Funeral for a Dog: A Novel

by Thomas Pletzinger

  Which must have been an interesting picture, Kiki Kaufman interrupts me. For two weeks now she’s been taking pictures of the garbage collection and the piles of black garbage bags on the sidewalks, pictures of the police at roadblocks, of the heaps of flowers in front of fire stations, of starved cats and parakeets in evacuated apartments south of Canal Street, of the moral-support crowds lining the West Side Highway toward the south, the USA! USA! USA! posters, of bars and cafés and restaurants between Lafayette Street and the Bowery, of drunk people, of crying people, of the bakers in Brooklyn and of American flags in American windows, cars, and trains. Those seconds of this city, says Kiki, have not vanished as irretrievably as others before and after. On the morning of September twelfth, she set out toward New York from Chicago. After the long drive through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, she parked on the other side of the Hudson. As the only passenger heading toward Manhattan she made it on board an evacuation ship only after long discussion. She was inspected several times by police officers and private security services and finally made it through back alleys and restaurants into the restricted area south of Fourteenth Street, into the completely deserted “frozen zone.” The city found itself in a sort of war, but she simply strolled through bars and between garden chairs. She had come too late and was only able to photograph the consequences, not the causes, but those ultimately couldn’t be photographed anyway without a world journey. That was the first displacement of reality. She shot the cameras and camera vans and cameramen, who themselves filmed and photographed ruins and debris and dust, she took pictures of the cameras at Ground Zero, pictures of a German photographer in Brooklyn, an Italian camera crew in lower Manhattan, of French tourists with digital cameras, photojournalists with reflex cameras, children with disposable cameras and artists with Hasselblads. Kiki scratches Lua behind the ears and says that we should hit the road now. I want to show you something, she says, pulling Lua across the courtyard and out into the street, the two of them speak English with each other and walk side by side as if they’ve known each other for years. As we pass David’s Kosher & Halal Meat on the way to Kiki’s car, we buy Lua his breakfast. Kiki clears off the backseat of her green Honda, she puts three shoeboxes full of pictures in the trunk, takes out a blanket, and makes Lua a bed in the back. She gives me a bottle of water, I haven’t drunk water for days, and as Manhattan gradually disappears in the rearview mirror, I unwrap Lua’s first proper meal in days from the wax paper.

  Along the way I tell her about Miguel and John and their duplex apartment overlooking Tompkins Square Park. John modeled for Tom Ford and Miguel was his agent. Miguel had invited us, so Tuuli, Felix, and I walked across the Williamsburg Bridge in the late afternoon. Tuuli was breathing heavily, and even Lua had a certain wariness in his dragging gait. Manhattan was quiet, the bridge spanned the river without cars on it. We sat down in front of Miguel’s gigantic television, John was wearing a blue T-shirt with the red inscription Super-Gay, from the window we could see the smoke cloud hanging in the cold white light of Ground Zero. Everybody, this is Super-Gay, said Miguel, Super-Gay, this is everybody. The television was muted, in a glass display case were a few bottles of Bombay Sapphire, CNN flickered in our faces. The airplane loops had been dropped from the program, instead there were now images of the clean-up operation, the posters along the highways and green America Under Attack logos. Mayor Giuliani spoke in front of the first homemade missing-person posters on a lamppost. I already can’t watch this shit anymore, said Miguel, America the Beautiful, Bush is hiding somewhere in the clouds over America and suddenly Zero Tolerance Giuliani is the city’s savior, God bless New York, one nation under God, and Rudy will take care of everything, probably he’ll want to be president soon. Miguel took his telephone from the table and pointed to the smoke, God bless America! Tuuli sat on the sofa and drank water, she rolled Felix a cigarette, occasionally she stood up and arched her back and stuck out her belly. On the terrace Miguel talked on the phone and gesticulated in a purple satin bathrobe, I heard Bach’s Goldberg Variations from the living room and slowly got drunk again. Miguel yelled something Italian into his phone, took a running start, and slid on his Asian slippers across the marble or fake marble. I wanted to get up and climb down from the roof terrace, walk along Avenue B holding Tuuli’s hand, go through one or two police checkpoints and get into a taxi to the airport. Lua could have stayed with Felix. They would let a pregnant woman through everywhere, Tuuli could have slept awhile at the airport, then we would have drunk Earl Grey and eaten oranges for breakfast. In an advanced stage of pregnancy she would have gotten special treatment and been put on the first flight out and back to Europe. In Helsinki or Berlin we would have already had to wear winter jackets, the child could have been born in the Charité. I could have been the official father. But I remained seated and drank, Tuuli closed her eyes, the moon stared over the rooftops, and eventually Felix poured his beer into Lua’s bowl and we switched to gin.

  The delivery’s here, said Super-Gay. The deliveryman looked like a bike courier and brought coke with a receipt. We’re first, said Miguel, so the two of them went into the bathroom. Why, no one knew, maybe it was due to a general, vague fear. Felix and I were coke partners, Tuuli watched us. For each round Miguel and John left us two very neat lines on the toilet lid. After the first round my tar-paper fatigue was gone, after the second I was praising Bret Easton Ellis. By the window Felix and John talked about the gin and how Bombay Sapphire had to be drunk straight no matter what, at the very most on the rocks, and so on, the cloud and the light, the visual sensation, the bright sound of Miguel’s doorbell. Someone put on electronic music. A few people joined us in the kitchen, Felix switched to whisky, Miguel gave Lua still more beer and pulled him by the tail in a circle, Super-Gay ordered pizza, Felix sushi, Miguel: so what are we going to do now, foreign policy, all this is a reaction to fucked-up imperialism, this attack is only the beginning. Right, right. Lua vomited on the marble, the doorbell rang, people dropped by, deliverymen, messengers, couriers and DJs, writers, journalists, musicians.

  The roller coaster is lying there like a slain dragon, Astroland is still empty. Kiki parks her Honda in the no-standing zone next to the Shore Hotel on Surf Avenue. At Nathan’s we buy hot dogs with onions and sauerkraut, hot dogs with chili, cheeseburgers, french fries with ketchup, soda for two. I carry the bag, Kiki her camera, Lua drags his leash behind him. Even Coney Island is full of flags now, they’re pinned to the padded coat of a Russian woman on Brighton Beach, they’re painted on the clam and beer stands, on the wheels of a Korean War veteran’s wheelchair, they billow over Astroland, they flutter blue and red and silvery over the boardwalk. Lua poses for Kiki next to the fishermen on the pier and in front of an army recruiting station. He looks boldly at the camera, we buy him cotton candy. A few more booths, then an empty, fenced-in lot with withered grass and paint stains, above it a garland of letters spelling Shoot the Freak shines into the sky. Painted in fairground-blue and carnival-yellow, the price is flaking off the walls, 3 for $1, as is the announcement Live Target! Paintball Freak! Moving Target! Shoot the Freak! Kiki says that after the war rhetoric of the last two weeks what she’d like most of all is to shoot at someone herself, but around noon the shooting galleries are closed. Kiki takes pictures of Lua and me amid the bright colors. In the can toss I win a bottle of sugary sparkling wine, the good French stuff, says the woman at the counter, you know?—We do, says Kiki. She pops the cork, and Lua drinks the Coney Island champagne from the soda cup.

  Later we sit on the beach next to a playground made of plastic: climbing cube, a few ladders, a slide. The Atlantic lies flat on its back, Astroland holds still. For the first time in weeks Lua gets to run free, for the first time I see the two warships on the horizon. Kiki takes only small sips, she has to get back on the road later, she says. She doesn’t say where she’s going. The September sun is now slanting steeply over the beach, two old men with metal detectors stroll slowly from r
ight to left, occasionally one of them finds a syringe, bottle cap, or coin. Lua plods along the beach and toward us on his three legs, he flops down on the sand between us and says he’s going to take his nap now. Kiki speaks of the beauty of this desolate area, of the decay that resides in places like this, she points to the apartment blocks of red brick behind the booths and carnival rides, one joyous sadness after another, she says, and photographs Lua and me at the bottom of the slide. Have you been together long? she asks, and I answer, yes, very long. And that I’ll tell her about Lua’s fourth leg and the Heckler & Koch that shot it off. There was still a lot to tell and explain, such as the blood on my T-shirt and my cigarettes. Such as why I’m here now and not with Tuuli and Felix, such as the child. When? Once I’ve put the last several days behind me, the good-bye first. Kiki packs up her camera and leans on me. Finish your story, Svensson!

  Tuuli shut the bathroom door and turned the key. On the toilet lid there was only one line of cocaine. Last round, said Felix, as always. One of us gets the coke, one of us gets Tuuli. Things were what they were. I remember how Tuuli kneeled down between Felix and me on the tiles. Svensson? she asked me, and rummaged in the pockets of her too-large jeans. Yes, I said. She found a coin and showed it to us like a second in a duel. Felix? Tuuli nodded at Felix. I looked first into his face and then at myself in the mirror, our eyes were like dark winter puddles edged with ice. We raised our glasses. Eyes shut! said Tuuli, but I didn’t obey. We sat down on the floor, I leaned my head against the wall and looked at Tuuli. Behind a massive block of frosted glass at her back shimmered fluorescent lights, from hidden speakers came the same music as in the apartment, even here in the bathroom a small television was on. I took a sip of my gin and put the heavy glass on the toilet lid. Then Tuuli ran her hand over my eyes as if I were dead. In Miguel’s black-tiled bathroom I sat on the floor between the toilet and heated towel racks and suddenly no longer knew exactly who I was. For a few seconds I stopped being Dirk Svensson. I remember the clink of the tossed coin on the tiles and that I opened my eyes again even though it was prohibited. Tuuli put the coin back in her pocket and smiled at me. She swept up a few grains of coke with her index finger and stuck it in Felix’s mouth as if he were a baby. He licked it off with his eyes closed. I’d lost, maybe I’d won, that night it couldn’t be decided. I took the bill from the toilet lid and snorted the last line with my left nostril, then Tuuli leaned over the toilet and kissed me. Felix sat next to us with his eyes closed and drank his gin, smiling. Had he opened his eyes, maybe everything would have turned out differently. The bitter cocaine dripped into the back of my throat, and Tuuli’s tongue tasted numbly of smoke and juniper berries. Okay, I said, and ran my fingers over Tuuli’s pregnant belly under the PricewaterhouseCoopers T-shirt she was still wearing, my hands on her breasts, on the back of her neck, and suddenly the last several days and weeks and years and past and future contracted meaningfully and clearly in her lips. Tuuli took my hand, kissed it, and placed it back in my lap. Then someone pounded on the door, told us to open up, the taxi was here. Felix, still squeezing his eyes shut, let us guide him out of the apartment. On the way out I drained my gin and my nose began to bleed on Tuuli’s T-shirt.

  The taxi crossed the bridge back to Williamsburg, the lights of the Manhattan Bridge shimmered in the dawn of September 14, on the riverbank below us the factories were asleep. Felix gave the taxi driver a tip and bought a flask of whisky from Corner Store Oscar with the change, I pulled the drunk dog home. Tuuli almost fell asleep walking. We gave Lua a shower with tepid water, we didn’t want to frighten him. I had surrendered control to the cocaine and opened another bottle of beer, Felix had unscrewed the flask. The muted television showed dancing women in Afghanistan or Iraq or Silvercup Studios on the river. Then Tuuli emerged freshly showered and naked from the bathroom. She tossed me the purple T-shirt, her naked belly and her breasts flickered in the light of the television. She lay down next to Felix. He laid his hands on her belly as if it belonged to him. Tuuli yawned and repeated that they were not alone but were three. She fell asleep immediately. I remember that at that moment I put down my beer and stood up, that I took Felix’s flask and Tuuli’s T-shirt, that I shut the door behind me and woke Lua. That I then walked down Lorimer Street and turned the next corner, past Settepani and the cardboard box huts under the BQE, first north, then west, later anywhere, away from Tuuli and Felix in my bed and surrounded by my books.

  Now, two weeks later on the Coney Island beach, Kiki Kaufman takes my hand in hers, the hand with the hole in the middle, and under her fingers the throb in the wound disappears. The three of you miscalculated, she says, you’re like Borromean rings. Lua’s still sleeping, and Kiki takes advantage of his sleeping and his looking away, she strokes me around the eyes as if she were wiping away a tear. A little boy in a bathing suit walks across the beach to the water, dragging an inflated rubber Superman behind him. Kiki holds my wounded hand to her cheek and asks if I want to come along to Fire Island, maybe to Sagaponack, to Great Neck or Port Washington, even better all the way to the end of the island, to Montauk, where there’s a lighthouse and a proper view of the Atlantic, the deeper water. For two weeks now she’s been taking pictures of rubble, of Lua and me in my bloody T-shirt. Kiki shines in the autumn sun as she talks about her pictures. For two weeks she’s basically been a camera, now it’s enough. She has recorded how the city’s been divided into war and peace, she’s photographed the hoisting of flags for and against, and both would have stood equally well in the wind. She has understood that she’s always seen things too simply. Kiki sits in the sand and smiles at me. What you could see with your own eyes, what you could touch, she says, never made it onto the television sets. She’s been taking pictures to verify her own perception, she has failed. Kiki wakes Lua and tosses him the last cheeseburger. Her toes dig in the sand and find a bottle cap, they give it to me. Ultimately her camera is only a crutch for her ideas, she says, for her it’s about making something new out of the photos and stories, she still has some paint in the car. We should head off. Kiki is right: I’ve told enough, I’ve drunk too much and eaten too little, I think, burying my telephone and Tuuli’s collected cigarettes in the sand. Kiki is right, I think, we should get out of here. I’ll climb into her Honda, drive past the carousels and the shooting galleries, down Surf Avenue, under the F train and along the ocean. A view would be good, I say to Kiki Kaufman, let’s go to Montauk.

  August 7, 2005

  (The deeper water)

  It looked like a storm, the clouds were still hanging in the San Gottardo, Svensson said after the Ping-Pong match, fetching a bottle of Lugana from the kitchen, they would be here sometime in the afternoon (north-south weather divide). He didn’t usually drink, he said, as he uncorked the bottle. Only today. And when he did drink a glass on special occasions, he didn’t move his boat an inch. So I could safely take a sip myself, because I would be staying here (he was still wet from his dip). Svensson simply refused to take me, and at the same time he raised his wine glass as if there were something to celebrate:

  Chin-chin!

  So I sat with Tuuli, Svensson, and his seventy-seven chairs, and to my own astonishment I took the glass handed to me without hesitation and said “to the storm” (the first cicadas in the oleander). Despite my departure plans, despite my flight booking, and even though my luggage is waiting for me. Maybe tomorrow, Svensson laughed, and I tried not to let any indignation show (my superior and wife is waiting too). Svensson refuses me Ping-Pong victories and answers, then he hands me a glass and wants me to stay (he exploits the full potential of his silence). Chin-chin! The momentary question of why Svensson doesn’t want to get rid of me. Tuuli and he don’t seem to talk to each other much, I don’t seem to be intruding here. There was something to celebrate, Svensson said, and maybe he needs witnesses for this celebration. The three of them paid no further attention to me: Svensson emptied his wine in one gulp and carried a few of the black garbage bags across the prope
rty, Tuuli took off her nightshirt and changed into a green bikini as if I weren’t there. She lay down on an intact lounge chair in the shade of the oleander and smoked, only occasionally she smiled in my direction. The boy examined the dog with a broken chair leg as if with a stethoscope. I strolled back and forth across the property, I weighed my possibilities, I played with the ring in my pocket, I watched the playing boy, finally I gave up my scheduled plan (“To enable the perception of social life with all the senses, the ethnological method of participant observation is traditionally based on long field stays within the group under investigation”). In the early afternoon I then fell asleep in Svensson’s room without another thought about the return flight (maybe I wanted to miss the flight).