Weser Stadium is full, every last seat. There’s a tifo being prepared on the East Curve, where the Werder ultras are located. They’re unrolling a banner that covers almost the entire corner. On the opposite side, the Hannover fans are making a racket, yelling insults in the direction of the Bremen fans. I’m glad we’re in neutral seats and aren’t sitting in the visitors’ section. Wouldn’t have been too keen to cross paths with certain familiar ultras. One of the Capos, the oldest ultra group in Hannover, is probably still a little sore at me since we tangled by the urinals at the traditional Marksmen’s Fair, which ended with him getting a black eye and his face shoved in the trough. Not that he could do anything to me. But it wouldn’t be a chill stadium experience.
“What, did they run out of Coke?” Hans jokes when I return to our seats with two cups of beer. Before taking a seat next to him, I have a view of his old man’s receding hair line through his thinning, brown hair. Soon it will meet up with the increasingly large spot on the back of his head and merge.
The game is fucking disgusting. No goals. The Reds, along with Bremen, all lose a handle on balls somewhere in the midfield because no one can make a decent pass. Or someone sends it long and they go for it like in amateur league—one bungled header after another. Because the Bremen defense has a tradition of being a pile of incompetents, several chances for 96 do materialize during the course of the match, but they’re all wasted, as commented on by my father with a throaty “crooked foot!” He also keeps bringing up the Cup-winning team’s finals in ’92, when Hannover’s first-round draw was Werder Bremen, of all teams, which meant their European adventure was over before it started.
“Still hurts, you know. Still hurts, I’m telling you.”
Then he pats me on the knee with his fist if I can’t pull it away fast enough.
“Are you taking good care of the critters?” he asks, and I confirm it monosyllabically and swallow the stadium beer.
“How’s Mie doing?”
“Yeah, good, I think,” I say, and he says: “She’s a good woman, Mie is. Good woman.”
“Aha.”
“And the boys? What are they up to? Kai, Ulf, and the two brothers?”
Something goes down the wrong way and I start hacking. Hans is about to pound me on my back when he notices how deeply he’s put his foot in his own mouth and withdraws his hand.
Several errant passes and botched headers, and I say out of the blue, “Was at the psychiatric clinic with Axel. We visited one of his old friends. Somehow seemed familiar to me.” I keep watching the game, occasionally catching Hans numbly staring straight ahead. “Must have been a huge guy.”
My father mumbles something indefinable into his beer while taking a sip.
“Sat in a wheelchair. Dirk was his name.” Now I notice Hans is rocking back and forth, barely perceptibly. I have no clue if he’s been doing it the whole time and I only noticed now. “You remember him?”
Hans coughs into his cupped fist, and I have the feeling he hasn’t blinked for several minutes. Then he says, “Hey, let’s watch the game, okay?”
Without another word spoken, a miserable North German rivalry comes to a close.
Just before Bad Zwischenahn, Hans tries to apologize while the rain begins to beat down hard on the windshield. I say he should forget about it and that it didn’t matter.
“Thanks, my boy. Really had fun. Horrible match… but, oh well.”
I nod and turn the key in the ignition. “Gotta go.”
“Yep,” he says, “take it easy. Drive safe and give them my regards back home.”
He closes the door, turns, and stops for a second. He looks over at the clinic, and I can hear his deep sigh even through the car door.
Something was banging against my door like crazy, making me sit almost bolt upright in bed.
“Heiko! Heiko! Fucking hell, you open up now!”
The wooden door is just barely hanging on its hinges. It vibrates with each of Arnim’s blows. When he hears me turn the key, he stops the pounding.
“What’s up? How late is it?” I ask.
Arnim is covered with drops of sweat. From his medicine-ball-sized head down to his old man chest, which must have been muscular once. His much too deeply cut wifebeater sticks to his paunch.
“The time has come! I’m getting it. I’m finally getting it!”
“What, huh?” I ask and rub a hand over the stubble on my head.
“Man, the tiger, my boy. The tiger!” But he pronounces “tiger” like “tigger.” Because I’m still busy rubbing my eyes and not really registering things, all I can think to say is a meager “Huh.”
“My dear boy,” he booms, “you’re sure slow on the uptake today.”
“Yeah, I understood: Tiger. You’re getting a tiger.”
“Oh, knock it off. It’s finally happening. I’m getting it next month!”
Gradually, I grasp the significance of what’s he’s been jabbering, and I peer at him through my fingers.
“Holy shit! For real? Don’t jerk me around!”
“Nope. Not shitting you, my boy. An honest-to-God fucking Bengal tiger! Here in our house.”
I drop my hands from my face. “What, that’s it? Is it here? Where’d you put the beast? You didn’t put it in with Poborsky or Bigfoot, right?”
He flips me off, pushing his flabby skin up on his forehead.
“Did they take a shit in your skull, my boy? Naw, the month after next. Then it’ll be time. I can pick it up.”
He turns around, almost skipping down the hallway like the fattest kid in the world, calling out to me, “Come on, pull yourself together, it’s time to pack!”
After I’ve gathered my wits and figured out that I slept late into the afternoon, I go down to the kitchen. The dogs are barking their asses off at each other and don’t stop. Arnim’s yelling at them that they should shut up only spurs then on. I bend over the sink filled with weeks’ worth of dirty dishes and look outside. In the back of the yard, which seems unusually well lit, there’s a small yellow backhoe. I move through the door. The yard really is getting more light than usual, though the sky is cloud-covered. The camouflage netting is rolled up in front of the shed. Arnim swings himself up behind the backhoe’s controls, spots me, and waves with a grin. Which once again makes him look like the fattest, sweatiest, most heavily tattooed kid over fifty. He starts the motor and all at once you can hardly hear Poborsky and Bigfoot.
“Arnim!” I shout. “Arnim!”
He stares at me, eyebrows raised, and turns it off again.
“What?”
“What are you doing? Where’d you get the backhoe?”
“Don’t scream your head off like that. Borrowed it from a buddy.”
Ah, okay, borrowed. I ask ironically if he’s planning to dig a tiger’s pit.
“Whadda you think? Sure, that’s gonna be a tiger pit. Top-notch tiger pit, my boy.”
“I-I can’t believe it,” I stammer.
“What?!” He calls, “Come and lend me a hand!”
Using the scoop of the backhoe, Arnim had done most of the dirty work of clearing the earth out of the planned pit, whose edges he’d marked beforehand with an X and wooden stakes. All the while I’m standing in the increasingly deep hole and going at it with a shovel. Shove it into the earth, which luckily isn’t too hard, scoop, and toss it over my head and out of the hole like a no-look pass. After a couple hours, the arm of the backhoe doesn’t reach deep enough. It’s raining. The soil is soft and soggy. I’m covered with a thin film of mud, but it’s only drizzling. I pray it stays that way. Or it really starts pouring and we have to stop. Though Arnim wouldn’t hear of it anyway. Arnim joins me, jumping into the pit, and the slurry splashes. Together we shovel out the remaining pile in the middle, because the arm of the backhoe was too short to come that far. Arnim had estimated about fifteen square meters and a depth of four meters. After leveling off the inside of the pit, we start to work toward the desired depth. The whole dirty job drags on into the evening. My hands have blisters despite the work gloves.