A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke

by Reng, Ronald

  For depressives, thoughts of suicide are to some extent a relief. The thought that there remains a way out helps them in the short term. The danger comes when the thought itself no longer provides enough comfort. Their irrational view of the world, restricted as it is to the negative, drives them to seek that way out of the darkness.

  Robert packed his bags. What should he take? There were so many things he was bound to need in Cologne. Where should he start? How did you pack a bag? There’s always the feeling that there’s such an incredible amount to do, but if I want to do something concrete, I don’t know how to go about it. He flew to Cologne and moved in with Tanja and Jörg at 29 Krefelder Strasse. They’d set up the guest room for him, and he thought: was it the nursery? Had he not shrunk to that role – the role of a helpless child? He no longer set the alarm clock, simply waited for Jörg to knock on the door. The first morning Jörg stepped into the room and waited. Robert didn’t move. ‘Robbi?’ He touched him cautiously on the shoulder, and finally pulled up the blinds. His friend was lying there with his eyes open, staring rigidly through the ceiling.

  From the next day Jörg sent him out every morning to buy the papers and bread, and began to set him some tasks for the day, careful to give him support but not take every decision away from him, or else he would convince himself he wasn’t doing anything at all. Over breakfast Robert heard Jörg talking to him as if from the distance – oh, look at this, 1 FC Cologne is throwing Funkel out. He would have liked to answer, but what did he care about any of it? Jörg went on talking as if it were a normal conversation, chatting excitedly with someone who responded next to nothing.

  Keep going, Jörg said to himself, even if there is no sign that things will ever move on. Did Robert even notice when his head fell to his chest at the breakfast table?

  They visited the psychologist recommended by the German Sport University. A busy woman, she must have helped lots of people. The problem wasn’t her, the problem was Robert. He couldn’t see how to explain to this woman what it meant to be frightened when a player knocked in a cross. Always those damned crosses. That time in Novelda, all three goals conceded after crosses.

  Keep going, Jörg said to himself.

  Dr Sun-Hee Lee, senior physician at the University Hospital in Cologne, was described to him as a luminary in the field of psychiatry. Robert sat facing her in the hospital and felt so strange that he didn’t know what to say.

  ‘We’ll find someone for you,’ Jörg assured him as they were leaving the hospital. ‘Definitely.’

  Robert said nothing. He didn’t care whether they found a psychiatrist he could work with, he didn’t care about anything. He just wanted to stop thinking back to all his mistakes over the past year. How could he have got so many things wrong – Barcelona, Istanbul … Why hadn’t he stayed in Lisbon? He kept on taking the anti-depressants, secretly prescribed, and no longer even felt the side-effects.

  He continued to train, not because he was working towards something but just for something to do. Jörg saw to it that he was allowed to use the fitness rooms at the Neptunbad for free. Candles on seven-stemmed candlesticks burned by the entrance to the spa. The high halls of the former public baths, a hundred years old, had been given a coat of fresh white paint. He sat down on the barbell bench and thought, as he lifted the weights, that he was already losing muscle-mass. He would have to draw up a plan, remember what regimen he had been following a few months before with Paco in the gym at Barça. But he lacked the nerve, and ended up carrying out a few exercises completely at random. He could only think one thing: the others are at training now, and I’m squatting here. Apart from him, the only people there were housewives and the odd television starlet.

  He had to get something to eat. Jörg was in the office, Tanja in the hospital, where she worked as an intern. He went back to Krefelder Strasse, where houses built over two centuries lined up seamlessly side by side. An amusement arcade stood peacefully next to a fine French restaurant; railway bridges running right through the area stressed the place’s gritty charm. On the corner of Maybachstrasse he discovered a small pizzeria. The place didn’t have much of a connection with Italian cuisine. The owner was an Arab, perhaps a Moroccan, and Robert was the only customer. The cheese on the pizza was tough and fatty. He didn’t notice whether it tasted good.

  ‘You ate there?’ asked Jörg. ‘I wouldn’t have dared go in.’

  Over the next few days he went back to the pizzeria for lunch several times. He felt sorry for the owner. If he didn’t go, there wouldn’t be a single customer.

  Things went better in the evening. The paralysing fear of the morning, when a whole day lay ahead, a day when so many things had to be done, when there were so many things that he wouldn’t get done, made way for relief in the evening, when the day was practically over and no one wanted anything more from him. In the evening he watched films with Jörg, like Father of the Bride; they went to Leverkusen to watch football; they even went to a party given by Jörg’s friends Verena and Walter. He didn’t know anybody but stayed until three in the morning even so, without feeling particularly uneasy. The thoughts didn’t come until the following morning: I have the feeling that I’ve never really learned to live. For example, why have I never wanted to party, why would I rather stay at home, why have I never taken an interest in other things?

  Keep going, Jörg said to himself; October will soon be over. He had had a Dr Markser at the Rheinische Klinik recommended to him. His practice was nearby, just on the other side of Ebertplatz. Jörg waited outside the house while Robert stepped inside. Half an hour passed, forty-five minutes.

  ‘And?’ asked Jörg when the door opened at last.

  ‘We can do it.’

  * * *

  For a man like Dr Valentin Markser, consultant in psychiatry and psychotherapy, it’s a great gift that he still speaks with a Croatian accent even after thirty-five years in Germany. The accent softens the harshness of German. Words that would sound stiff and theoretical when spoken by other psychiatrists sound melodic coming from his mouth.

  A taste for fine cuisine has left its mark on his figure, but the doctor belongs to that enviable group of men whose paunches fit quite naturally within their bearlike physiques. Dr Markser can look at you, and you know he is listening to you with all the attentiveness a person can muster.

  He was a professional handball player before he became a psychiatrist, with VfL Gummersbach in the seventies – German champions, European Cup winners. He was a goalkeeper.

  Robert went to see Dr Markser every day, and his days found a structure: things got done. In the morning he went not to weight training at the Neptunbad, but to a rehab centre. He worked with specialist trainers among injured professional basketball and ice-hockey players. He was a part of things again. He told the other sportsmen he had an ankle injury. After a while his foot really hurt.

  What he had never learned, his psychiatrist told him, and what he had to learn, was how to cope with making mistakes. The best goalkeeper, perhaps even the happiest person, was the one who came to terms with his mistakes. Robert had to teach himself that a mistake wasn’t the whole game, a game was never the whole season, a season wasn’t a career. A career isn’t a life.

  In the afternoons he was sometimes permitted to join in as a guest at 1 FC Cologne’s goalkeeper training sessions. Football – and this had already been proved, in Barcelona – was something he could do even when he was depressed. His body, which had been trained for years, made the decisions his benumbed brain couldn’t face. He dived, and he reacted to shots with lightning speed, even though slow reactions are one of the most common symptoms of the illness. He saved the shots. He felt nothing as he did so, just emptiness.

  That was good today, Peter Greiber, the goalkeeping coach at 1 FC Cologne, said to him. And he started to get frightened. Did that mean he would soon be able to go back to professional football? That something would soon be expected of him?

  His telephone conversations with
Teresa were painful, too. He had to tell her that he was doing better, so that she knew it had been worth his going to Cologne. But how could he tell her that without her taking it as an insult? I’m doing better, far away from you. And how could he say he was doing better if he still felt bad?

  She had visited him for a week, she would be back at the end of November. Dr Markser told him he had to argue with Teresa if something bothered him, like the dogs running round in the house. Told him that I prefer to avoid conflicts. He doubts whether I take myself, meaning my own thoughts and feelings, seriously at all.

  Have you heard? Jörg asked Teresa, who had arrived in Cologne for her second visit. It was Friday 23 November, midday. Jörg was calling from the office and didn’t even stop to ask where Robert was.

  Sebastian Deisler had been sent to hospital suffering with depression.

  The greatest German talent since Günter Netzer! the sports reporters on the Bökelberg had shouted five years earlier, when Deisler started with Borussia in the Bundesliga. Having only been close to Marco Villa among his team-mates, Robert had only been in superficial contact with Deisler.

  The next morning they were able to read detailed articles on depression in the newspapers Robert brought with the bread-rolls.

  Depression wasn’t a weakness of character but an illness, moreover an indiscriminate illness that afflicted people without regard to their status, success or strength, and regardless of whether these people had all the qualities and possessions we think are necessary for a happy life. One of the most steadfast politicians of the modern era, Winston Churchill, suffered from depression just as much as any unknown secretary; Sebastian Deisler had been playing electrifyingly for Bayern Munich over the past few weeks. Depression, like cancer, can have a variety of causes and forms, and the doctor treating Deisler called his a ‘typical depression’ because Deisler had a ‘predisposition’ that became noticeable under extreme pressure to perform. The huge expectations of the public that he must be ‘Basti Fantasti’, the new Netzer, had combined oppressively with the even greater demands he made on himself. In five years as a professional player, Deisler had had fifteen injuries and five operations.

  Robert wasn’t sure what to make of the report. It was good to read that he wasn’t the only footballer who suffered from depression, that he wasn’t a freak. On the other hand he felt a twinge of envy. Everyone was talking about Deisler, and he was receiving sympathy from all sides.

  The Kicker magazine made an insinuation about me to Jörg, but so far my name hasn’t been in the press. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

  He went on giving interviews, though not many enquiries came in these days. Sports journalism has only a short-term memory. He was already the forgotten man. Besides, he didn’t feel like talking. What would he say? His foot was injured and he just hadn’t felt well in Istanbul? But Jörg insisted that he do two or three as a way of working towards a return to football even if it might never happen.

  Certainly when he sat facing Dr Markser he was sure he wanted to be a goalkeeper again. The fear he had felt wasn’t a fundamental, unchanging fear, only the expression of his illness. If he had his fear of failure treated, the terror would disappear along with the illness. The problems, the thoughts, began when he left Dr Markser’s practice.

  Keep thinking back to things that happened more than two years ago. When will it suddenly click for me, making me get my butt in gear? I don’t think it’s going to happen.

  For weeks now everyone had wanted him to go to Manchester. Manchester City were interested in him.

  ‘Just draw up a list of pros and cons, the arguments for and the arguments against moving to England,’ said Teresa.

  ‘We could all go and have a look at the place,’ said Jörg.

  Simply look at City’s offer as an opportunity, or even just as an exercise, not as all or nothing, as you did in Istanbul and at the game in Novelda, Dr Markser said to him.

  ‘All right then, let’s go,’ Robert said, and wondered what that decision would bring.

  Jörg’s business partner in England showed him the city, the stadium and the Citizens training-ground. I was supposed to decide by last Sunday whether I would say yes to negotiations or not. I did it. I don’t need to go into the fact that I have severe doubts.

  Jörg had seen the improvement coming for several days. There would never be a ‘click’ – that was the dream of a footballer who was used to things changing in a single moment. But since the end of October, since the days of training and Markser had found a fixed rhythm, there had been hope again. Robert sometimes replied to remarks over breakfast. In the evening he came unresistingly along for a beer. The stone mask that his face had once been was showing its first cracks.

  He had been taking anti-depressants for three months now.

  At the weekend Jörg went jogging with him, down to the Rhine. Jogging was good for depression: the muscles relaxed, stress hormones ebbed away. Robert hated jogging. It was proof of his decay: he was a goalkeeper and he was jogging.

  They ran past the old skating-rink where a few Turkish children were playing football. The boys waited until he was past.

  ‘Hey, Enke, bad goalie! Bad goalie!’

  Robert just jogged on.

  It took Jörg a few paces to process what he had just heard. Then he turned round. ‘What did you just say? What? Shall I tell you what sort of a club Fenerbahçe is? The worst! You’ll never see a goalkeeper like Robert ever again!’

  ‘Jörg,’ Robert said calmly, five paces ahead of him, ‘leave them, they’re children.’

  They jogged on, in silence, Jörg glowing with fury. Only much later did it occur to Jörg that they were suddenly their old selves again. Not nurse and patient, but adviser and client, in reversed roles. As so often in the past, the protector was being taught good sense by his charge.

  Christmas fell in the middle of this phase of cautious hope. Advent lights burned in the streets, people huddled tightly around wooden stalls decorated with fir branches, hot cups of mulled wine in their hands, steaming breath in front of their faces. Robert felt an oppressive expectation that he should be full of festive cheer as well. Why couldn’t he be like that any more?

  Jörg had made an Advent calendar for Tanja, with a little surprise for her every day. Other people’s happiness reminded Teresa how lost she was. She would have liked an Advent calendar herself, she said. He thought he heard sadness in her words: other people got Advent calendars, and she didn’t even have her husband by her side in Barcelona.

  Suddenly Robert had an idea: he would send her a calendar by text. Every day he sent her a self-penned four-liner on his phone.

  Your heart is something you can’t define,

  It’s easier to find a mountain to climb.

  Now climbing a mountain’s a hard thing to do

  When that tiny dwarf down at the bottom is you.

  He liked the image. He was a dwarf. He didn’t notice himself getting any bigger with each rhyme.

  The dwarf says to himself: I can’t do that,

  I’m just a stupid idiot.

  He thinks: for that I’m much too small,

  You’d have to be bigger, over all.

  One mistake, Dr Markser said, was to wait for something to happen. Don’t yield to passivity! Robert noted, with an exclamation mark, and drove to Gierath. He wanted to surprise Hubert Rosskamp with a visit.

  His old friend was fighting ‘to stay ahead of the reaper’s scythe’. In Hubert’s Rhineland singsong even a phrase like that sounded cheerful. He was struggling to recover from a cancer operation.

  Hubert was wearing a pair of jogging pants that didn’t exactly bring his ashen face to life. ‘For God’s sake, Robert,’ he yelled, ‘I haven’t even got any strawberry tart in the house!’

  They set off for a walk, along the old path where they’d taken the dogs in his Mönchengladbach days. Alamo, the old hunting dog Teresa had found in the street and left with Hubert, was there. The earth was ha
rd under their feet. He would get some strawberry tart, Hubert said. Robert asked about Hubert’s operation, his pain, his progress. He concealed the fact that he was ill too. He had come to help, after all.

  ‘Will you go on giving me an Advent rhyme every day?’ asked Teresa before she returned to Cologne on 20 December. She and Robert were planning to fly back to Barcelona together for Christmas.

  He didn’t think, I’m cured, he just hardly gave his illness any thought. On the radio Michael Jackson sang ‘Billie Jean’, and he danced the moonwalk with Teresa in Jörg’s living-room. They had been invited for a turkey dinner with Jörg’s friends. He didn’t know anyone, but that didn’t bother him; all the better: he would meet some new people. He took along a pile of advertising postcards from a bar. One card showed a black-and-white photograph of a cocktail bar. On the back of it the promised Advent calendar four-liner turned into eight lines:

  Today is Saturday, oh so hearty,

  We’re all going to a party.

  Eating turkey, drinking wine,

  Going home and feeling fine.

  Tanja, Terri, Jörg and Rob,

  One of them a real nutjob.

  We’ll have a laugh, it’s really fun,

  This one’s going to run and run.

  Three days later they landed in Barcelona. The ring road from the airport passed the tower blocks of the outer districts – the epitome of hideousness – but he soon spotted the greenness of the Collserola. When they turned into the Calle de Las Tres Plazas in Sant Cugat, he saw their house and knew he was home.

  Marco Villa rang that Christmas. He had gone to see a sports psychologist. He couldn’t see how she would help him – breathing exercises, staring at the wall – but it didn’t matter. He had some news, he would just put Christina on the line. His wife was pregnant.

  Having a child of our own would be lovely, thought Teresa, but certainly not in the near future. First they would have to recover from what they had just been through.