gym in Hannover and also asks about that. I produce some random phrases I’ve picked up here and there. Stuff like: “Yeah, it’s really protracted,” and “it has to, just has to.”

Then she looks at the clock and says her program is about to start. Jojo and I slip upstairs. We take a seat in Joel’s old room. The same posters on the wall. One of his old jerseys has been framed in the meantime. Handbooks about football coaching are spread across the desk and every free surface. Colorful Post-its poke out from between the pages.

“Wait a sec,” Jojo says and retrieves something from his own room next door, “here.”

He hands me an old Diercke world atlas.

“Yeah?” I ask. “What am I supposed to see here?”

“Just open the Oceania page.”

I look in the table of contents. In an open space: Joel Seidel. Sixth grade, class B . Then I leaf to the page way at the end of the atlas. A tiny group of islands in the middle of the blue nirvana of the Pacific Ocean has been circled with red marker. The islands, printed in yellow, are so small that at first glance you could mistake them for crumbs or boogers smeared in the book. The name Nation of Tonga is next to them. Also next to it, in Joel’s red handwriting: FIFA World Ranking 199 . I look up at Jojo. His face is as serious as if he’d just handed me his autobiography to have it read, and he asks, “You still remember?”

“Of course, I still remember,” I whisper and watch my fingers travel from island to island.

Jojo sits down on the chair in front of the desk and, lost in thought, leafs through his football instructional manuals. Without having to look up, I can sense how he continues to watch me. For a moment that stretches like hours, I’m ripped out of the here and now and see myself back then with Joel, sitting on the tower roof of the shuttered step ladder factory, legs dangling twenty meters up. I’d scraped my chest on the handle of the heavy metal door leading up to the roof, and a thin line of blood seeps through my T-shirt. It was the night after Joel had told us about his transfer to the 96 youth squad, and we’d messed ourselves up in my new apartment in the residential tower. We’d simply left the others behind because they were lying there passed out, and our nocturnal stroll led us to the place where we’d already held more than one private party. The beer cans of countless teenage nights lay untouched at the foot of the tower. We used to roll them down the corrugated roof when they were empty, betting on whose’d be first. That’s how I got fifty euros off Jojo one night. I still remember exactly the way Joel blew his parted bangs from his forehead and laughed because he couldn’t believe he’d actually be wearing the Reds’ jersey from then on. We couldn’t even imagine back then he’d develop into one of the young players with the most potential in his age group. Even less, how badly he’d been thrown by the training injury so severe it nipped his chance in the bud. Well. And then. That he’d jump to his death from precisely this spot, where we were sitting.

“You’ll hook us up with some box seats, right,” I’d joked, but of course I wasn’t planning to ever spend a game sitting next to all those money bags and sponsoring fuckers, who don’t give a damn whether they put their petty cash into a football club or a race horse. After all, everything’s just a joke for them.

“Just let me have a game on the scrimmage team first,” he said and laughed, “I still think this whole thing’s a huge misunderstanding and they’ll give me back to the Havel team.”

“Oh, cut it out!”

I thought he was going over the top with his humble routine.

“Well, let’s wait and see. And even if I’m just subbed after a couple times. It’s already completely nuts as it is,” he said and grinned. “On the other hand, there’s always Tonga.”

“Why Tonga, actually?“ I asked and couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t—with his talent—at least pick a halfway legit country where he’d want to get citizenship if he didn’t have the stuff for German pro football. Which I wasn’t assuming, and was completely of the opinion he could easily make the leap. And maybe he would have.

“Why not Tonga? First of all, it sounds good. Say it once: Tonga.”

I repeated after him and nodded and said, “Yeah, rolls off your tongue.”

“And then,” he counted down his arguments on his fingers, “Tonga is so low in the international rankings they’d immediately give citizenship to any European player who can just barely hit the ball. It’s sure to be enough, money-wise. I mean, you’re living on a crazy tropical island. Can lie around all day on white beaches, and the bright blue ocean is only a couple steps away. You’re celebrated by everyone in the country as the new Maradona of Tonga and can pick and choose between women in hula skirts and coconut bras. How great is that?! Who‘d need the cash to buy a stupid sports car or something?”

“You’re right,” I said.

Then we lay back, ignoring the hard ridges of the roof, looking into the night sky and imagining we were on the beach in Tonga, where I’d visit him several times a year, and there’d probably be a coconut bra girl or two left over for me.

“What’d you actually want?“ Jojo asks.

I have to think about it for a moment, because in my mind I’m still lying on the beach and sipping a chilled Tongan beer.

“About the 18th,” I say. “The match against Braunschweig,” I say, but Jojo already knows what I’m talking about.

He grimaces. Now he’s thinking about how he can let me down gently, but I don’t have any desire to have some excuse thrown at me.

“Let me guess: you’re gonna be there. Right?”

He exhales and rubs his neck. Dandruff falls like fake snow from a Christmas-themed snow globe.

“Heiko…” he starts.

“No, not Heiko now. Say it.” I was a little surprised at myself and how vanishingly short my patience is.

“I’ve thought it over. What Ulf said and—”

“Fuck Ulf. I get the impression he never felt it!” I give my statement added emphasis with my hands.

“I don’t believe that, Heiko. No, that’s just not true. But it’s not just that. The thing with Kai.” I try to rub the headache from my forehead. “Heiko, I never want to see a friend like Kai was that night. Never again.”

“I can’t believe it,” I say into my cupped hands, “I can’t believe all of you are abandoning me at the same time.”

Jojo pushes the chair closer to me and I automatically move back.

“That’s just not true. How do you get the idea that we’re all abandoning you? That’s not true, Heiko.”

If he says my name one more time, I’ll either have to scream or smack him one.

I say, “Yes, that’s exactly the way it is. You’re abandoning me. Leaving me to take care of it alone. If Kai isn’t even ready to take revenge on the motherfuckers, then it’s even more our job to stand up for him.”