A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke by Reng Ronald

Author:Reng, Ronald [Reng, Ronald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446499023
Publisher: Yellow Jersey
Published: 2011-09-28T23:00:00+00:00

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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.

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