Funeral for a Dog: A Novel

by Thomas Pletzinger

  It’s already noon when I start the pump again. We washed Lula with drinking water, the lambskin we threw into the fire, followed by our bloody T-shirts and pants, then Lula’s leg. Tuuli is sitting next to the dog and smoking. At one point she changes the bandage. Lula is sleeping, Felix and David are lying in their hammocks. The stink of the diesel pump mingles with the smoldering lambskin and the blood. I’m waiting for the padre with his cap. Today is Sunday, and on Sunday the padre takes off his cap and reads three consecutive Masses, first on Rua do Lixo, then in Majada, lastly for the glue-sniffing children of Mimoso. Any minute now his Peugeot will pull up in front of the Fundação Ajuda de Nossa Senhora and honk, any minute he’ll want to eat with them, but no one has cooked. I’m sitting next to Tuuli and waiting for the police. We’ve burned what was left of the weed, but our fear remains. Why, I don’t know, and of what, I only suspect. I said everything I could say, I told them everything I understood, but still the fear is stuck in my bones. The motor is running, the pump pumps, and just as I’m about to turn off the motor, there’s a soft burble. I take Tuuli’s hand and point to the sound. Then comes more and more. The tower is still standing, the tower doesn’t even creak alarmingly, we hear the water gurgling into the tank. The pipes seem to be watertight. I run into the bedroom and wake Felix and David. The water, I say, the water! Felix gets the Heckler & Koch out of the drawer and fires into the sky, as if he wanted to shoot the fear dead from behind. Peace to the huts! he sings, war to the palaces! To the tower of Seraverde! he cheers. On the decisive Sunday in Seraverde, the day of district policeman José Santos Tourão Splitter’s death, the day of Lula’s greatest pain, the day of Tuuli’s first amputation, the day of her arrival in the lives of Dirk Svensson and Felix Blaumeiser, the diesel motor pumps the first water into the garbage street. We test the water fountain in the courtyard, we let the faucet run, we pour water on our faces, we try the shower and the shower works, we bathe in the first water of Rua do Lixo, we stand in the midday sun, we rinse the sleep out of our eyes and the fear out of our bones, we wash the blood off the doorstep and off the iron door, we give Lula a drink.

  August 8, 2005

  (Bar del Porto)

  Mandelkern! Svensson’s loud knocking wakes me too early and much too fast, I must have slept less than an hour. Mandelkern? I become aware only slowly that I’m in Svensson’s house, on his lake: Svensson’s desk under the window, his books and pictures (the suitcase under the desk). I’m dizzy from not enough sleep and too much gin. Yes? I ask, and Svensson is immediately standing in the room and holding out one of his shirts to me, his voice too loud and too firm for the early morning:

  Take your notebooks, Mandelkern, and come with me!

  My first thought: the Astroland manuscript. Last night I opened the suitcase with Tuuli’s hairpin and unwrapped the packet, in it almost three hundred typed manuscript pages, the title page a photo of Astroland covered with scrawls. At first I turned the pages drunkenly, then I sobered up over the course of Svensson’s story. After the first third I could concentrate better and read until the candle had burned down, then read on in the moonlight, it didn’t rain all night. I read Astroland through from beginning to end like a child under the blanket. I couldn’t stop, even though I was tired, even though the manuscript isn’t intended for my eyes (forbidden time, forbidden book). Astroland tells a love-triangle story, two men, a woman and a dog: Svensson, Tuuli and Felix. The dog is named Lua or Lula. Svensson has apparently tried to find words for the past years (1993-2003). His life story has turned for him into a sort of novel, maybe a roman à clef (I used Tuuli’s hairpin). The story takes place in Europe, North and South America, Svensson’s characters have endless possibilities and no obligations, they’re always on the move, tourists in search of a home, like those “nostalgia tourists” journeying back to their roots abroad (Elisabeth and me in 2003). Svensson’s story should have ended on the Italian side of Lake Lugano. That is, here.

  Astroland

  Svensson and I in white shirts and flip-flops, he holds the door for me, I carry my red plastic bag with the notebooks out of his room (headache). My second thought, as I pass Svensson on my way out the door: I won’t be able to take the manuscript with me if he’s bringing me to Lugano now. I should leave with the hidden stories, but the stack of paper is in Svensson’s old suitcase (Astroland is the reason I’m here). After you, Mandelkern, says Svensson, closing the door behind me, after you (as if nothing happened). I wrapped up the stack of paper again and put it back in the suitcase when the roosters began to crow (my journalistic thoroughness).

  Tuuli

  On the stairs, passing the pictures of black, dying animals, I’m struck by the question of why Svensson wants to get my departure over with today and so early in the morning, of all times, even though yesterday my presence still seemed to be pleasant to him (we ate his fish, drank his wine, his gin). Tuuli and I offered each other cigarettes by the pack. I smoked what I could smoke, my night was short (now I’m paying for it). Then in the kitchen the emptied ashtray, the sorted empty bottles, the clean plates (the glass shards in the middle of the table). Svensson hurries ahead, and I follow him like a dog (my sudden nausea, the spring in his step). My third thought: I got too close to Tuuli. We sleep in adjacent rooms, I could have knocked on her door. She seems to still be asleep, she and the boy are nowhere to be seen (her Finnish-plumed singing on the other side of the wall while I was reading). I won’t meet her again, I think, as Svensson and I walk side by side to the water, I don’t even know her last name. I wonder what I’ve done wrong, why Svensson wants to get rid of me. Could he be more than just strange? 288 meters. The air over the lake is slightly hazy this morning, distant chainsaws, the sun is still waiting behind the mountains. Svensson is bigger than I, the borrowed shirt flutters around my body, the sleeves too long, I have to roll them up (his shoulders and strides, as if he made a decision).

  Lua’s Spot

  A yellow swan stretches its neck. It stretches it up along the wooden side of the boat and toward Svensson, he feeds it seeds from his pants pocket and mimics the animal (the forward and back of both heads). When I reach out my hand, the swan hisses, as if I came too close to it. Cygnus olor, says Svensson, directing me to the bench in the bow, the mute swan. I feel like I’m going to throw up, Svensson has jumped onto the boat and is observing me from the stern as I clumsily climb on (he doesn’t help me). Lua is still lying motionlessly by the water, he doesn’t even lift his head when Svensson revs up the outboard motor (Evinrude 25). Lua doesn’t look up when the motor starts only on the seventh try, when Svensson laughs and curses, when the swan thrusts out its head and hisses (the multihued gas on the water, in its feathers). The mute swan, says Svensson, commits for life. Above all during mating season the males are very aggressive and defend their territory against people too. They hiss and with a well-aimed blow of the wingtip can break human bones. Then he turns his wrist, Macumba rises steeply and moves out onto the lake in a wide curve (for a few seconds I’m looking down at Svensson). House and dog quickly grow smaller, the swan soars from the water with three or four heavy strokes of its wings and follows the boat. He likes these birds, says Svensson, they have their memories and their freedom. That’s enough for them. But that freedom doesn’t last forever either. Memories disappear too, if one doesn’t do anything to stop it. Svensson observes the swan. Of course animals can’t tell their stories. He looks at me. Of course not, I say, because I now have to say something (the pollen on the water’s surface like souls). Just as none of us can tell our own stories. As an author of children’s books he must be acquainted with this dilemma, I say, but also as a novelist

  (I break off)

  Then my fast talking about myself as an ethnologist and my notes, as if I could take back my remark (the remaining color drains from our faces). Svensson suddenly smiles at me, he rolls up his sleeves once more, showing me his upper arms. Then he revs up the motor somewhat and steers Macumba in a straight line into the mi
ddle of the lake. The passing thought: the suitcase, his manuscript, Svensson has noticed my spying. Now he wants to get rid of me. You look at surfaces, says Svensson, and make your articles out of them. What do you know about writing, Mandelkern?

  Interview (nausea)

  SVENSSON: You look so pale all of a sudden, Mandelkern, are you nauseous?

  MANDELKERN: A little. The gin.

  S: That was good gin. The cigarettes?

  M: Maybe the fish.

  S: The fish was fine, Mandelkern.

  M: Can you drive somewhat slower?

  S: You mentioned your questions, Mandelkern, now would be the right time.

  M: Isn’t Lugano in the other direction?

  S: Lugano?

  M: Yes?

  S: Yes.

  M: Okay.

  S: Is that all you wanted to know?

  M: Well. The fact that you live in solitude here. For example.

  S: Yes?

  M: I mean: why do you live here of all places? Why not in America?

  S: America?

  M: Or Berlin, if you prefer.

  S: Go stand over the water and look out at the lake, Mandelkern, the mountains sleeping animals, ships with the speed of glaciers, below the surface the fish, over the lake the clouds and the whizzing of the swallows overhead. Swallows turn gracefully, have you ever noticed that? Tourists come here only with the ferry. When any come at all. The overland route isn’t interesting enough, the road clings to concrete piers just over the water. There’s nothing here. A rundown campground, three or four rusty garages, a quarry without orders. Back there. You see? Nothing else. Even the curves are not as sharp as on the other side of the lake. Over there. Now and then the seasons. The sage grows and lemons and kumquats. I wake up and go to sleep, and all this would go on exactly the same way without me. Every day the church tower clocks make their odd music. I could work anywhere, but here I’m not so important. This house stands at the edge of time. Here the dog has his peace.

  M: How’s the dog doing?

  S: How are you doing, Mandelkern? You look bad.

  M: You obviously have a higher tolerance for alcohol than I.

  S: Come on. That was only one glass of good gin.

  M: A water glass.

  S: And I trust the fish seller here. We all ate fish.

  M: Fish seller?

  S: We don’t have much time. Keep asking your questions, if you can.

  M: Is it going to be just the one children’s book? Or are you already working on the next one?

  S: I’m trying to give memory time.

  M: Your book is based on memories?

  S: I think people can only write about themselves. And fail at it.

  M: But the themes of loss and compensation have significance for many people.

  S: Good observation.

  M: Can you explain your work method?

  S: I wake up and feed the chickens. Then I see what needs to be done. I build a cistern. I renovate. This and that.

  M: I mean: Are you primarily an author or an illustrator?

  S: The pictures are not by me. The pictures are by Kiki Kaufman.

  M: I see. And where did you get the idea?

  S: Death dictated the story to me. Yesterday was the anniversary of a death, Mandelkern.

  M: I heard.

  S: What did you hear?

  M: Felix Blaumeiser has been dead for three years.

  S: I wonder whether you should use this information at all. It’s not that simple, of course. Maybe our interview is unusable.

  M: Any information is helpful.

  S: Felix Blaumeiser drank himself to death, and yesterday we toasted to that.

  M: With Bombay Sapphire?

  S: The lake swallows everything that is given to it, all joy, all sorrow. The lake isn’t that particular. You can throw up overboard, Mandelkern. Don’t make such a big deal out of it.

  Macumba & my decision

  Svensson asks if I can swim as I take his advice and surrender the gin, wine, and fish to the lake. Svensson says I shouldn’t lean out too far, one shouldn’t lean out all too far anyway (little fish feed on the vomit on the surface of the lake). It must have been the cigarettes, I think, I smoked almost the whole pack (eventually smokers’ sperm give up). I haven’t slept. Svensson revs up the motor again and turns the gas lever. He’s sorry, he says, in situations like this it’s necessary to maintain the stability of swaying boats, he says, it’s like riding a bicycle, you can’t just stand still (Svensson revs up his voice). The boats of the Guardia di Finanza have a fairly strong wake, so he’d better bring me ashore now. Svensson steers Macumba in a wide and scarcely perceptible curve back toward the shore, and by the time I can finally stand up again, we’ve almost reached the small port (my pants wet at the knees from the water in the boat). I could wait for him on solid ground and in the fresh air, says Svensson, he has some errands to run, I should watch the fishermen. I could also take the ferry to Lugano and leave. Whatever you like, he says and steers the boat carefully to the ferry dock of the small village on the other side of the rock shelf,

  You decide, Mandelkern,

  and then Svensson’s friendliness catches me completely off guard as I cling to the steel ladder on the quay of Osteno (as if he were pursuing a strategy). With his hand he keeps Macumba away from the concrete piers, and declares what a pleasure this has been for him. I hope I was some help to you, he says, your questions are questions I sometimes ask myself! He’d like to continue our conversation, out here there’s not much chance to talk. With Kiki Kaufman, for example, he speaks exclusively English, and Lua too has grown taciturn (he says: in another language one is another person). Tuuli refuses to remember anything, says Svensson, shifting the outboard into first gear, Tuuli only thinks about tomorrow, the boy is ultimately a mystery to him anyway (Svensson is now talking as if he wanted to tell me these things). Then he revs up the motor and Macumba stirs the green water. Feel better, Mandelkern, Svensson shouts as he departs, leaving me behind on the dock (Macumba is a sort of voodoo among Brazilian peasants, that much I learned last night). On the dock a ferry timetable (Società Navigazione Lago di Lugano).

  Piazza G. Matteotti, Osteno, 8:30 AM

  It will get better soon, I think, a short stroll through the village will dispel the nausea, the fresh air the burning from the tobacco, a coffee the fatigue (solid ground underfoot). Osteno a deserted place without a real restaurant, without a supermarket and with only one café, early in the morning the two plazas are empty (Piazza Ugo Ricci, Piazza G. Matteotti). In the morning fog a black eagle with outspread wings commemorates the local dead (World War I + II). The only store in the village is closed, a paint and lacquer shop (Colorificio). On the wall of the village hall a poster announcing a fair in Porlezza for the summer of 2002 (Luna Park), there are also the recent deaths in the village. I follow the serpentine Via Val d’Intelvi up the mountain, in the cemetery overlooking the village an old woman in an army raincoat is kneeling in front of a gravestone. To avoid intruding, I wait among the urn compartments at the other end. I wait for the wretched nausea to go away (she nods at me before she leaves). On the small gravel grave a tiny brass bicycle and a wooden model of a boat, behind the gravestone a beer glass for watering flowers (Aronne Gobbi, 1937–2002). Felix Blaumeiser must have died the same year, if I am to believe Svensson, but his Astroland manuscript breaks off at that decisive point. I should ask my main informant. In the whole cemetery there are no living plants, on the Via Mulino behind it only stinging nettles (I throw up into the weeds).

  How do I get out of here?

  Porlezza 13:05

  Osteno 13:20

  San Mamete 13:28

  Oria 13:35

  Gandria Confine 13:40

  Gandria 13:45

  Castagnola 13:58

  Paradiso 14:08

  Lugano Giardino 14:15

  What would I like,

  asks the maybe forty-year-old waitress in the only bar in the village, first in
too-fast Italian and then in somewhat antiquated German. I need a coffee, or else I’ll fall asleep before the ferry or Svensson picks me up. The bar is a flat shed, the only bungalow in a row of whitewashed, multistory harbor houses. At the red plastic tables in front of the bar, four men are playing cards (coffee cups & Tuttosport). An old man with white hair and the yellow and black armband of the blind is sitting off to the side and drinking Prosecco, even though it’s only nine o’clock in the morning. Here too sparrows on the tables. I order: espresso for the fatigue, mineral water for the headache. The waitress’s reply: immediatamente, Signore. The old man with the Prosecco glass hears my whispered German and extends his arm in a Nazi salute, the waitress goes over to him and pushes down his outstretched hand with a smile. Sorry, she says, looking at me, are you unwell? Sembra pallido (my Italian is doing miserably). And because all words and reasons for the answer fail me, I alternately nod and shake my head (headache).

  BAR del PORTO/Caffè Manzoni

  I wait for recovery. Plastic seats under pruned lakeside lindens, on the sidewalk orange-red umbrellas (Algida), the gold-green paint is flaking off the window frames. Linden leaves, a toy vending machine full of blue, pink, green capsules (the ferry back doesn’t leave for three hours). Two days ago I fell out of time. I’ve been here since Saturday, two days without a word to Elisabeth (two days outside my life). Two days ago I bought the Süddeutsche Zeitung at the Hamburg Airport: caesaerean risk and air running out in a sunken mini-submarine in the Black Sea, along with three notebooks. Un altro espresso? asks the waitress behind the bar, as I slowly slink back from the bathroom. Even with my finger in my throat there was nothing left but thready saliva and useless coughing (Lua). I can’t get rid of last night. Si, I say, and flop down on the plastic chair next to the entrance. Elisabeth and I didn’t make an arrangement as to when to give notification of my absence (the absence of my article). By now she will have called several times, sober on my cell phone, insistent with Lufthansa, indignant with the hotel (her singing-resistance-to-pieces frequency). Tomorrow evening the next issue will go to print. Mandelkern is the perfect man for this story, Elisabeth said. I should have refused the assignment outright. The nausea isn’t subsiding, the ferry isn’t coming. I notice that I’ve forgotten my Svensson file on Svensson’s desk, along with the Süddeutsche Zeitung and my shirt with the red wine stains (Svensson won’t find out anything new about himself). This morning too the mini-submarine with the eight confined crew members will still be on the bottom of the sea. They’ll calculate their oxygen, as Svensson calculated his oxygen on September eleventh (my coughing after all the cigarettes). The blind man with the white hair has extended his arm again and is babbling German and Italian commands to himself. I would have liked to reread the article about the risks of caesareans, I would have been interested in the report on the mobile lifestyle (Elisabeth and me). When the waitress sets another coffee in front of me and my notebook, it becomes clear to me that I should call, but there’s chewing gum stuck to the pay phone of the Bar del Porto.