Horse

The unnamed horse in Hans Meyer’s childhood memory is more than the occasion for an accident: its suffering becomes the measure by which Meyer’s father teaches him responsibility, and the uncertain cause of its fright remains contested years later. Recalled during a quiet chess game with Caspar Leinen, the horse’s death connects a child’s helplessness to the grief of an old man, while the animal’s pain remains starkly concrete: a broken leg, a scream, and an irreversible decision to end its suffering.

Identity and Place in the Story

The horse is a nervous showjumper owned by Hans Meyer’s mother. It had already won at several shows, and she believed it might be a strong candidate for the Olympic Games in a few years. The animal therefore appears within a human world of care and ambition, but it is not merely a prize or a symbol in the memory Meyer tells. Its body, fear, and pain drive the episode: after it breaks its left foreleg, it screams, and the forester comes that afternoon to put it out of its misery.

The horse has no name in Meyer’s account. Instead, it is remembered through particular details: its place in the paddock, its injured foreleg, the sound of its scream, and the later burial of its hooves. Those details distinguish the animal’s fate from an abstract lesson about childhood guilt. The memory is told by Meyer, years after the event, but it preserves the horse as a living creature that was frightened and hurt, not simply as an object whose death mattered because a boy was blamed.

The Paddock Accident

Meyer says that he was about eight or nine when the accident happened. He had put on a vivid red-and-blue shirt that his uncle had brought back from Italy and went to the riding stables, where he spent time almost every day because he liked the horses. He remembers seeing his mother’s showjumper in the paddock. Whether he meant to pat it that day is uncertain even to him; he says he had done so before but cannot now remember what he intended.

On seeing Meyer, the horse reared and ran into the wooden fencing. It broke its left foreleg and screamed in pain. Meyer had never heard a horse scream like that. He covered his ears and ran away. The response is immediate and bodily: the sound overwhelms him before he can make sense of what has happened. Later that afternoon, the forester killed the horse to end its suffering. The account offers no rescue or recovery; the animal’s injury leads directly to its death.

Guilt, Burial, and Responsibility

That evening, Meyer’s father summoned him to the study and told him he was to blame for the horse’s death, because he had caused it to die before its time. Meyer recalls being frightened of his father even though he loved him, and describes a household in which parents did not speak much with their children. His father did not punish him. Instead, he told the boy to think about the horse’s death and to take better care of what had been entrusted to him in future.

The phrasing stayed with Meyer: his father emphasized that the horse had died before its time. A few days later, it was buried in the park by the lower lake, though Meyer clarifies that only its hooves were buried there, not the whole animal. The physical trace of that burial survives in family memory: Philipp once showed Leinen the place. In Meyer’s telling, the burial and his father’s warning make the accident endure beyond the afternoon itself, turning a frightened child’s experience into a lasting accusation of responsibility.

Memory and the Disputed Cause

Meyer recounts the episode after the deaths of his son, daughter-in-law, and grandson. Standing beside those graves, he had received condolences for hours before shutting himself away in his study. Leinen visits that evening, and the two men begin by playing chess as they used to. Meyer stops the game, opens the window, and tells the story without turning around. The horse’s death thus enters a conversation shaped by grief, but Meyer gives it its own remembered circumstances rather than reducing it to a passing comparison.

Leinen responds that the shirt could not have frightened the horse, arguing that horses see in black and white. Meyer smiles through tears and contradicts him, saying horses can see red and blue. The exchange does not establish exactly what caused the animal to rear: Meyer remembers that it reacted on seeing him, while the role of the shirt is disputed. That unresolved point keeps the memory between observable action and retrospective explanation. The horse’s fear and injury are certain within the account; the cause remains bound to the differing claims made by the two men.

Afterward, Meyer embraces Leinen and asks to be left alone. The next morning, Leinen finds the old chess set on the passenger seat of his car. The horse’s story is part of this restrained exchange between them: a memory of harm, blame, and care offered without a simple resolution. Its force depends not only on what the boy may have caused, but also on what he heard, what his father made him carry, and how the old man still remembers the animal’s suffering.