Killing the Second Dog. Marek Hlasko

Hamlet and Ophelia’s brother quarrel by the grave? Olivier had this brilliant idea how to perform Shakespeare, so he turned his plays into theater. Shakespeare is life, not theater.”

      “Don’t tell that to too many people.”

      “I’m telling it to you,” he said. “You just have to shout out your lines and walk off the stage. You don’t have to perform at all. Anyway, we’ll rehearse your part from the beginning.”

      “Tonight?”

      “No. Tonight we need to rest. But first we have to talk to this backer of ours. Finish your beer and we’ll go. It’s cooler now.” He fell silent for a moment and then asked, “What did that guy say?”

      “What guy?”

      “The guy in the cab. Did you understand his last words?”

      “Not quite. I think it was ‘pray for my soul’ or something like that.”

      “He said it in German?”

      “Yeah.”

      “How cliché,” Robert said. “But I guess a lot of people have repeated that hackneyed phrase. Still, it’s worth remembering. You can always add a word or two and change something around. I’ve heard that all those famous last words are a pack of lies. When Goethe was on his deathbed, they couldn’t get a word out of him for posterity, so they started shining a light on his face until he finally said that famous line of his: ‘More light!’ Sly bastards.”

      “I wouldn’t say a thing. I’d be too scared.”

      “Not even a word to the kids kneeling around your bed? Or to your wife banging her head against the floor in desperation?”

      “Come on,” I said. “I’m tired. Let’s talk to our backer and have it over with. I want to climb into bed and sleep until morning. Look at the dog. He’s beat too.”

      Robert paid the bill and we walked slowly toward the sea. It was already dark. I remembered reading in some book that man is but the shadow of a dream, but I couldn’t think of the book’s title or the name of the author. I don’t know who had dropped that line on me or at what point in his life the author had written it. Was it while he was gazing at the dying flame of a candle, or watching a dog with a bone in its jaws, its eyes shining with fearful ecstasy? Or maybe it was the voice of God that had suddenly rumbled inside him and made him mutter those words while staring wide-eyed at the people around him, certain all of a sudden that he would not disappear without a trace when he reached the end of his road. And maybe it seemed to the people around him they had been allowed to glimpse some wonderful light that would never shine again. It must have been a glorious moment and I can only thank God I wasn’t present, since most likely I would have added a few words and spoiled the whole show. That’s the way I am. And then what would have happened to the light? But I don’t like light. I like the darkness, which frees us from our faces and the shadows we cast.

      “Is anything wrong?” Robert asked.

      “No. I was just trying to remember something.”

      “And …?”

      “No luck. But don’t worry. That’s why I’m so fond of thinking; it doesn’t lead to anything. You should know me, Robert. We’ve been working together for over a year.”

      “Ease up, man. Soon we’ll start talking about money and you’ll feel even worse.”

      “You’ll do the talking.”

      “Right. And you just try not to have such a goddamn sad face. All you need to do is sit with us; you don’t even have to listen to me. You can clean your fingernails or pick up some book and leaf through it. Don’t pay any attention to what’s happening. To you it should be obvious he’ll give us the money. Pretend you can barely hide the boredom and disgust you feel, okay?”

      “Okay,” I said.

      We were walking side by side. Darkness was all around us, but not the kind that envelops a city like a dream. It didn’t make us forget our hot and tired bodies. This darkness was rough and hard, like the dust; and like the dust it clung to our skin.

      “So, once again. How will you act?” Robert asked.

      “I won’t pay any attention to either of you,” I said. “You won’t interest me at all. I’ll just sit there looking out at the garden, and your loud, repugnant voices will seem to me both meaningless and unreal.”

      “You got it, pal. Okay, we’re here.”

      We entered a building and started climbing a stairway overrun by cats. It was siesta; in this country, people sleep by installments. They go to bed after coming back from work, and then again late at night. They spend their evenings in cafes or visiting friends. When you visit someone, your host usually asks whether you’d like to shower before you sit down for coffee. Robert disliked taking showers and almost always refused, claiming that only dirty people need to wash very often. Chacun à son goût.

      Our host was sitting on the terrace, reading a newspaper. His girlfriend was sitting next to him. When she saw us, she adjusted herself in her deck chair and lowered her gaze to the floor. It was meant to show her contempt. She was putting on an act. Men look only for peace and deliverance; women have to have something churning and shifting in their lives. They’re always very serious about how they feel and genuinely convinced that all those fleeting emotions they take for anger, love, or contempt are going to last forever.

      “It’s us, Mr. Azderbal,” Robert said.

      “Again?” Azderbal said.

      “Didn’t it work out very well last time?”

      “Sure. All it took to save my neck was two top lawyers and a doctor who testified that I happen to be partially insane. I don’t suppose you’ve come here to tell me of some new deal we could make together, huh?”

      “That was an accident,” Robert said. “Somebody squealed on us.”

      “Bullshit,” Azderbal said. “I’m not interested in any more shaky deals.”

      I moved away and sat down on a deck chair next to the girl. She glanced at me in a brief, detached way. I could swear she’d been practicing that look in front of a mirror for the past three months, certain I was going to show up at any moment. But I hadn’t shown up; I had come only now with Robert because we were short of cash. I sat next to her, staring out at the dark garden, while behind our backs the two men continued their loud conversation.

      “I need money,” Robert was saying. “I have to pay for his hotel, food, and all the rest.”

      “And for the doctor,” the other added.

      “Yeah, for the doctor, too. We need money for at least two, three weeks. He must have a room and three meals a day; breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He must be able to afford cigarettes, coffee, a deck chair at the beach, and a haircut and shave once in a while for him to look all right. And our dog, too, our dog costs a pretty penny.”

      “What does it eat?”

      “Two pounds of pork a day,” Robert said. “Or do you expect me to cook grits for it in my hotel room and mix them with canned kosher meat? Do you really? Well, maybe you’d eat that mush, but not this dog.”

      “It’s too big. You should have bought a smaller dog, a poodle or a Pekingese; this one’s not a dog, it’s a monster, a fiend. No wonder it’s so expensive to feed.”

      “Why don’t you just say outright that we should use a dead dog? That would come out cheapest. You don’t know how to make money because you don’t know what investing is all about. You want a hundred percent profit on every lousy deal you make; you haven’t learned that some of the best deals ever made often involve just fractions of one percent. You think like a small-scale herring merchant who has to make a hundred percent profit on every sale or else he’ll die of hunger.”

      “You should have bought a smaller