Funeral for a Dog: A Novel
Page 1
More praise for Funeral for a Dog
“[A] complex story about how people deal with love and loss…. Pletzinger does an admirable job of revealing intriguing characters without being heavy-handed or coy, and the story he tells is smart and well paved, no small feat considering the large scope and the messiness of the lives chronicled…. [Funeral for a Dog] is marked by accomplished writing, a slick translation, and intelligent takes on the absurdities of contemporary life.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Like Etgar Keret or Haruki Murakami, Pletzinger has found a translator who bridges the distance between two languages and almost makes it disappear. He should win a large, and devoted, American readership.”
—Jess Row, author of The Train to Lo Wu
“If Thomas Pletzinger’s ballsy novel is any indication, things are happening in German fiction right now that we owe it to ourselves to pay attention to.”
—John Wray, author of Lowboy
“A love triangle. A three-legged dog. Journalism. Sex. More sex. Sex in Hamburg, sex in Finland, sex next door to Moby—Thomas Pletzinger’s book has it all. A magnificent, emotional, haptic book. Actually, this is not a book, this is a rocket ship.”
—Saša Staniší, author of How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone
“[Funeral for a Dog] employs a surprisingly unique style to advance its unusual tale of storytellers and their self-deceptions…. [An] undeniably uncommon journey. Pletzinger is a unique young voice emerging from the hotbed of the German literary scene.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“We are looking at a young novelist who is going to make an amazing mark not only on German literature, but on world literature.”
—Gerald Stern, National Book Award–winning poet
“Funeral for a Dog reminds me of nothing so much as D. M. Thomas’s The White Hotel—the same astounding and precise imagination, the unflinching eye for human misery and perseverance, the lush sensual detail and nearly fantastic sense of moving through space and time.”
—Kim Barnes, author of A Country Called Home
“The kind of writing that makes us want to read the whole book as soon as possible.”
—David Varno, Words without Borders
“[Funeral for a Dog is] the rare experimental novel that, astonishingly, does not have its head up its own ass. Pletzinger has looked at the United States just as hard as he’s looked at everything else, and allowed me to see my own country in a new way.”
—Tom Bissell, author of Extra Lives
“Pletzinger’s debut is a real smash hit. It’s been a long time since a young German writer has thrown himself into the hurly-burly of life and literature with so much intelligence and bravado.”
—Wolfgang Höbel, Der Spiegel
“A love triangle story, a tale of self-discovery and a mystery, drastic and hip as well as structurally sophisticated and elegantly written.”
—Kirsten Riesselmann, Der Tagesspiegel
“Pletzinger writes a fast-paced story about cockfights, chainsaws, sex, air guitars, models, but always about love, life, happiness.”
—Matthias Kalle, Zitty Berlin
Funeral for a Dog
A NOVEL
Thomas Pletzinger
TRANSLATED BY ROSS BENJAMIN
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY
NEW YORK LONDON
Copyright © 2008 by Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln
The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut which is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
English translation copyright © 2011 by Ross Benjamin
Originally published in German under the title Bestattung eines Hundes.
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pletzinger, Thomas, 1975–
[Bestattung eines Hundes. English]
Funeral for a dog: a novel / Thomas Pletzinger; translated by
Ross Benjamin.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-0-393-08034-6
I. Benjamin, Ross. II. Title.
PT2716.L47B4713 2011
833'.92—dc22
2010039784
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.
Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT
For Carol Houck Smith
Funeral for a Dog
(On love as a relationship between the sexes there is nothing new to report, literature has depicted it in all its variations, once and for all, it is no longer a subject for literature that is worthy of the name—such pronouncements are being made; they fail to recognize that the relation between the sexes changes, that other love stories will take place.)
–Max Frisch–
hardly art, hardly garbage
–The Thermals–
Contents
August 6, 2005
Shut up and play
August 6, 2005
Animals, the Hearts of People
August 7, 2005
Shoot the Freak
August 7, 2005
Capoeira with Heckler & Koch
August 8, 2005
William Wordsworth vs. Robby Naish
August 8, 2005
Lua and the Third Death
August 9, 2005
August 9, 2005
Shitty City 2000
August 10, 2005
August 10, 2005
Acknowledgments
About the Author
About the Translator
Lugano, August 10, 2005
(I)
My dear Elisabeth,
You want to know where I’ve been? I’m sending you seven postcards and a stack of paper, 322 pages. This stack is about me. And about memory and the future. I’ve been reading and sorting all afternoon. You were right, Elisabeth: Svensson is a strange man, and: yes, there is a story here. Svensson’s children’s book is only the last chapter. He’s been carrying a whole suitcase of stories around with him, a suitcase full of…
[Image: Hamburg Volkspark Stadium, aerial view, 1999]
(II)
…tales told and secrets kept, full of stones and flowers. I’ve saved what I could. This stack of paper is my days with Svensson, my notes and interviews, Svensson’s desert and his rain forest, beer cans and streamers, dogs, rats, pigeons, gulls, horses, ravens, swans, snakes, butterflies, fish, the downtrodden animals of creation (black), Svensson’s dead, his Seraverde and his Williamsburg. Sometimes I feel like I’m Svensson, I’ve…
[Image: Monte Brè at Evening, poster by Daniele Buzzi, 1950]
(III)
…mixed up our stories. I asked the waiter with the sweaty mustache. Prego, he said, it’s Wednesday. My reply: Mille grazie e un altro bicchiere di vino per favore. So I’ve fallen out of time, but now I’m back in Lugano, today is Wednesday. Black plastic ducks are floating in the pool at the Lido Seegarten, a rat…
[Image: Vaccatione en Svizzera, illustrator unknown, 1925]
(IV)
…is waiting at the poolside, on the floating dock in the lake a heron is standing on green Astroturf. Time is a lake and memory a sad dog. Herons can fly extremely slowly when they want to. I’ve learned to observe such things again. You were right, Elisabeth: this Svensson is a strange man, but he’s no stranger than the rest of us. Our stories don’t fit on a newspaper page. I’m tired of newspaper pages, Elisabeth. Li
fe is a spiral, not a line.
[Image: Ticino Village Scene, poster by Daniele Buzzi, 1943]
(V)
I’m eating peanuts and have been feeding them to the rat. You were right, Elisabeth: the hotel is beautiful, but it’s decaying, as all beautiful things decay (roses, geraniums, plastic deck chairs). On the lakeside an old married couple is eating fish under strings of lights while Chopin plays from a tape, next to me is a freezer (the cords yanked out). The sun is setting.
[Image: Caffè del Porto, b/w, “Invierno 1939/40”]
(VI)
I’m sending you our story, Elisabeth. The rest is history and blind obedience (obbedienza cieca), and it’s rotting away with a three-legged German shepherd (Lua) at what is probably the deepest point in Lake Lugano (288 meters). No light penetrates down there, Svensson said, down there the fish are white and insanely beautiful.
[Image: Monte Brè at Morning, poster by Daniele Buzzi, 1950]
(VII)
Dear Elisabeth, I’ve learned: we don’t have to make such a big deal out of everything. I’m staying a few more days. You were right: there is a good Barbaresco in this region (Taleggio & Quartirolo). No cigarettes. I kissed a small, pretty woman and meant you. I’m tired. I’m taking the train back. I’ve thought about it.
Minä tulen sinne, rakkain terveisin,
Mandelkern
Daniel
[Image: Porlezza, 2001]
August 6, 2005
(And who exactly is Daniel Mandelkern?)
Elisabeth demanded a decision, and I left our apartment without making one. It can’t go on like this. My flight to Milan doesn’t leave Hamburg for an hour. I’m sitting alone and completely exhausted in the waiting area at Gate 8 (on the other side of the airfield, the pines on the edge of Niendorf). At Gate 7 two Italian businesswomen are joking around. I get up, I have to move so I don’t fall asleep. Somewhat farther down the corridor a newsstand: I buy a newspaper (Süddeutsche Zeitung), I buy a postcard (image: Hamburg Volkspark Stadium, aerial view, 1999), I see Semikolon brand notebooks. The only other place that carries them is a stationery store next to the Academy of Fine Arts on Lerchenfeld, which is always an all-day trip, so I buy three of them. I buy cigarettes. I’m starting to smoke again now, because smoking reduces fertility, smokers’ sperm don’t hold out as long (eventually their sperm give up). Cigarettes have gotten more expensive since my last pack. I buy coffee at a vending machine and go back to the gate, I tear the cellophane off the notebook and make a note of my fatigue and my headache. Then I make a note of the headlines in the Süddeutsche Zeitung of August 6–7, 2005:
Caesarean Risk
Craze for the Mobile Lifestyle
Air in Sunken Mini-Submarine Running Out
I’m writing because I always write when things get complicated. I’m alone, I could smoke. I could throw the notebooks into the garbage cans next to me (one red, one green, one blue, color-coded for trash separation). I should get up and go back, back to my wife.
Samsonite
How I got here: Elisabeth and I didn’t raise our voices, I left our apartment in the middle of the night and without closure (we fight in our indoor voices). Took the Svensson file from the kitchen table and carried my half-packed suitcase through the hallway, but then slammed the apartment door behind me much too hard and almost ran down the street in the light drizzle. Away from Elisabeth, the sound of the ridiculous rolling suitcase on the slabs of the sidewalk behind me is louder than expected (for your reporting trips, Elisabeth had said, putting the suitcase in my office). I turned off my phone so I could ignore her calls (she’ll want to have the last word, as always). Gave the taxi driver who took me from the Hoheluft Bridge to the airport an absurdly high tip (ransom). At the only staffed counter in the otherwise empty terminal, I opened my suitcase and buried my phone between suit and shirts (between recording device and shaver). I stuck my toothbrush in my shirt pocket. The ground personnel seemed to have been waiting for me. Milan? Yes. Identification? Herr Mandelkern? Yes. As I began to explain myself and my more-than-punctual arrival, the Lufthansa agent gave a routine laugh: as far as she was concerned, I could fold my whole life into my luggage as long as it stayed below the allowable weight limit (the scale showed 12.7 kilos). There was still a seat available on the earlier, direct flight, did I want it? Okay. At dawn I was the only passenger at the security checkpoint, I put the two folders full of research on Svensson next to my belt in the gray plastic tub. No, I said, I had nothing else with me (I had surrendered everything at check-in). The ring on my finger didn’t set off any alarm. Now I’m sitting here at six-thirty in the Hamburg Airport in the nearly empty waiting area at Gate 8, much too early, because I left our apartment in the middle of the night and without a word. I simply left.
Dirk Svensson?
I asked last Wednesday at the weekly editorial meeting, which Elisabeth leads, because the travel assignment was listed as “Dirk Svensson” on her updated monthly schedule and followed by my name. The passing thought of getting up immediately and leaving, of refusing the assignment outright.
Dirk Svensson: Interview and Profile (Mandelkern)
Elisabeth and I haven’t exchanged a personal word for days, and professionally she’s met me with stubborn resolve for weeks. She gave me the assignment as I returned her gaze aloofly and angrily (her urgent mouth). “Dirk Svensson: Interview and Profile” means a weekend’s less time for what I’d like to say privately to Elisabeth. I’ve heard of Svensson. You can’t escape his name these days, he’s written one children’s book and is probably on the verge of making a fortune. I’m not interested in children’s books or their authors, I don’t want to write a story about this Svensson, I could have said at the editorial meeting, I want to talk to you. But I remained seated and looked first at Elisabeth (red hair tied back off her neck) and then at my feet (green flip-flops). Why now? I asked, and Elisabeth gave a completely professional answer: If the piece couldn’t appear next week, she said, or the week after at the latest, then another newspaper would do the story. The appointment had presented itself today, Svensson had called and actually agreed to a meeting (the connection had been really bad). Svensson the man, Elisabeth said at the editorial meeting, the man remains hidden behind this one children’s book and its sales figures. I’d started the research, but then I passed the job on to her intern, because I’ve never been interested in children’s books. For weeks the editorial department has been abuzz with talk about him, and for weeks the story has been postponed. Svensson doesn’t want to travel, he cancels all his appointments, he lives alone with his dog, and apparently this dog is everything to him (a black German shepherd with three legs). Svensson’s exact place of residence is unknown to us: northeast of Milan, somewhere on Lago di Lugano. Elisabeth pushed the two black folders across the table to me. Mandelkern is the perfect man for this story, she explained at the editorial meeting, this assignment suited me better than anyone else. The trip to the anti-doping laboratory in Châtenay-Malabry would be reassigned to Harnisch, since he’s a former sportswriter (Harnisch is as athletic as a pencil). I’m an ethnologist and get the strange assignments from Elisabeth: Mandelkern writes about anthropological concepts like matrilineality and male childbed, so Mandelkern meets children’s book authors and their dogs. On Saturday (today) I would fly to Milan and return on Sunday (at four). Svensson is peculiar, said Elisabeth with a laugh, but profiles and strangeness are your specialties, Mandelkern.
Taleggio & Quartirolo
It’s Elisabeth’s diplomacy in front of our colleagues that I can’t bear, her defiant diplomacy, which, to appear fair, has to be unfair (the evenly distributed green of her eyes). Her intern had done the research, printed it out, and bound it, Elisabeth said later in the hallway outside the conference room, now it was my turn. She pointed to the black folders in my hand, then her telephone interrupted us. Elisabeth answered with her first name. You’ll definitely find Taleggio and Quartirolo down there, she whispered to me, as if I were ru
nning out to the Swiss gourmet deli on Grindelallee to pick up a few things (Christl’s Comestibles). And Barbaresco! That was on Wednesday: she wanted to get personal, I turned around and left. On Thursday we lived alongside and past each other: Elisabeth was asleep when I got home, I was asleep when she headed out (since I started working for Elisabeth’s department, our marriage has become more professional). On Friday morning we happened to meet in the kitchen. We should go out to eat tonight, I said, we can talk rationally on neutral terrain (Elisabeth’s red hair in the backlight like a halo, Elisabeth is a holy witch). Elisabeth’s reply: We drink too much. We don’t have to drink, I said, we have to talk.
Black Dogs
We arranged to meet in an extremely loud restaurant on Paulinen-platz (mandolin music and Italian stage noise). At least it’s from Italy, I said, meaning the wine. I wanted to begin the conversation with all due caution. Elisabeth’s reply: Svensson doesn’t have children either, even though he’s a children’s book author, he seems to be a strange man, maybe the two of you will get along. I noticed Elisabeth wasn’t smoking. I don’t think so, I shouted back, straining to laugh, he has a black dog with three legs, I’m averse to black dogs, starting with the color, black dogs stand guard at the gates of hell and wait. Elisabeth gulped her wine down quickly and refilled our glasses. I’d like to have your problems, she said, maybe there’s a good story there. We ordered and gazed into our glasses (Elisabeth’s slender neck when she swallows like a swan). When I asked later why it had to be this weekend, Elisabeth answered: Staff availability. Or would you have preferred to go to Châtenay-Malabry and test the moral content of Lance Armstrong’s frozen urine samples?
But Elisabeth doesn’t have my problems.
She ordered another wine, the same grape variety, this time a glass (Barbaresco). We still had some bottles in our apartment, Elisabeth said, and I replied only reluctantly: Okay. Not much later I opened one of those bottles and we started drinking in the kitchen (our kitchen), and didn’t speak much there either (she on the glass stovetop, I on the floor next to the cases of wine). I ignored the two black folders full of research on Svensson lying on the kitchen table. She informed me she was giving up smoking, like this and that female editor, she talked about yoga and her thirty-eighth birthday. I knew all these things already, I began, these days we only spoke on this surface level, I really needed to talk again sometime to the woman I’d married, we should have an actual conversation again sometime (we’re circling a child). Elisabeth stood up, put down her wine glass and took a breath: