Philipp Winkler - Hooligan

“Kai, can we have a word? The two of us,” I stammer.

Ulf sits up. Wants to open his mouth, but Kai holds up his hand and says, “No problem.”

Then he heaves himself up from the bed with their help and staggers over to me. We walk down the corridor, through the cafeteria and its glass facade, out into the park. He’s now wearing patches over both eyes. The right eye’s is white with ventilation holes. There’s a transparent patch over the left one.

“Can you see stuff again?” I ask and point to my own left eye while we walk side by side and the headwind makes us go even more slowly.

“Not bad. Everything’s still blurry, but the doctors say my left eye is healing so well that I’ll soon be able to see again. Almost like before.”

“And the right side?” I ask and the feeling that everything will turn out all right spreads across my chest.

“They can’t say yet. The tear is much worse than with the other eye and the doctors are holding back with a prognosis.”

We take laps over the prescribed path for a couple minutes and I pass out cigarettes.

“I have to go back in. The draft isn’t good for the eyes,” Kai says in a hushed voice.

“I’ll be there tomorrow,” I blurt out, and I give Kai a pat on his bicep, “then we’ll celebrate. I’ll come here and we’ll celebrate.”

“No, Heiko,” he sounds weak. Maybe we’ve already gone too far, done too much; “not me. You’re going to have to celebrate without me.”

“I’m telling you, they’re going to suffer something terrible, the sons of bitches.” I clap my hands together symbolically. “Score settled.”

Kai stops abruptly and literally pierces me with his one eye. He hits my chest with the back of his hand. The translucent cup makes his left eye seemed cruelly distorted.

“I don’t want anything to do with it anymore! Get that through your head. I’m out. That’s it for me. How many other ways do you want to hear it?!”

I just stand there. In his eye cup there’s a flat, brown reflection of me blurred beyond recognition. A tiny figure without a face, copying every turn of my head. A human residual image in front of a gray backdrop.

“Come along,” he says and swallows hard.

“Where?”

“To London. You have enough saved up. And here? What’s keeping you here? Not a fucking thing, man. Let’s get away. Just for a while.”

I can’t look him in the eye. Instead, I watch how his gown flutters around his ankles. The path around us begins to shine with moisture. Rain drops fall on my head and run down my forehead and over my face, along my nose.

“Besides, I could use a good guide dog,” he says uncertainly when I manage to lift my head again. He laughs in the hope I’d join in and we could laugh together. I grab his forearm with my left hand and shake his hand with my right and say, “Take it easy, brother.”

As I walk past him, I think I hear my name whispered but must have been mistaken. I pull my hood over my head, drawing the elastic drawstrings tight so I can take the jacket collar in my mouth, and press my fist so deep in the pockets that two bulging balls press out from under the fabric of the windbreaker. I walk through the rain to my car with a numb humming in my chest, making all of my movements automated. I still have a couple of things to do, a couple scores to settle, before the day can start tomorrow.

The lane to Arnim’s farm is soggy and soft. The car gets stuck halfway between the county road and the woods. I put it in neutral, open the door and push. It’s pouring like crazy, and a little puddle forms on the driver’s seat. At first the vehicle seems just to sink even deeper into the mire. I gather all my strength one last time and push almost horizontal against the frame between the door and the interior. The hatchback goes over a stone or something. Then it starts to roll and I’m able to push it out of the hollow. I make to jump back onto the seat, but my left shoe remains stuck in the mud. I pull and tug and my foot slips out. Fuck it. I climb in, close the door, and step on the clutch with my foot covered with muck and the sock only halfway on, while the seat of my pants soaks up the water.

Arnim’s pickup truck is parked in front of the house. As if he’d come through the screen door any second and call out, My boy. With his gun in one hand and an Elephant beer in the other. I go inside. The house, still destroyed, is quiet all the way to the roof the rain is drumming against. I can hear the refrigerator humming out in the living room. The acrid stench of old blood rises in my nostrils. Even the sound of the doorbell didn’t rile the dogs. I curse myself for not having had the balls to come here sooner. Something rustles through the newspaper and the other stuff scattered everywhere. Probably a rat or a field mouse that’s found its way into the house. In the kitchen it stinks like a stale cellar and mold. Maggots wriggle in the leftovers in the sink. I walk out into the yard. One side of the camouflage netting has fallen over and a section as big as the clock in a clock tower snakes across the tiger cover. Nothing moves in the cages. The bowls inside are spread around and overturned. I put my middle and index fingers between my lips and let loose a shrill whistle. No reaction. I’m such a damn, cowardly asshole.

“Bigfoot!” I call and make an effort to imitate the Russian accent of the previous owner. “Poborsky!” But neither dog comes storming out of its house as if snake-bit in the fruitless attempt to seize me by the throat. Even worse, when I walk around the cages, I see they’re both wide open. I hold tightly to the fencing, feeling my body go heavy and sluggish. It hangs numb, supported only by my fingers and my shaky legs, and all of it is so overwhelming. And by all of it, I mostly mean the guilt. The guilt that I didn’t do anything but hide upstairs behind Siegfried and waited for the coast to clear. The guilt that I also didn’t initiate anything later and postponed returning again and again. And even more than about Arnim’s possible fate, I feel bad about Bigfoot and Poborsky, who couldn’t do anything about being thrown into this miserable life, never had a choice except to play along or lie down and wait to starve to death. I’d like to cry right now. Really. Till my face dissolves and my body collapses in dehydration. I let go of the fence, but my wish doesn’t come true. I wipe the raindrops stuck to my fingers over my face and roll up my sleeves, trying to prepare myself for the worst, and pull the cover of the tiger’s pit to the side so I can look through the crack. There’s water in there, reaching halfway up the tiger’s legs. Its fur hangs down wet and limp. It immediately looks up at me and growls deeply, but it’s visibly weak. Too weak to try to jump up the walls. There’s something floating on the surface of the water that looks like bits of clothing. The shreds float on the water like water lilies and rock with every wave. A shiver runs down my spine, but I force myself to look a little longer and search for additional evidence. I don’t find anything. And right now, in this moment, a tiny glimmer of hope should be flowering within me, but there’s nothing. Nothing moves. Because for some reason I know I’ll never see Arnim again, even if I turn the damned Earth upside down. The tiger quickly loses interest in me. We didn’t even have time to give him a name. He turns away from me and wades through the knee-deep, slaggy water. Knowing full well it can’t expect anything from me. Except for one thing. A last service I can render the creature and that I have to do, as little as it pleases me. Because no one else is there. Should I call the zoo? Wouldn’t change a thing. I wouldn’t be doing the animal a favor because the result would be the same. I pull the cover closed again and go into the house. I dig through the chaos, push the sofas to the side, and lift the broken cabinets. But Arnim’s gun remains missing. The fucking losers must have taken it. I sit down in the trash, smoke a cigarette, putting my ashes wherever. And contemplate. I consider calling Gaul. He could surely provide me with something. But it’ll all take too long. I’d have to drive to Hannover first. Maybe it’d take a couple of days for the goods to arrive. No, all that is out of the question. I can’t leave till it’s done. Then I remember the gun Arnim pulled out from under the kitchen table. I jump up and slide over the greasy kitchen floor to under the table. There it is. Hangs flat in a holster made of layers of black duct tape. That wily bastard! I sit down at the table and pull it out. It’s so easy. I weigh it in my hand. It lies heavy there. I remember how everything works. The magazine is fully loaded. I push it back into the handle till it clicks, get up, release the safety, and pull back the slide. A round slips into the chamber and I release the slide. I go back outside. The heavy black thing dangles from my hand. Careful not to accidentally touch the trigger with a finger, I place it on the lid, pull the lid over again, and take up the pistol. Then I place my index finger on the trigger. The tiger has only a fleeting glance and a brief hiss for me. I check one more time if the safety is really off and aim into the pit.