Philipp Winkler - Hooligan

“Heiko, are you still there?”

Manuela’s head peered sideways out the doorway. The glasses she didn’t need and only had to look more like a teacher were dangling from her neck. I hear Hans’s voice from the kitchen. He’s saying something. But I can’t understand him.

“All right, Papa,” she said, and then again to me, “Come on. The coffee is getting cold.”

How carefully she pronounced the words. So deliberately prim, just so she wouldn’t say it wrong. Made the hair stand up on the back of my ass. I almost hit my head on the low ceiling, that’s how long I hadn’t been there. Manuela bustles around the small kitchen. Sparse light falls through the window and the patio door. Mie is standing at the sink and washing dishes. My father is sitting at the table, left and right arms resting next to his plate, which is already full of large crumbs. “Hey,” I mumble. Mie briefly turns and whispers a hello. At least I assume so. It used to make me furious how quiet she always is. Today, because I don’t have to live here anymore, I couldn’t care less. Even though she’s discrete, I still see Manuela give our father a poke, and he too produces a “Hey” before he loads another piece of cream-filled almond cake on his plate.

“Sit down, sit down,” Manuela asks and immediately pours me a coffee. I pull out my cigarettes and place them next to my plate. Manuela instantly produces the ashtray and sets it noisily in front of me on the table.

The next minutes, in which no one at the table exchanges glances, are tortured. Mie places a dish with brown balls next to the plate with the cake. Then everyone is finally seated.

“What is that, Mie?”

“Kai nok…” and I don’t understand the rest because it’s Thai and fades into silence.

She appears to ponder how you could translate it but doesn’t come up with a solution. Also because Manuela nods and says, “Aha,” as if she knew exactly what was in those steaming bull balls.

I remove a cigarette from the pack, and while I light up, Manuela loads a piece of cake on my plate. Only then does she ask, “Cake?”

I wave my hand vaguely and tap the ash off my cigarette. My father looks over for the first time. He stares at my cig and runs his tongue over his upper lip. Even though it’s been years since he shaved off his old porn stache, I still haven’t gotten used to the view of his naked upper lip, which is covered in beads of sweat.

“Can I bum one?” he asks and didn’t look at me for a single second, speaking only to the pack.

With relish, I take a long drag on my cigarette, knock off the ash, take another drag, and place it on my ashtray.

Then I flick the pack. It slides across the table, past Manuela, and slams against Hans’s plate. He takes one out and pats down his pants pocket. Doesn’t find anything, and now he looks at me, the butt already between his lips.

“Have a light?”

His eyes are simultaneously watery and glassy. Like an ashtray that someone had accidentally poured liquid into. I flick the lighter right after.

After the whole smoking thing is over and Manuela has quit her hacking, she finally gets to the point. Her disapproving gaze, which fits perfectly with the strict bun she’s tugged her hair into, remains unchanged. She can’t stand us puffing away but has to go along because she’s in the minority and not inside her own four walls. At least she’s learned to have an ashtray handy in situations like these, because neither Hans nor I give a rat’s ass where we put our ashes.

“It’s nice to finally be sitting together.”

No one reacts. Only Mie is smiling somewhere between embarrassment and approval.

“But there’s also an occasion,” Manuela continued. “I was finally able—I have to say with the help of Andreas’s good connections—to secure a spot in rehab for Papa.”

Hans lets loose a scornful grunt that sounds so vulgar, as if his mouth was an asshole. But Manuela doesn’t let herself be fazed. That’s from her years of experience.

“And he has—,” she cleared her throat, “will be going to Bad Zwischenahn until November.”

“Hmmm,” I murmur past the piece of dry cake in my mouth. I’m afraid she must have baked it herself.

I’m wise enough to refrain from asking what all this has to do with me, because I have absolutely no interest in a full-on bargaining session. In a second, she’ll be getting around to saying why it’ll all be my business.

“I’ll probably take him there personally next week,” because she wants to be truly sure that he’ll go, but of course she doesn’t say that.

“Of course, someone will have to tend to Papa’s pigeons during that time”—aha, so that’s the way things roll—“and because I really won’t have any time to take care of that too, with my job—and the kids are so demanding at their age—and I have so much to prepare and get through before and after school, with corrections, I just can’t manage it, and because Mie’s terrified of the birds, we were thinking”—she looks at Hans, probably in the hope she’d catch his gaze, but he keeps staring at his cake—“I was thinking that you could do it, Heiko. You used to always help Gramps feed the birds, right? So you must still know how all that works.”

It’s at least twenty years ago.

“That would be a great relief for all of us, Heiko.” She appears to have repressed the reason why I never again set a foot in the shed, never helped my father with the feeding after he’d taken over the pigeon breeding from grandpa. Suits her agenda.

While I’m busy scarfing down the last piece of cake, I mentally scroll through various excuses, none of which is substantial enough that Manuela wouldn’t throw it right back at me. The rock-hard corners of her mouth loosen, and her eyes, which seemed almost rectangular, relax a little. She probably noticed I couldn’t think of a good objection. I really, really don’t want to do it, but once again, some sort of important connection between my brain and my facial expressions is apparently MIA.

“So it’s a deal,” she decides and is the first to take one of Mie’s meatballs. She bites down and is only barely able to twist her mouth into a smile. I can see her fake a smile for Mie. Mie smiles back, unsure. Then I look at my father, who’s having a staring match with his cake and probably thinking only about the next can. I can’t blame him. I don’t feel any different. Sitting here, at this table, in this house. With my biological family. Damn it to hell, what I want more than anything is to get drunk with the next best can of beer. Nothing here makes any sense, I think to myself, and pat the table, saying, “Good.”

This pulls everyone else out of the thoughts they were just lost in. I down my coffee, get up, and reach across the table for my smokes.

“Got to get movin’,” I say, “lots of shit to do.”

No one was expecting that exit, not even my sister, who’s stuttering away, immediately searching for some random thing we could still discuss. No. Way. I turn on my heel, knock on the doorframe in parting, not looking back, and am through the hallway, out the door, maneuvering my VW hatchback down the driveway.

Wotan Boxing Gym is a former factory building in Hannover’s Stöcken district. Uncle Axel once told me they used to produce fountain pens or ballpoint pens here. The company went belly-up. Axel, who owned part of a bar next to Steintor, had his share paid out and bought the joint for next to nothing and opened the gym. The clientele is mostly made up of less-than-successful martial artists, pals from the security scene, and bikers. And unfortunately, a good deal of right-wing riff-raff. You shouldn’t be too surprised at that if you name your gym after a Germanic god. If I had my way, none of the skinheads would be allowed in. But as the gofer I have next to no say. Adjusting equipment, sorting weights, wiping up sweat and blood here and there. Besides, you can catch wind of plenty of things you shouldn’t list on your résumé. I’ve already been doing the job for five years now. Since I flamed out of school after wasting my second chance. But despite the shit I’ve seen here and have to listen to, day in, day out, I can’t imagine anything else. No suit busting my balls. Axel usually lets me do my own thing. I can work out whenever I want. And I earn more than enough to pay the bills.