Dog Years (67 page)

Overhead return shots are all right for the backs, but not for the man on the line. The left forward is pretty good, but they're not using him enough. Actually the team hasn't got a playmaker, the center -- he looks mighty familiar to Matern, but that could be because of the gym suit, and as a rule a lot too many look familiar to him -- well, all the center does is to bounce the ball high, so anybody at all can come running up: both backs, the lineman; naturally the Derendorfers, who aren't really so hot, get in close and pile up points by smashing. Only the left forward -- he too looks as if Matern had seen him somewhere sometime -- stays put and manages, mostly with backhand shots, to save the honor of the Unterrath Seniors. The return game also ends with a defeat for the home team. They've switched the line man and the right back; but up to the final whistle the new lineman exhibits no prowess capable of saving the day.

Matern with dog stands at the entrance to the field: any one heading for the locker rooms has to pass by him and his inquiring gaze; the moment they come in sight with their gym suits over their shoulders, he's sure. His heart hops. Something presses against his spleen. Painful kidneys. It's them. Once Unterrath Juniors like himself: Fritz Ankenrieb and Heini Tolksdorf. Even then, so and so many dog years ago, Fritz played center and Heini played left forward, while Matern was lineman: what forwards! What a team altogether, the backs -- what were their names anyway -- were class too. They even beat the stuffings out of a Cologne University team and the boys from the Düsseldorf SS, but then the team suddenly went to pot, because. . . I'll ask the boys if they remember why, and who it was that turned, if it wasn't a certain Ankenrieb that, and even Heini Tolksdorf agreed that I. . .

But before Matern has a chance to confront them: I've come with a black dog. . . Ankenrieb starts jawing at him from one side: "Christ, is it possible? Is it you or. . . Take a look, Heini, who's been watching our lousy playing. I said to myself before, when we were changing sides: You know that guy. Look at that posture, the same old. Hasn't changed a bit, except on top. Well, none of us can claim that his looks are improving. Once we were the hope of Unterrath, today we get one drubbing after another. Christ, those were the days, remember the police meet in Wuppertal. And you on the line. The whole time right under the nose of that cop from Herne. You've got to come to our bar, we still have all the pictures and scrolls. As long as we had you for a lineman, nobody could, after that, am I right, Heini, we went downhill fast. We never did recover. Lousy politics!"

A group of three, with a black dog frolicking around them. They've put him in the middle, they talk about victories and defeats, they blurt it out quite frankly, yes, they were the ones who went to the club manager, so he'd. "You just couldn't keep your trap shut, though of course you were right about a good many things." A few whispered remarks in the locker room had done it. "If you'd said that to me at home or somewhere else, I'd have listened, maybe even agreed with you, but that's how it is. Politics and sports have never mixed. They still don't."

Matern quotes: "This is what you said, Ankenrieb: We can do without a lineman who spreads Jewish-Bolshevist propaganda. Is that right?"

Heini Tolksdorf comes to the rescue: "We were brain washed, the whole lot of us. You yourself didn't always say the same things. They threw dust in our eyes for years. We had to foot the bill. Our backs, do you remember, little Rielinger and Wolfchen Schmelter, never came back from Russia. Christ! And what for?"

The club's hangout is where it always was, on Dorotheenplatz in Flingern. With four five old friends, Matern is affably constrained to remember the game in Gladbach, the quarter finals in Wattenscheid, and the unforgettable end game in Dortmund. The corner reserved for the Unterrath Club isn't lacking in decoration. He has a chance to admire himself, the lineman, in twelve photographs of the team, all framed and glassed. From late fall '38 to early summer '39 Matern played, here he has it in black and white, on the Unterrath team. Barely seven months, and what relics of victory! What thick rebellious hair he had! Always serious. Always the center of attraction, even when he was standing on the right wing. And the scrolls. Brown calligraphy under the eagle, emblem of those days. "You really should have stuck something over that. I just can't stand the sight of the animal. Memories well and good, but not under that bankrupt gallows bird."

That's a suggestion worth discussing. At a late hour -- the drinks are beer and gin -- they patch up an exemplary compromise: Heini Tolksdorf borrows a tube of paste from the owner and, encouraged by cheers, sticks common beer mats, Schwaben-Brau, over the offensive emblem on all the honor scrolls. In return, Matern makes a solemn promise -- all the club members rise to their feet -- never again to waste a word on the stupid old incident and to play lineman again -- shake hands on it -- for the Unterrath Seniors.

"Good will is the main thing. We'll make out. What comes between us shall be forgotten, what unites us shall be held in honor. If everybody makes a concession or two, strife and dissension will be things of the past. For true democracy is unthinkable without readiness to compromise. We're all sinners, we've all. Who will cast the first? Who can say, I am without? Who can claim to be infallible? Therefore let us. We of Unterrath have always. And so let us first, in honor of our comrades who in Russian soil. And then to the health of our good old, who is with us today, and lastly to the old and the new comradeship among athletes. I raise my glass!" -- Every toast is the toast before last. Every round has no end. Every man is merriest among men. -- Under the table Pluto licks spilled beer.

So things seem to be on the mend. Inge and Jochen Sawatzki are delighted when Walter Matern parades his brand-new gym suit: "Boy, has he got a figure!" But the figure is deceptive. Of course you have to get back into the feel of the game. It would be dumb to put him on the line right off. But for the present he's too slow for a back -- a back has to get away fast -- and he proves a failure at center because he wants to cover the whole field and can't manage to maneuver the ball effectively from the backfield to the line. He plays neither to the left forward nor to the line man. He takes everything that comes up from the backs as intended for him personally, cuts the ball off from his own men, and then half the time proceeds to lose it. A solo artist, who hands the opposing team set-up shots on a platter, just asking to be smashed. Where can they put him if it's too soon to put him on the line?

"He's got to be on the line."

"And I'm telling you he has to get back into shape first."

"His type can only be used on the line."

"His reactions aren't quick enough."

"Anyway, he's big enough for a lineman."

"He's got to taste blood, then he'll perk up."

"Too ambitious for a center."

"All right, put him up front, we'll see."

But playing right forward, all he can manage is an occasional trick serve that drops square in front of the opposition's feet. Only seldom does he surprise the Oberkassel or Derendorf Seniors with tricky backspins; but then, when the ball takes a sharp, flat, and unpredictable bounce in enemy territory, one gets an inkling of the lineman that Matern once was. Ankenrieb and Tolksdorf exchange wistful nods: "Man, what a champ he used to be! Too bad." And keep their patience. They give him good passes, they keep the ball up high for him, and he shoots it down the drain. He's hopeless. "But we've got to be sporting about this. How can you expect him to be in form after all these years? And besides, there's his leg injury. It's hardly noticeable, but just the same. Why don't you make him a reasonable proposition, Heini? Something like this: 'See here, Walter, it seems to me you've lost some of the old zip. I can understand that. God knows there are more important things than being a lineman for the Unterrath Athletic Club, but couldn't you referee the next game or two, just until you get the feel of the thing?"

Team members try to make things easy for Matern. "Sure! Why not? There's nothing I'd like better. I'm only glad you're still willing to. Whatever you like: line watcher, scorekeeper, referee. Like me to make you a cup of coffee or bring you a coke? Can I have a real referee's whistle?" That's something Matern has always longed for. His true calling: to make decisions. "Foul ball. The score is now nineteen to twelve in favor of Wersten. You're wrong. I know all the rules. When I was knee-high to a grasshopper, at home on Heinrich Ehlers Field. Man, what a center we had. A fat kid with freckles, but light on his feet like lots of tubbies, and, boy, was he calm! Nothing could rattle him. And always cheerful. Like me, he knew all the rules: The player who puts the ball into play must have both feet behind the line of play. At the moment of hitting the ball and putting it into play, he must have at least one foot on the ground. The open hand or a fist with disengaged thumb may not be used in putting the ball into play. Any one player may only once, and in general three times is the limit. The ball may strike the ground only once between strokes, neither the goalpost nor the line must be, only arm and fist may be -- Ah, if only I could play again with Eddi, he in midfield, I on the line! -- any infringement turns the ball into a foul ball, the whistle is blown twice, which means: The ball is dead!" Who would have thought it: Matern, who had come with black dog to judge, makes out fine as a referee and trains his mutt to be a line judge: Pluto barks at every foul; Matern, who had always been hot on the heels of an enemy, knows no opponent, but only teams which are all, without exception, subject to the same rules and regulations.

His old faustball friends, Fritz Ankenrieb and Heini Tolksdorf, admire him. They talk Matern up at meetings of the club's officers, and especially to the Juniors. "You can take an example from him. When he saw that his form wasn't what it used to be, he gave up his position on the line without a single bitter word and unselfishly offered his services as referee. He'd be a swell coach for you, what a guy! Went through the whole war. Wounded three times. Always ready for a suicide mission. When he begins to tell stories, your eyes pop out of your head."

Who would have thought it: Matern, who had come to judge the Seniors Ankenrieb and Tolksdorf, turns into an unbiased referee, declines when someone, in a well-meant attempt at subordination, offers him a half-time job at Mannesmann's, which would keep master and dog in style, and strands incorruptible, with dog at heel, among the Juniors of the Unterrath Athletic Club. The boys in the blue gym suits form a loose semicircle, and he in crimson gym suit explains his raised striking fist, showing the surfaces employed in the backhand shot and the inside shot. While he demonstrates his lowered fist, showing the surfaces used in the forehand shot and the snap shot, the Sunday morning sun does a headstand on his hairless dome: how it glitters. The boys can hardly wait to apply what Matern has drummed into them: his horizontal fist shows the surface employed in the backhand shot and the risky roundhouse shot. And then, after a lively practice game and the starting exercises for the backs -- his own idea -- he tells the boys stories from wartime and peacetime. Seated, the dark-blue gym suits around him, the crimson-clad coach, form a loose but tense semicircle. At last somebody who knows how to get at the youngsters. No question falls unanswered on the turf of the faustball field. He knows about everything. Matern knows how it happened; how things came to such a pass; what an undivided Germany was and could be; who is to blame for all this; what jobs the old-time murderers are holding down again; and how to make sure it will never happen again. He has the right tone for the youngsters. He makes what was jellyfish-soft woodcut-clear. His leitmotives unmask murder motives. He simplifies labyrinths into straight broad highways. When coach Matern says: "And that is our still unconquered past!," every Unterrath youngster looks upon him as the one and only true conqueror of the past. After all, he has set an example, not once but many times: "For instance, when I stepped up to that member of the special court and a little later to the judge himself, those bastards crawled, crawled I'm telling you, and Local Group Leader Sellke in Oldenburg, who used to talk so big, began to snivel when I and the dog. . ." In general, allusions to Pluto, who is never absent when past and present are being clarified in the loose semicircle, are the refrain of Matern's long didactic poem: "And when I went to the Upper Weser country with the dog. The dog was there when in Altena-Sauerland. The dog is a witness that in Passau I." The boys applaud whenever Matern tumbles one of the old-time big-shots. They are carried away. Model and coach in one. But throughout these pleasurable Nazi funerals Matern unfortunately can't refrain -- and not just in subordinate clauses -- from making socialism triumph.

"What business has Marx on an athletic field?" asks the executive committee unanimously.

"Can we allow Eastern propaganda to be encouraged on our athletic fields?" runs the question which the field manager submits in writing to the Unterrath Athletic Club.

"Our young athletes will not tolerate this state of affairs," maintains the honorary chairman at the bar in Dorotheenplatz. He knows Matern from before the war. "He made the same kind of trouble even then. Can't adapt himself. Poisons the atmosphere." In his opinion, which is seconded by nods and murmurs of "exactly," a true Unterrath athlete must not only give himself wholly and cheerfully to his elected sport, but must also be clean inside.

After soandso many dog years, for the soandsomanieth time in Matern's medium-length life, a court of honor takes up his case. Exactly like the Young Prussians on Heinrich Ehlers Field and the men of Langfuhr SA Sturm 84, the members of the Unterrath Athletic Club decide to expel Matern a second time. As in '39, the vote to exclude him from club and athletic field meets with no opposition. Only members Ankenrieb and Tolksdorf abstain, an attitude which meets with silent approval on all sides. In conclusion the honorary chairman remarks: "He can be glad that these proceedings will remain among ourselves. The last time the affair had further repercussions, police headquarters on Kavalleriestrasse, if that rings a bell." DON'T GO IN FOR SPORTS. YOU''LL BE MADE SPORT OF.