Funeral for a Dog: A Novel

by Thomas Pletzinger

  Grace’s breast moves in my hand as I dial Tuuli’s number, Svensson Home. Grace is asleep or pretending to be asleep. If Felix answers, I’ll hang up, I decide, and with each ring in the receiver, with each inhalation, with each exhalation, I say to myself what I’ll say to Tuuli: the two of you stop calling me, get your own telephone number, do whatever you want, but give me my books back, give me my plants back, and what about the plates and cups, what am I supposed to eat off and drink from? If the two of you could see me now, you’d be surprised how thin I am, Svensson’s all skin and bones, the old Svensson has almost disappeared. Fuck and live wherever you want, but if you could see me now, Tuuli, if you could see me now, you’d be worried. Grace wakes up, I trace my finger around her nipple, the sunlight is pouring into the room and I’m in the middle of it, on the fire escape sits a crow, the porcelain dog is still staring, Grace’s nipple is so much darker, it contracts so much more than Tuuli’s. Do you know any German? I ask. You’re my first one, says Grace. She turns on her side, she’s not interested in the telephone either. I count the tattoos just to the left of her spine, down her whole back, the characters I can’t read. I lay my other ear on Grace’s hip, look directly into the sun and grab her from behind between the legs, maybe because I have to, when someone picks up the phone. I say, I just want to see your face, Tuuli, that’s all. But then it’s Felix who answers and says the boy was born on Saturday.

  August 6, 2005

  (Master of chairs, master of chickens)

  In my head this image remains: Elisabeth in late summer under a village linden between Fischland and Darss, leaning on the hood of my R4, her red dress (second wedding not in white!) and the dahlias in her left hand, singing “The Linden Tree,” Am Brunnen vor dem Tore, / Da steht ein Lindenbaum, at her side children wrapped in towels on the way back from the beach. How she then goes down on her knees next to a little girl and points at me, that man over there is named Mandelkern and is now my husband (the red of the dress and the towel’s green fight). Elisabeth laughs, I laugh too.

  Lua

  Now the small, pretty mother is laughing and the dog is coughing. I’m standing with the rope in my hand under an alley of lindens on the shore of Lake Lugano and observing Svensson (in the sunlight the fine drops of the linden flowers, which will now be sticking to our windshield in Hamburg). Svensson lets go of the small woman’s hand, the boy stands next to his mother and observes the three-legged dog on the boat. The animal is a kind of German shepherd, black and old, he has a light spot on his chest and stands on his foreleg coughing on the boat’s bench, or maybe he’s barking, I can’t tell the difference (fatigue). The dirty swans turn away. I don’t understand what Svensson is saying, he’s gesturing at the boat and the dog, he’s pointing at me, then out at the lake. Finally he holds out his cap to the boy, but the boy doesn’t take the cap. When Svensson then tries to shake his hand, the boy evades him and starts to climb across two or three pedal boats toward the boat (Svensson awkwardly following). The boy looks past Svensson to his mother. The sun has now sunk lower over the smooth water, occasionally a light breeze comes out of nowhere, and the dog stops his coughing (the lake suddenly like plastic wrap). The small, pretty woman (Tuuli) takes another two drags and again stamps out her cigarette with her heel.

  Who exactly is Daniel Mandelkern?

  I’m a journalist, I say, Daniel Mandelkern. Then I apologize to the small, pretty woman for not having introduced myself sooner, I’m here to conduct an interview with Svensson, I’m actually an ethnologist, but I’m currently working as a freelance cultural journalist. She smiles (she keeps her eye on the boy). So it’s Mandelkern, Manteli in my language, she laughs, Karvasmanteli (Manteli must mean “almond” too). The success of Svensson’s book is really remarkable, I say (awkwardly), of course I’m not the only one whose interest has been aroused, and: I find it equally remarkable that for the whole journey we had the same destination.

  There are more important things,

  she says, going around me and my outstretched hand, you’re not going to get anywhere with your interview today, Karvasmanteli, just come along (she speaks slowly and clearly). Svensson jumps ashore again, and tries to help her across the pedal boats, but she too steers clear of Svensson. He holds his hands apologetically in the air. Svensson and I watch as she sits down on the deck between the dog and the boy. She talks to the boy, she seems to be explaining the dog’s three legs (Finnish is a soft language). Finally Svensson asks: You’re Mandelkern? In reply I repeat: yes, it’s very nice to meet you, we have an appointment here this afternoon, Riva Albertolli, right? Svensson looks at me silently. I’m holding the plastic bag with my notebooks, postcards, and shirts in one hand and the small woman’s suitcase in the other (in my head: Elisabeth in the bathroom; the drizzle on the chestnut trees as I ran off last night). I’m early, I say to Svensson, my baggage is still on its way, I’d be glad to wait here for you. In the sunlight between the lindens a few old men play chess, panama hats and bright summer shirts (I could join them). But Svensson shakes his head: Climb aboard and come along, he says, or stay here, it’s completely up to you, Mandelkern. You decide (memory is bulky baggage).

  hairpins and the deeper water

  Here in Lugano there’s no wind, the mountains on the right and left are wearing thin clouds, near the shore the lake is a translucent green, but after a few meters the bottom is already no longer visible. Svensson backs the boat between the pedal boats into the deeper water, then he shifts into forward, accelerating so suddenly that the boat rises steeply. The heavy dog loses his balance and, lying on his side, slides across the wet deck (his foreleg a frantic scratching on wood). Tuuli with the Finnish passport falls toward me, her head lies briefly on my shoulder (she clutches the boy immediately with both arms). From up close I don’t smell any trace of her cigarettes, the light hair on the nape of her neck is sticky, I think of milk. Svensson apologizes, the boat slows down. The dog struggles to his feet, the boy closes his eyes, a hairpin falls on the deck and glimmers in the puddle (for blonde women there are golden hairpins, says Elisabeth, for dark-haired women there are black ones, but for redheads there are none. My reply: girls with freckles and red hair are honored guests in the devil’s lair, followed by Elisabeth’s laughter). I pick up the hairpin, dry it off, and give it back to Tuuli. The dog is coughing again, now the boy is crying after all, one of the yellow swans soars into the air and follows the boat.

  Daniel Mandelkern?

  In the afternoon Elisabeth will be going for a run along the canal, singing Celentano (Isekanal). The summer of 2003 was a summer of record-breaking heat. I know where my name comes from: my parents called themselves Mandler (they had to flee anyway). Elisabeth calls orgasms milky moments. I never liked telemarketing. Ethnology is a science, it’s about the eye of a stranger on human groups. My grandfather is said to have gone bald too (on my mother’s side). It’s not up for discussion, Elisabeth said, I’m wearing red when we get married! Genealogically I’m not Jewish, but I am circumcised. Elisabeth is five years older than I, but doesn’t look it, she says: I have a great metabolism. I’m not a practicing Catholic, but I remember my first confession. To write about art is art. In Hamburg I’ve moved four times: Dithmarscher Strasse, Schulterblatt, Marthastrasse, Bismarckstrasse, and I’ve always lived with women. My father’s marriage to the youngest daughter of a member of the Quickborn Catholic youth movement in postwar Essen was problematic solely due to the age difference (he died in 1974, she in 1990). I’ve slept with twelve women. I speak German, English, a little bit of French, Swedish, Finnish, miserable Italian. To write about sports is art too. I manage as everyone manages. Elisabeth has stopped taking the pill, now she wants to have a child. I want you to decide, she says.

  Why a children’s book?

  Svensson steers the boat slowly and in wide curves across the smooth lake. The dog lifts his foreleg onto the railing and barks at the water’s surface (focused and dull as if something were there). Svensson puts his h
and on the dog’s head. When a gray motorboat approaches, Svensson says customs, passports (Guardia di Finanza). He decelerates with a quick hand motion, the motor sputters, there’s a smell of gas (multihued streaks on the smooth water). Macumba drifts on the lake. Here is the deepest point, Svensson says to the boy, 288 meters, no light penetrates down there, down there all the fish are white. The boy slowly makes his way to the middle of the boat (can children conceive of depth?). We have our passports ready, but the man at the steering wheel sees Svensson and the black dog, he shouts something Italian, Svensson shouts back. Both give a thumbs-up. The customs boat turns away with a deep roar of its motor, Macumba rocks alarmingly.

  I had a fleeting acquaintance with Elisabeth

  She entered the office, ABC Market and Opinion Polls, a tight Union Jack T-shirt over a pregnant belly (short hair, a dark henna red), and for a whole autumn sat two computers down from me every day, including Sundays. Sometimes I listened to her, she was efficient. We rarely talked (I smoked on the balcony during the break, she drank tea in the kitchen), and when it got too cold to smoke on the balcony, it must have been November 1996, overnight she became my superior for the first time (supervisor). One evening after work, as I walked through the snow a few meters behind her on the way to the Hamburger Strasse U-Bahn station, she sang softly to herself, “There are some who are in darkness / And the others are in light / And you see the ones in brightness / Those in darkness drop from sight.” A few weeks later she was gone. Our colleagues assumed the child had been born. On the supermarket studies she’d been the best interviewer from the start, the manager said later in a training session, her voice had exactly the right register for market research, a frequency that sang resistance to pieces.

  master of chairs, master of chickens

  Svensson spreads his arms. This is where we live, he says (a children’s book author and his three-legged dog). A narrow but tall stone house surrounded by cypresses, an oleander, and a gigantic sycamore. Svensson has moored Macumba to the dock and helps us ashore one after another: first Tuuli, then the boy, then me, and finally the dog. In front of us there’s a stone table and two stone benches covered with moss and pine needles (the benches shouldered by lions), next to them garden chairs with flaking white lacquer. Stainless garden chairs, an inflatable plastic armchair (blue, not much air). Also: wicker chairs, a few wooden chairs with warped and cracked plywood seats (on two of them large stones), next to them garden lounge chairs with mildewed cushions, also bare lounge chairs. And still more: a chair made of green lacquered metal (with canvas upholstery), folding chairs made of pale red wood, a granite table with two granite benches, white plastic chairs, blue plastic chairs, pink plastic chairs, four green children’s chairs with a red children’s table. There are terra-cotta pots, intact ones and broken ones, big ones and small ones, upright ones, overturned ones, empty ones and planted ones (tomatoes, herbs, kumquats). There’s a circular saw and a stack of gray plastic pipes and rain gutters, next to them bags of cement. Behind and off to the side of the house a shed, next to the shed the garbage: a heap of black plastic bags, cardboard boxes, a boat’s mast, a printer and a computer monitor with smashed screen (a surprised mouth, toothless). On a jutting branch of the gigantic sycamore hangs a child’s wooden swing, a basketball hoop is screwed to the trunk. Under it a Ping-Pong table (I could challenge Svensson).

  against the fox

  Svensson leads us around the property. A small blue car with open driver’s-side door is parked at the edge of the woods (FIAT 128 Sport L), covered in ivy and moss. Standing on the Fiat are two bored roosters (brown, white). Svensson introduces them: This is William Wordsworth, he says, and here we have Robby Naish. Under the oleander another chicken is pecking around in the wilted flowers on the ground. Daisy Duck, says Svensson, the hen. The white rooster crows, the boy laughs: cock-a-doodle-doo. Tuuli kneels next to him and, shaking her head, watches Svensson scatter seeds in the Fiat and slam the door. For a home, says Svensson, you need seventy-seven chairs, three chickens and a dog to guard against the fox.

  Heiligengeistfeld

  At first we didn’t recognize each other. Because her hair was long and the T-shirt with the British flag long since discarded, five years later Elisabeth and I again worked for months in the same building without talking to each other (I never managed to find the T-shirt). Then it was she who rammed her tray into my back in the Gruner + Jahr cafeteria at noon and didn’t apologize until early evening in the Baumwall U-Bahn station. She recited the prescribed salutation of the market and opinion polling company: Hello-my-name-is, I’m-calling-on-behalf-of, jogging my memory (her voice sings resistance to pieces). We talked about this and that, such as the port (the launches and cruise ships), her editorial department (Brigitte culture section) and my freelance work (GEOkompakt). Elisabeth seemed glad to see me, but when I asked her how long it had been since our sad interlude in market research (Esso, Wal-Mart), her child must already be five by now, between St. Pauli and Heiligengeistfeld Elisabeth suddenly said that she had to get off here, here was her home (she actually said: here is my home!), even though she’d previously mentioned the Generals’ Quarter.

  Yoko Mono

  Elisabeth is a sober woman. She steered me through that evening and through the things that had to be clarified, places of residence, visions, and finally bodies. The whole time she looked me in the eyes (her voice a taxi). I’d jumped off the train behind her, and then she’d taken me along to a bar on Markt-strasse (Yoko Mono). She ordered wine, Barbera, she called out, with her right hand she bunched up her hair and tucked it behind her ears. I’d already gotten used to her face. When I quoted from an old book after the third glass (red hair, red hair, I tear it out, make a broom to fly about), she looked at me, lifted her glass to her mouth, and I noticed for the first time her swallow and her delicate neck. She undid one of her hairpins and took a calculable risk as she quoted the saying “rusty roof, damp cellar.” Several blocks farther, she nonetheless said goodbye to me for now without a touch (at the corner of Bismarckstrasse and Scheideweg, of all places). We could see each other tomorrow afternoon in the cafeteria, she said.

  little porno face

  During the first few weeks, Elisabeth and I often saw each other in the cafeteria (the unpopular tables facing the courtyard) and quickly began to live off each other (her personal affairs and my personal affairs fused into one big affair). Elisabeth is a smart woman. The first time we slept together I was surprised by her porno face (her mouth an O, occasionally she bit her lips) and the speed with which she fucked me (that’s how she talked, that’s how it was), she by my soundlessness. She said: We don’t fit. But we did fit after all. We met in the evening in bars we didn’t know, we discussed how we could be (we imagined ourselves). As other people introduce their friends, we announced our bodies. She wanted: to be free when fucking. I wanted body and mind to be in step. Elisabeth said: some pain is natural. I said: theoretically. She said: exactly. She could come harder when she was squatting and had a finger lightly touching her asshole (words fail me). I said I like to watch women masturbate. That same week both of us suddenly got new job offers: I was given a regular freelance position at GEO, she became an editor (her still-husband would not have been uninvolved in that, but at that point she hadn’t mentioned him yet). Our theory gave way to my euphoria. I’d already pictured her various faces beforehand (a vein on her forehead during sex as if she were carrying heavy suitcases). Your little porno face, said Elisabeth, as I came with less restraint than I was used to.