A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke

by Reng, Ronald

  He appeared on the pitch for the warm-up. He looked concentrated and powerful in his tight black tracksuit. His face was fuller again, from all those pizzas and sweets. Anyone who knew him, and who looked carefully, wondered why he apathetically let some of Sievers’s balls go straight past him.

  A quarter of an hour before the whistle the teams went back to the changing-rooms to put on their shirts. The coach said another few words – pass the ball calmly back and forth in defence, better to pass it back rather than riskily forward. Under their new coach, Andreas Bergmann, Hannover had climbed to eleventh place in the Bundesliga. They were back where they belonged.

  The players took up position in the corridor outside the changing-rooms. Outside on the pitch a row of red-skirted cheerleaders waited for them. The stadium announcer had put on the club song. There were Cologne fans ‘in Rio, in Rome, in Gladbach, Prüm and Habbelrath’ sang De Höhner, ‘the chickens’, a popular local band. The fans waved their red and white scarves, and when it grew quieter the referee marched out.

  As captain, Robert stood directly behind him. In his right hand he carried his gloves, in his left he held the hand of a black-haired boy who had been chosen as mascot for the game. Just as the referee started moving, Robert jerkily twisted his head to the right as if to rest it on his shoulder. It was the same movement that had told Teresa ten years ago in that shopping-centre in Lisbon that the fear was inside him.

  The captains had to go to the centre circle.

  ‘White or yellow, Herr Enke?’ asked the referee, Helmut Fleischer.

  ‘White.’

  The referee threw the coin in the air and caught it again.

  ‘White!’

  Team captains have normally thought for a long time before hand about which half they would like to start in. Robert looked frantically behind him at one goal, looked ahead to the other goal, grabbed his nose and said, ‘Ermmm …’

  Five seconds later Fleischer was looking at him in amazement.

  ‘We’ll stay where we are,’ Robert said at last.

  ‘Fine!’ said the referee cheerfully.

  Helmut Fleischer, an orthopaedist with the army in Fürstenfeldbruck, blew his whistle and two completely different games began. Forty-five thousand people watched Robert Enke in goal again in an ordinary Bundesliga clash after some sort of infection. Teresa and Sebastian watched Robert starting the riskiest game of his career.

  One of the side-effects of his anti-depressants was that they slowed down his reactions. How could a man under the influence of these drugs play in goal in a Bundesliga game? Could a man who found the question ‘Three or six roses?’ overtaxing at a florist’s stall decide, when a cross came into his area at speed, whether to run out or not? Could a patient who no longer has enough concentration to form complex sentences stay on high alert for ninety minutes of top-flight football?

  Less than half a minute had passed, without a single Hannover player having got anywhere near the ball, when Lukas Podolski abruptly launched the ball long and low into the Hannover penalty area from over forty yards out. Robert ran towards the ball. A split-second later forty-five thousand people muttered with disappointment because Enke had blocked the through-ball without a Cologne striker getting anywhere near it. Teresa and Sebastian yelled with enthusiasm. It was an everyday feat for a goalkeeper, but it was impossible to ignore how quickly and resolutely he had run out to collect that pass. He’d hardly had time to think, which was his good fortune. A goalkeeper’s instinct, trained over twenty years, had made his decision for him.

  But could he keep his concentration?

  Slowly and carefully, Hannover moved the ball around their defence, and when Cologne had the ball they did exactly the same. As soon as the game took off in midfield both teams made crude mistakes. Sometimes Hannover showed a bit of spirit. Cologne, on the other hand, were revealed as a team without an even vaguely passable concept of attack. In the most banal way they kept trying to pass the ball through into the free space behind Hannover’s defence. Robert had to run out several times to intercept harmless through-balls. Teresa and Sebastian cheered every time he collected the ball. What’s up with them? said the expressions of their neighbours on the terraces.

  At last Podolski energetically broke through on the left wing; Robert came out again and safely gathered the ball. Forty-five thousand people were watching a goalkeeper putting in a solid performance.

  Anyone who knew about his illness, though, could tell that he wasn’t quite right. He had been standing by the near post waiting for Podolski’s cross – not, as he had recently started doing, more in the middle of the goal. His instinct was unspooling movements he had made his own since boyhood; for more complicated manoeuvres he lacked both attention and strength. Teresa saw him repeatedly tensing his body when the ball was far away in the other half of the pitch. He was using up an incredible amount of energy just to guard against losing his concentration.

  After thirty-seven minutes Jan Rosenthal put Hannover 1–0 up. The goal changed nothing. Cologne continued to pass the ball long and badly. They couldn’t think of anything else to do. One corner for Cologne, and then it would be half-time.

  Podolski took it. The ball flew into the area six yards out. Robert was standing in the middle of his goal and should have been able to intercept it easily. But as the ball came over he nudged Rosenthal away with his right hand to gain more room for his jump and this made him lose his balance for a fraction of a second. He jumped too late to take the ball, and this time the forty-five thousand shouted along with Teresa and Sebastian.

  He had dropped the ball. Cologne’s Pedro Geromel kicked at it just a few yards in front of goal. He caught the ball with the tip of his toe so it flew high into the air rather than straight towards the goal and Robert, quite calm once again, caught it and immediately tried to throw it straight to a team-mate so that the game could go on.

  That never happened to Robert Enke, the sportswriters murmured. It was his first game after that infection of his – that was how they explained this little mishap.

  The television camera caught his face. It seemed frozen with concentration; there was no annoyance, no nerves. It would look exactly the same for the whole ninety minutes. Only one thing seemed strange: he was breathing heavily for a goalkeeper.

  Teresa worried at her fingernails. It was half-time. There were still forty-five minutes in which the dread of the corner could return.

  But his team protected him in the second half. They carried on defending emphatically in midfield, and Cologne barely bothered him. With a thrilling reflex he punched one long shot from Petit away from goal – in the eyes of the forty-five thousand his only serious test. But it was impressive, perhaps even unbelievable, how alert he was. He was playing very aggressively, taking every available chance to collect a through-ball, even outside the penalty area. When Fleischer confirmed the 1–0 victory with a blast of his whistle, Hanno Balitsch immediately ran over to Robert.

  ‘That was the first step back,’ said Robert as his friend hugged him.

  On the terraces a fan asked Teresa, ‘What’s up with you?’ She was crying.

  The team, with their shirts hanging out of their shorts, marched towards the Hannover end. Robert walked behind them, and high-fived the fans. On the way back, Hanno gave him a high-spirited nudge with his chest.

  He saw Teresa standing behind an advertising hoarding on the main terrace. She hugged him, her tears still flowing. ‘I’m so proud of you, Robbi.’

  He smiled.

  ‘I felt something again,’ he said to Markus Witkop.

  On the way back, on the bus this time, Hanno Balitsch put on a film on his laptop. He had bought a double plug for two sets of headphones so that Robert could watch with him. Every now and again Robert sent Teresa text messages. ‘Don’t drive too quickly’ and ‘Are you drunk already?’

  Empathy and humour, two devourers of depression, were shimmering into action again.

  Teresa was already waiting a
t the stadium in Hanover when the team bus arrived that evening. Perhaps they could go and get something to eat, she hoped, maybe even – the word seemed appropriate – celebrate a bit.

  ‘So, how are you?’ she asked as he fastened his seat-belt beside her.

  ‘Bad.’

  The word was like a blow to the stomach.

  ‘Not even a little bit better?’ Her voice was gentle, as if she were begging for a positive answer.

  ‘No.’

  He wanted to go home.

  When he got there he put his gloves out to dry in the bathroom, took a sleeping tablet and went to bed.

  Teresa sat in the kitchen and remembered all the great moments of the afternoon in Cologne: the through-ball collected in the first minute of play, his warm hug with Hanno, his smile when he came over to her after the match. When she saw that smile she had been sure that the game had helped him.

  ‘Today, the words from his farewell letter come to mind,’ says Hanno Balitsch. ‘He wrote that he had been tricking us all over his last few weeks; that he was only pretending to be better. So I’m afraid he was just saying what we wanted to hear when he came over to me right after the game and said, “That was the first step back.”’

  Sunday lay before them like a desert. The crushing realisation that the game had failed to change his mood paralysed Robert. For a moment Teresa thought she would never be able to deal with the situation on her own.

  She called the Wilkes.

  ‘Sabine, we need a plan. We’ve got to do something. Isn’t there anything we can do together?’

  Sabine Wilke talked to her husband, she phoned her sister Ines. All of a sudden they were aware of an incredible feeling of pressure. What were they supposed to do?

  Cheesecake, it occurred to Ines. Robert had always loved her cheesecake. She started baking.

  That afternoon everyone was sitting at the table at Ines and Jürgen’s – Robert and Teresa, Uli and Sabine and the children. Before Ines could cut the cake, Robert leapt to his feet. He had to go to the bathroom.

  ‘Where is he?’ Ines asked several minutes later.

  ‘I’ll go and get him.’ Teresa pushed her chair back. She knocked on the bathroom door and didn’t go away until he came out.

  He sat down, he praised the cheesecake, but after a few minutes he got up again.

  ‘What do you need, Robbi?’

  ‘I’m just getting myself a wheat beer from the fridge.’

  ‘Stay there, I’ll bring it to you.’

  ‘No, no.’

  He stayed in the kitchen until Jürgen came to get him.

  A little while later he went back to the toilet. As soon as he came back he announced that he was going to have a look around the flat. He wandered through the rooms for a quarter of an hour. He had seen Ines and Jürgen’s flat many times.

  He simply couldn’t bring himself to sit down at the table and chat while thoughts were flying through his head at the same time. Why hadn’t his comeback brought him contentment? How could things ever get better if nothing was better even after a game like that? Why didn’t he just put a stop to this madness?

  He walked through the flat. His body required movement to shake off the thoughts.

  The others stayed in the living-room and tried not to s how how unsettling they found his behaviour. It was a natural response to depressed people. His friends believed they had to treat him as if everything was normal out of consideration for him. They didn’t want him to remember his suffering. So not only is a depressive an actor, he turns most of the people around him into extras.

  He hadn’t written any whole sentences in his black book for a long time. Nothing but self-reproach was the sole entry for 2 November. He had been sick for nearly three months now. When he had had his first depression, by this point he had been watching comedies with Jörg again and noticing that he sometimes felt a feeling of joy. Six years later he only felt one thing: that it was getting worse.

  One sound had not been heard at their farmhouse for several weeks: the cheerfulness of xylophones, the enthusiastic beating of drums and a smoky, powerful woman’s voice singing ‘Como la rabia de amor, como un asalto de felicidad’ (‘Like the fury of love, like an attack of happiness’). In good times he had made the song ‘Alegría’ by Cirque du Soleil his ring-tone. Now he had set his mobile to silent.

  The mobile’s display was lighting up on the kitchen table. He hardly ever took calls any more. The flashing of the phone scared him. What was he supposed to say? What did someone want from him?

  ‘Who is it?’ Teresa asked him. If she could at least persuade him to go to the phone, perhaps it might bring him a bit of contentment.

  He looked at the display. ‘Alex Bade.’

  ‘He’s tried to get you five times. Please go and talk to him, Robbi.’

  He steeled himself.

  Alex Bade, the goalkeeping coach at 1 FC Cologne, wanted to know if there was a chance of enticing Robert to Cologne for 2010–11. Robert’s current contract ended in eight months – end of June 2010.

  ‘I can’t say what I’ll be doing,’ he told Bade.

  The conversation ended almost as soon as it had begun because Robert said hardly anything.

  But now the phone was lying in front of him, and he screwed up his courage. ‘I should also phone Lothar Bisinger.’ He was hugely bothered by a tiny detail on his gloves. When he fastened the straps on his wrist there was a very small wrinkle at the top of the glove.

  ‘Give him a call,’ Teresa encouraged him.

  He described the problem to Bisinger, and as always his glove-man said no problem, he would sort it out immediately.

  The conversation didn’t even last a minute.

  ‘Great that I’ve sorted that out,’ said Robert in the kitchen. ‘That’s been bothering me for weeks.’

  From such everyday triumphs Teresa drew hope and courage that got her through whole days. There was always something positive to be had. You just had to search for it in the smallest details.

  She persuaded him to take a look at the clinic in Bad Zwischenahn. ‘Just take a look,’ she said.

  Dr Ingwersen gave them an appointment on Thursday afternoon, 5 November.

  Robert immediately told Teresa he couldn’t go, he had training until lunchtime, and they would never get to Bad Zwischenahn in time. It was 150 kilometres to the Ammerland, whose quiet country roads and broad horizon tended to attract cyclists rather than motorists.

  ‘Robbi, tell the coach you’ve got to leave a bit early. Say we have to take Leila for a special examination and your wife doesn’t want to go on her own.’

  The psychiatric clinic in Bad Zwischenahn was, like their own house, a converted clinker-brick farmhouse. There was good food, wireless internet and private access to the Zwischenahn Lake. Anyone who didn’t look too closely might have thought they had ended up at a five-star country hotel. Robert let them show him everything and explain everything without asking a single question. He would have a think about it, he said to Dr Ingwersen as they left.

  When they got back into the car he said, even before he had fastened his seat-belt, ‘I’m not going there.’

  ‘Just let the idea sink in for a while.’

  ‘I’m an international goalkeeper. I can’t go to a clinic.’

  ‘Robbi, there are lawyers in that clinic, university professors, businessmen! Do you think it was any easier for them to come here? But they did, because sometimes it’s the only solution.’

  ‘That’s very different from my case. If people find out about them, it’s not so bad.’

  ‘If someone’s a lawyer or a GP and people in his town are saying “He’s a depressive” he has just as much of an existential problem as you do. And they manage to find a life afterwards too!’

  Their discussion ended in silence. As always when an argument began between them, eventually they just stopped and tried to forget that they had clashed. This time Robert just went to sleep.

  The evenings had already
started drawing in fast. Teresa’s eyes hurt because she had to concentrate so hard on the gloomy A-road, and all of a sudden she was filled with rage. She looked at him. He looked peaceful, innocent, sleeping there in the passenger seat. ‘How can you be furious?’ she rebuked herself. ‘He’s sick.’

  As they drove through the moors of Lower Saxony Robert was being talked about once again in the world of professional football. That morning the national coach had announced the squad for two internationals, against Chile and the Ivory Coast, in mid-November, and Robert Enke wasn’t on the list. Joachim Löw had noticed that both Robert and René Adler often turned down international games on grounds of injury, so he wanted to test Tim Wiese and Manuel Neuer as possible alternatives. In the world of football, always strictly divided into winners and losers, only a few could see the selection of Wiese and Neuer as a mere test. Many people implied that the coach’s decision was a blow for Enke.

  As thoughts continued to fire like shots through Robert’s head – the clinic isn’t the solution, I can’t go on like this for much longer, there’s only one answer – at the same time, after training on Friday, he was obliged to devote himself with the usual sacred seriousness to addressing the excitements of professional sport. It had been agreed with the national goalkeeping coach that he would stay out of these internationals, he said. He would prefer to do targeted training with Hannover – he had a shortfall to make up. ‘I can live with that.’

  Because he spoke so monotonously, some sportswriters jumped to the conclusion that he was definitely sad, perhaps even furious at having been disregarded, and just didn’t want to show it. If Robert really felt relief at not having to join a training-camp with the national team again, he only let Teresa know.

  Now that he had played once, in Cologne, it was quite naturally expected that he would go on playing. A day before the game against Hamburg SV, Jörg travelled to Hanover to be with Robert. He drove him to the final training session. No one mentioned, as they had done a week before, the possibility of feigning a muscle strain. The people closest to Robert wanted to give him the feeling that it was quite natural for him to play on.