Philipp Winkler - Hooligan

I take it all in. I filter out how absurd it all seems because I’ve never heard Axel talk this way. So I take it all in and almost ovulate for joy or enthusiasm or the hell if I know. Finally, really start something. Show all of those goddamn son-of-a-bitch operations in Germany they’d better pay attention to Hannover. Must pay attention. Maybe he wouldn’t be such a bad politician.

“Listen up. I want to introduce you to someone. We’re gonna just drive over to Wunstorf and visit an old friend of mine. Who you can learn plenty from. I’ve learned plenty. From him. All right?”

Once again, I don’t open my mouth, and I’m just smiling and nodding like a true brownnoser. Even if I know it’s not really me, only the simple fact of sitting there and listening to it all, even if I’m truly happy about it, I’d like to slap myself upside the head and tell myself I shouldn’t be acting like a hypocritical yes-man.

“Then you can call it a day. Your car is parked at the train station in Wunstorf, right?”

And again, I just nod.

“Just give me a call when you’re finished with your royal audience or whatever kind of faggy stuff you’re up to,” Kai had joked, and I climbed into Axel’s plush Audi.

We rolled down the autobahn at two hundred kph. Axel’s way of driving doesn’t leave room for questions, although there’s probably a big, fat, red question mark on my forehead when we turn off into the parking lot at the branch of the regional hospital in Wunstorf. The local funny farm. I’m supposed to wait outside, and Axel says he’ll bring out his friend.

“Then he can get a whiff of fresh air.”

I take a seat in a wooden shelter set aside for breaks in the hospital’s park.

I’m already smoking my third cigarette and there’s a scent of freshly spread potting soil and summer thunderstorms. It hesitantly begins to rain. Here a drop. There one. Then more. All around me, the rain falls in thousands of spider legs. I flick the glowing cigarette butt into the already soggy bed of flowers. The automatic doors to the front entrance open. Axel comes out. He’s pushing someone in a wheelchair.

Through the rain, which was already letting up, I hear him: “Oh, oh, oh, we’re gonna get so wet.” He’s pushing the wheelchair and its jockey out in front at a trot. It rattles a lot over the cobblestone path. As if the sight of the guy in the wheelchair wasn’t bizarre enough in itself. This guy is huge. I’m talking about Ulf and Latze proportions. A goddamn fridge of a guy. Or rather, he must have been at some point. Now he looks like his skeleton and inner organs shrank but his skin stayed the way it was. I don’t mean he looked all wrinkly. I’d guess he’s roughly my uncle’s age. It simply looks… wrong. Off, somehow. As though it wasn’t a natural process. At any rate, even in his state, he still seemed far too large for the wheelchair, which is probably a completely standard model. But he still gave me the impression of a sad clown on a kid’s tricycle. This was heightened by the puffy orange bomber jacket he almost disappeared into.

Once they’re nearly under the roof with me, I’m able to make out the guy’s sunken face better. On the cheek more than anywhere else, it’s like one of those beat-up plastic bottles you can massage as much as you want but you’ll never get the dents out. I suddenly have a kind of déjà-vu feeling. I ask myself if I’ve ever seen this guy somewhere, but try as I may, I can’t picture it. His head is pocked, strangely pointy, and looks like he would normally shave it, judging from how the hair’s sprouting from his scalp. Only it doesn’t grow evenly but in thin, isolated bundles.

Axel pushes him under the roof. I don’t know if I’m supposed to stand up or not. I just stay seated.

“Dirk, this is my nephew. Heiko.” Axel pronounces the words clearly and distinctly. Emphasizes every single syllable.

It feels like Dirk needs years to lift his face in my direction. Two shimmering pools of spittle have gathered in the corners of his mouth. For some reason, I feel nauseous. His eyes pan slowly and imprecisely in my direction. They’re topped by bushy eyebrows that look like those fat, hairy caterpillars you can see in documentaries on the Amazon.

I say, “Hello,” and wave without lifting my arm, as if he weren’t sitting directly in front of me.

The sight of this ghost made my testicles contract. I’d already seen plenty in my day, but him… A taste of soggy cardboard spreads through my mouth.

Axel crouches down between us so anyone who walked by here would think we look like a conspiratorial group. He rests his hand on the puffy sleeve of Dirk’s washed-out bomber jacket, from which a hand with scabby yellow fingernails protrudes. And the back of his hand. Only now do I notice it. On the back of his hand up into the sleeve, and as I assume, probably even farther up his arm, there’s a blackish, tumor-like crust growing rampant that looks like a smoker’s leg kneaded into a lump.

“My nephew here. Heiko,” Axel emphasized loudly once again, “he’s really talented. One of our best.” I briefly squint over to Axel and then back into the milky eyes of Dirk, which don’t seem to have any spark, from my perspective. “Has proven himself multiple times. He’s capable of stuff, Dirk. He’s a good one.” Axel gets really close to Dirk’s ear, but doesn’t reduce his volume. Dirk begins to nod very slowly. His mouth opens and closes to a hardly visible degree, like a goldfish. I hope I don’t look like that when I’m nodding in agreement because I can’t think of anything better.

My uncle turns to me. Back at normal volume: “Me and Dirk. We used to be the best. Always at the front of the pack. What am I talking about? Leading the way! Together we made that tired bunch into a hard-hitting squad. I couldn’t have done it without Dirk.” He briefly ponders, looking at the ground, then back at me: “A little like you and Kai. Dirk and me. We were always that tight.”

“Understand.”

“You, Dirk. We’re no spring chickens anymore, hey?” Axel doesn’t wait for an answer. We could be sitting here till the month after next. “And at some point, you really have to let go, right? That’s when I thought of Heiko here. My nephew. The best of all.” He swipes his hand in the air between the three of us in emphasis. I have to look away out of embarrassment. The rain has stopped. Individual drops slip heavily off the leaves of the flowers and onto the soil. A neon-yellow butterfly flies past the wooden hut. I watch it go, till my gaze snags on the two warhorses in front of me.

“But of course, none of that happens unless Dirk gives his blessing, right? You’re okay, Dirk,” he literally croaks in his ear. I notice how my uncle’s voice flutters, but just slightly, so you hardly notice. Dirk’s face pans toward the source of Axel’s voice like in slow motion. The black bulges also protrude from the collar of his jacket, up his neck.

“All right?”

Axel appears to be out of patience. I repress the impulse to light one. Then finally a reaction. He nods. His goldfish mouth forms an: “Okay.” Strings of drool connect his lips.

It’s enough for Axel: “I’m glad. Well, we’re all cooled down after that rain. I’d better bring you back inside. So you don’t catch anything out here. Say good-bye, Heiko.”

I say bye and watch the two of them go. I want to pull one out of my pack as Axel and Dirk have turned onto the path toward the main entrance, when Dirk yelps all of a sudden. At first I don’t get that it’s him, but it absolutely doesn’t sound like Axel. It can only be Dirk’s voice. I hear him caterwauling the metro song, but unbelievably off-key, till they disappear past the sliding doors of the building. That he wants to build a subway from Mannheim to Auschwitz. My forehead is buried in my palms and I spew as much vomit between my feet as I possibly can.