Funeral for a Dog: A Novel

by Thomas Pletzinger

  Aeroporti Milano Malpensa

  With my plastic bag on a bench next to the bus stop (the airport building dull green, fields of light and glass facades). “The best Malpensa-Lugano connection is the Airport Express!” reads the itinerary that Elisabeth’s intern wrote (a greasy person with a telephone voice and an absurd talent for data banks and timetables). Not far away the small woman in the tank top again, now holding the sleepy boy’s hand. She brushes a damp strand of hair from his forehead with her index finger and looks into the emptiness beyond the buses; she is his mother (but above all she has an inscrutable beauty, a slender beauty). Her legs are short, but much too delicate to seem ungraceful. She looks over at me briefly, then she disappears behind a bus (www.airportbus.ch). I could carry her suitcase (I could offer her my life), but she’s apparently traveling without baggage.

  Biglietto di andata no 133567

  Il biglietto di corsa semplice è valido per il giorno cui è stato rilasciato. La mancata effettuazione del viaggio per causa di forza maggiore o per fatto proprio del passagero non dà diritto ad alcun rimborso, né alla proroga di validità.

  Malpensa—Chiasso—Lugano

  Sometimes people find themselves on a journey together. To my surprise, the small, pretty woman with the boy gets on the bus to Lugano too, this time she’s sitting a few rows behind me. The bus follows entrance ramps onto the highway, traveling at first over flat land (prefab warehouses, Parmalat and Danone factories, palm trees), at one point through a residential area (the backs of five-story houses, laundry between the windows, lots of pink). I read on in the Svensson file: Dirk Svensson, born in 1973 in the Ruhr area and grew up there, the photo in the publisher’s catalogue shows him smiling in front of a stone house, he’s wearing a shirt with rolled-up sleeves and suit pants. He’s kneeling next to a black dog (you can’t tell if it has only three legs: Svensson is blocking the view). His biography sounds like mine (his shirt rolled up like mine). At Chiasso on the Swiss border, the boy stands on the seat and takes the passports out of his backpack, his mother is asleep now (years ago I learned a smattering of Finnish). I hold up Svensson’s book and wink at him, the boy raises his hand (then the bus station on the mountain over the city, the water is shining in the sun like metal, the boats on it like scratches). When we get off the bus and the boy actually waves good-bye to me, I could go over and speak to the two of them, I could offer the small, pretty mother a cigarette, but she pulls the boy across the plaza toward the city and disappears into a gray concrete entrance (Funicolare, pigeons). I take a taxi to Piazza Manzoni and sit down in a café (three mineral waters, the possibility of another life).

  Piazza Manzoni, Lugano, 2:30 PM

  I’m waiting for Svensson. I’ll have two hours to ask my questions. Actually, I should skim through the file one more time, but in my fatigue the letters blur (headache). I wait with a view of the fountain. Lugano is a city that is aware of its beauty: through a gap between the houses shimmers the lake, at times a blindingly white sail, chestnuts, ginkgos and palm trees in the early afternoon light. I could get up and leave the folders here, I could wait in the hotel for the return journey (I could refuse). The sun slants steeply on the cobblestones, children and pigeons under the tables, the sparrows on the breadbaskets of the cafés are casually waved away (friendly sparrows are compliments). The light green of the branches hanging toward the water, a boy is feeding swans (8) hamburger buns from a McDonald’s bag, couples have their photos taken in front of the fountain (their faces happy for the duration of the picture). I’m much too early here too. I think of Elisabeth and the numbness that my departure has left behind. Then, despite everything: that I’m not appropriately dressed for an interview (flip-flops and red wine stains). In the Manor department store I buy a clean shirt, I buy another pack of cigarettes (Muratti 2000), I buy postcards (image 1: Monte Brè at Evening, image 2: Vacation in Switzerland, image 3: Ticino Village Scene—all three: Museum of Design, Zurich). I walk along the shore in the direction of the casino, at the Riva Albertolli I sit down on a bench by the water (red; the last surge of pain directly above my nose). The green pedal boats lie waiting in the water, reluctantly I write down

  —Who exactly is Dirk Svensson?

  —Why should I be the one to ask him this question?

  —Where does he live and why there?—How does he live?

  —Why a children’s book?

  —Is Svensson first and foremost an author or illustrator?

  —Can you be two things at the same time?

  and suddenly there’s the small, pretty woman with the boy (ice cream on his T-shirt) sitting two benches down. She wipes his mouth clean and then licks his ice cream off her finger, she takes a cigarette out of his backpack. She looks over at me, and this time she laughs. In front of her stands a small suitcase. Up to this point we’ve taken the same path, but soon I’ll meet Svensson. We’ll go our separate ways, we’ll have to part. I concentrate and write

  —Can you want two things at the same time?

  —Does the black dog really exist? And if so:

  —Where is its fourth leg?

  —Who exactly is Daniel Mandelkern?

  Lua

  I’m early, Svensson is early. There really is a black dog with three legs standing on the deck and coughing as the boat docks (Macumba in blue writing on the pale wood). Dirk Svensson pushes the gearshift into neutral with the ball of his thumb and throws the line to me (the children’s book author in a purple T-shirt and taller and heavier than in the pictures). Hello, I say, it’s very nice to meet you. Svensson shuts off the outboard and doesn’t reply, he’s wearing a cap (Los Angeles Lakers, the purple faded, but not the gold). Daniel Mandelkern, I say, but Svensson is looking past me. Macumba scrapes along the green pedal boats. Svensson suddenly ignores his boat, he gives me a nod, me and my tugging at the rope, he climbs across a few pedal boats to the shore. The small, pretty woman with the boy is still sitting two benches down, she’s sitting there in her green, in her beauty, and waiting with the boy in the shade of a linden tree. Svensson leaves me standing there and goes to her (remain polite and get all this over with). Tuuli, he says, and reaches for her wrist and the nape of her neck. The woman gets up, Svensson pulls her up, her back bolt upright, the dog coughs, the dirty swans of Lugano hiss, yellowed as if from cigarettes, the dog barks. Quiet, Lua, says Svensson, quiet.

  Shut up and play

  THE CITY IS FUNCTIONING AGAIN, THE GARBAGE IS GETTING collected, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway is drivable again, and there are cars on it. The wreckage is being removed, they’ve stopped searching for survivors. My goal tonight is to remove the last splinters of the past few weeks, so I close the door from outside and buy another beer at Giacomo’s. Eventually I’ve had as much as I can take, so I hail a taxi at the entrance ramp and say, Enid’s, at which point the driver turns around and asks why I want to visit his mother, and when I look at him blankly, he says it was only a joke. Great joke, taxi driver with cowboy hat, I think, today I’m in no mood for jokes, today I’m in the mood for a tabula rasa. Lua is black, at night he can hide unnoticed in the taxi’s footwell despite his size, he waits on the roadside and jumps into the car when I open the door. I say, Enid’s, the bar, please, Manhattan Avenue, next exit, and so that he doesn’t ask any more questions but instead keeps listening to country as if I weren’t there at all, I say that I stepped on a nail, inflamed wound, that makes even the shortest distance too far. I understand, says the taxi driver, my mother, God bless her, was named Enid, that’s why. Seventeen years ago she was run over with seven shopping bags in her arms in front of Zabar’s on the Upper West Side, on my birthday. By a Pakistani taxi driver. The shopping bags were for my birthday party. Really? I ask. Really, he says, that’s why I became a taxi driver, the Pakistanis and Indians and blacks drive like Italians. I’m out here to keep the streets clean. Really? I ask. Really, he says, and after his mother’s death he just stopped going to school, good Lord, maybe it’s a coincidence, on his birthda
y and the anniversary of his mother’s death someone wants a ride to a bar named Enid’s. Would he mind not talking so much, I ask, I have my own problems. The taxi driver takes off his cowboy hat and looks in the rearview mirror, he’s not much older than I, in New York there’s usually a language barrier between driver and passenger, for the safety of both. But today the taxi driver, according to his ID card, is one Jack Vonderlippe, stuck to his Plexiglas window are stars and stripes and pictures of the New York fire department and police, New York’s Finest. A New York taxi driver named Vonderlippe, and there’s even a little flag dangling from the mirror with the inscription “Don’t mess with Texas—not even in NYC!”

  I take a sip from my beer can, Vonderlippe looks at me in the rearview mirror. No open containers in the car, he quotes in a dull voice, no open containers, no animals, no weapons, says Vonderlippe with the law behind him. Laws are in vogue these days, Lua barks. I can’t close the beer can, I say, at which point Vonderlippe says that he has to expel me from the vehicle anyway because of the dog. Okay, I say, nothing can be done about it, sometimes there’s no way back, once something’s open it’s open, at least when it comes to beer cans. In the middle of the BQE Vonderlippe puts on his hazard lights and pulls over. Couldn’t you at least let me out at the next exit? I ask, but Vonderlippe just shakes his head, this is no time or place for compromises, so Lua and I get out. Vonderlippe immediately drives off and leaves us with my beer can in the middle of a bridge over the roofs of Brooklyn, good luck with your foot, he yells out the window. Happy birthday, asshole, I shout, and want to throw the beer can after him, but these days overreactions lead to nothing but trouble. And I don’t have a nail in my foot anyway, I think, I have a splinter in my heart, my God, I’ll just walk.

  Lately I’ve been avoiding walking to Enid’s, the way there leads past too much. On the bridge there’s no shoulder to speak of, the cars honk, a helicopter with a searchlight flies over me, but they’re not searching for people with beer cans, they’re searching for terrorists. My telephone rings, it’s Tuuli or Felix, I don’t answer. Since Monday I’ve stopped answering when Tuuli or Felix calls. Today is Saturday, on Monday I moved out. Because of Tuuli and Felix I’ve stopped walking to Enid’s, my old apartment on Lorimer Street stands in the way, the two of them are living there for now. They lugged his old leather suitcase up the stairs, his cameras and Tuuli’s books, Tuuli her pregnant belly. I liked the apartment, the three rooms and the leaky roof, the smell of the bakery, but eventually there’s only so much you can take. I left on friendly terms, at least it looks that way, the lease is still in my name, the telephone too. Now I live with Lua on a sofa owned by a sculptor who’s in Holland welding scrap metal into art in public space. When Tuuli or Felix calls, Svensson Home comes up on the display, but I don’t want to talk to Tuuli or Felix. We’re not alone, we’re three, we said, but we miscalculated.

  Pressed against the plastic guardrail, Lua and I slowly make our way across the bridge and jump down the slope on the other side. In a few weeks the three of us will be four. The telephone rings again, I trip over some black plastic bags and spill beer on my pants, but I don’t answer. When I find a hole in the barbed wire for Lua, I cut my hand, and when I myself land on the sidewalk, I twist my ankle. I curse and Lua barks. Apparently I’m in Greenpoint. That’s good, that’s where I wanted to be. Under a streetlight two old men are sitting in wheelchairs and smoking, I ask them for the time and for cigarettes. The younger one says, almost midnight. I don’t smoke, but for weeks I’ve been pocketing one cigarette after another. I collect cigarettes. First you’re a nonsmoker, and then suddenly you’re collecting cigarettes. Tuuli will eventually want to start smoking again, and then I’ll be able to offer her some. I ask where Manhattan Avenue is and the older of the two old men says, the hospital’s that way, as he gives me the cigarette. Are you okay, young man? The other old man gives me a light. My hand is bleeding on the cigarette and on my shirt, Lua and I are limping, I have a beer can in my hand and a cigarette in my mouth, I inhale and inadvertently cough smoke into the face of the man in the wheelchair. No time for the hospital, I cough, we still have something to take care of.

  By the time we get to Enid’s the beer can is empty, and I buy a Rolling Rock at the bar. What happened to you, asks the bartender. Nothing, I say, and as a matter of fact for a few weeks not much has been happening. Tuuli, who may be the love of my life, and my friend Felix are making phone calls on my dime, they’re probably fucking between calls, Felix is probably fucking Tuuli surrounded by my furniture, my books. Tuuli is seven months pregnant, Felix is taking care of Tuuli, I now take care of the dog. They always call me when they’ve finished fucking, Svensson Home appears on my display. But because eventually there’s only so much grieving you can take, tonight I’m wearing Tuuli’s purple T-shirt, that’s a first step away from the widower I am. I have to give things new meaning, I think, on the purple you can scarcely see the bloodstains. Can I quickly wash the blood off myself in the back? I ask, and the bartender says, sure, honey, but it actually looks really good on the purple. Of course, I think, wounds and scars make a man interesting, my blood is a fashion statement. The bartender is probably a fashion designer, and fashion is going crazy, so the bartender is going crazy. In the Enid’s storeroom I wash the blood off my fingers. What madness, I think, and watch myself in the fluorescent light over the mirror as I down the new beer in one swig. My telephone rings, Svensson Home. I don’t answer, I take another bottle of Rolling Rock out of a case. Tomorrow I’ll get a haircut, I think, holding my hand next to my face, the blood from the cut mingles with the water. I look myself in the eyes and ask myself how it could have gone this far. From the hole in my hand blood is running down my arm and dripping into the sink. Nena is playing in the bar, here in Enid’s they’re at the forefront of retro, time is passing much too quickly for me too, and as I watch myself burping and crying, there’s a woman with a camera standing behind me, she brushes my hair from my forehead, just a second, please, she says, can you stay like that?

  Two hours later Lua and I are sitting on a stoop next to Enid’s. The woman with the camera is taking pictures, I open another beer. She’s wearing black pants and a black blouse, she has black curly hair and dark eyes, her laughter flashes in the darkness. My hand has stopped bleeding. Lua gets up, hobbles across the street and through an open steel door into the Polish bakery and comes back with a loaf of bread. A baker chases him into the street, fucking dog, he shouts, and stops when he sees the woman with the camera. She takes pictures. It’s all just a fashion statement, absolutely, I say to Lua. We share the bread and the beer, and maybe the dog says, strange times. At which point I raise my drink to him and he takes another bite. Lua reserves his wisdom for the decisive moments, I’m drunk and full of resolutions. Things have to be different from now on, I say to Lua, and kiss him on his scruff, but how’s Tuuli doing? No idea, says Lua, why don’t you ask her. And how am I supposed to do that? Call, says Lua, or even simpler: pick up the phone! But it’s not that simple, I think, don’t pick up under any circumstances, I resolve, today the splinter is getting removed. Lua puts his foreleg on my knee and looks into the camera. Stay like that, says the woman with the camera, you two look good. Can you give the dog some more beer? she asks, and takes pictures. When the dog is drunk, I say, we have good conversations. A dog isn’t a parrot, says the woman. Lua got some bread, I say, petting the dog between the ears. You know, Lua, I say, lately I haven’t been getting enough sleep, lately I haven’t really been myself. Come with me, the woman with the camera says, and walks to a Polish corner store two blocks down, you can’t go to a party empty-handed. So we buy two six-packs.

  A GIRL WITH RED hair and a birdcage without a bird is climbing the stairs behind us and says, I’ve lost hope. What? asks a short Mexican guy with a pink water gun in his hand. On the top floor it’s loud, everywhere people are raising their arms to the music, everyone’s wearing white. I’ve lost hope, repeats the girl with the birdc
age. Let’s hope I get the bastard, says the Mexican, hiding behind a sofa on which some people in white are balancing with their arms in the air. Kiki Kaufman, says the host to the woman with the camera, kissing her on the neck. He apparently knows Lua too, good evening, Mr. Dog, he says. Lua doesn’t say anything, but instead lies down in the middle of the loft under a gigantic, dust-brown Christmas tree with purple glass ball ornaments. Behind a cardboard Dolph Lundgren, a tall black guy in a white shirt is kneeling on the floor, he leaps over Lua in a single bound and aims his Super Soaker full of red wine at the Mexican guy, who defends himself. Showdown, he yells, die, motherfucker, die! They both empty their magazines, boom, boom, bye-bye, shouts the black guy, cha-cha-cha, yells the Latino. White is innocence and red is war, says the host, with red wine you see the hits better, there’s beer in the bathtub, and yes, there’s a truckload of plastic toys hanging on the walls, salvage items, there’s liquor on the roof, don’t ash on the Christmas tree, it’s four years old, fire-extinguishing water is in the buckets by the window, piss from the roof into the neighbor’s garden in the back. I’m Pierre, says the host, make yourself at home. Take care of yourself, says Kiki Kaufman. Pierre grabs her hand and pulls her along behind him onto the roof. I’m Svensson, I say. I’ve lost hope, sings the girl with the birdcage. Want a beer anyway? I ask, but she dances through the room and isn’t listening to me anymore. On the edge of the bathtub a gorgeous Chinese girl in a snow-white suede coat is sitting and cooling her feet in the beer bottles. My shoes are too small, she says. You can have mine, I say.