Tschick
Extracts from a German textbook*
Wolfgang Herrndorf** English translation by xia23
1.
I never had a nickname. I mean at school. But also nothing else. My name is Maik Klingenberg. Maik, not Maiki, not Klinge and also not the other rubbish either, always only Maik. Except when I was in sixth grade, my nickname was psycho once. If a man's name is psycho, that is also not a big deal. But that did not last long, and then my name was Maik again.
If a man has no nick name, then there can be two reasons. Either the man is really boring and therefore gets nothing, or the man has no friends. If I have to choose one of the two, I would, rather say honestly, to have no friends, than to be really boring. Well, if a man is boring, the man is automatically no friends, or only has friends who are as boring as the man himself.
There is also the third possibility. It can be that the man is boring and has no friend. And I'm afraid of, that is my problem.
…
2.
I couldn't like Tschick from the beginning. Nobody liked him. Tschick was an Asi***, and he also looked like Asi*** too. Wagenbach dragged him to the class after Easter, and if I said he “dragged” him to the class, I mean it so. The first lesson after Easter: history …
So Wagenbach came in a bad suit with the brownish poo-colored book bag under his arm as usual, and slowly behind him this boy dragged himself, it seemed that the boy as close as to be in a coma or so. Wagenbach slammed his bag on his desk and turned around. He frowned and waited for the boy, who shuffled slowly, and then said: “We have here a new classmate. His name is Andrej –“
And then he looked at his note, and then looked again at the boy. Apparently his family name should be mentioned. But the boy looked at nothing through the central aisle with his slant eyes and said nothing.
...
“Andrej", Wagenbach said, stared at his note and moved his lips silently. “Andrej Tsch… Tschicha…tschoroff.”
The Russian mumbled somewhat.
“Please?”
“Tschichatschow”, the Russian said, without looking at Wagenbach.
Wagenbach inhaled some air through one of his nostrils. That was a tic from him. Air from only one nostril.
"Handsome Tschischaroff. Andrej, would you like perhaps to talk about yourself a little bit? Where do you come from? From which school were you coming here?”
That was a standard procedure. If new students came to the class, they had to tell where they were and so. Now the serious change with Tschick happened. He turned his head slightly to the side, as he looked at Wagenbach first at the moment. He scratched his neck, turned himself further to the class and said “No.” Somewhere a pin of needle fell at the floor.
Wagenbach nodded seriously, and said: “You don't want to talk about where you come to here?”
“No”, Tschick said. “I don't care.”
“That’s fine, then I'll just talk about you, Andrej. Based on politeness I myself finally have to introduce you to the class”.
He looked at Tschick. Tschick looked at the class.
“I take your silence as consent", Wagenbach said. And he talked about that with an ironic tone, just as all teachers, if they say so.
Tschick did not answer.
“Or do you have anything you don't like?” Wagenback asked.
“You begin”, Tschick said and made a hand movement.
…
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*:
p. 120, Stationen, Ein Kursbuch für die Mittelstufe, 3rd Edition, Prisca Augustyn & Nikolaus Euba, Cenga-ge Learning, USA, 2015
**:
Wolfgang Herrndorf was born in 1965 in Hamburg, Germany. He studied art and worked as an artist for different magazines. His novel Tschick was published in 2010. Since then the book had won many awards, including the youth literature award, and became a theater piece with great success (original text is German*).
Tschick is a novel concerned with intellectual or spiritual development of two 14 year old boys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Herrndorf.
Herrndorf committed suicide in 2013 (wiki link above).
***:
Asi, abbreviation of an antisocial person.
