palimpsest
Between the crayons and papers: the grocery receipt with the boy’s picture on it. When I view it more closely, the momentary question of why Svensson bought so much wine (Barolo), so much beer (Heineken), so much meat. He brought groceries ashore by the box. Samy’s picture consists of a few lines, astonishingly clear for such a small child. I should eat something, I think, I should finally sleep. But when I turn the receipt sideways, the child’s picture becomes the little doctor’s prescription (I’m drawing a prescription for Lua, the boy said, Lua shouldn’t die sad). The grocery receipt shows a syringe and the letters L U A. With my feet on Svensson’s suitcase of stories I realize: the little doctor is prescribing Lua a gentle death, the boy is helping Lua out of the world (Lua becomes history).
Auberge la Fontaine
Elisabeth and I a few months ago in a guestroom above the restaurant in Venasque where we’d celebrated her birthday that evening, her friends’ laughter had died away around midnight on the Rue de l’Hôpital. Elisabeth sat backwards on me and arched her back, then she told me for the first time that she wanted a child. Not at some point, not from anyone, but now and from me (from you, Daniel, she said). She sensed that her body was driving her thoughts in this direction. In my head this image remains: her body from behind bright in the almost complete darkness of the room, her face turned in the orange glow of the streetlights (her back a distinct exclamation point).
now she wants a child
Lying on the examination table in the urology unit of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in May (birds chirping and sirens on the clinic premises). Elisabeth had changed her gynecologist, a recent and thorough examination yielded no cause for concern. Now it was my turn, she said, just to make sure. Her gynecologist had recommended a urologist, Dr. Thankri Sitar, and in answer to my perhaps somewhat too-nervous question as to whether he had anything to do with the instrument of the same name, he told me completely humorlessly to hold my penis a little bit higher, please, he couldn’t see anything. At which point I caught myself for a moment in the suspicion that there might be something to see (the cold ultrasound gel). He gave me a cup and an instruction: sperm sample for the fertility test.
Use your imagination, Mandelkern!
This time everything has to work, Elisabeth apologized afterward in the park at the medical center. We sat on the steps of the central medical library next to our chained-up bicycles. It felt absurd, just a moment ago to have jerked off into a plastic cup and now to be sitting next to her. This is my last try, Daniel (she didn’t even sound silly).
my central medical library
My hesitation in the face of doctor visits surprises Elisabeth. She’s a pragmatic woman, she observes her body, she notices something, she gets treatment (I get things sorted out, she says). It must be her age that has made her so sober. I write and read my own records, I consult reference books. Daniel Mandelkern, born 07/12/1973, height: 1.85 meters, weight: 79 kilograms. Circumcision in 1975 due to foreskin nonretractability (phimosis), 1981 greenstick fracture of the left forearm after fall from a swing (radius, ulna, humerus), no predisposition to wisdom teeth (dentes serotini), 1983–1985 orthodontic treatment of gap between teeth (diastema), 1985–1987 regression of same. Childhood illnesses: chickenpox (varicella), mumps (epidemic parotitis, epidemic salivitis), as well as a prepubescent series of scarlet fevers overcome probably without permanent damage (infertility would be possible). In 1985, on the occasion of the delivery of a mail order catalogue with skin-colored corsetry, first self-gratification under the reproachful poster look of the Pet Shop Boys, subsequent irrational crises of conscience (sex makes you weak, pale, and unsuccessful) and development of compulsive neuroses focused on gaining strength, a healthy complexion, and success (push-ups, vegetarianism, tanning salon). From 1983 to 1993, anxious anticipation of hair loss (matrilineally inherited, I know that from photo albums), 1991 torn ligament in the left ankle, 1994–1995 hair loss and embarrassing gel hairstyle. In 1995, final visit to the haircutter, and purchase of electric hair trimmer (Grundig). Then, as of 2001, joint pain in the knees, increasing weight and accelerated aging (the precision of my diagnoses). Last self-diagnostic discovery: eczema on the ring finger of the left hand, an incredible symbol, I’ve never heard of an allergy to precious metals (it must be psychosomatic). Now I’ve been given an official medical opinion. It’s not an infection, says Tuuli, it must be your curiosity.
my decisiveness
I’m extremely tired, but Svensson thinks I’m sick, he’ll leave my care to the small, pretty doctor (he won’t discover my spying). At twilight and on my knees in front of the suitcase I unwrap the Astroland manuscript from the packing paper. Tomorrow I’ll continue searching: in the kitchen, in the bathroom, on the boat, in the hallway, on the shelves, in the cabinets (I’ll talk). I’ll find out the whole story. Svensson and Tuuli know how Blaumeiser died (it’s their story). I take my notebook and Astroland, I take Svensson’s books, and lie down on the mattress.
my books, his books
I leaf through Svensson’s thinned-out library (books are a takeoff into another life over the course of pages, a suspension of one’s own body for a few minutes). I reread The Story of Leo and the Notmuch, I flip through Svensson’s encyclopedias, I skip around in Max Frisch’s Montauk. I skip around in my notes and keep finding sentences that pretend to be only my own thoughts and feelings. At times I understand things as someone else has understood them. On Svensson’s mattress in his library on Lake Lugano I’m writing, but I’m making use of nothing but read words, lists, and parentheses. I’m surprised by the speed with which I forget these connections and the amazement when I then rediscover them. That’s not new, scarcely anything is new (title page Astroland: hardly art, hardly garbage).
Craze for the Mobile Lifestyle
is printed on the front page of the Süddeutsche from my plastic bag. I speak German, English, French, and miserable Italian. I learned a smattering of Finnish from Carolina (I could brush up on it here). I’m lying between books and people, between words and bodies. My language is of no use for decisions, each word is only true for a few seconds, then it dries and turns to paper (for Mandelkern decisions as such are suspect). It would be good to be able to set clear boundaries, Hamburg would be Hamburg, a life with Elisabeth would be a life with Elisabeth (a life with Tuuli would remain an unlived life). Svensson has decided on things: he lives in a ruin, now he chops the old wood, he jumps in the clear, reliable water. Is that how one should live (is that how I should live)? Svensson has told his version of the story, he has wrapped it in paper and locked it in the suitcase, Svensson does push-ups, he plants kumquats and potatoes, he catches his own fish (Svensson has put words behind him).
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Tuuli is suddenly standing in the middle of the room. She opened the door without a sound. She’s wearing Svensson’s T-shirt (I know it from the Astroland manuscript: the much too large and bright purple PricewaterhouseCoopers promotional T-shirt). I’m lying between Svensson’s manuscript and my notebooks, I can no longer hide my curiosity, but Tuuli seems to want to disregard my notetaking (she knows the symptoms). The T-shirt actually reaches down to her knees, under it she’s still wearing green, she has knotted the bikini top behind her neck (her bare feet). My small, pretty main informant has a soup bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other. Chicken soup for the soul? she asks, and smiles as if she just came up with this herself. For someone who’s sick with the flu you look quite fresh, Manteli. She takes the pen from my fingers and hands me the bowl. Yes, I say, I’m already feeling better. Tuuli remains seated next to me on the mattress and waits for me to take a spoonful of the chicken soup (Wordsworth & Naish). Only when I say it’s good does she take the first page she happens to grab from the mattress and hold it up to the light. What is this anyway? she asks and reads aloud without waiting for my answer:
“Shitty City 2000? What you don’t hold on to disappears. A hotel room on the sec
ond floor, a clock was ticking. I lay between Felix and Tuuli and smelled the darkness yawning. A double bed and Tuuli’s hand on my neck, her smell in my ear and Felix’s leg over mine. It’s bitterly cold in Oulu, I thought, and the darkness is a black dog. We lay under blankets and jackets, the heat vent was breathing dryly and uselessly, at midnight the champagne in the glasses was frozen. The darkness rose and sank calmly, through the closed blinds fell the red remains of the neon sign next door: Ravintola, firecrackers exploded on the street. The darkness lay at our feet. Felix: in this cold having your own fur doesn’t help anymore. So he put his blue parka on Lua and tied the left sleeve in a knot. Lua lay there like a disabled veteran. In this cold only liquor and other bodies help?”
Where will the small, pretty mother sleep?
Tuuli is reading and laughing, she looks straight into my face (I’m at her mercy). Astroland? she asks. She gets up and closes the door. Where’d you get this, Manteli? Have you been rummaging around in Svensson’s things? Is it possible you’ve gone a step too far there, Manteli? She’s smiling. What would Svensson say about the fact that you’ve been snooping instead of asking your questions directly? Tuuli takes Svensson’s manuscript from the mattress and lies down next to me (her smell like warm milk). Move over a bit, Manteli, she says, without even waiting for my reaction. Tuuli begins to read, as I empty the soup bowl in focused soundlessness (the clink of my spoon). She leafs through Svensson’s stories and laughs, she adjusts her bikini under her T-shirt. Then she reads on. This doesn’t have much to do with me, Manteli, she murmurs. I haven’t eaten anything yet today, I haven’t slept today, I could simply close my eyes. As I put the bowl down softly on the floor, she turns to me and kisses me briefly on the mouth (she forgives me). Sleep well and don’t worry, Karvasmanteli, Tuuli whispers, nuku hyvin älä pelkää.
I’ll read, you sleep.
And in fact I don’t wake up until I hear the boy crying from the next room, then Tuuli’s soft singing, minä tulen sinne, rakkain terveisin. In my room the light is out, the moonlight is falling through the window onto the floor (the cicadas now turned up loud, waves soft on the shore). In the spot where Tuuli was lying, the bed is still warm. I’m lying among Svensson’s papers, without a blanket and with a sleep erection. Did Tuuli notice it? I wonder whether she’ll come back. The chapter that Tuuli read to me before I fell asleep takes place on the night of New Year’s Eve in a rundown hotel room in Oulu. Felix, Tuuli, Svensson have spent Christmas with Tuuli’s father in Lapland, now they’re waiting for their car to be repaired. Outside it’s bitterly cold, the three of them crawl under blankets and hide themselves away from the world. In this story Svensson tells of a perfect moment of love, no more, no less. I wonder whether Tuuli will sleep with me, between the pages of a book in which she appears (the story doesn’t have much to do with me, she says). The momentary awareness of the improbability of this situation. The Astroland manuscript is lying read on its belly, only the last page is open in front of me. I reread the part where Svensson’s manuscript breaks off:
Lua & the Third Death.
Lua and the Third Death
I SEE SAMULI FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A BURGER KING ON THE A5. There’s something to celebrate, Felix said on the telephone. What’s to celebrate is his secret, and I packed my bag without a great deal of thought. You two meet in Frankfurt in two weeks, then drive down to Lake Lugano. I’ll be waiting for you. This morning Lua and I took the train from Berlin Ostbahnhof to Frankfurt, Kiki is coming later on the night train, she has things to do. I haven’t seen or spoken to Tuuli and Felix for months, the last time Felix said that the boy was born: Samuli, almost two months early, but everything was all right. Then came a year of silence. Now Felix is waiting at his parents’ house in Italy, Tuuli is leaning on Felix’s blue Fiat and smoking outside the west exit of Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, as Lua and I emerge from the train station. Tuuli has short hair. Samuli is still less than a year old, I’m amazed that his feet reach his mouth, I’m amazed that Tuuli is smoking again. Svensson, she says, stroking Lua’s head, how are you? Good, I say, throwing my bag in the Fiat. Lua jumps into the footwell as always, and we set off heading south, Felix’s secret is waiting for us.
The boy is hungry when Tuuli parks the Fiat in a Burger King lot on the A5 beyond Heidelberg. Samuli has to eat, Tuuli says, I don’t have enough milk. In the parking lot a giant foam rubber mouse in overalls is walking around between the parked cars and sticking advertising leaflets under the windshield wipers: I’m the Euromaus, she sings, from the Europa-Park in Rust! Thrills galore, she shouts, and gives Tuuli a flyer, the sensational Silver Star roller coaster! Tuuli reads and hands me the boy, I touch him for the first time, his hair color is hidden under the blue cap. We have a bottle of milk warmed up in the microwave, Lua gets a Whopper. We sit outside the Burger King in the sun with our milkshakes, and I give the boy the bottle. Tuuli talks about the past year without me and how it has come to this, she tells me about life in Hamburg and this and that. I nod, Samuli drinks. Tuuli has stamped out her cigarette and is petting Lua, then she leans her head on my shoulder, for the first time in months I can smell her hair and her smoke. What’s this secret Felix mentioned? I ask, even though I know what it is. No idea, she answers, it’s not that important. For a few seconds in the parking lot of the Burger King at exit 57 on the autobahn, Tuuli, the boy, and I are a family, then the foam rubber mouse in overalls interrupts us: the Silver Star—breathtaking fun! No thanks, I say, but Tuuli takes another leaflet and says that we are now going to ride the roller coaster, there really is something to celebrate.
August 9, 2005
(The pretty mothers)
Down by the water: Lua motionless, then Svensson steps onto the dock from the right. A few minutes ago I woke up with a stubborn erection and between manuscript pages (the empty soup bowl on the floor). For the first time in days I’m not tired or drunk. The door is ajar, the window open. It comes back to me: last night Tuuli was lying next to me on the mattress and reading. I fell asleep, even though she now and then touched my shoulder (her occasional laughter in my half-sleep). I gather up the manuscript pages and put them in the suitcase with the stones. I sit down at the desk as if nothing happened, I open my blue notebook (my rapid recovery). Down below on the dock Svensson scoops lake water into a light blue cleaning bucket and pours it on the dried chicken blood. As they do every morning, the two fishermen glide along the shore, the blood-scrubbing Svensson on the dock raises his brush and shouts something Italian. The fishermen laugh. Svensson scrubs and scours and rinses the blood into the light green lake. Then he bends down to Lua and watches the boat (Pike Machine). Svensson is kneeling there and looking across the lake to the opposite shore, to the glowing yellow of the church. I gaze at the villa below it in the morning sun. That villa belongs to Blaumeiser’s family, Tuuli said. Blaumeiser drowned. Svensson’s hints come back to me (Tuuli’s reproaches). He’s standing on the shore like the sad Jay Gatsby, I’m observing as unreliably as Nick Carraway. Svensson has come up against a limit, he hasn’t finished writing his autobiography (his stories don’t extend into the present). I’m waiting for my cock to give way, but the thought of Tuuli remains. This morning the swallows are sailing their sharp turns just over the water’s surface on a wind I can’t feel yet, they’re avoiding the storm that’s supposed to come soon (Svensson’s been talking for days about a storm caught in the St. Gotthard Pass). The sycamore is shedding its leaves due to dryness, the oleander is spitting its flowers at our feet (the question of whether this storm will come).
The Story of Leo and the Notmuch
In the next room Tuuli is reading softly to the boy from the children’s book, Samy is reciting along. The two research folders still on the desk. “The Story of Leo and the Notmuch doesn’t downplay anything,” writes the Frankfurter Allgemeine, “it’s more than another illustrated trivialization. It explains death to children as what it is: loss.” And “against loss it is above all memory that helps” (literary suppl
ement of the 2005 Leipzig Book Fair). The Neue Zürcher Zeitung speaks of “potent images that create a palpable grief and then dissolve this in imagination and memory.” The Story of Leo and the Notmuch tells a story of loss because Felix Blaumeiser is dead (naïve biographism, Elisabeth would call that; but she sent me here). Svensson is a collector, he wants to retain memories in stones, chairs, pictures. He wrote the Astroland manuscript. Lua has almost always been there, the dog has seen and heard most of it. I’m sitting by the window and surmising: The Blaumeiser family’s house is in Cima di Porlezza on the other side of the lake, so Svensson lives directly opposite. The blue Fiat once belonged to Felix, that’s why Svensson has parked the car probably forever in his yard. At the cockfight in Olinda they bet on Wordsworth and Naish, so Svensson gave two roosters those names (I can’t tell the ages of animals). Tuuli and Svensson were in the Fiat on the way to Felix on Lake Lugano. There was something to celebrate, Blaumeiser apparently said. His death remains a mystery. Tuuli and the boy can no longer be heard (my main informant must know the solution).
chicken blood
I’m lying on the mattress again, my erection won’t go away on its own. Under the white sheets my fingers summon the memory of Elisabeth’s dried blood (my wife’s blood), my nose smells Tuuli’s tobacco and milk, I think about last night (the missed opportunity). I could consider myself lucky that Tuuli didn’t come closer to me last night. I’ve fallen out of time, I haven’t been able to wash myself, I haven’t brushed my teeth for days. The bed bears her smell, her golden hairpin is no longer lying where it was still lying last night. A line of thought: if Tuuli doesn’t open the suitcase for me now, it will remain locked, and I won’t be able to save Svensson’s story. Without the story I need not even go back to Hamburg at all. I could jump in the lake to get rid of Elisabeth’s blood, I could jump in the lake to wash off my wife. Down below on the dock Svensson is scrubbing the animals’ blood from the planks, in his study I want to expel my strategies, my fingers work on the usual mechanics, in my pants pocket I search for and find the necessary handkerchief. Tuuli’s singing and Svensson’s footsteps are nowhere to be heard, only a single pigeon is sitting silently on the windowsill, and I help myself to the images in my head, Elisabeth and Mandelkern, suddenly
Funeral for a Dog: A Novel Page 21