My uncle groans, says, “You know what for. Come on.”
I don’t say anything. I just look at him. My arms stiffen into ice picks at the sides of my body and prevent any further blood flow to my fists. The guys from Braunschweig are waiting. They have patience now, the stupid puddles of piss. Axel pushes off his chair, grabs me by the arm, and turns to his shitty guests, saying, “Excuse us for a sec.”
He closes the door behind us. I hear them grunting with laughter. Axel pushes me against the office door. He’s almost touching the tip of his nose to mine in an Eskimo kiss.
“You’re gonna apologize right now for your attack on one of their people.”
“I’m not doing shit.”
“Heiko, listen up for a sec.” His breath smells limy. Probably rubbed some leftover coke onto his gums. “I don’t give a shit if you mean it, but you’re going in there right now and saying you’re sorry. So that we can proceed.”
“What they did to Kai—”
“What they did, what they did,” he mimics, hissing at me, “doesn’t interest me one damn bit! If I tell you to, you do it!”
He shoves me against the door and scoots me aside. Then he pushes me into the room, walks past, and sits down in his manager’s chair. Everyone has turned around. Tomek is standing between them like something foreign. He looks at me. In commiseration. But with rage in his eyes. I can see clearly that he dislikes the taste of this as much as I do. I’d like to yell at him that he should grab the knife from the drawer and throw it to me so I can put an end to these dirty fuckers. Maybe they were in Leipzig. Beating and kicking Kai. Made him half-blind. The image of ripping open their throats with the rough side of the knife sends a pleasant, warm feeling down my spine. Axel stares at me. His neck muscles are tense, making him look like wires have been run beneath his skin.
I say it. I actually say it. Say, “Sorry.” And I’ve never hated myself more than in that brief moment. Like a dirty traitor. One like my uncle. A dirty, hypocritical, fucking traitor. I haven’t even completely finished saying the word when I push open the door and escape to the hallway. I run to the toilets. Have the feeling I need to barf. Simply vomit everything out. Only sour bile comes up, and I pant and scream into the bowl so my own gagging is thrown back into my ears by the porcelain.
Relegation to the second league. One of the most infamous games in our history. Uncle Axel had gotten our mothers’ permission to bring Kai and me along, saying he’d take good care of us and nothing would happen.
We two twerps, wearing our 96 scarves, were standing among the men in the away side’s section. The songs roared around us, and the fans threw their fists in the air, and we jumped around on the perimeter fence like we were on fire. Things were going on like in a wave pool, and the sluggish masses of Hannover fans repeatedly washed against the lateral fences separating us from the other spectators. Monkey sounds rang out across the field of play. Every time our players Addo and Asamoah had the ball. I asked my uncle why they did that, and he said because they were Negros, and I didn’t have the slightest notion what that meant. And I jumped on the fence, Kai along with me, and we hoped our curses reached the Cottbus fan section. No one was allowed to insult Otto and Gerald. Regardless of how! They were our best. Playmakers and goal getters. Assured Hannover’s offensive attack. But we weren’t loud enough. Our flat boyish voices drowned out in our own crowd’s yells. A wall of faceless policemen behind heavy riot helmets set up in front of us, but we didn’t care. Even back then, I’d learned there’s no backing down. Even when the first beer cups filled with gravel flew into our section and a couple people next to us hit the ground, bleeding. Here in the Cottbus Stadium of Friendship, you get stones and shit thrown at you. Axel, Tomek, and Hinkel formed a circle around us. Protected us from the projectiles next to the fence. I tried to look through their bodies. Those hit were helped up. Got something to drink. They wiped the blood away or held tissues to the gaping wounds till the fabric itself stuck to them and their hands were freed to beat their fists in the air.
The game would be over soon. The score was 1–1, and 96 was gaining the upper hand. When the floodlights went out and the corner flags were cloaked in darkness. Game put on hold. The evening air vibrated with thousands of voices that were screaming their heads off and driving me crazy. But in a good way. So I would have liked nothing more than to take the monkey sounds as a reason to race up the fence, perch on top of it, and scream like mad. Scream Hannover. 96.
From then on, everything went wrong on the field. And when the lights went back on but only on one side, and Sievers, our keeper, was blinded, the fan section crowed in unison, “Fixed!” And the team’s rhythm was thrown off. Cottbus got back into the game and the visitors’ section boiled over. We watched as our own people destroyed a sausage stand, and a charcoal grill was knocked over. And the whole thing burned like an oversized torch in the partially darkened Stadium of Friendship. And Kai and I stood there shoulder to shoulder and cheered them on, and the light of the flames flickered against our bared teeth, and Tomek and Hinkel and Töller and my uncle brawled with the police. They beat down on us with batons, but we didn’t budge. Only had our own fists. And hit back. And Kai and I looked at each other and he thought the same thing as me and we swore to ourselves we’d never budge and we’d stand there some day. In the front row. And we sealed our oath with a handshake.
I can barely look Kai in the eye. Can’t anyway, because they’re still glued shut. So it’s not even possible. But even looking at him is hard for me after my denial. That’ll change after the match on the 18th. Once the score has been settled. Kai’s eyes will heal completely and we’ll be able to get back to normal. Everything like it was before.
Kai gets up from his bed and says something. I’m scrolling through the pictures I shot with my smartphone of the winding passages and alleys in the Ihme complex. It’s the perfect place for a match in the city. Enough space and room for movement for a clash between forty, maybe even sixty people. And the labyrinth-like structure and visual cover of the residential towers and empty shops offer enough hiding places to carry out the whole thing before the police force us to break it off prematurely. If it even got that far. And even if the cops do catch wind of it in time, the complex offers more than enough escape routes. But because of the low level of occupancy, it’s more likely we’ll be sitting in Timpen long before that and raising our glasses to our victory before a single rank-and-file cop shows up.
Kai works his way to the foot-end of his bed, expertly reaching for the other bed and pushing his way past it. Extends his hand and touches the corner of the wall behind which the room’s small toilet is located. He’s mastered the route by now and you don’t have to lead him by the arm like a resident at an old folks’ home. He leaves the door open while he takes a piss. From where I’m sitting, I can only see his feet, over which his lowered boxers are draped. Then the flush. He washes his hands and comes out.
“Did you hear?” he asks.
I look up from my phone and say, “What? Yeah. No.”
“I said that I’m thinking of doing an internship abroad,” he says, “for a semester. Or maybe two.”
Without looking, I turn off the phone and put it away.
“And where?” I ask, although the “where” sounds furious.
“London. One of the advisors for my masters’ program has a friend at Deutsche Bank. Already said that he’d recommend me.”
“London in England?”
Kai feels the dry rustling of the sheets and sits down with a groan. That’s one of the annoying characteristics of hospitals. All of a sudden, everybody mutates into the worst kind of handicapped people, moaning and groaning with every move. I mean, sure, his body’s probably still fucked up, but it’ll heal again. The eyes are what we have to be most worried about.