‘Hip dysplasia,’ said the veterinarian and pointed to the X-rays, but Rolf couldn’t make out anything much on them. ‘Advanced stage,’ said the vet, ‘we’d have to operate. There are various options, gold implants and so on, but with artificial joints and the latest methods he could live a long life.’
‘He was running around just two days ago.’ Piet lay next to him, and Rolf kept his hand on his head. Piet was really scared of the vet, he moaned and yelped in the waiting room and didn’t want to come through to the surgery, although he only had his injections there once a year. He could smell the other animals’ fear, and maybe death too.
‘Hereditary,’ said the vet, ‘nothing you can do.’ He had given Piet a mild anaesthetic shot so they could X-ray him better, and then injected a contrast agent into his joints.
‘Dogs don’t show it right away when they’re in pain,’ said the vet. ‘They don’t know what it is, where it’s coming from. Not until they can’t keep going any more.’
Piet was asleep, and the vet and the nurse wanted to lift him onto the X-ray machine, but he had said, ‘No, I’ll do that,’ and squatted down, put his arms around him and lifted him up.
‘With painkillers,’ said the vet, ‘he’ll keep going for a while … if you take really good care of him …’
‘And then?’ He still had his hand on Piet’s head. Piet had woken up from the anaesthetic a while ago, but he was still very weak and lay there next to him, and Rolf felt him breathing.
‘It’d be OK for a year or two,’ said the vet, ‘maybe longer, but at some point he’d just be suffering. If you don’t want to go through with the operation …’
They took a taxi home. Now and then Rolf turned around to him, but Piet was lying at the back of the cab and was still pretty knocked out, although back when Rolf had still had a car and they would go for a drive together he was uneasy all the way, moaning and yelping.
‘It’s nothing serious, is it?’ said the driver.
‘No, just a routine check-up.’ Rolf hadn’t taken a taxi for years. He couldn’t really afford it either, the examination and the tablets had used up almost all his money. He could have asked his brother to pick them up from the vet’s, but he didn’t want to talk to his brother right now; he’d have to talk to him later about the operation, but he was scared. His brother didn’t much like Piet, and Piet didn’t much like his brother either. He growled at him and sometimes started barking when his brother came by. But his brother didn’t come by too often. ‘Nice dog you’ve got there,’ said the driver.
‘Yes, he is.’ He turned around to Piet again, who was licking at his hips with his long pink tongue now, at the place where the vet had injected the contrast agent. ‘A Rottweiler, isn’t he?’
‘Rottweiler-Doberman.’
‘Really nice animal,’ said the driver and nodded and looked at Piet in the rear-view mirror. And Rolf looked in the mirror too and saw his dog’s big head and felt very proud.
Rolf had been playing the lottery for years but he had only won once. Over four hundred deutschmarks with a special system using ten numbers in different combinations. He had had three lots of four numbers come up and five lots of three with his system, and they had brought him over four hundred deutschmarks in winnings. If five of his numbers had come up (which he always dreamed of; he never actually expected six), maybe even two fives would have turned up in his system, and that would have brought him big bucks, but still, the four hundred marks had been a lot of money for him at the time, even though he was still in work back then.
He didn’t play the system any more because it had cost him twenty marks every week, and after they switched to the euro and he lost his job, forty euros a month was just too much for him.
Now he handed in just one set of six crossed-off numbers every Saturday afternoon, always number four because of the four letters in their names, Piet and Rolf, and five other numbers he had picked for no special reason. But he never won anything, and he didn’t know anyone who had won big money on the lottery.
And big money was what he needed. Three thousand euros was big money to Rolf.
‘If it wasn’t for Piet,’ his brother had said, ‘maybe. But just so you can patch up that dilapidated old dog …’
‘Piet isn’t dilapidated.’
‘Three thousand euros, Jesus, d’you think I’m made of money?’
‘You’ve got more than me at any rate. Don’t you get it, it’s the latest surgery, he can live a long …’
‘Listen, Rolf, I can’t help it that you lost your job. And you know that back when Martha went, I …’
‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s nothing to do with her, it’s about Piet.’
‘Jesus, if he’s so sick why don’t you have him …’
He had left without another word. He had walked the streets and thought about who else he could ask, who he even knew who had that kind of money. Then he’d gone back home, laid down next to Piet on the rug. He only went on short walks with him now, and Piet had started to limp again despite the tablets. Rolf lay next to him, one hand on his back, feeling him breathing, and they lay together until it got dark and he got up and turned on the light.
He took a short walk with Piet, and once the dog had disappeared into the bushes and taken a crap he took him home again. There was lots of dog shit on the pavements in his area, and he was proud that not a single turd was from Piet. He had taught him when he was very small only to shit in bushes and on the grass.
‘I’ll be back soon, boy, look after the place, be good.’
Piet lay in his corner and looked at him; whenever Rolf left the house he looked at him with his dark eyes. He didn’t like being alone, like all dogs. Whenever Rolf had to go out for a while longer he told the old lady next door; she liked Piet and was happy to keep an eye on him. She was on her own too and Piet liked her. She was over seventy and Rolf was scared she’d die one day; there was no one else to look after Piet when he had to go away. But now he just wanted to walk and think and maybe have a drink; he had enough money for that. He threw Piet a big dog biscuit and could still hear him crunching as he locked the door.
He walked the streets, not knowing where he wanted to go, walked past the bars and kebab shops, wanted to think, about the money, about the operation, but he was tired and he walked very slowly, and he knew there was nobody who would help him. He drank two small bottles of beer at a snack bar that stayed open until late at night. He was the only customer; the owner leaned on the counter, drinking coffee and watching the people going by his little place. Rolf drank a shot and paid his bill, then he too went on his way.
On a corner was a new place that he didn’t know yet. A large neon sign with red letters: ‘Sports Bets’, and there were pictures in the window of football players, boxers, and a big horse galloping along with a jockey wearing a cap, bent low over the horse’s back and seeming to fuse with the horse. A couple of men came out of the door, talking loudly and waving little slips of paper; not money, he could tell. They walked along the road bellowing and laughing, then disappeared around the corner. Rolf stayed where he was and looked at the pictures and the sign, then he turned around and went home.
Standing in the bookmakers the next day, he was surprised at how large it was and how many people were standing around him, looking at all the monitors on the walls. It was Saturday, after three in the afternoon, and most of the screens were showing football, but on some of them there were horses galloping, and a couple of men were standing there, holding slips and newspapers and staring at the horses. They didn’t talk and didn’t seem to care about the noise all around them. ‘Kick the damn thing,’ shouted a man next to him, punching the air, ‘What’s the matter with you, even I could’ve scored …’
‘Yeah!’ growled a man in front of another monitor, ‘That’s it, I’ve got it,’ and Rolf walked slowly over to the silent men and the horses. But they weren’t as quiet any more now, the race seemed to be entering the final phase, and they twitched their nervo
us shoulders, stepping from one leg to the other and whispering things like, ‘Go on, come on,’ ‘Five, what do I care about number five,’ ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ ‘He’s losing it, he’s gonna eat dust,’ and then they got slightly louder, and then the race was over. Rolf was standing right behind them; some of them took their slips to the long counter, where there were already lots of people fiddling with slips and money, giving them to the men behind the counter; there were a couple of women too, taking the bets and the money, but otherwise he couldn’t see any women in the room; actually, no, over there were two old ladies huddled together, studying a newspaper spread out in front of them.
Rolf went closer to the monitor, where numbers and the names of the horses now appeared. Star King, he read, and then a man making notes on his paper pushed in front of him. ‘How much d’you think the triple was worth?’
‘Star King had over fifteen to win, the places weren’t bad either, not everyone saw that coming. It’ll be a nice little earner.’
‘Real nice,’ said another man, ‘six or seven hundred for the trifecta, I reckon, at least.’
‘I had Prairie Louise down,’ said a short man with a grey beard, who was filling out a betting slip against the wall next to the monitor, ‘she had good odds and all.’
‘Yeah, six to one’s not bad, she was doing all right until the finishing straight.’ They talked about the race just run and the next one, filling out betting slips and flicking through their newspapers, and Rolf stood between them, not knowing what all the numbers and words meant, only understanding one thing: ‘Six or seven hundred at least.’
‘The payouts,’ said the short man with the beard, ‘the payouts should be up in a minute.’ They formed a semi-circle around the monitor, and then a few numbers appeared again, and the short man with the beard shouted, ‘Eight hundred and seventy-three to one, Jesus, even five euros would have made you a packet.’
‘And nearly nine thousand for ten euros,’ another man said, ‘I should’ve risked it, but hell, who’d have guessed it, Star King to win and Miss Marmalade and One Night Girl placed, you might as well play the lottery!’ They laughed and flicked through their papers, and the bearded man took his betting slip up to the counter.
‘Eight thousand seven hundred and thirty,’ Rolf said over and over on the way home, ‘eight thousand seven hundred and thirty.’ Ten horses had run, he had understood that much. Picking three horses correctly out of ten seemed more likely than waiting for five numbers to come up in the lottery. And there must be combinations where you didn’t have to bet on the exact order of the horses. He’d been to the races as a child once with his grandmother, but all he could remember was the jockeys’ bright silks, which seemed to blend together into a long stream of colour as they galloped past him on their horses.
He had no idea about horse races and betting, but an old friend of his had spent a lot of time at the racetrack in the old East German days and up to the mid nineties, and had told him a good deal about it. And he thought he remembered that this old friend, who he hadn’t seen for almost ten years, had won a stack of money. And as he walked home now, past the bars and kebab shops and the snack bar where he’d drunk two beers and a shot last night, he knew this was his last chance. Piet and Rolf and the horses.
‘You haven’t been round for ages, Rolf.’
He hadn’t said ‘Hello’ or ‘How’s it going?’ or ‘What do you want?’ – he’d just opened the door, stared at him a while, and now he said it again in the same low voice: ‘You haven’t been round for ages, Rolf.’
‘No,’ said Rolf. ‘Time flies, Schäfer.’ They stood like that for a while, Rolf outside the apartment, Schäfer in the half-open door, looking at each other in silence, until the light went out on the stairs and Schäfer said, ‘If you want to come in …’
‘Yes, thanks.’ He walked behind him along the corridor, which was completely empty apart from a pair of shoes on a large mat. Schäfer opened a door, and they walked into a room that was just as empty, nothing but a table and two chairs, and a picture hanging on the wall; it looked like a real oil painting, a brown horse and a white horse galloping with their riders through green, hilly countryside.
‘Take a seat.’
‘Thanks.’ They sat down at the table, and Rolf held up the cloth bag he’d brought with him. ‘Brought you a little present.’ He pulled out the bottle of Goldkrone brandy and put it on the table.
‘Only the best, eh Rolf?’ He got up and went out of the room. Rolf listened but he couldn’t hear anything, no banging of cupboard doors, no clinking. Then Schäfer came back with two water glasses. ‘Been a long time since we last drank together.’
‘Sure has,’ said Rolf.
Schäfer screwed off the cap and half-filled the two glasses. ‘Well then, cheers, here’s to seeing you again.’
‘Here’s to getting together again,’ said Rolf; they raised their glasses and drank. Rolf turned his head a couple of times as he drank, but there really was nothing else in the room but the table and the chairs and the picture. There was no ashtray on the table, even though Schäfer had used to smoke like a chimney.
‘How are you?’ Schäfer was still holding his glass in his hand and turning it; he didn’t stop turning it.
‘All right thanks,’ said Rolf, ‘and yourself?’
Schäfer laughed, turned his glass a while longer, then put it down on the table.
‘Great, Rolf, just great.’
Rolf nodded and looked at the table, then picked up the bottle. ‘Did you know Goldkrone’s only twenty-eight percent now? Not thirty-two like in the old days. Because of tax, you know, so it counts as a liqueur. That’s what I heard anyway.’ He filled the glasses halfway again.
‘Hmm,’ said Schäfer, ‘interesting. A lot of things have changed.’ They drank. They’d often sat together and drunk and talked in the old days.
‘Heard about your wife,’ said Schäfer, ‘sorry to hear that.’
‘Thanks. It’s ages ago now. I’ve got a dog now. It’s not the same but I’m not on my own.’
‘Hmm,’ said Schäfer, ‘a dog’s a fine thing.’
‘Shall we have another?’
‘Sure. Why not?’ They drank. Outside it turned slowly dark; Rolf looked up at the window and saw the red of the twilight above the buildings. ‘And you,’ he pointed at the picture, ‘still at it, still good old Horses Schäfer?’
Schäfer didn’t reply, picked up the empty glass again and turned it. He turned it on the tabletop, and they didn’t talk and didn’t look at each other, and the only sound was the empty glass turning on the table. Then he let go of the glass and stood up. ‘It’ll be night soon,’ he said, ‘you came late.’ He went to the door and switched on the light. Then he went over to the wall with the picture. ‘It’s a real Emil Volkers. Worth a bit of money. 1892, that’s the year. Bought it over ten years ago from a dealer. He was always at the track – Hoppegarten, outside Berlin. Lost so much he nearly went bust. I was doing good business back then, bought it off him for a good price. That’s all I’ve got now.’
He stood in front of the picture, his back to Rolf, and didn’t move, just stood there and looked at it, his arms crossed. Rolf poured himself a splash of Goldkrone, leaned back and drank. Then he started turning the empty glass on the tabletop.
‘It’s a nice picture, isn’t it?’ said Schäfer.
‘Beautiful.’ Rolf looked past Schäfer at the green hills and the two horses. The riders were sitting very upright in their saddles, not like the jockey in the picture on the bookmakers’ window, who leaned low over the back of the horse.
‘Yeah, it’s beautiful. But it’s wrong. The picture’s painted wrong. No human eye can make out the movements of the horses’ front and rear legs when they’re galloping.’
Schäfer came back to the table, slowly, and picked up his glass. It was empty; Rolf topped it up. Schäfer stood at the table and pointed the glass at the picture. ‘The dream gallop phase. You ever heard of it?’
They sat down again and drank. It was dark outside now, and Rolf saw their reflection in the windowpane. There were no curtains. ‘I need your help, Horses Schäfer.’ He picked up the bottle and divided what was left between their glasses.
‘There is no Horses Schäfer any more, Rolf.’ Schäfer looked at him and smiled. ‘I haven’t been to the track for years now. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’
‘I gotta win. There’s no other way. I have to win, Schäfer.’
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