Funeral for a Dog: A Novel

by Thomas Pletzinger

  Santuario di Nostra Signora della Caravina

  Now Svensson’s talking. He explains the mountains: over there Monte dei Pizzoni, he says, and gestures upward at the shores to the right and left, here Monte Cecchi. Svensson throws pinecone after pinecone into the lake. He explains the villages: San Mamete on the opposite shore, Osteno over there behind the trees, Porlezza at the end of the lake. Svensson points to the opposite shore: Cima di Porlezza. Over there, under a rough, jagged mountain, is a village, in the middle of it a church is glowing yellow. Svensson says: Santuario di Nostra Signora della Caravina (a sleeping gecko, the left foreleg a rockslide). Below the church a grand villa (same yellow, in front of it palms, a dock with white posts). The boy examines the shattered monitor. At night the church tower is illuminated and looks like a gladiator, Svensson tells him, do you know what a gladiator is? But the boy looks up from the shards and asks,

  Why does your dog have only three legs?

  My notebook is still in the shopping bag as even the dog suddenly falls silent and looks at Svensson full of anticipation. Where the fourth leg of the dog is would have been one of my questions too. It took us an hour to cross the murkily reflective lake (long before the shore mosquitoes already swarming over the water), and now I’m sitting next to the small, pretty mother on a stone bench under the oleander (white and red flowers). She’s smoking again. I’m here for my interview, and I have to go back to the city today (Lido Seegarten). I’ll offer her one of my cigarettes. Well, Svensson begins, then he looks at the small woman and falters, he doesn’t answer the question (the dog motionless as a photo, the fourth leg airbrushed out). The boy walks slowly toward his mother. Tuuli moves over and is suddenly close to me, she laughs smoke into my ear, don’t write this, Manteli, she says, Svensson’s stories are made up (I would only have to turn my head toward her).

  Why does your dog have only three legs?

  Lua was a professional night watchdog, he says in reply to the boy’s almost-forgotten question, he wears the moon over his heart. Svensson lays his hand on the dog’s black fur (dark gray from up close). I found him at full moon on the roadside, a car had hit him, he was lying in a pool of blood, right over there near the church. Svensson points to the other side of the lake. German shepherds are good night watchdogs. I brought him to the hospital in San Mamete, his leg had to be amputated, for a few weeks he couldn’t move. Lua is a sad dog. Svensson goes back to the boat. The boy approaches the sad dog carefully and lifts his hand (hesitation). Svensson looks at Tuuli and says: but after some time dogs get used to any loss. Lua flops heavily on his side, over the shore lies a light mist, there’s a smell of something burning. The boy withdraws his hand and asks, is Lua dangerous? Tuuli’s reply: the dog is old, he’s going to die soon.

  Interview (first try)

  MANDELKERN: Could you explain to me again what exactly I shouldn’t write, Ms….

  TUULI: Call me Tuuli, Karvasmanteli, you can drop the formality, we’re the same age.

  M: I was born in 1972.

  T: Exactly. You’re in your early thirties and so are we. More or less. Svensson seems older and I younger. Right?

  M: And how old is the dog?

  T: Dog years? Human years?

  M: Either way.

  T: It must have been at least ten years ago when Felix Blaumeiser, the idiot, brought the dog back from Brazil.

  M: May I ask who Felix is?

  T: Felix is the reason we’re here, Manteli.

  black dogs

  Come with me, says Svensson, taking my plastic bag from my hand, it’s my fault. He apologizes stiffly for the chaos, he’d be glad if I stayed the night, we could talk tomorrow in peace (“please forgive the mess”). Then I’ll bring you back to the city in the afternoon, he says, and because I was early this afternoon at the arranged meeting place, because I burst into Svensson’s private life, at this point I answer unemphatically “okay” (otherwise I’d return empty-handed). Svensson’s house is a ruin: three stories of natural stone and wood built at the foot of the cliff, on the side facing the lake green window shutters (closed). The back section of the roof a skeleton, ivy and vine are growing up the walls and into the frame. The flat shed next to the house slants toward the water (it must be a boat shed). Pigeons are fluttering everywhere, their droppings speckle the stone walls. Come with me, Svensson repeats, and I follow him (I’m here to have my questions answered). Lua trudges ahead, coughing, we walk between the sycamore and the garbage heap around the house. A heavy door, then a dark hallway with a terra-cotta floor, pictures all over the walls and framed photographs with black centers (dogs maybe, Lua maybe). We climb a dark staircase, closed doors on the right and left. The dog breathes heavily in the dark, now the smell of smoke is stronger. Svensson opens a door, then a window, and stands in the backlight (Svensson is an opaque man).

  crematorium

  Over Svensson’s property and over the lake in front of Svensson’s property lies an acrid stench. That’s Claasen, says Svensson, in answer to my question as to whether there isn’t a smell of something burning (state the obvious and casually open the conversation). Clouds of smoke, stretching long and wide, hang over the lake: burning leaves and underbrush, smoldering green wood, burning paper. Svensson is standing with my bag in a room that looks like a study (empty shelves, only a few books). This was my study, he says. Lua flops down on a carpet in a corner of the room. In the other corner lies a mattress with clean sheets. Claasen? I ask, and Svensson nods as if I should be able to understand everything here, as if I had already been here for a long time. Every day at four, says Svensson, Claasen burns another piece of his life. Claasen is his own crematorium.

  Can you elaborate on that?

  Svensson’s reply: Claasen is his neighbor, a former journalist from Germany, his wife left him, the children are already grown up. Now this pyromaniac in early retirement burns his possessions every day at four, log after log, dry and damp wood, leaves, grass. Svensson opens another window shutter. Furniture, pictures, books. Clothing is the worst. Do you smell that? Melting seventies synthetics: jackets, suits, shirts, dresses. Sometimes Claasen gazes into a book for hours before he throws it into the fire. Depending on the wind direction, a veil of the desire to forget hangs over the shore, when no wind is blowing you sometimes can’t see the other side of the lake (Caravina). Svensson gives me back the bag and turns to the door. Make yourself at home, Mandelkern, get some rest, if you’d like. We’ll call you down for dinner later, and I again say “okay” (you look tired, Mandelkern, Elisabeth would say, lie down).

  my assignment, my profession

  My assignment: get on the trail of Svensson the man. The true personality of the artist, said Elisabeth after the editorial meeting on Friday, always remains hidden behind success stories (this is what interests Elisabeth). My assignment doesn’t have much to do with my vocation. My profession: I’m an ethnologist, even if my dissertation has been shelved for two years (“Thick Participation and Mediated Identity: A Method in Flux”). It deals with distance and proximity (the ethnological dilemma). Sooner or later, everything I write has to do with me, I think, and of all thoughts it is this one with which Svensson leaves me alone in his room (I find myself in the middle of the group under investigation).

  Optolyth

  The room has very high ceilings. The shelves on the walls are nearly empty: a little bit of dust on them as if the books were only just removed, a few novels left behind. On the wall hang three large paintings (about 1 x 2 meters), opposite them under the three windows looking out on the lake stands a small, tidy desk, arranged on it along an invisible grid: two small yogurt jars (La Laitière), in the first a yellow pencil, some paper clips, loose change (Swiss francs, dollars, euros, reais), in the second a few crayons. Then a letter holder (without letters), an inkwell (without ink), in the middle a pair of binoculars (Optolyth). A hotel bill for 84.50 euros (Hotel Stella d’Italia, dated August 4, 2004). On the back of the desk a row of reference books (show me what yo
u read, and I’ll tell you who you are, Elisabeth once said to me, referring to my ethnographies, theoretical writings, lists, and notebooks). Next to the reference books a green plastic picture frame, in it a photo of Svensson and Tuuli. She’s smiling, she looks tired, between them a blond man. Svensson is holding the camera. In the background a chimney, the three faces pale and red-eyed from the flash; the blond man is laughing exuberantly and holding a beer can up to the camera (Pabst Blue Ribbon). And finally, the outlines of a monitor and a keyboard in the dust on the desk. I put my bag on the desk and take out my notebook. It’s now Saturday afternoon, Elisabeth will have gone to the office today despite everything. She’ll drink water and write until her headache is gone. She’ll try to call me at the Hotel Lido Seegarten, she’ll dial my cell phone number. She’ll realize that I’ve run off (I take notes to leave a trail, each word a pebble, each sentence a row of little stones). The smoke hangs low and thick and dense over the water.

  Shoot the Freak

  The paintings on Svensson’s wall: 1. two old men in front of a wire fence, behind it shiny red lettering (Astroland); 2. a roller coaster and smoke (old dragon). The third and middle painting shows a very thin man in a purple T-shirt at the foot of a green children’s slide. Behind him red tower blocks, snack stands, ocean waves, and hot dogs. The man is in the middle of all this, his eyes are ill at ease, they look straight ahead and seem to threaten the painter. His pants are pulled down and hang around his thin legs, his cock is sticking out from his body (erect, pale). All the paintings in thick oil on canvas, with bottle caps, sand, and beach grass pressed into them. The brushstrokes and colors are reminiscent of the pictures in Svensson’s children’s book. Between a hot dog stand and a lottery stand stretches a series of bright-colored pennants, on each pennant a letter: SHOOT*THE*FREAK. The man resembles Svensson (self-portrait). Svensson is a strange man.

  Der Lindenbaum

  In my head this image remains: Elisabeth moving into her new office in the spring of 2003. I put two moving boxes down on the carpet, she sits on her desk and watches me. Marry me, she says (the commanding green of her eyes). I laugh, I close the doors to the hallway and the other offices, but then the telephone rings, and Elisabeth says, wait here, Mandelkern, wait for me.

  Who exactly is Dirk Svensson?

  Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

  Onkel Tobi by Hans G. Lenzen

  Water Supply Systems for Home Farming by Williams & Steynman The Great Encyclopedia of Dog Breeds

  The Encyclopedia of European Trees

  Piccolo Mondo Antico by Giovanni Fogazzaro

  Selected Poems by William Wordsworth

  I lie down on the mattress in the corner of the room (headache) and fall asleep.

  ATTENTION FRAGILE/ACHTUNG ZERBRECHLICH

  At twilight I wake up and look around. Under the desk are an abandoned power strip and a huge brown leather suitcase with a heavy lock. On the ceiling a mobile that I didn’t notice earlier dangles over me (small colorful airplanes). On the floor next to my head a cheap stuffed animal (a gray mouse in blue overalls, “Euromaus” on the bib). The dog must have forgotten it. I sit down at Svensson’s desk and take Elisabeth’s ring out of my pants pocket (E. E. E.). According to the intern’s research, Svensson has no kids, even though he’s a children’s book author, and, Elisabeth added, that’s exactly what makes him interesting. Outside the dog is coughing as if he really were going to die soon. I sit down at the desk and leaf through Svensson’s books: the German shepherd, withers height 50–60 centimeters, weighs up to 40 kilos, thick undercoat, thick covering of fur, back straight and firm, life expectancy with good care and breeding fifteen years, even temperament, strong nerves, child-friendly, good-natured, and brave. My legs are too long, the desk is too low, the suitcase under the desk is too high (I’d have to sit with my legs askew). I try to move it, to pull it out, but the suitcase is defiant and drags only reluctantly across the wood, the sound must be audible in the whole house (its weight an invitation to open). I push it back into its place. Old leather, metal-reinforced corners, nicks and stickers, on the handle hangs a nametag: Felix Blaumeiser (this name for the second time already today, Tuuli called him an idiot). But Dirk Svensson is not Felix Blaumeiser, I think, unless it’s a pseudonym (inquire at some point). I take a paper clip from the yogurt jar, bend it into a hook and try to open the suitcase, but the heavy lock refuses (copper is softer than people think). I sit back down at the desk, my legs aslant on the suitcase, and write down:

  —What should I write about?

  —What shouldn’t I write about?

  —Is the boy Svensson’s son?

  —Where will his pretty mother sleep?

  —How do I get out of here?

  —What’s in the leather suitcase?

  —Who exactly is Felix Blaumeiser?

  stone smoke

  No computer, no printer, no typewriter. I take the binoculars and look out the window across the lake. In Lugano and Cima the lights come on little by little. The smoke has dispersed. Tuuli and the boy are out of sight. Svensson is sitting on the dock, next to him lies the dog (shaking). I should call Svensson, I should conduct the interview immediately and get a ride to Lugano tomorrow morning at the latest if I don’t want to miss my return flight. Svensson kneels down next to Lua, and I’m not sure whether his hand is trembling. He strokes the dog and talks out over the water. Maybe he’s talking to the lake, maybe to the other shore, maybe to the yellow light on the other side of the lake (Santuario di Nostra Signora della Caravina). No wind is blowing, cicadas can now be heard.

  Animals, the Hearts of People

  THE BOY WAS BORN, TWO MONTHS EARLY, AND I’M DRINKING milk and vodka out of Grace’s belly button. Eventually the milk is gone, and Lua wakes up. Take it again from the top, I decide, and again close the door from outside and leave someone behind, but that can’t matter to Grace and the porcelain greyhound, because when someone says good-bye to you by whispering “fuck you, weirdo, you and your dog,” turns over and goes on sleeping, forgetting isn’t far off. Today is Sunday or Monday, I take a walk through the West Village, along Houston Street, through SoHo. I should think and calm down, I should reflect. Lua and I walk past dogs with sunglasses and masters with sunglasses, it’s autumn in New York, the leaves are yellow, the leaves are red, the flags flutter, and on the corners men are playing “America the Beautiful” on the fiddle. The tourists show their generosity, their coins jingle in the fiddlers’ caps, in my pants pocket I have my credit card. I buy a suit and a shirt, I buy white sneakers, I buy Aspirin and Lysol, I buy a hundred-pack of vitamin C, I buy a toothbrush, I buy champagne for forty-seven dollars and ninety-nine cents. I buy Lua two cheeseburgers, Lua loves cheeseburgers, I buy him a green leather leash, exactly like the one the Chihuahua in front of the West Village bakery had. On Broadway we get into a taxi, at Times Square we get out, and I don’t know why I’m here or where to go, but the sun is shining and the advertisements are glowing. I buy chicken soup, I buy chocolate, and in Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library women with sun hats sit on the steps between shopping bags, muffins, and coffee cups. Behind a pavilion I tie up Lua and give him the second cheeseburger. I’ll be right back, I tell him, I have to calm down. I lean against a stone lion on its pedestal in front of the library and dip the chocolate in the chicken soup. A library is a good place to get to the bottom of things and figure out where to start. The security guard at the entrance searches my plastic bags for weapons, hi, how are you today? he asks, and I say, so-so.

  In the bathroom I change my clothes. I try to flush my bloody T-shirt down the toilet, but the toilet gets clogged and overflows. So I’ll have to throw my pants in the river, maybe in the Atlantic, my telephone and the calls and the hanging up right afterward, the waiting for Tuuli and Felix and for a boy whose name I don’t know because I hung up too fast this morning. In the bathroom of the New York Public Library I raise the champagne for forty-seven ninety-nine toward the boy, toward Brooklyn,
toward the towel dispenser. No drinks in the reading room, so I drink half the bottle of champagne here. The suit fits, I take an overdose of vitamin C. Too much vitamin C gets excreted without consequences, unlike too much love. Too much love afflicts the stomach and the liver, it goes to the kidneys. I brush my teeth, I spray Lysol in the hole in my hand against tetanus, I spray Lysol on my cock against AIDS and against hepatitis and against gonorrhea, it burns in my eyes, it would be too late anyway and the wrong method, it burns and burns and burns and I feel my way to the sink and hold my face under the cold water, I flush my eyes with it, splash some on the back of my neck. This is not a public washroom, sir, says a security guard, handing me my plastic bags, I have to ask you to leave.

  In the reading room I take the book given to me by the woman with the camera out of my pants pocket and put it on a table, “646-299-1036 Kiki Kaufman!” The security guards don’t bother people who are reading, so I’m glad to have the book. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser. I leaf through it as the champagne hits me, I find champagne just the right thing for an afternoon. I skim the sentences marked in red and green, many are true, sometimes things are just simple and right and good, sometimes the world can be better understood in black and white, sometimes you need red and green markings. The book goes roughly like this: the not beautiful but unusual Carrie comes to Chicago from the countryside and doesn’t find work, then she falls in love with the traveling salesman Drouet and ultimately with the bar manager Hurstwood. Carrie leaves Drouet and goes with Hurstwood to New York. Yes, that’s where I am too right now, I think, and fall asleep on page seventy-six, New York, New York. When the library closes and the security guard shakes my shoulder, I wake up on page seventy-seven. Hurstwood is serving a bottle of sec, as he calls it. Alcohol is a good idea, I say to the security guard, and close the book. I put it in the bag, the guard asks, you all right, sir? and I say, so-so. Do you know the hotel with the best martinis in the city?