Funeral for a Dog: A Novel

by Thomas Pletzinger

  journalistic scrupulousness

  The moon over everything an appropriate lighting. I’ve bent Svensson’s paper clips and tried his pens, I’ve searched for the key to the suitcase, I’ve pulled and tugged. Without success. My kneeling in front of the suitcase, Tuuli’s golden hairpin in my hand, the window is wide open: Macumba in the water and the lights on the other side of the lake. Do I hear footsteps on the stairs? Do I hear Tuuli singing? Is Svensson still talking? Tuuli’s hairpin is slightly curved and rounded on one end, it’s sturdy enough to turn in the lock, and Svensson’s suitcase (Blaumeiser’s suitcase) acquiesces, it opens with a soft click, and that very second all the lights turn on in the room.

  That a night can suddenly be so bright.

  That a dog can die so loudly.

  Quiet, Lua, quiet!

  My wincing and springing to my feet and standing paralyzed: I’m frozen in front of the open suitcase in the brightly lit room, the dying dog by the water is coughing and barking at the same time, down below Svensson is emerging from the house (two tinted lights at the end of the dock, a floodlight with a motion detector on the outside of the house). Tuuli follows him and talks relentlessly at him: it was a fuse, idiootti, she only had to flip the switch! Not Claasen, not a power outage, not fallen trees, not heroic independence, not rebelliously refused bill payments, not his retreat from this world, paskapää, only his morbid collection of old, useless things, his dumb insistence on a corny idea of the ruin, only his inability to deal with the present. Only a damn fuse (a bogus epiphany)! Then Lua is finally quiet.

  in the suitcase

  Stones (heavy), flowers (dried), finally: a thick packet, brown paper and tight packing string. I put the packet on the desk (that smell of old suitcases), untie the knots very carefully and remove the paper (journalistic scrupulousness). That a night can be so quiet (that paper can rustle so loudly). I find the light switch and turn off the lamps.

  Astroland

  Observed from the safe darkness of the room: on the way to the lake Svensson takes off his T-shirt, he leaves his shoes in the grass and tosses his pants aside, Tuuli picks them up and throws them at him furiously (can that be explained?). In the light of the motion detector, Svensson finally stands naked on the dock. For a moment he looks across to the opposite shore, then for a few seconds at Tuuli. She’s still berating him, but I don’t understand what she’s saying. Svensson spreads his arms and dives headfirst and perfectly straight into the black lake (reflection of the sky). The water splashes up over him, the surface evens out, Tuuli is standing alone on the dock. On the other side of the lake shines the yellow tower of Santuario di Nostra Signora della Caravina, in the deeper water is the white buoy, above the lake Monte Cecchi, the moon. Svensson has vanished (everyone is waiting). Svensson doesn’t reappear. The light over the property goes out, because no one is moving.

  Svensson can’t lose.

  In the unwrapped packing paper in front of me the thick stack of paper:

  Capoeira with Heckler & Koch

  MY BAG IN THE BACK OF THE TRUCK, THE ANTARCTICA BOTTLES open, and we’re off. David at the wheel of the red pickup, Felix in an open shirt and panama hat, me with the twenty-four-hour flight in my bones. We blast through a red light. Between the entrance ramps and concrete pillars the greenery grows rampant, and over everything an airplane thunders in for a landing. Felix reaches for the glove compartment and tears the door off, holy Mother of God, there’s nothing there, did you drink it all, he asks. David? And again: David? Felix says “DAVI” with the last d silent, as Brazilians do. David with his pitch-black skin drives with tunnel vision down the street, a luminous tube through the sultry night, from the rearview mirror dangles a crucifix. Synthetic lambskin hangs over the seats. At our backs shimmers the Recife airport. Felix raises his bottle, spraying some beer, welcome to the tropics, my Svensson! Felix is wearing multicolored bracelets around his wrists and explains that that’s what’s done here. I’m out of it, in the glow of the streetlights before my eyes there’s a sprinkling of moisture or cigarette smoke. Or is it the light-emitting diodes in the crown of the holy Madonna flashing from the dashboard? Is the driver really wearing the black skull-and-crossbones sweatshirt of FC St. Pauli? I say: The flight from São Paulo was a disaster, they’d unscrewed the seats next to me, there were only two other passengers on board, the propellers were flapping and grating. There was beans-and-rice and nothing to drink, it was hard for me to swallow. Felix and David raise their bottles with a loud clink. Turn on the music, meu amigo, says Felix, make it louder, there’s something to celebrate, Svensson’s here! I say: I guess I am, but where are we actually going?

  The pickup roars along the Recife beach promenade, the left rear wheel suspension makes a whistling sound, or maybe it’s Felix singing to the music on the radio, “Girl from Mars.” Now and then a streetlight, now and then none. On the left the black sea and the white streaks of the waves, on the right beach bars with strings of lights or strings of lights on wooden trellises over the doors or over a few men in open shirts, over beer bottles and card tricks. And the waves crash on the beach. Then steel fences, behind the steel fences high-rises, between them dark green bushes with thick, shiny leaves, Madonnas with low-voltage aureoles, now and then a neon cross, soldiers and armored cars and rifle barrels on the driveways. I ask: Are those Kalashnikovs? No, answers David, all Heckler & Koch, quality workmanship from Germany! Then the pickup leaves Boa Viagem, first come flat buildings made of concrete, then corrugated iron, then plywood, then cardboard. Felix opens another bottle of beer and pushes his hat back, I say: From above the city is a carpet of glowworms and frayed at the edges. Tourist, hails Felix, those are the fires, there are no glowworms here, this here is the favela of Recife, Svensson, you understand? I don’t understand anything, but meanwhile I’m holding in my hand my third beer since my arrival in Brazil. David turns the corner and winds through the muddy roads, he avoids the cardboard huts and burning garbage cans, the dark faces between the flames, and they all turn with the pickup like flowers with the sun. I ask again: Where are we actually going? The pickup stops in front of a poorly lit shell of a house, on the second floor a few windows are illuminated, in front of the house a tin garbage can is burning and throwing off sparks. Here, says Felix, to buy weed. I ask: Can’t we just get a beer and then go to a hotel? Don’t worry, my Svensson, says Felix, jumping out of the truck, this is all great fun.

  I ask through the open window: Isn’t this dangerous? Felix hunches his shoulders as he walks toward the mossy ruin. I get out and follow him, I ask louder: Isn’t this dangerous? Toward the horizon the lights of a tanker or an airplane in descent or the sparks over the garbage can? I say, Felix? But Felix is climbing the dark staircase, stepping over the trash on the staircase, he jumps over a man lying in a watery pool on the concrete, the man is snoring and stinks. Felix? Be quiet, Felix replies, or else they’ll hear your fear, and I can’t say they’re harmless. Up above, light falls through a door into the stink of piss and onto the stains on the walls. Am I breathing too deeply? Can fear be heard? In here, says Felix, and I think: Get out of here! and stay in the stairwell. I hear terse sentences from inside, and someone laughs loudly. I turn around and begin to go carefully down the stairs. Is the man on the landing snoring louder as I step over him? Are the fluorescent lights in the stairwell flickering or am I not seeing straight? Is that piss or liquor or mildew burning in my eyes? Am I sweating going downstairs in the dark? Is that possible? Can all this be true?

  I wait in the passenger seat as Felix jumps onto the back of the truck, the air thick with smoke from the garbage cans. Felix with a bulging plastic bag in his hand, printed on it is: Supermercadinho e Panificadora Bom Jesus. David turns the key in the ignition back and forth like a screwdriver, the engine sputters and finally starts. We got lucky, says Felix, and I ask: Why lucky? They messed up, says Felix, meu amigo! Look at this bag full of weed, he whispers, the idiots made a mistake, meu amigo, he cheers, this is at least five hu
ndred grams! And are sparks flying from the garbage cans on the road, or is there even an illegal Heckler & Koch rattling behind us, or are the shadows on the road ducking like flowers in the moonlight? I stare at Felix: Are you serious? David steers the pickup out of the favela, but with my twenty-four-hour flight in my bones I have trouble following. With such curves, with such holes in the ground.

  Felix and David show me the area through the truck window. The pickup roars along the sea again and then turns into smaller streets, we drive up a hill and back down, past gardens full of orchids and bougainvillea, past iron fences and shining old buildings. I say: There are palm trees everywhere here! Incredible! Olinda, says Felix, is not a city, Olinda is an attraction. The pickup drives over rivulets and streams, through the window I hear cars honking and beggars singing. Felix passes around an Antarctica, then a Skol, then a Brahma. With Felix you always have to be drinking. The pickup drives past glass facades and gas stations, it turns under bridges, there are mildewed election posters stuck to the bridge piers, Burger King shines in the night. Then the billboards and satellite towns disappear, the pickup leaves the city. David signals to move into the passing lane and steps on the gas, he turns up the cassette player and whistles through his teeth, Rudi Ratlos heisst der Geiger, Felix screams to the sky, der streicht uns grad’ ’nen Evergreen! Half a kilo of weed! And I with the twenty-five hours without sleep in my bones sit next to Felix on the synthetic lambskin and scarcely believe my ears and eyes. I ask: What are we actually doing here? I thought this was alternative service in the rural blight of Seraverde, Pernambuco. David laughs and drinks and throws a Brahma bottle into the stalks and bushes flying by on the roadside, in a way it is. Felix laughs louder, in a way it is! Seraverde, he says, is a town of average size and average beauty between rain forest and desert. Seraverde throws its trash on a piece of fallow land behind the bus station, Rodoviária. The poor live off the trash, they wear old shoes and T-shirts, they drink the oily water, they eat melon rinds and gnaw on chicken bones, they beg for sugarcane liquor. That’s why we’re here, my Svensson, says Felix, we’re building a water tower. We cook them soup, we show them how to use a toothbrush, we pay a doctor, we pull rotten teeth, we teach them the alphabet, we change diapers. The Germans and Italians and French donate money, the Catholic Church pays a padre to hear confessions. We provide salvation, we have a fax machine, we throw condoms on Rua do Lixo. The poor fuck like rabbits, then they get into fights, they stab each other and shoot, they die like flies, and we drive the ambulances, we manage the sutured wounds. Felix turns around to me. Rua do Lixo is the ass crack of Seraverde, the garbage street, you understand? We wipe Seraverde’s butt, so it doesn’t itch the medium-sized and moderately pretty city. And since this work is a disaster, David laughs and looks at us instead of the road, we got ourselves some weed. Felix cheers and slaps me on the shoulder, porco dio! The two of us in Brazil, Svensson! The two of us! Warm night air wafts in through the window, and I’m suddenly so tired that I can’t even see straight. I ask: When will we finally get there? Another five hours to Seraverde, says David, then you’ll get a hammock and a mosquito net, then you’ll get electricity, then you two will have a wall around you and glass shards in concrete. And you? I ask. I’m your night watchman, says David, and takes a Heckler & Koch out of the glove compartment, I guard you. Nothing will happen to you! Felix takes the gun out of his hand and aims into the darkness. Old tires on the median strip, and because David is grinning and the music is clanging so beautifully, I lay my head on the lambskin and close my eyes. Urinating is good for you, I hear Felix singing, and as the pickup stops in the middle of the rain forest and Felix pees on a car wreck, in the din of the crickets, in the howling of the jackals, with my twenty-seven hours of anxious anticipation in my bones, I finally fall asleep.

  When I wake up, it’s bright. The pickup is parked in the floodlight of an armored car. Police, Felix whispers, come on, Svensson, move your ass! He buries the Supermercadinho e Panificadora Bom Jesus bag under me and the lambskin. I need a few seconds to get my bearings: Brazil, pickup, lambskin, me, Felix, David the night watchman. The policemen are hard to see in the glare of the floodlight, their Heckler & Kochs are shining, the armored car is blocking the pickup. I slide back and forth on the lambskin and feel the bulging plastic bag under me. Just arrived, I think, and immediately thrown in prison. A short policeman approaches the window between tall policemen, he has a sparse mustache but is otherwise clean-shaven, he’s in shirtsleeves and holds a pair of leather gloves in his hand. Next to him is a black German shepherd, it barks deeply and darkly at the pickup. Our night watchman David puts up his hands, the policeman grins into the truck and I don’t move, at least not visibly. Santos! says Felix. Oi, meus amigos alemães, says the policeman, tudo bem? He looks over the rim of the mirrored sunglasses he’s wearing, even though it’s night. Felix nods, so I nod too, as if I understood. The black dog is waiting next to the policeman like death, his chain rattles, the muscles under his smooth fur move, his jowls droop, and when he yawns, I can see his fangs. Get out and put your hands on the roof, the policeman says politely, so we step out and put our hands on the hood, one of the tall policemen pulls my passport out of my back pocket and flips through it. Svensson? Turista? Yes. The pitch-black dog sniffs Felix first, then I feel his wet nose between my legs. The animal takes his time thinking about what part of this tourist he should bite into first. Just woke up, I think, and already got my balls bitten off. David and the tall policemen seem to know each other, the doors are opened, they take David’s Heckler & Koch out of the glove compartment, hold it up to the light and put it back. P10? No, MK23. Permit? In his pants pocket. Santos laughs, David laughs too, but his laugh sounds angry. Can the dog sniff out the weed? He licks my hand, he licks every single finger with his rough tongue, the weed smell reaches this far. I’m trembling, and the pickup’s hood fogs up under my damp fingers. Then Santos slaps the dog on the nose with the leather glove and pulls him to the pickup by the chain, vambora, Lula, vambora! The dog sticks his nose into the truck and drools on the seat. Does the dapper policeman smell the Supermercadinho e Panificadora Bom Jesus bag under the lambskin? Felix reaches into his pocket and presses a few bills into Santos’s hand. They both laugh. The policeman twirls his fine mustache and smoothes out the money. He sticks it in his shirt pocket, then steps up the negotiations. Santos stands on tiptoe and takes the panama hat off Felix’s head, he turns it and flips it, he puts it on over his thin hair. David holds a forced smile as if he were posing for a painting. If Lula doesn’t find anything, says Santos with the panama hat on his head, you’ll have to reward him, Allemaos. The tall policemen with their Heckler & Kochs in their hands laugh. Vambora, Lula, vambora! Of course, says Felix, meu amigo, of course! Compadres, says Santos, if you still need water for your tower, Lula and I could do a lot for you. All we need is a little favor. Meu amigo, Felix says, of course, and he turns to me. Do you have any money? With the black dog Lula breathing down my neck and the lambskin in the corner of my eye, with damp fingers and weak knees, I hand over to Santos all the dollars from my neck pouch. Beleza, meu irmão, Santos shakes Felix’s hand and claps me on the shoulder. The tall policemen rub their fingers together, Santos tugs on Lula’s chain. He runs a glove across his throat, the floodlight goes out, all of a sudden it’s dark. The policemen get in their car and drive slowly toward the city, Lula has to gallop behind the car, we hear the rattle of his chain on the asphalt along with a jubilant song from the radio of the pickup, “Girl from Mars.” On the hills in the background the lights of Seraverde. Just arrived, I think, and already robbed. Welcome to Seraverde, says Felix, and David crosses himself and curses, if it were up to him, Santos would drop dead, safado, two-faced son of a bitch. Drop dead!

  Two months later, the day the new volunteer arrives, everything is at first the same as always. A wall encloses the Fundação Ajuda de Nossa Senhora, on top of it glass shards embedded in concrete and razor wire. When David comes back from his
last round at sunrise, Felix and I are already awake in our hammocks and mosquito nets. I make coffee with sugar, and Felix smokes some weed before he goes to the bathroom, he sings, er ist achtzig, hat zittrige Finger und ist schon ganz weich in den Knien. David takes off his ski mask and puts the Heckler & Koch in the cabinet, he washes with water from the enamel bowl, he lies down in Felix’s hammock. David guards our sleep, he works when we’re asleep, he makes his rounds along the walls, he sits cross-legged amid the glass in concrete and smokes, sometimes he shoots a cat with ragged ears, sometimes one of the gray street pigs, and leaves them there until the dogs get them. At first everything is the same as always: at six the gate is opened, in the old people’s barracks the residents wake up, at seven the padre says the morning prayer in his purple baseball cap. At seven-thirty comes the soup kitchen cook Cris, at eight the mothers bring the first children, at nine comes the dentist, and I throw the first molars on top of the onion skins and chicken bones. I’ve learned how to give injections. On the train platforms behind the Fundação Ajuda de Nossa Senhora the railroad children sit with their plastic bags and glue cans, they get orange juice and bread. Felix feeds the chickens, he milks the goats, he gives the smallest children the bottles, he rocks them to sleep. Today he is doing all this for the last time, today the new volunteer is supposed to arrive on the six o’clock bus from Recife, we send one of the railroad children to Rodoviária to pick her up.

  Today is a special day, today the water is supposed to come. In the morning I crush ants and spiders underfoot, I sweep the bedrooms and the courtyard, I drink the sugary coffee. I’ve grown thin, I’ve already gotten over the vomiting and diarrhea, I’ve spent nights lying awake next to the toilet. Now I wear friendship bracelets around my wrists like all the Europeans in the Fundação Ajuda, for health, for good luck. At eleven Felix and I drive the pickup into the city. For the last time we buy drinking water in containers, three sacks of concrete and two iron bars for the last steps to the water tower. We buy beer and a bottle of champagne. Felix and I work hand in hand, we saw, plane, nail. In the courtyard the hungry stand barefoot in line, there’s feijoada and rice, oi, gringos, they say to Felix and me. At eleven-thirty the bars are bent into makeshift steps, fourteen metal hooks up to the top, the last two we affix around twelve. We check the struts, we test-run the pump without water. Then the water tower is standing, it took us two months, a large metal tank on four legs, cast in concrete and six meters high. It stands in the middle of Rua do Lixo, against the filth in the area, against the poisonings, against the bacteria, against the dying of children. For two months Felix has driven the pickup into the city every day and bought concrete, pipes, wood and wire mesh with European money. The pipeline runs illegally through the field between Rua do Lixo and Seraverde, four hundred meters of plastic pipes twenty centimeters under the dust, buried by the day laborers at dawn and nightfall, the municipal pipelines tapped only unofficially, officer Santos was willing to turn a blind eye to the construction of the water conduit in exchange for a friendly donation, meus amigos. The pump runs on diesel. For a small fee, compadres, Santos said, he and his dog Lula wouldn’t notice any of this. Everyone helped: David can weld, I learned to mix concrete, Felix can hang in the scaffolding and direct the day laborers, his book in his hand, Water Supply Systems for Home Farming by Williams/Steynman, Chapter “Shut up and play”, everything just roughly tripled.