Funeral for a Dog: A Novel

by Thomas Pletzinger

  Manteli/Karvasmanteli

  Tuuli’s not the first. I’ve gotten used to comments and jokes about my name. My father was from Prague. My mother didn’t choose the name Mandelkern until after his death (patrilineality, matrilineality), otherwise I would have been born and entered in the records as Daniel Mandler. I’ve looked myself up: To treat epileptics in the first half of the previous century neurologists removed the amygdala (the Mandelkern), the part of the brain responsible for emotional attachment to things, people, and situations, but also for fear and panic attacks. The amygdala is almond-shaped (the Greek amygdal means almond, just as my last name literally means “almond kernel”). My father was a lawyer in the Ruhr area. When the first Carolina left me, Pfeifer laughed and said: What a kick in the nuts for Mandelkern! The otherwise unimaginative Hornberg insisted for years on my resemblance to Marc Almond, he spoke of separation at birth (the idiot still sings “Tainted Love” whenever we meet). My mother’s mother is named Röther, she was born Hülsmeier and is from Hamm, in Westphalia. My pediatrician laughed as he diagnosed me with inflammation of the amygdala when I was sent to him with my first acne (Mandelkernentzündung). Karvasmanteli means bitter almond. Elisabeth thinks that only characters in novels and journalists should be named Mandelkern. The name sounds like it means something special, she says, your name leaves tracks (I have to disappoint her).

  Interview (author or illustrator?)

  MANDELKERN: When are all these pictures from?

  TUULI: We haven’t seen each other for a long time.

  M: So has Svensson always painted?

  T: Svensson is a collector, Manteli, he’s never painted a picture.

  M: Then are the pictures in the book not by him at all?

  T: He should tell you about that himself.

  M: Are they by Felix Blaumeiser? Did Blaumeiser paint all these pictures?

  T: The villa on the other side of the lake belongs to his family. Svensson’s house too. Nothing else. Felix had nothing to do with art.

  M: Had?

  T: What has Svensson told you?

  M: Nothing. Is there something to tell?

  T: Everything Svensson says is made up, Manteli, you can write that. Svensson collects fragments and assembles them into a world he can bear.

  Tears and Blood

  Half an hour later Tuuli is cursing in Finnish. She carries the crying boy into the kitchen and opens the medicine cabinet. The boy is bleeding from a wound on his hand, his light blue T-shirt is stained, but he calms down quickly as Tuuli wipes the blood off his hands and the tears from his face. Was it the dog? I ask, but don’t get an answer. I don’t know how I can help. In her anger Tuuli’s cheeks glow and her hands move faster (blood now on her nightshirt too). By the water the dog can be heard still coughing. No, Tuuli finally says, not the dog. It was Svensson. For years I wrote him e-mails, he read them and didn’t reply, then I announced our visit and when he got that message, idiootti, he threw his computer out the window. No more computer, no mail, for days no power: Poppycock, she says, Svensson wants to be alone here. Lua forgot how to bite a long time ago.

  Le silence est l’aîné de la parole

  Around noon Svensson is standing in the doorway again, sweaty, an army rucksack full of groceries on his back, in his hand a yellow children’s fishing rod wrapped in plastic. He ignores the blood and Tuuli’s nimble fingers, he avoids the bandage on the child’s hand. Here, he says, for tonight, to celebrate the occasion. Svensson bought bread, cheese, and wine (Taleggio & Barolo), he unpacks the groceries into the kitchen cabinets. Tomatoes, onions, peppers. Tuuli and I watch him. Svensson unwraps three fish from wax paper and lays them on the table, the eyes of the fish stare in my direction. He holds the fishing rod out to the boy:

  Here, for you!

  But the boy doesn’t take it, he leans on his mother’s leg and looks at Svensson. To celebrate the occasion? Tuuli asks Svensson, to celebrate the occasion? She turns around, takes the boy’s hand, and leaves the room. I’m standing in the entrance to the terrace, and want to focus on Svensson, on the questions I should ask him, on his answers. Svensson arranges his purchases on the table: fishing rod, cigarettes, three fish. What’s the matter with her? asks Svensson (the plastic-covered children’s fishing rod next to the fish, the bloody paper). Svensson lays an oleander flower in front of his still life. Silence is the older brother of the word (the fish is decomposing in the wax paper). Finally I ask: Are they self-caught? As if I were in Svensson’s house on the lake to talk about delicacies (as if I wanted to get to know him from the ground up). I don’t know what’s keeping me from asking my questions or simply leaving. I should ask Svensson to bring me to Lugano on the boat, I think, I could also set out on foot toward the village on the other side of the woods (Osteno or Porlezza). There seems to be a footpath, Svensson has just returned from shopping, and from there I could hitchhike to Lugano. Yes, he says, self-caught. In answer to my question as to whether we could talk now, time is running out, Svensson looks at me. Then he pushes me through the kitchen and out of the house. Come with me, Mandelkern, he says.

  against himself

  Do you play basketball? he asks. He fetches the ball from under the Ping-Pong table, looks at me, and turns to the sycamore. He shoots. The ball flies in a high arc through the air, falls through the hoop, bounces three times in the tall grass, and then comes to rest. Svensson looks me directly in the eyes: he’s stronger than I am, he made the shot. I could pick up the ball, I could say: okay, Svensson, here’s the deal. I’d have to make a shot to get answers to my questions (dramaturgy of sports). But Svensson nailed the basket to the sycamore with his own hands, Svensson has the home court advantage here (his house, his lake). I wouldn’t win here, my questions would remain unanswered. So I stand in the knee-high grass, searching for an explanation for my “no,” but Svensson has apparently not reckoned with any resistance. He pulls down the second half of the table (on it a swastika in red spray-paint). Ping-Pong. He always plays only against himself here, the Italians in the area aren’t suited to it, says Svensson, pointing to the swastika (the Italians must not like him). Svensson tightens the net. And the dog is ultimately no use as an opponent either, he says, brushing dry leaves off the table, the dog’s missing his paddle hand (my polite laugh). From the looks of you, it could be an interesting game, Mandelkern. Svensson positions himself at the table, under it two paddles and a yellow Ping-Pong ball (Schöler + Micke). Okay, I say, Ping-Pong, but I have to leave today, so it’s really important to go through a few questions, that’s the reason I traveled here from Hamburg, after all. My return flight is in a few hours. Best of three, Mandelkern, says Svensson. If you win, I’ll answer all your questions.

  between the sets

  It’s been years since I’ve held a Ping-Pong paddle in my hand, but I can play (five years Eimsbüttel Sports Club). Svensson wasn’t expecting that, and Elisabeth for her part used to take it as a joke (Mr. Mandelkern’s Ping-Pong past, she said, an endless back-and-forth). Lua’s now lying by the water again and coughing. I win the first set, we play silently and intently (the ticking of the ball a clock). Svensson plays close to the table and slams the yellow ball fiercely, in contrast I stand a few meters away from the table and return the ball slowly and with backspin. Svensson keeps track of the score. My shirt is soon sweaty (my luggage is waiting in Hamburg, Frankfurt, or Lugano). If Svensson mastered the drop shot, he’d have the advantage. I wonder if he can play against himself with such ferocity, alone against the raised half of the table. The 21–19—you–Mandelkern after the first set he states with pointed calm, sweeping a withered oleander flower off the table with a professional hand movement. He takes off his cap and wipes the sweat from his forehead, he suddenly looks distinctly older than his 32 or 33 years. This isn’t going to get me any answers, I think, I should let him win. Tuuli and Samy are lying on a rusty deck chair under the oleander and watching us. Svensson gives me the blue and apparently worse paddle. Changing sides means changin
g paddles, Mandelkern! I nod and let him regroup (I let Svensson hit one past me). I’ll give him the second set (be polite and get this over with). Svensson accepts my offer: he slams and slams. When I congratulate him on a successful point (14–7) and remind him once again of my questions (of his answers), he puts down the paddle and takes off his T-shirt.

  Shut up and play, Mandelkern!

  he says, and I reply to this inappropriate outburst with another friendly “okay.” The situation is paradoxical: if I lose, Svensson will be silent, and if I win, he won’t want to talk either. Between forceful strokes Svensson now announces the score increasingly loudly and clearly, 15–7, 16–7, 17–7, 18–7, 19–7, 20–7, 21–7. The boy and Tuuli clap their hands. One to one, says Svensson as we change sides again (but not paddles). Svensson takes a drink of water and doesn’t offer me anything. He wants to win. Svensson has hung his T-shirt over a chair, zero to zero in the third and decisive set.

  no winner/no loser

  But then Svensson serves too low and opens the third set with a net ball. He doesn’t know that he’s playing in the decisive round not only against the sun, but also against my hands’ memory (sharper slices, longer strokes, lower error rate). Ping-Pong is not a sport, said Elisabeth, seeming to doubt my masculinity, Ping-Pong is for school recess. Svensson and I stand opposite each other, our rallies get longer and fiercer. Now it’s about the game and no longer about politeness and my story (decision: I’m not giving up the lead again). I shift into a defensive position and let Svensson go at me. He serves to my backhand, and I return the ball with a sharp slice close over the net. At 19–19, when I just barely return one of his smashes and slip (I land on my knees), Svensson, completely unchallenged, smacks the ball into the net (he wanted to make it too good). Svensson stands there, inhales through his nostrils and lays his paddle on the table. Then he walks to the dock, takes off his shoes, and jumps without comment into the water (dramaturgy of people). Did Manteli win? the boy asks, and Tuuli says,

  Svensson can’t win.

  Shoot the Freak

  THESE DAYS, WAKING UP IN A PANIC IS THE RULE. THE DOUBLE plank-bed is screwed to the walls, the room is the exact length of the bed and less than twice as wide. Yesterday I fell asleep naked and I have now woken up under a wool blanket, the time in between has escaped me. Lua is snoring under the bed, and if Lua is snoring, I think, things must be all right. My new suit is hanging on the wall, next to it the room key with a heavy wooden tag: 219. The door is secured from the inside with a padlock. Little by little most of the details come back to me. Kiki Kaufman is asleep next to me, her camera is lying between us on the bed. The Bowery Whitehouse Hotel is not a hotel but a large loft with dark masked windows and tin ceiling tiles. This is where Hurstwood killed himself. The rooms are not rooms but wooden boxes, open on top, with latticework to keep out thieves. In the murky semidarkness I don’t know whether it’s day or night, I don’t have a watch, and I don’t have a headache yet from vodka, champagne, and wine. I told Kiki Kaufman half of the story, now she’s asleep. She’s thin, she has wrapped herself up to her neck in a white sheet, her black curls are spread out around her head like a pillow. Kiki Kaufman’s nose is covered with freckles. I remember West Broadway, Chinatown in the rain, the chickens on their hooks in the windows, the garbage cans, Kiki’s camera, Lua next to the black plastic bags. This city never sleeps, I think, the neon lights never go out. In one of the boxes someone screams, Kiki wakes up, we’re lying side by side. On the third floor of the Bowery Whitehouse Hotel we listen to things: footsteps on the worn-down carpet, the opening of beer cans, then a belch, the toilet at the end of the corridor, the groans of sad people in their boxes. I haven’t yet told Kiki that Tuuli had a boy, or that his name is Samuli, that the two of them are doing well, that I don’t know who the father is, that I hung up before Felix could say the name of the clinic. Samuli arrived two months early, I say, he was actually supposed to be born in Germany, now he’s an American. Kiki asks whether I’m a sort of uncle to him. After a while we hear a giggle outside our box, a rattle of keys. From 218 first the sound of a door closing, then the sound of greedy lips, two fast belt buckles, the squishing sound of the washable mattress. Six o’clock, Kiki whispers, welcome to the desert of the real. Then the tear of a wrapper and the snap of rubber. At least they’re using protection, says Kiki. A man is breathing loudly and clearly, and a woman’s voice directs, back, back, baby. Good. Kiki and I lie on our backs and watch the fan on the ceiling through the latticework. Next to our heads, the panting and smacking goes on for a while, then the two voices and bodies click into their unimaginative in-and-out automatism, the man’s voice sings a hymn, show me those tits, come on, show me those tits, and the woman fills the gaps with the mantra of these days, oh my God, oh my God, but her voice falters more confidently and skillfully than in the television images. Kiki and I don’t move on the rubber mattress, we wait in the groaning of the wooden walls, in the shaking of sleeping boxes 215 to 221, in the New York round of the last days and weeks. We’re not alone, we’re three, Tuuli said. We miscalculated. Kiki Kaufman, Lua, and I listen to 215 breathing, 216 dying, 217 asking for quiet. 221 is cooking packet soup on a gas cooker. We hear a lubricant tube and a lubricant squelch. When 218 then finishes loudly and clearly, Kiki Kaufman grabs a towel from the hook on the washable wall, takes a toothbrush out of a small bag, puts on underpants, a white T-shirt. Kiki walks barefoot out of the room, the last few days have to get washed off, she says. Lua sits up and asks me what we’re going to do now. I don’t know where to go, I answer, and a sign next to the door says DO NOT leave valuables in room, but Kiki has left us and the 219 key hanging here.

  At ten, Lua, Kiki and I are leaning on the red fire-exit door and drinking vending machine coffee in the lobby. Today the sun is shining, Kiki is wearing a bright summer dress and taking pictures of the homeless people on the bench in front of the Whitehouse. A one-legged man is wearing the stars and stripes around his shoulders and playing a singing saw, he calls Lua his fellow veteran, he gives him a can of Yuengling Lager and puts down the saw on the linoleum when I can’t give him any change. Lua drinks silently, Kiki has brushed and petted him, he has said enough for the moment, and because a minute of silence with George Bush is broadcast on television, for a few seconds it’s unexpectedly quiet. The backpackers have disappeared, says the one-legged man, usually he lives off them. But then the first sirens are coming down the Bowery, the one-legged man picks up the saw again and plays “America the Beautiful,” because Kiki has found another dollar and wants to take pictures. Lua lies at her feet. I get us another coffee, and Kiki says I have to tell her more.

  The night from the eleventh to the twelfth of September we spent in my bed, Tuuli slept badly and Lua snored. Eventually I was woken up by the sun or the traffic on the BQE and climbed up to the roof. A little later, Tuuli came up the fire escape and gave me a blanket. I gathered the bottles and cans as she sat in the sun. She had on the purple PricewaterhouseCoopers T-shirt again, I see clearly before my eyes the material stretching across her belly and the cracked white lettering across her breasts. I lay down next to her. It was cold, the tar paper smelled of beer. Lua whimpered down in the apartment, I remember the answering machine coming on. Someone was stuck at some airport and playing pool for money in a hotel lobby. My mother called, then Tuuli’s father, her mother, later the secretary of the Blaumeiser shipping company. In the first rays of sunlight we could see the gray houses of Williamsburg, farther away the brick buildings where the Latinos lived. Apart from the column of smoke, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, in the low sunbeams the sycamores along the street seemed to be shining from within. Was she thirsty too, I asked. I don’t know, said Tuuli, and leaned toward me for a kiss. I taste like shit, I said to be safe, and she leaned back against the chimney. I closed my eyes and thought about nothing but the sun in my face, my headache, and Tuuli’s hand in mine. Down on the street Corner Store Oscar pulled up the metal shutters, put out the garbage,
and hung an American flag in the window. And now? asked Tuuli, when Felix later came up to the roof and sat down next to us. You have tar-paper imprints on your face, said Felix, and when I replied that he should stop talking for a few minutes, please, Tuuli removed her hand from mine. Someone had to make coffee.

  The singing saw is singing again. There are more and more flags, Kiki interrupts me, and nods to the one-legged man, stars and stripes and rainbows, a time of fresh veterans and new one-legged people is approaching. Breakfast? she asks. Yes, I say, Lua too. When we step into the street from the lobby, the Bowery comes back to me. Right around the corner there are good Bloody Marys, I say, and take Kiki’s hand. It’s the first time I’ve touched her intentionally. Her hand in mine feels realer and warmer than expected. Only now do I notice her eyes. Stop right there! she says after two blocks and takes a picture of Lua and me in front of a construction fence covered with missing-person posters. Burned-out candles, Lua among dried roses and brownish lilies, missing! missing! missing! like an aureole around our heads. Behind the fence is the empty garden of the B Bar & Grill, this morning only a fat cat is sitting here under the tree and its turned-off strings of lights, the first leaves are falling. Lua lies down under the table and immediately falls asleep. Here too a television is on. Kiki orders coffee instead of Bloody Marys, as if we always ate breakfast together, and on television Mayor Giuliani is talking about how this city has to shop and live and have breakfast as if everything were completely normal, good morning, New York! Good morning!

  Kiki pays and politely says thanks for Lua’s water. That was the last of my money, she says. Under a tree with Kiki, with the credit card in my suit pocket and a coffee in my hand, the world looks distinctly simpler, I think. But then, as Kiki puts her camera on the table and laughs, as she looks at me with interest, as Lua sleeps between our feet, I tell her about the cracked concrete slabs of the Williamsburg piers around noon on September twelfth, the two painters in the sunlight and their portable easels, the smoke over the East River bridges in their oil paints. Everywhere people were standing and staring and talking, the cloud was wafting southward from the World Trade Center, we could smell it. Tuuli sat on a plank, leaning back on her arms, stretching her pointy belly into the sun. I threw stones in the water. A boy with horn-rimmed glasses and a Pavement T-shirt sold Felix pieces of melon from a cooler bag. Cars stopped, photographers took their pictures, two camera crews searched for suitable perspectives, a journalist asked us one by one whether we knew anyone down there, at the site formerly known as the World Trade Center? He moved on without notes. The smoke smells like Seraverde, said Tuuli, throwing a melon rind into the river, like plastic, gasoline, fire, wet earth, and poverty. Lua jumped in after it. A photographer photographed him as he climbed out of the shallow water with the rind in his mouth and shook himself off, the column of smoke in the background.