by Bill Kirton
There are two things about this book that might make some
people decide not to bother reading it. The first is that it’s about sport. The
fact that it won a top British Sports Book Award in 2012 makes no difference;
some people just don’t read sports books. The second thing makes it even less
palatable: it’s not just about sport, it’s about football of the soccer variety
and, as everyone knows, soccer players are spoiled, overpaid thugs with an
inflated sense of their own worth. But this book transcends football,
transcends sport. It’s the story of a likeable, gifted, seemingly grounded
individual who suffered from depression and it leads us through the tangles of
his mind as his illness dragged him inexorably down to the point at which, on
November 10th 2009, he stepped in front of a train.
There are two things about this book that might make some
people decide not to bother reading it. The first is that it’s about sport. The
fact that it won a top British Sports Book Award in 2012 makes no difference;
some people just don’t read sports books. The second thing makes it even less
palatable: it’s not just about sport, it’s about football of the soccer variety
and, as everyone knows, soccer players are spoiled, overpaid thugs with an
inflated sense of their own worth. But this book transcends football,
transcends sport. It’s the story of a likeable, gifted, seemingly grounded
individual who suffered from depression and it leads us through the tangles of
his mind as his illness dragged him inexorably down to the point at which, on
November 10th 2009, he stepped in front of a train.
In the early years of the century, Robert Enke was one of
the best goalkeepers in the world. As well as playing for clubs in the Austrian
and German leagues, he also played in three other top European sides: Barcelona , Benfica and
Fenerbahce. He played for his country at junior and senior level and was
scheduled to be Germany ’s
number one in the 2010 World Cup. He was young, handsome, wealthy and in a
secure, loving marriage. In other words, he was living what should have been a
dream life but, as this account of it shows so powerfully, the dream was too
often nightmarish. The writer notes tellingly that his suicide, at the age of
32, wasn’t really a result of a free choice. ‘The death of a depressive,’ he
writes, ‘is never a free decision. The illness narrows perception to the extent
that the sufferer no longer knows what it means to die. He thinks it just means
getting rid of the illness.’
The irony is that the book takes the place of one which Enke
and the author were supposed to be writing together. They’d been friends for
years and Reng had access to his diaries and to many other sources which
allowed him to record the impact Enke had on those around him and piece
together the contradictions, the moods and even the thought processes of his
subject. The material is handled with care, honesty and one could even say with
love, and it gives us a moving account of the life of a complex, intelligent,
caring individual who was haunted by a darkness which resisted attempts by
psychiatrists, friends and a loving wife to offer ways to combat it.
Depression isn’t just sadness. Enke and his wife had a
daughter who was born with a heart defect and died at the age of two. Naturally
enough, the effect of such an event was disastrous for both of them and yet it
was only one of the demons that spread their poison through his mind. It’s too
easy to identify an event we can all sympathise with and make the seemingly
logical link: event-sadness-suicide. But, as Reng reminds us, there are more
deaths from depression-related suicide every day than there are from road
accidents.
More complexities are added to this analysis of the condition
by the nature of Enke’s job. In a soccer team, the goalkeeper is unique. He’s
the only player allowed to handle the ball and also the only one whose mistakes
are usually far more costly than any made by players in other positions. In a
way, it’s a negative position. The object of the game is to score goals but the
keeper is there to prevent them. As the last line of defence it’s also
important for him to be (or at least seem
to be) calm, in control, unlikely to panic. Any sign of stress or frailty sends
a message to the rest of the team that he’s vulnerable. And goalkeepers aren’t
allowed to be vulnerable. Some of the most fascinating and heart-rending
passages of the book come near the end when his wife and friends are watching
him play a game, knowing that he’s in a deep depression, seeing the truth of
his body language and facial expressions while others interpret them differently.
To the uninitiated, Robert Enke seems to be in ice-cool control of the
situation.
The book begins and ends with the suicide. At the start it’s
the helplessness, bewilderment and anxiety of those close to him that’s
stressed; at the end, the pace is such that both the reader and those same
people are dragged inexorably towards what they all know is to be a tragic
outcome. The writing is skilful, Reng’s love and compassion are self-evident,
but the force that overwhelms everything is that of the dark, incomprehensible
monster that harried Enke to his death. This is not simply the story of an
individual, it’s a frightening chronicle of how depression overwhelms all else,
fragments and distorts values, undermines everything that makes life so
precious.
