Free Playing Days by Benjamin Markovits Page A

fact, I could tell his career was a source of anxiety to his mother. It didn’t seem to her the kind of thing that could ‘go anywhere.’ Besides, you can’t keep it up much beyond thirty. She asked me how long I expected to play basketball, someone with my education.
    â€˜I’m afraid that someone with my education,’ I said, ‘isn’t really fit for any kind of profession at all. Apart from teaching, and I don’t really want to teach.’
    But Katrin couldn’t help herself. ‘At least you have an education,’ she said. ‘That’s something.’
    It was Herr Schmidt who introduced the subject of Olaf’s adoption. They were children of the sixties, he confessed, and had all of the wonderful illusions and ideals of their generation. Katrin had very much wanted a child, to give birth to a child, but it seemed to both of them, given the state of the world – well, he supposed I could guess the conclusions they had come to. Now, ofcourse, Germany had a very different problem. Middle-class couples weren’t reproducing nearly enough to sustain the economy, which depended more and more on the supply of skilled workers from the former Soviet satellites. The culture was beginning to – he didn’t want to say suffer, but perhaps it was kindest to put it this way, to dilute. But Germans, German Germans that is, if he might be forgiven a simplification, were too attached to their lifestyles to give up so many years of it (twenty was a conservative estimate, for two children) to a family. ‘In this respect, they differ entirely from your countrymen,’ he said, ‘who consider their children to be a necessary part of the all-American lifestyle.’
    When Brigitte was born, they moved to Schwabing – to this same block, as it happens, though to a different apartment. The neighborhood was very mixed at the time: Africans, Turks, and, of course, poor Italians. The building itself was in a terrible state. All of this more or less suited their ‘ideals.’ But then something began to happen, both to the neighborhood and to their own lives. Most of their friends, it seemed, and not only their friends, but the kinds of people who might have been their friends, the kinds of people, in fact, who became their friends, had had similar ideals. Together, they moved up in the world.
    Katrin began earning as a consultant; his law practice found its feet. The wonderful cooperatives, which they had set up to foster a sense of community, did their jobs too well. They became exclusive. Property valuesclimbed and the poor moved out. Katrin and he had feared that Brigitte would grow up in the ignorance of privilege. She wanted another child, but they really couldn’t justify such an addition. To have one may be a right, but two seemed an indulgent luxury. That’s how they thought at the time.
    Olaf was a happy compromise. Katrin had been volunteering in a community center for African immigrants, and one of the case workers put her in touch with an adoption agency connected to the Ivory Coast. That’s where Olaf was born; they had been encouraging him lately to seek out his birth-father.
    â€˜You have been encouraging him,’ Katrin said.
    I asked Brigitte if her parents’ plan had worked, if she had grown up in the ‘ignorance of privilege.’
    â€˜As far as that goes,’ she said, ‘privilege in the eighties mattered much less than being cool. And there was nothing cooler than having a black kid brother.’
    â€˜That’s not true.’ Olaf had looked up at last. ‘Being black was only cool in gym class. The rest of the time they called me names. And before I got too big for them, they did worse; I was always getting into fights.’
    Brigitte put her hand on his wrist, in careless sympathy. ‘You’re right,’ she said, ‘I had forgotten. They called me names, too, though mostly they told