His name was Dieter

By Khoi Pham

His name was Dieter. I met him at our chess club’s annual gathering. That year, he was sixty-three, tall and slim, his silver hair was thinning and revealed a high and handsome forehead.

I was the only Asian person there, and one of the few young faces in a crowd of elderly people—in this country, being under forty already counts as young. He came over and shook my hand.

“You’re Vietnamese?”

“Yeah.”

“From South Vietnam, right? Where I live, most of the Vietnamese folks are from there.”

“There’s no more South or North. That ended a long time ago.”

“Oh, right. At first, I thought you were Korean. I love Korean movies.”

He started telling me about one he really liked. I think it was one of the movies that was quite famous in the early 2000s. His eyes lit up, in a way you often see in someone starving for conversation. His hands moved around constantly as he told me the story. When he got to the emotional parts, his whole body swayed. That reserved manner he had at first was completely gone.

The second time, not long after, I spotted him one morning at a café beneath the old town church. In this little town of fewer than thirty thousand people, you often run into people—people who look or feel familiar—by accident or by chance. He was reading a newspaper. Still the same look: worn jacket, old jeans, slippers flapping along the ground. He saw me and waved me over.

“Morning! Day off today?” I said.

“Morning. Nah, I’m out collecting rent.”

I didn’t quite get what he meant until he stood up and spoke to the café owner. I saw him pull out a thick stack of fifty and hundred-euro notes. The owner handed him a few more bills, and he bundled them all up with a rubber band before slipping them into his worn-out brown bag. He thanked the café owner and turned to me.

“See, you have to go early to collect rent. You can’t always catch them if you come too late.”

He invited me to ride with him around town. A blue Skoda with a manual stick shift, no digital display. We passed the market, the lakeside hotel, a Russian supermarket. At each stop, he pointed: “That one belongs to my family.” I thought he was joking. 

Later, I found out he wasn’t. Some mornings, I’d see him by chance, still carrying that same faded bag as he went around to collect rent.

You’d never have guessed it, just by the way he looked or carried himself.

***

We Vietnamese have a saying for people like him: “fated to suffer.” It wasn’t like he lacked money; his ancestors had left him plenty. Yet every morning, rain or shine, he’d drag his slippers around town, practically begging stylish, well-dressed tenants to pay rent. Weekly, monthly. It was like he was the one who was asking for money, not the other way around. 

His younger brother, who I’d sometimes see in town, was a completely different story: expensive cars, designer clothes, slicked-back hair. You’d never have guessed they were brothers.
Once, I teased him:

“You should get married and have some kids, you know. What’s all that money for, if not to share it?”

“Me? When I die…When I die, I’ll burn all my money. I won’t leave a single cent to anyone.”

I never knew if he meant it.

Then, for a few months, I didn’t see him. Back then, I was getting pretty busy with my new job and our first-born child. Even if I had time, there was no way to reach him. He didn’t use a phone or have an email address.

Then one summer evening, I ran into him again at the club. He was carrying the familiar brown bag and handed me a bundle wrapped in newspaper.

“Wild boar meat. Hunted on our family’s land. They’d destroy the crop if you don’t take them down.”

“Why didn’t  you hire someone to do it for you?“, I said, “Why makes life harder at your age?”

He smiled and didn’t answer my question. He showed me a jacket someone had given him and a Chinese smartwatch I instantly recognized as one of those twenty-euro ones from the flea market.

“Look, it counts your steps, even shows the weather, here, you tap it like this, like this…”

I promised myself I’d get him a decent smartphone one day.

Sometime later, he invited me to his home. It was way up on the fifth floor of an old apartment building. The place was near empty, the only thing that stood out was a large bookshelf in the living room. I noticed some rare chess books and a few philosophy titles. I asked him about them. He lit up with excitement. Behind his black-rimmed glasses, his eyes sparkled again, like they had when he talked about the movies back in the day. He turned on his computer and showed me a few e-books he’d collected. It was an old Compaq, the kind you used to find in many internet cafés in the early 2000s, still running Windows XP. He asked:

“My computer’s been really slow lately. I think I need more RAM. You studied computers, right? Think you could help?”

I told him it was way too old and would be better off in a museum than at someone’s home. He should just replace it. He nodded.

“I’ll do it, I’ll do it…”

I took the chance to ask:

“You should replace your car too. The new ones are safer, and more comfortable.”

He just shrugged without a word. I figured he’d forgotten.

But a few months later, one Sunday morning, we met again at the same café. He patted me on the shoulder and gave a nod toward the door. He wanted to show off his new car. It was a secondhand car bought at a local car dealer. He was proud. Said the mileage was low and it ran smoothly.

I told him it was a great car. He smiled, his eyes squinting with joy.

***

Not long after that, someone from the club gave me the news: Dieter had passed away. He was gone before spending much time in the car he’d been so proud of.

Dieter had a history of heart trouble and had suffered a stroke before, so the hospital had implanted an artificial valve in his heart. Normally, he was supposed to go in for regular checkups to make sure it was still working. But he forgot. Maybe he didn’t want to bother, maybe he didn’t want to spend money, or maybe he just didn’t think about it. All of that sounded like him. I’ll never know, nor do I ever get to ask.

One night, the valve must have failed. He likely passed in his sleep. The next morning, a relative came by, knocked for a long time, got no answer, and opened the door with a spare key. That’s when they found him.

He left behind his books, the recently bought car, the old Compaq he never got around to replacing, his worn clothes, the brown bag I’d seen him carry around, and the flea-market smartwatch someone had given him. He left no will, and no one to burn his money like he once said he would.

As we Vietnamese say: “Life is borrowed, death is returning home.” He had struggled long enough. I think he passed peacefully. He never once complained about being sick.

Isn’t that right, dear Dieter?

Khoi Pham is a Vietnam-born and now Germany-based computer forensics analyst. Though he does not work in the field of literature, he enjoys reading and writing as ways to reflect on memories, losses, and the struggles of modern life. Having previously written only on his personal blog, this is one of his first attempts to have his work published in English.