Soccer Mania

narrated by Ulf Blanck

with illustrations by Stefanie Wegner
and Kim Schmidt

translated by Georgina Hodge

KOSMOS

A Bad Morning

It was still very early in Rocky Beach. The small town was waking up to the new day. So was Justus Jonas, as he lay in bed with his head buried in his pillow. A gentle breeze of pleasantly cool air was drifting in through the window and the thin curtains floated to and fro. The early birds began to chirp.

Suddenly, Justus was jolted out of his sleep by a terrible noise. Shocked, he opened his eyes wide and listened anxiously, not daring to breathe. It was a loud, metallic noise. Glass shattered and he could hear the roar of engines. Justus slowly went over to the window and opened the curtain. He couldn’t believe what he saw: In the middle of the junkyard stood a big excavator and it was heaving old fridges and rusty car parts onto a truck with its huge gripper arm.

Justus couldn’t believe his eyes. He bolted down the stairs and as he opened the door onto the veranda, he bumped straight into his uncle Titus. “What’s going on here in the middle of the night?” he gasped staring out at the junkyard. Uncle Titus scratched his head nervously. “Well, let’s face it. There was just no space left. It’s high time that I got rid of a pile of this excess junk.” Justus was speechless. “Hold on a minute. Didn’t you tell me that all this ‘junk’ was recyclable?” Embarrassed, Uncle Titus took a long sip of his coffee. “Err yes, so it is. The excavator is only loading up metal. Later the whole lot will be melted down and re-used. Maybe they’ll make some nice bikes out of it. The recycling process starts early, you know.”

At that moment, Aunt Mathilda came out of the kitchen. “Dead right! Finally, some order in all of that chaos. If it were up to me, they could take all of it with them.” The driver of the excavator let the heavy gripper arm smash down relentlessly into the piles of junk. Everything was loaded onto the truck: worn out ovens, computer cases, engines, drainpipes and empty oil drums.

Justus sat down, still reeling from all this news. “And what happens to the good things?” Uncle Titus leaned over to him. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “I put them in a safe place, of course.”

But his wife had overheard everything. “Titus, there’s no need to whisper. The shed with your favorite junk will go next time round.” But she didn’t really mean that. Uncle Titus kept everything he had grown fond of over the years in his shed. His most recent acquisition was the “original” hairdryer used by Marilyn Monroe.

Meanwhile the excavator was digging deeper and deeper into the piles of junk and soon a second truck would have to come to the junkyard. Uncle Titus and Justus looked on in silence, as an old motorcycle on the truck became buried under a pile of rusty metal sheets. A shiver ran down Justus’s spine with every loud crash of the heavy gripper arm. He had been living here since he was five years old and the junkyard had become his home. He had lost both his parents in an accident.

“Uncle Titus,” he began rather gloomily. “It is not gonna stay like this here, is it? I mean a big empty junkyard is totally boring.” His uncle put his hand gently on Justus’s shoulder and drank the rest of his coffee. “Don’t be silly! You’ll see that in a couple of weeks, everything will be back to normal. I have just bought a used research submarine on the Internet. But keep it to yourself!” Aunt Mathilda didn’t know a thing about it this time. She was busy in the kitchen preparing breakfast. They were just going outside with a tray, when Peter and Bob cycled through the archway into the yard. Both of them gawked in disbelief at the excavator, in the same way that Justus had done before. Bob leaned his bike against an old fridge and walked towards the veranda. “What’s going on here? Are you clearing out your junkyard?” Peter stood his bike next to his friend’s. “Or are you moving house?”

The thought of moving made Justus shudder slightly, but then for the first time that day, he actually laughed. “Don’t be stupid! Do you really think we’d take all that junk with us?” Then he told them about his uncle’s plans. Bob took his glasses off and looked across the yard. “Not bad at all. When all this stuff is gone, we can make a bike racetrack here. When he heard ‘bike’, Peter suddenly leapt to his feet. “Oh nooo! Our bikes! Hurry!” Then Bob saw what was happening: with a loud whoosh, the gripper arm opened its jaws and was just about to crush both their bikes together with an old fridge. Peter shot over to the digger driver like an arrow. “Stop! Wait! Not the bikes!” Astonished, the driver pulled the lever and the gripper arm ground to a halt. “So, now what? I thought you wanted to get rid of everything. Make your mind up! I’m not here for the fun of it, you know!”

RBSC - Rocky Beach Soccer Club

Peter wheeled the bikes away, angrily. Uncle Titus was just as furious and he marched over to the excavator operator. “Hey there! I told your boss exactly what stays and what goes! Just this stuff here in the middle, up to that tree over there. Honestly, I’m afraid to leave you here working on your own.”

“Do you really want to go out and leave this guy alone with your things?” said Justus in surprise, when his uncle came back.

“Yes, I have an appointment in town. Some lawyer from Rocky Beach called a couple of days ago. Said he had to talk to me about something.”

“Maybe you’re going to inherit something,” Bob said, hopefully.

“Nonsense. None of my relatives have died recently – thankfully. No, it’ll probably just be some red tape.” But Justus’s curiosity had been awakened. “Can’t we join you? We were going to go swimming today, but your appointment with the lawyer sounds so much more interesting. I can remember another case when …” Uncle Titus thought for a moment. “Hmm, well OK then. If you really want to spend your holidays doing such boring stuff – that’s fine by me. Maybe it’s not a bad idea at all to get away from here. Before you know it, that crazy excavator operator will scoop you up with his gripper arm.”

But Aunt Mathilda wasn’t so sure. “Hold on right there! What about your breakfast? I am not standing around here all day in the kitchen for nothing! You need to eat something first!”

They hurriedly buttered their toast, gulped down their hot tea and ran to Uncle Titus’s pickup truck. “Stop! You forgot your apples for later on!” she shouted after them. But it was too late – the pickup was already turning into the coastal road towards Rocky Beach.

The three ??? were squashed together in the back seat. The truck’s air conditioning had long since died and so they rolled all the windows down. The closer they got to the town, the more traffic there was. At last Uncle Titus turned into John Street. “So, the lawyer’s office must be here somewhere. His name is Randolph Mulligan. There it is! Forty-four – we’re here.”

A few minutes later, all four were sitting in the lawyer’s waiting room. A woman wearing heavy perfume that was far too sweet, offered them something to drink. “Please wait a moment, gentlemen. Mr Mulligan will be with you shortly. Ten minutes later, a heavy wooden door at the end of the corridor opened and a small man in a checked suit stepped out. “Come! Please come in.” Somewhat hesitantly, Uncle Titus followed the lawyer. “Err, I’ve brought some company along. I hope you don’t mind?”

“No problem at all, Mr Jonas. No problem. Please take a seat. Please take a seat!”

The lady pushed another three chairs into the meeting room. “So, Mr Jonas. I’ll be brief: You have inherited. Inherited, so to speak.” Uncle Titus stared wide-eyed at the lawyer. “Inherited? Who’s died?”

“And more to the point, what has he inherited?” Bob blurted out.

“One at a time. One at a time, please. The deceased is named Otto Kautzer. He died three weeks ago in Europe. In Europe, that is.”

“Otto Kautzer?” Uncle Titus wondered. “Never heard of him.”

“Apparently you went to school together. Many years ago, here in Rocky Beach. In Rocky Beach, so to speak.”

“Ah, wait a minute. Now I remember. Otto Kautzer – a fat boy. That’s it, fat Otto. Now I know who he is.”

I, Otto Kautzer, do declare my will, with a sound mind and with my own free will and accord: In the event of my death, I bequest all my worldly possessions in Europe to the ISBC – the International Soccer Booster Club. These possessions are worth a total of approximately 12 Million Euros