“I’ll be right back,” Jojo said and pulled out his wallet.
“What’s he up to now?” I asked.
We watched him push through the crowd of despondent gazes, stopping in front of one of the street vendors.
“You can’t be serious,” said Ulf.
“Not really, right?” I said. And I didn’t mean Jojo but the guy who’d blatantly set up shop with a selection of candles he was hawking to mourners.
“Dude,” I started, and could already feel the rage shooting into my fists, “I’d really like to go over there and give that cocksucker some business.”
Ulf said something intended to keep me from giving him a beating right then and there. Even if he deserved it. So just to be on the safe side, I memorized his face in case I happened to run into him on the street someday.
Jojo returned with four red candles, for the price for which you could have gotten a small personalized funeral wreath. He handed one to each of us, and we waited for the procession to start. I can’t remember anymore how we found out about it, that a procession to the stadium was supposed to happen in the first place, but it felt like everyone in Hannover and the whole area knew about it. It was probably in all the papers and talked about at every kiosk and supermarket till.
It started soon after, and this huge throng of 96 supporters drifted right through the city. We kept to the back of the crowd. At the margins. Even though Jojo imitated the other mourners and walked silently in front us, for some reason I couldn’t give in to the mood. Which is why most of the time I was going on about meaningless shit with Ulf and Kai. I was still surprised Jojo would let himself get drawn into the whole mourning business. Of course, it’s all good and stuff, but if I had everything pressing in on me like Jojo, I don’t know how I’d hold up. I can’t stop thinking about Joel anyway.
I felt different when we got to the north entrance to Lower Saxony Stadium, where the fan shop is at. You could barely raise your cigarette to take a drag without touching the back of the person in front of you with the cherry. That’s why I mostly avoided spending time at the train station, the Passerelle mall, or the shopping streets in the city. Everywhere always so fucking packed with people. Cheek by jowl. Another reason the whole ultra thing wouldn’t have been my cup of tea. Sure, it was cool in a way to be in the stands, on your feet, screaming your head off, and guzzling the watered-down stadium piss. If it wasn’t for all the teens and wannabes among the few good men you can find in the fan sections. I guess the feeling I had from my childhood wore off at some point. Reverence for the stadium and the stands, ruled over by people like my uncle. Probably goes back to the damn commercialization. Everyone calls it the Lower Saxony Stadium still, but every few years a new company buys the naming rights, and each time a piece of tradition fucking disappears. But what’s even more important is when you’re one of the oldest in the block at some point and surrounded by middle-class kids who only have the balls to make a scene when they’re surrounded by fences and security.
People for as far as the eye can see. Many were crying, embracing one another. Joined by the press, which caused the bile to rise in my throat, leaving a sour taste in my mouth, and made me pull the hood of my windbreaker down over my face and draw the zipper up over my chin.
Kai put words to what I was thinking: “People, there’s way too much press and piss here for my taste. It’s giving me ulcers and making my sphincter pucker.”
It sounded like a joke, but even Kai had lost his gift for levity. He pulled his hoodie tighter over his noggin so his eyebrows disappeared beneath the visor.
“Jojo,” Ulf said, and tried to grab him by the shoulder.
Some kind of Jackie Chan sense let him guess that Ulf wanted him to turn around. At any rate, he pulled in his shoulders and said, “Just wait a second,” and then wriggled his way into the sea of mourners. We could see him for quite a while because of his mop of curly hair, which was still quite long then, twisting through countless shoulders. A short time later, he was out of sight, even for Ulf, who stuck up over the mass of heads like a shiny bald lighthouse.
So we waited for Jojo to come back after whatever it was he wanted to do. But because even Ulf had grown restless in the meantime, we separated completely from the herd. We were waiting for him on Robert Enke Street which was still part of the Arthur Menge Shore Drive, and from the other side of the street we watched the slideshows of Enke that were being projected on screens in front of the North Curve bar.
“Best keeper we ever had,” Ulf declared, arms crossed.
“Together with Sievers, you mean,” Kai answered and spit to the side without watching out for people passing by.
“Sure,” I said, butt between my lips, “Sievers was a beast on the line. The best at the time, controlling his area”—I weighed the situation with my hands—“definitely Enke. And not only that. The best damn keeper Germany ever had. He was calm like no one else and had reflexes like fucking Superman.”
Ulf clucked and said, “Besides, he wasn’t a pampered sports car–driving idiot like most of the pros these days.”
We nodded in unison, and at some point a “Best man” slipped out of me. Without my really consciously wanting to pronounce it.
“This is all so fucking sad,” Ulf added.
Jojo joined us just as Kai was returning from North Curve bar with three cups of beer. Judging from Kai’s gaze and the fact that his nostrils were flared like he’d been caught picking his nose, I guessed he hadn’t just been taking a piss in the bar’s toilets. Kai was passing out the cups when he saw Jojo and wanted to give him one of the three beers.
“I’ll be right back. Getting another.”
“Forget it. Here.” Jojo returned the beer. “I want to go. Can we go?”
We asked what was wrong and tried to keep up with him as he led the way with slow strides and swinging hands. He eased off just enough so we could catch up, then pulled out his phone and showed us a photo he’d snapped of the thousands of candles and bouquets. They seemed to stretch for hundreds of meters on the stadium grounds, and in the picture they morphed into a single indefinable mass of dots of light.
I pressed Jojo on why he wanted to get out of there so soon, and in the effort to keep up with him, my beer sloshed out of the thin plastic cup, spilling over my fingers and dripping on my pant leg.
“Maybe,” Jojo said, “I just kneeled to put my candle down. But maybe then I had to think about Joel as well. And maybe a little raindrop fell on my face. And maybe, just maybe, I smashed one of those press fuckers who thought it’d be a great shot.”
Kai and I briefly stood in shock and then had to make up two strides to catch up with him.