I laugh. Wave him off.
“Nah, it’s only hot air anyway.”
“You think? I can go in there right now and tell Latze you want to challenge him to a round of arm wrestling. Won’t take long at all. Wham bam, thank you, ma’am.”
He acts like he would really get up any second and do it, but then he sits down again and continues sipping on his can of beer.
“But even if the stadium is awesome,” I say, “and I do have my doubts, I have to believe some of the atmosphere gets lost in a huge arena like that. Even if, who would play there anyway?” I don’t wait for an answer: “Nope. Celtic versus Rangers. That,” I point my raised index finger at him, “would be something! The oldest, longest-standing fucking derby in the world. That’s where religions collide.”
“But then the Rangers would have to move up to the top league.”
“You’re right about that, too,” I say.
The beer almost slips from my hand when my uncle rips open the door and bellows, “Can you step into my office, Heiko?”
“Where’d he come from all of a sudden?” Kai says in a whisper, though Axel’s already back inside.
“I shrug my shoulders, drain my can, and toss it to Kai, who catches it and sets it down next to him.
On the way to Axel, I try to decide whether I should ask what those Nazis were doing in his office the other day. The question had been rolling around my brain the whole day, but I just couldn’t think of an answer that would be any of my business. After all, I keep my nose out of everything else that concerns the gym.
I open the door to Axel’s office.
“Hey, hey, hey. Don’t people knock these days or what?”
I apologize and want to close the door.
“No way. You’re going right back out and doing it the right way.”
You gotta be kidding me, I think to myself, but do as ordered: go back out in the hall, close the door, wait a second, knock, he says, “Yes?,” I open the door, my uncle says I should come in, and I close the door behind me and plant myself on a chair and just think what the point of the preschool show was?!
Axel sorts through some documents on his desk. Acts as if nothing had happened. He actually praises me for the good organization of the Cologne match. It could have run a little more smoothly here or there, without going into detail about what he means exactly, but it was really quite good for the first time. In the end, everything turned out all right. We took home a win. No cops. Bottom line, a success.
I’m about to interrupt him and ask about the right-wingers when he says he’s proud of me. I think I wasn’t hearing right, but he takes a deep breath and says, “As you probably already know, I can’t do this forever. It’s a pity, even so, but at some point things come to an end. I’m not so shortsighted to think that I can stay fit forever. There are enough idiots out on the field that tell themselves who gives a damn what happens afterward, but not me,” and he rapped his knuckles on the table. Maybe it was supposed to be some kind of superstitious knock-on-wood thing. “Heiko”—he moved so close to the desk that the edge pushed into his stomach muscles—“we’re starting to build something. For Hannover. Put the city on the map, once and for all. So that no one talks about Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Dresden, Magdeburg, hell if I know, without having to mention Hannover.” He balls up his hands into fists that immediately go red because of how fast the blood shoots into them. It’s like he’s the leader of the bodybuilding political party or something with this little motivational speech. He pulls back from the table again, leaning backward and making the chair squeak under his weight. “I hope I can pass the whole thing on to you someday. That I can hand the reins over to you and not any old Johnny-come-lately. What they’re missing. What we have. That’s brains, Heiko”—he taps his finger against his temple, where veins ran like pipes—“brains.”
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.