Free Playing Days by Benjamin Markovits Page B

dirty jokes about Katrin. In fact, that’s how I learned about sex: from the jokes that nasty boys made up about my mother.’
    â€˜Oh oh,’ Herr Schmidt broke in, from sheer good humor. This sort of talk amused and pleased him.
    â€˜When did you get to be too big?’ I asked.
    â€˜By my fourteenth birthday,’ Olaf said, ‘I was almost two meters long and weighed a hundred kilo. I could buy beer from a supermarket. When you can buy beer, everybody wants to be your friend.’
    Katrin cleared our plates away and Herr Schmidt sat back in his chair. ‘What people never understand,’ he said, ‘is that prejudice is practical. People become tolerant when it’s no longer in their interest to be racist. The trouble with immigration is that it produces a society in which a number of minority groups have an interest in scoring off each other: it’s really nothing more than the guild system brought up to date. The middle classes are always tolerant because it’s always in their interest to be so. Immigration brings them cheap labor and good food. Of course, all of these discussions in Germany are complicated by the question nobody asks: what did your father do in the war?’
    â€˜That’s not true,’ Olaf said again. ‘It’s complicated by sports, too. In sports, being black is like a style, but in the rest of life, it’s just a fact.’
    His father stood up to prepare himself an espresso from one of those bright monotone Italian coffee makers that look like a child’s toy. Like a toy, too, it made a burst of ugly noise. I guessed this was his particular role in the kitchen, the maker of coffee, and he offered each of us a shot. Only Brigitte accepted. When he was finished he continued standing, enjoying the freedom of thinking on his feet with a cup in his hand. ‘That’s because insports,’ he said, ‘it’s to the advantage of white children to play with their black friends – if they want to . . .’ But he had seen where his own argument was going and hesitated for the first time.
    Olaf completed his thought. ‘If they want to win?’
    â€˜That’s just fascism,’ Brigitte broke in – one of her favorite words. ‘Whites always say blacks are better at sports, so that they can claim to be better at other things. That’s where their self-interest lies.’
    â€˜No,’ Olaf said. ‘It’s not in their self-interest, at least as far as basketball goes. Being black is just a style in sports, a very popular style. If you have two players, one white and one black, the black one will always have an advantage with the coach, because of his style, even if the white player is just as good or even better.’
    â€˜Are you thinking of Hadnot?’ I asked. ‘Hadnot and Charlie.’
    â€˜I wasn’t thinking of them, but they’re a good example.’
    What he was thinking of involved him in a longer story, in which Katrin took a particular interest. She was one of those women in whom tiredness brings out, like opening buds, her worries; and she was tired that night and struggling to hide it. For whatever reason, Olaf had remained a source of guilt and concern to her. The conversation about race had been making her uncomfortable, but she was glad when her son took the floor.
    A few years ago, he told me, he had accepted a scholarship at a college in San Francisco. To play basketball. He was beginning to get bored of club sports and had half a mind to study medicine, like his sister. The family had once made a holiday to Yellowstone, his only visit to the United States. San Francisco seemed a little like Munich. Not too big or too small; very hip, but quite rich, too, and safe and pleasant.
    When he got there, his coach arranged for a tutor to help him. The assistant manager gave him a list of professors who were known to be sympathetic to the basketball team. Few of the