Stephan Mendel-Enk Monkey in the Middle
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
STEPHAN MENDEL-ENK MONKEY IN THE MIDDLE Apan i mitten Norstedts, 2020, 233 pages excerpt translated by Kate Lambert Norstedts Agency [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [Pp. 5–64] PART 1 ONE MORE WALKOVER and we’d be disqualified for the rest of the season. Ten players would do. Nine if the ref wasn’t too fussy. With me, we were seven, and we’d got less than an hour before the match was supposed to start. Guttkin flicked through the register of members of the congregation, dialling one after the other on the grey phone. He always began politely. “We’re a couple of men short. I was wondering if you might be able to help us out?” Then he’d switch to threats. “You’ve been using your blasted knees as an excuse for five years, Berkowitz. Now get over here or this city won’t have a Jewish team anymore.” Because that was what disqualification would mean, Guttkin explained to us in between the phone calls. Who would even bother putting in the effort to get things up and running again once we’d been chucked out of the league? Booking pitches, washing kit, mending cones. Fixing player licences. Negotiating with the football association so they didn’t give us fixtures on Shabbat. Well it wasn’t going to be him. We could be clear about that. 2 And then it would be over. This year, 1993, would be the club’s last. The end of more than 60 years of history. The end of Maccabi Göteborg, the first Swedish football team to be founded by a minority. The team had endured antisemitic insults and harassment, hidden refugees in the clubhouse during the war and then – in the years that followed – offered Holocaust survivors a community, a way into society, and an opportunity to keep the memories at bay for 90 minutes a week. Maccabi had shown Gothenburg that Jews aren’t just a collection of astigmatic bookworms, hopeless at any sport apart from chess. It was true that the team had lost by a goal margin in double figures more times than any other in the history of club football in Western Sweden, but its rapid, inventive short passing play had celebrated triumphs in its day. Like when the 70s were edging into the 80s, when every home game got turned into a party with the whole congregation crowded on the side-lines. The old folk in sun loungers, chickens on portable barbecues, English versions of Israel’s Eurovision entries on congregation chairman Zaddinsky’s car stereo. My first memories were of those matches. I remembered the orange drink all the children got, Zaddinsky’s dog Eshkol, keen to dash out onto the pitch, Mischa the striker who scored in every match. I remembered the clear blue October afternoon when he scored a left volley from the edge of the penalty area to secure our victory in division 6F Central Gothenburg for 1981. 3 It was the club’s biggest success ever. There was a framed photo of the winning team between the trophy cabinets in the changing room. The cellar where we changed doubled as the sports hall of the Jewish Pensioners’ Association. There was a sack of blue foam balls by the entrance. Wall bars were fitted on one of the green-painted stone walls. It was early August and a ray of summer light had made its way in through the bulletproof glass of the windows, along with the shouts of kids in the park and the sound of heels on the asphalt. From the shelf in the cupboard I took spare shin pads and boots. I picked up a black reel of tape from the floor, bit off long strips and attached them tightly round my socks. The sharp smell of liniment made my nose tickle when I sprayed it generously into the palms of my hands and worked the liquid into my thighs the way I’d seen Guttkin do. It was my third match with the team. I’d been surprised when Guttkin rang and asked if I wanted to play. I was too young, I thought. Not good enough. Mostly I was surprised that anyone from the congregation was phoning us at all. No-one had rung us since my parents got divorced. I still went to the synagogue with my sister for the major festivals. Otherwise we never saw any of our old friends. I avoided the places where I might bump into them. The Jewish centre by the canal. The Jewish old people’s home where Mame lived. I hadn’t 4 even been to Dad’s grave in the Jewish cemetery since the headstone unveiling. I’d played two matches now but I hadn’t really got over my surprise. It was still strange to take the tram to Allén, go up the hill to the congregation building on Vasagatan and step up to the brown wooden door as if everything was just like it used to be. As if my presence there was as natural as it had been when I used to go there to nursery. All the time – crossing the grass in the inner courtyard, passing the rug-beater we used to play with, going down the small flight of steps to the cellar – it felt like I was doing something forbidden. Any moment, I imagined, someone might place a hand on my shoulder and say I was no longer welcome. The boots I’d borrowed were covered in a film of dried mud. The laces had only half their original length left. I missed out the two top pairs of holes to make enough for a double knot. While I did up my shoelaces, Guttkin’s booming voice bounced between the walls. “I don’t give a shit whose birthday it is! You’ll be back with her in two hours’ time. Go straight to the pitch. Goodbye.” He slammed down the receiver. So that would be eight of us then. We still needed at least one more player. After another few calls, Guttkin abandoned the membership register. His hunt for playable Jews in the region then entered its next, even more desperate, phase. Wronkow’s relative who was studying at a folk high school in Ljungskile? No, said Joel Grien – centre back and team captain. 5 He’d moved back to Stockholm. What about that Canadian who worked with Friedkin? Still on crutches. Hannah Turman’s new guy? Joel shook his head. Goy. The Israeli guy who sold bags on Kapellplatsen? Gay. Guttkin still hadn’t got his kit on. While he walked round the room his hairy stomach bobbed up and down over the edge of his underpants. His gold-coloured star of David, the size of a fist, dangled above the dip in his chest. His cheeks were puffed up like two balloons. He counted the number of players again, apparently in the hope that he’d miscounted last time. “Jacob,” he said, pointing a finger at me. “Didn’t you say Rafael was coming home this week?” “Day after tomorrow,” I said. Guttkin sighed and sank down onto the corduroy upholstered swivel chair by the phone. There wasn’t much more to be done. Some new people to contact were suggested, but mostly as a laugh – half-hearted jokes that got a lame chuckle in response. In any case, it was starting to be too late. Even if we got hold of anyone, it wasn’t certain they’d get there in time. Ten minutes the ref would wait, and then we’d be disqualified no matter how many players we turned up with. We could go anyway, someone proposed. Have an unofficial match, or a training session if the opposing team didn’t want to play us. Guttkin said no. If that was the best we could manage, he had better things to do with his time. After a while, Dmitri stood up and took off his match shirt. The other Russians in the team followed 6 suit. Our goalkeeper, Teddy Kovacs, kicked his bag and it sounded like something inside it broke. I sat still on my chair, not at all keen to start on all the tasks ahead. Off with the boots, socks and shin pads. On with my ordinary clothes. Go home without having played, without showering, without the post-match tuna and hard- boiled egg sandwiches. Guttkin said he’d ring the office on the pitch and see if he could get hold of our opponents that way. He’d tell the board tomorrow. The reels of tape and bottles of liniment went back in the cupboard. The bottles of water were emptied in the shower. The chairs we’d been sitting on had been carried down from the shul, where the services were held two storeys up. We had to put them back again and Guttkin asked us to get Kjelle so he could lock up after us. “What about him though?” said Teddy. Slowly Guttkin pressed the numbers on the keypad. No, he said, in a tired voice. Obviously, we couldn’t ask Kjelle. We were a Jewish team. He wasn’t a Jew. If we were going to abandon the rule the whole club rested on, it would only be for a proper player. Not a 60 year-old caretaker with a back problem who coughed his lungs up when all he was doing was raking the lawn. “I was just thinking he’s worked for the congregation for so long.” Out of the receiver, squashed between Guttkin’s shoulder and his ear, came the sound of a ringing tone.