Playing Days Read Online Free PDF Page A

front row is kneeling, and includes Charlie Gold, Willi Darmstadt (grinning like the schoolboy he is), Milo Moritz and Herr Henkel. The back row, made up of the taller players, are standing arm in arm; Karl has his hand on my shoulder. With a burst of affectionate presumption, I’ve rested my palm on Charlie’s head, on what’s left of his curly hair. ‘Playing Days,’ the caption says.
    The cameras made for happiness, that’s what I remember. I don’t just mean the photo itself, but the presence of the photographers. (The press never showed up to any other practice.) They turned the gloomy hangarlike court, at the edge of a small market town in ruralBavaria, into a scene of importance; they turned us into basketball players. Just a few lines of the article have survived the picture’s framing. Herr Henkel, it reads, has brought in several young talents to make a push for the first division. He says that Charlie Gold, last year’s star, is just the man to bring them into shape. The only question mark is Hadnot’s knee; whether he can recover from surgery in time for the season. In the event of the worst, they’ve signed a young American to replace him . . .

5
    The Yoghurts was a division of the local sports club, and far from the most important one. Some of the ice hockey players, it was rumored, made six-figure salaries. We shared gym time with a dozen other sports and exercise classes. On Wednesday nights, for example, aerobics for the over fifties met before us. A dozen grey-haired ladies in their leotards stood aside to let us in when the bell rang. We often had to stack their floor mats before beginning play.
    Herr Henkel had big ambitions and thought that hard work was the way to realize them. He pushed for two two-hour slots a day and got them: from ten to twelve in the morning, and from eight to ten at night. There was a lot of grumbling about these night sessions. It was hard to know when to eat, and by the time we got home, aching and sweating, we were mostly too wired to sleep. I had to wait till eleven to shower or the sweat would break through again. After that, a meal, if I could face it – usually something cold left over from the afternoon.
    Breakfast and morning brought the same set of problems. I forced down some toast and a bowl of cereal around seven o’clock, then tried to catch a few morewinks before heading to the gym. Strangest of all were the long dead afternoons, stretching from noon to eight, in which the only thing to do was muster up an appetite for lunch. I lost ten pounds in the first month. All I could do, all I wanted to do, morning, noon and when I woke dry-throated in the middle of the night, was drink.
    Some of the other clubs practiced only three times a week. They had a few full-time professionals; the rest of the guys squeezed in training around their other jobs. Henkel, it was Olaf who told me, one night at my apartment over cold leftover chicken, hadn’t paid much for his roster of players. He had negotiated a high salary for himself by persuading the boss that he could win with mediocre talent. Olaf gave me a look to say, no hard feelings. It was only then I realized what he meant: that I was one of the guys brought in on the cheap.
    We were sitting in my kitchen, which had no curtains. The dark country night outside made the lone lamp glare in the windows. Flies, big horse flies from the stables on the other side of the road, settled and resettled on the cooking tray; from time to time both of us waved our hands at them. Olaf was a grumbler – the fact charmed me a little. In spite of his great placid beauty; in spite of his obvious abundant physical gifts. What was charming was just his air of unhurried dissatisfaction with life. He could always find more to complain about, he was never in a rush.
    â€˜I don’t mind if they’re tight,’ he said, ‘but Henkel shouldn’t brag about it.’ He had asked