“It’s me, old pal,” I say, my voice like a refrigerator’s monotone hum, “brought you some treats.”
The floorboards are almost completely covered with newspapers where Siegfried can relieve himself. But he still prefers his armchair. Only a hint of its turquoise color remains after years of gathering dust and all that bird shit. I take a big step over the middle stretch of papers and dump the contents of the bucket in a pile in the far right corner of the room. Then he can pick out whatever he feels like. Then I step back, careful not to walk in the piles of crap, and approach the window. Taking care not to make any rash movements. I continue to reason with Siegfried. The meaningless chatter is more for my benefit. To be honest, I don’t think the old bird gives a damn. I always lay out the papers so I have about one and a half feet of free space to the window. The whole time, my gaze stays glued to Siegfried, who shakes out his feathers. Maybe it’s like when people yawn. Although I don’t know if birds are able to yawn. At least I’ve never seen Siegfried do it.
“Sleep okay, old boy?” I ask and carefully lift the heavy blanket from the nails that keep it in front of the window. Thousands of dust particles float through the tilted rectangle of cloudy daylight. Siegfried pulls out his head and immediately has a closer look at me with his healthy, red-rimmed pupil while shaking out his wings, big as sails. I let the blanket slide to the ground and take a couple steps back. Keep my hands waist-high.
“Okay, everything’s okay.” We look at each other. “It’s just me.”
In the course of our acquaintance, Siegfried and I have tangled only once. It’s certainly very different than with the silly pigeons. I was new here and hadn’t worked out yet how to handle him. He probably viewed me as an intruder and thought what the hell does the dweeb want. He tried to snap at me. And that’s no joke. When a huge, old bearded vulture grabs at you, then you shouldn’t be surprised if your hand’s gone. I was so startled I almost fell over. But I reflexively pulled back and whacked him with the back of my hand. Not everyone can claim they’ve bitch-slapped a fucking vulture. It’s still one of Kai’s favorite stories. For weeks I refused to set foot in the room. But because Arnim threatened to kick me out or make me pay rent, I did it again. And since then we’ve been cool with each other. What’s more, I like the old buzzard.
He jumps from the back of the chair onto the floor with a thump and hops over to the pile of bones. When he’s moving around on the ground, ’cause there’s not much chance to fly in here, then he doesn’t walk but hops instead. By getting up some momentum and jumping forward with both legs at once, but somehow he always stays slightly sideways. I stand still for a second. Smile. I like watching him when he moves around like that. Because his body is covered with thick, rusty feathers down to the talons, which are almost as large as human hands. It looks like he’s wearing pants. Only the outside of the wings and his head have a different color. His face is black all the way to his beak, where there are the beard feathers he’s named after. The underlying red tones shine through. He pokes with his beak among the pile of bones and starts with a chick.
“Tastes pretty good, right?” I say and begin pushing the papers together and balling them up so I can replace them.
When I’m done spreading them out, he’s sitting up on the back of the chair again and looking out the window. I ask myself if birds—or animals in general—can feel bored. I hope not, because his life here is even more dreary than before. I decide I’ll ask Arnim when I have the chance why he doesn’t build him an aviary. Then he’d at least be able to fly a couple yards, assuming he hasn’t completely forgotten how. It’s probably like riding a bike. He’s already had to spend fifteen years staring out this window. There’s nothing interesting to look at. At least as far as the one eye can see. Arnim tells me he lost the other one to a monster of a raven that some Bulgarian brought over: “That was a brute, all right. I’d never seen anything like it, my boy. About this big.” Then he spread his thick arms. “I had no clue they could get that big. Thought it just couldn’t be, that it must be a Lilliput he stuck in a black costume.”
The football-sized wad of paper sticks together pretty well with all the bird crap. I kick it out into the hallway, tell Siegfried to enjoy his meal and that he shouldn’t take everything so seriously. As if he has a swivel stuck in his craw, he turns his head at an angle impossible for humans and looks at me. I give him a thumbs-up, who knows why exactly, and say, “Keep your head up, bud.”
Then I close the door behind me.
A true football fan places great emphasis on tradition, on time-honored things. Nothing embodies this more than our local Hannover bar, the venerable Timpen in the old streets of the Calenberger Neustadt district. Surrounded by traffic-free cobblestone streets and half-timbered houses gussied up for the tourists, into which eye-wateringly expensive yuppie cafés had been dropped, the Skipper, with his, or rather our, Timpen, is one of the last bastions of true Hannover culture. And I swear, if it should ever cease to be, which isn’t unrealistic, then we can just climb into the casket. From time to time, my uncle makes some pronouncement about taking over the place to keep it afloat, but seriously. Once in a while, he bugs Skipper about the liquor license and the whole nine yards. There’ve also been efforts by Axel to shift the focus of our “company” to his gym. But that was met with such resistance not even he could bring it off. I’m telling you: hooligans and our customs. Try to cut us off, and we’ll hit the barricades. But Axel is basically just as much a traditionalist, and I don’t think he’d trade Timpen for anything. The old farts are still the ones who tell the best stories. Hinkel, more than any other. When he’s a little lit and starts to “spin,” there’s no holding back. About when all this was still a free country, which Kai, Ulf, Jojo, and me didn’t ever really experience. None of this constant surveillance with cameras on every corner, battalions of policemen with helicopters for every pitiful match that’s suddenly declared a problem game. And even outside the stadiums. Things must have been really hairy here. There were cases of bricks and benches flying through thick-barred windows.
Every time I sit here and nurse my pilsner, I feel a little like I’m in a museum. Listening to the talk of back when. Back when everything was better, la-di-da. But I did have some good times before Timpen. Back then we weren’t really accepted and had to wait outside. Except in fall and winter. That was fucking hell. But it always paid off. Skipper sometimes even sent us a spiked pot of coffee. We couldn’t have beer yet, but in a thermos like that you couldn’t see something’d been added.
Today I feel like I’m a part of that story. Whether that means our “company” or the football club. Or even the city. It just feels good to sit here in the middle of all these idiots and lift one glass after another.
Ulf, Kai, and I are perched there like roosting chickens receiving our next freshly poured beverages into our parched throats. Because the weekend and match day are ahead of us, Jojo’s doing an extra shift of coaching his youth squad.
“To you, Skipper”—Kai raises his glass—“and may the well never run dry!”
“Cheers!” We clink glasses with Skipper.
Axel, Tomek, and the rest of the crew are seated at the regulars’ table at the end of the taproom. Behind them, the pennants of various Hannover-based sports teams hang thickly, partially overlapping on the dark, chocolate-colored wood paneling. Of course, every second one is from 96. The adjacent wall, which you follow to the shitter, is covered with pictures and photos. Besides the photos of him at sea, Skipper’s particularly proud of the autographed team picture from the group that won the German Cup in ’92. Hannover was the first second-league team to ever win the Cup.