Philipp Winkler - Hooligan

“I’m busy right now. So if it’s nothing important…”

I forget to answer him and, one after the other, examine the bozos, whose faces I recognize from somewhere. I just can’t place it.

“Nah… um… it’s okay,” I say and want to move my body back into the hallway.

“Hey, Heiko, wait a sec,” Axel says and snorts the remaining coke that’s still hanging on his nostril. “Let’s chat about Cologne sometime soon. A little debriefing. Okay?”

He winks conspiratorially, which confuses me so much I only stupidly nod and leave an “um” hanging in the room. The drugged, wigged-out eyes of the three skinheads follow me out. I close the door.

It just wasn’t working anymore. Much as I wanted it to work, for us to work. It was equally clear I couldn’t change myself and she wouldn’t change. No question. That’s what we’d told ourselves from the beginning of our relationship. Sure, other people wouldn’t see it as real, but that’s what it was. Which was also fine by me. Me and my bros were just starting to learn to play the third half—as people rightly call it—and I wasn’t about to let something mess it up. Least of all a woman. On the other hand, it’s Yvonne and not just any girl.

At first I kept thinking how perfect it would be. She needed plenty of space too. I never thought it’d be possible to meet anyone so compatible with my lifestyle. And then it wasn’t as it seemed, but for reasons I couldn’t have imagined. Goddamn! It’s almost funny, but after a while I guessed she had another poker in the fire besides me. Poker… how fucking fitting. Always talking through everything took forever. I was never good at things like that. At least with words. And saying what’s going on inside yourself, and all that emotional crap. But the conversation always heads in that direction. Without me really being prepared for it. She said it wasn’t as bad as all that. That she just needed it. She has everything under control. I just have to leave her alone. After all, she accepted me just the way I was too. With the brawls and the “football crap,” as she called it. Such a goddamn fucking crock of shit!

She threw all my clothes she could gather into the hallway and locked the door. I didn’t even do anything about it. Like stick my foot between the door and the frame or yell she should cut it out. She said I should go, and I accepted it. I collected my clothes, went into the kitchen, and ate the meal we hadn’t finished that evening. Could have just left right when she said it, but I think I was trying to draw it out. Maybe she’d reconsider and come out of her room. But, of course, she didn’t. She never did. Never once in my experience did she change her mind when she’d made a decision. Not even with the smallest, least important things. I went into the living room, turned on the tube, and sat on the couch for a bit. Pet the cat next to me, which was having a hard time finding a comfortable sleeping position and was punishing the slipcover. I tidied up a bit. Put dishes in the dishwasher, carefully stacked her stupid magazines on the glass coffee table, and washed the backup utensils and hypodermic needles and syringes in the bathroom sink, returning them to their leather case. Then placed the case in its spot in the drawer in the living room cabinet. I would have preferred to slam the case against the wall. Actually, why not? For some reason, I was cleaning up like a zombie, with my head empty and stuck on straightening up. I took my things, pausing in the open doorway to the apartment, listening to Yvonne’s place one last time. Then I closed the door behind me. As I went down the stairs and ran my thumb over the jags of the key in my bag, our two-year relationship shrank with every step into a tiny, compressed ball.

Kai’s done with his classes. Even though that means he has to take an ass-load of finals on balance sheets, human resource management, and some other business crap, he still prefers to hang out with me all day at the gym and starts drinking around noon. I always skip a round of beer so I’m halfway able to do something when necessary. But there’s nothing to do. And Kai’s presence distracts me from the dull bits of conversation I overhear all day long. We’re just sitting next to the front door, smoking, drinking, and Kai shows me pictures from Aztec stadium in Mexico City. His big dream. Just once in that ginormous stadium which used to hold more than 110,000 people. These days it still has around 95,000 seats.

“Sure, but seats, dude,” I say, “it’s fucking lame.”

“You don’t really believe the hombres stay seated, resting on their asses. There’s a real fiesta!” he bellows and accidently knocks ash on his new, snow-white Le Coq shoes.

“Oh, fuck.”

He licks his thumb and tries to wipe away the ashes. Gaul comes around, greets us, and goes in. We watch him go. Inside, he’s approached by Latze, the six-foot-six bouncer who’s smiling like a fat kid in a candy shop, and they go into the locker-room together.

“If Latze swallows any more bull shark hormones his biceps will explode someday,” Kai says and giggles.

I laugh. Wave him off.

“Nah, it’s only hot air anyway.”

“You think? I can go in there right now and tell Latze you want to challenge him to a round of arm wrestling. Won’t take long at all. Wham bam, thank you, ma’am.”

He acts like he would really get up any second and do it, but then he sits down again and continues sipping on his can of beer.

“But even if the stadium is awesome,” I say, “and I do have my doubts, I have to believe some of the atmosphere gets lost in a huge arena like that. Even if, who would play there anyway?” I don’t wait for an answer: “Nope. Celtic versus Rangers. That,” I point my raised index finger at him, “would be something! The oldest, longest-standing fucking derby in the world. That’s where religions collide.”

“But then the Rangers would have to move up to the top league.”

“You’re right about that, too,” I say.

The beer almost slips from my hand when my uncle rips open the door and bellows, “Can you step into my office, Heiko?”

“Where’d he come from all of a sudden?” Kai says in a whisper, though Axel’s already back inside.

“I shrug my shoulders, drain my can, and toss it to Kai, who catches it and sets it down next to him.

On the way to Axel, I try to decide whether I should ask what those Nazis were doing in his office the other day. The question had been rolling around my brain the whole day, but I just couldn’t think of an answer that would be any of my business. After all, I keep my nose out of everything else that concerns the gym.

I open the door to Axel’s office.

“Hey, hey, hey. Don’t people knock these days or what?”

I apologize and want to close the door.

“No way. You’re going right back out and doing it the right way.”

You gotta be kidding me, I think to myself, but do as ordered: go back out in the hall, close the door, wait a second, knock, he says, “Yes?,” I open the door, my uncle says I should come in, and I close the door behind me and plant myself on a chair and just think what the point of the preschool show was?!

Axel sorts through some documents on his desk. Acts as if nothing had happened. He actually praises me for the good organization of the Cologne match. It could have run a little more smoothly here or there, without going into detail about what he means exactly, but it was really quite good for the first time. In the end, everything turned out all right. We took home a win. No cops. Bottom line, a success.

I’m about to interrupt him and ask about the right-wingers when he says he’s proud of me. I think I wasn’t hearing right, but he takes a deep breath and says, “As you probably already know, I can’t do this forever. It’s a pity, even so, but at some point things come to an end. I’m not so shortsighted to think that I can stay fit forever. There are enough idiots out on the field that tell themselves who gives a damn what happens afterward, but not me,” and he rapped his knuckles on the table. Maybe it was supposed to be some kind of superstitious knock-on-wood thing. “Heiko”—he moved so close to the desk that the edge pushed into his stomach muscles—“we’re starting to build something. For Hannover. Put the city on the map, once and for all. So that no one talks about Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Dresden, Magdeburg, hell if I know, without having to mention Hannover.” He balls up his hands into fists that immediately go red because of how fast the blood shoots into them. It’s like he’s the leader of the bodybuilding political party or something with this little motivational speech. He pulls back from the table again, leaning backward and making the chair squeak under his weight. “I hope I can pass the whole thing on to you someday. That I can hand the reins over to you and not any old Johnny-come-lately. What they’re missing. What we have. That’s brains, Heiko”—he taps his finger against his temple, where veins ran like pipes—“brains.”