Read Online All the Lights by Clemens Meyer - Free Book Online Page B

heard the tip-tap of his steps in the hall, and then he saw Piet’s head in the doorway, ‘Come on, come and get it,’ and the dog ran towards him, jumped up at him, and he said, ‘Down boy, sit,’ and Piet sat down in front of him and stretched out a paw towards him, although he hadn’t said ‘Shake’, and then he gave him the dog biscuits and Piet crunched them up and ate them, and he said, ‘There you are boy, you’re eating them up nicely, you’re not feeling so bad are you, you were just tired before.’ He watched as Piet ate the dog biscuits one after another, and he was happy.
    ‘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