the fox
The opening and closing of the bathroom door, then the night. The yellow church on the other side of the lake has long since ceased to glow. It’s dark, the coffee was too much. Shitty City is the name of the Polaroid, and Shitty City is the name of Kiki’s painting in the kitchen (her signature is missing). Shitty City is the Astroland chapter that Tuuli read to me. The story of the turn of a year in Finland. I’m lying on my back and listening to a nocturnal motorboat far out on the lake, I gaze at the mobile in the dark, Samuli, for a while I was still hearing sounds from the kitchen, voices and glasses. I’m waiting for sleep. I think about Elisabeth, about the unwritten profile, about my own story. Tuuli hasn’t come yet to get the boy, the door is wide open (I haven’t heard her singing). I’m lying awake and thinking about a series of New Year’s Eves, early New Year’s Eves and fondue with my mother, later with Hornberg and Eva at the Port of Hamburg, 2001 alone in Berkeley, the first New Year’s Eve with Elisabeth, but then my thoughts find their way back to the supposedly perfect moment in Astroland, the story told by Svensson and Tuuli and Kiki. But Svensson’s manuscript is now lying in Blaumeiser’s suitcase and waiting to be buried (Lua’s coffin). The new computer is on the desk (inner emptiness). I wonder whether Svensson has a copy of Astroland. Kiki seems not to have read it, but she destroyed the computer. Tuuli and I might be the only people who know Astroland (I would be the one who didn’t save it). I turn Tuuli’s hairpin in my fingers. The suitcase is on the boat, in it the perfect moment and Tuuli’s prophesy of its passing. The house is asleep, so I get up. On the desk in front of me the two research folders: I open them and take out the photocopied material. With superficially researched information on Svensson I came here, I will leave with his story. My journalistic precision: I will exchange page by page (Svensson won’t notice). I creep out of the house, past Tuuli’s open door, past Kiki and Svensson and Bella’s room, then through the kitchen and the large room on the ground floor. Nothing. I slide open the glass door and walk barefoot through the damp grass. I notice my fear of Lua, the dead watchdog, of his bark, of his teeth. I walk on nonetheless, and only stop when the floodlight on the house suddenly again illuminates the property as bright as day. Everyone will be able to see me, I think, and once my eyes have adjusted to the brightness, I notice the fox next to the Fiat, stiff as I, frightened as I (the brownish red fur shaggy, its eyes are glowing in the floodlight).
Shitty Paradise City
As fast as the light came, the fox is gone again (we stared into each other’s eyes). I walk to the edge of the property and wait for the darkness. When the floodlight goes out, I decide to take the risk (I have to be fast to avoid notice). I inhale and run to the dock. With a slight delay the light flashes on, I jump into the boat and duck as low as possible. The suitcase is now lying in Lua’s spot in the stern. After a few seconds the light disappears, and because I approach the suitcase in slow motion, it stays dark. I take Tuuli’s hairpin out of my pants pocket, I exhale, I turn it in the suitcase’s lock and feel the slight resistance of the metal (I’ve been practicing the movement for days). I keep turning, the lock opens with a soft click (even in the moonlight “Felix Blaumeiser” can be read on the tag). Macumba is rocking, I balance out the automatic light. In the shallow water near the shore, the swan is sleeping, its head under its wings. I open the suitcase. Only a single cicada is louder than my research. Wrapped in the blanket, Lua is lying stiff and strangely bent between oleander flowers and paper and is pretending to be asleep (Astroland under his head a pillow, stuffed with memory). I have to lift up his bony head briefly so as to be able to pull away the manuscript under him. In the moonlight Lua seems to nod, his fur has grown cold (the ethnologist as grave robber). Despite the darkness, I find the chapters I’m looking for, and replace them page by page with photocopied book plugs, reviews, brief bios. Then I wrap up the manuscript again and push it under the black dog’s head. I’m careful not to bend his ears, I stroke his snout, I wish the brave Lua a good night. Älä pelkää, Lua, I say, sleep well, you’ve earned it.
Shitty City 2000
WHAT YOU DON’T HOLD ON TO DISAPPEARS. A HOTEL ROOM ON the second 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, said Felix, at which point Lua yawned and I could smell his yawn, it must have been morning now, even if I couldn’t see the clock, the morning of the first day of the new year, and I asked into the dark, is anyone hungry? and Tuuli said, breakfast for three.
The bright light downstairs in the lobby: three anti-depression lamps over the buffet. In the constant night of the train station hotel Turisti there was only a Japanese man in a Santa Claus costume sitting at a table and drinking his Crazy Reindeer as he’d been doing last night. He blew a streamer toward me. At reception a woman with a fur cap and a cigarette was mopping the remnants of New Year’s Eve off the floor, the cleaning bucket was boiling, the water was steaming on the linoleum. Outside the window someone had spray-painted black letters on the wall across from the hotel: Paska kaupunki. I loaded up a tray. Breakfast for three, Tuuli had said, so I took toast for three and cranberry marmalade and butter and milk, corn flakes and coffee and packaged cheese on a stick. Lua liked Lapin Kulta beer, so I took a few cans, Tuuli loved apples, I took a Braeburn. Then: two vodkas in little plastic bottles and orange juice, because Felix chased liquor with juice. I took the last three mandarin oranges and juggled, then one fell on the floor and rolled to the feet of the cleaning woman with the cap. The Japanese man was waiting in the Finnish night and humming in the empty lobby, he was waiting for the air guitar world championships of Oulu and for the next morning sometime in March, he was sitting in the antidepressant light of the hotel lobby and plucking Guns n’ Roses on his invisible instrument. Breakfast wasn’t included here, I paid at reception and got permission to take the toaster with me. Shitty city, said the woman with the cap, when I asked about the writing on the wall, paska kaupunki means shitty city.
At least this: Felix with the Polaroid camera. In the room the breakfast was waiting on the floor, I was standing by the window and observing the frost patterns on the glass. The snow on the train station plaza was glowing orange, we could still hear individual firecrackers exploding and shards clinking. Behind me Tuuli and Felix lay intertwined in the blankets and jackets. Our car was parked under the streetlamp, freezing. We’d come from Rovaniemi, we were on the way to Helsinki, now we were stuck in Oulu, because the car couldn’t go on at thirty-nine degrees below zero. The coldest day of the year. In Rovaniemi Tuuli’s father had a snail farm, and in the winter he sold the deep-frozen animals in the shopping mall, eat, eat, he said on Christmas, please eat! Breakfast! I said now, opening a can of Lapin Kulta for the dog, please eat! Lua woke up and rolled off the bed, under Felix’s hood he looked like a monk. Tuuli reached out her hand to me, and I poured the beer in Lua’s plastic bowl. The monk drank beer, the disabled veteran greedily emptied the bowl, my thermal underwear struck sparks into the darkness as I took off my ski pants and Tuuli’s hand followed into her cave of blankets and jackets. Tuuli’s smell might have condensed, she bit into the apple, and Felix said: stay still! The coffee’s getting cold, I said to Tuuli’s mouth, and her warm tongue made the word “cold” melt. I drank the apple taste from her mouth. Felix put aside the camera, his hand moved between Tuuli’s legs, our breath hung over u
s in the cold like a cloud, Lua drank his New Year’s beer, firecrackers exploded, we wore our caps. We are here, said the dog, lying down in front of his bowl, we are here where we belong.
We leaned our heads together, and Felix held up one picture after another over us. Santa Claus is waiting down in the lobby, I said. Once, whispered Tuuli, Santa Claus wore a white coat and shone in the sky like the brightest star with the longest tail. Tuuli took Felix’s right hand and my left in her small fingers, I could smell Felix’s liquor breath and Tuuli like hot lemonade on his fingers. Santa Claus rode on his noblest elk, whispered Tuuli, the most faithful animal with fur like snow and a heart of gold, it carried him everywhere and always brought him back home. But one day they ended up in the worst snowstorm since the beginning of time. Tuuli’s fingers trembled. It was so terribly cold that the lakes froze to the bottom and the air cracked. Santa Claus and his faithful friend were buried in the high snow of Rovaniemi and looked death in the eye, his red beard turned to ice, and his heart froze. If we warm each other, master, said the elk, then we’ll live. But Santa Claus grabbed an icicle and stabbed the elk with his fur like snow and his heart of gold, he opened the soft belly with a sharp shard, he buried himself inside the animal, he soaked his white coat in warm blood, he slept between the stomach and the heart of his faithful friend and so survived the cold and the storm. On the street someone was shooting flares, and we read the colors on the walls of the room. Nothing, said Tuuli, nothing is true and nothing lasts forever. We’re not alone, said Felix, clasping our hands, we’re three. Paska kaupunki, said Lua on the floor. Felix threw aside the blanket and got up, take me down to the paradise city. The cold crept between our bodies. A good year, said Tuuli, kissing me on the forehead and Felix on the neck, happy New Year, you two. My loves, she said.
August 10, 2005
(Funeral for a dog)
Wednesday. Today I’m leaving. I’ve put my shirt with the red wine stains back on and folded the shirt I borrowed from Svensson. Packed the cigarettes back in the plastic bag, the Süddeutsche Zeitung of August 6–7, 2005, the grocery receipt and Kiki’s sketches, Astroland (hidden in the black research folders). Looked up the departure times of the ferry to Lugano: Porlezza 13:05, Osteno 13:20. The last notebook is lying on the desk in front of me, next to it six postcards:
Hamburg Volkspark Stadium, aerial view, 1999
Monte Brè at Evening, poster by Daniele Buzzi, 1950
Vaccatione en Svizzera, illustrator unknown, 1925
Ticino Village Scene, poster by Daniele Buzzi, 1943
Caffè del Porto, b/w photograph, “Invierno 1939/40”
Monte Brè at Morning, poster by Daniele Buzzi, 1950
Meanwhile I’m listening to Kiki in the kitchen clearing away yesterday evening. Tuuli must have come to get Samy at some point without waking me. The door is closed. Svensson has written down his love for Tuuli and Blaumeiser, he has frozen it: the morning of the coldest night of the year at a train station hotel in the Finnish city of Oulu, liquor for breakfast, coffee and apples (I calculate: Samy will have been conceived shortly thereafter). I’ve gone over Svensson’s story in my head, instead of Dirk Svensson his manuscript answered my questions (several things unresolved). By the shore Kiki is gathering the empty bottles from the tables. Our lives consist of chance occurrences and possibilities. I, too, could have lived in Oulu, Seraverde, or New York, met Tuuli in Hamburg, maybe Kiki in New York, Lua, Samy, and Bella (I could have been Svensson). Probably Svensson has at some point asked himself the same questions I’m asking myself now: when to leave, when to stay? What to remember, what to write down? I’ve made a note: Svensson and I struggle as everyone struggles, I’ve taken down: Svensson is no stranger than I am (our dwindling possibilities, our paths not taken). Svensson has ended up in this house on the lake. He has written himself, in what he regards as the right way (Astroland), he has simplified what would be too sad.
Svensson is renovating his ruin.
Over the lake the heron again and its extremely slow flight, its wings paddle and stir in the air. Lua is dead, time refuses and doesn’t stand still. Every decision is a step toward the end, I think (I’ve marked down the grief over that). I observe my fingers, how they write my own words in my own notebook. Daniel Mandelkern is Daniel Mandelkern, I write
Elisabeth
Elisabeth
Elisabeth
even though I can’t help finding that melodramatic. My new courage for pathos: Svensson’s desk, the lake outside the window, the empty shelves, wasps, swallows, pigeon droppings, the swan. The dusty border around the spot where the suitcase was (Lua and I are departing). I close my notebook, do a few push-ups, I take my plastic bag and carefully close the door to Svensson’s room so I don’t wake anyone (the door to another life).
Franz Schubert, sings Elisabeth
In the kitchen the radio is playing softly, piano, in the intervals Italian-language news. Tuuli is still asleep, says Kiki, without looking at me and my plastic bag, the kids too, only Svensson is already on the way to Porlezza, he needs his run. Kiki is wearing men’s pajamas and ballerina flats, she presses a dish towel into my hand, in front of us lie plates and bowls and glasses from the party. I dry the first plate that Kiki holds out to me (white porcelain, red flowers). I’m leaving, I say, I’ve already been here too long. Kiki shakes her head and laughs, stay, she says, no problem (it doesn’t seem to strike her as strange to have a journalist in the house). So when is the profile going to appear? she asks, handing me the next plate from the sudsy water (blue earthenware). I take it, hold it for a few seconds in my hands, and while my head is trying to formulate a journalistic answer (date and length and potential visual material), my mouth utters a different certainty:
I’m not going to write the profile.
And even though Kiki’s “I thought so” surprises me, I stand in front of her on the warm kitchen tiles as I stood next to Tuuli a few days ago and listen to my reasons: I mention the ruin and the calm of the lake, I describe my scientific eye in general and my ethnological gaze in particular, I describe the presence of the children, the water, and the mountains, I mention Tuuli and the notes I’ve compiled so far, which are not really ethnological, but not journalistic either. I explain that I’ve stumbled into the personal (Mandelkern’s ethnological dilemma). As I talk and stack the dishes neatly in the cabinets, I believe myself (arguments and household effects). I want to go back to Hamburg, I explain in Kiki’s kitchen, I have to inform my wife that the article isn’t going to appear, I have to call Professor Jansen (she doesn’t know who Professor Jansen is). Speaking of my wife: I hint at Elisabeth and the child she wants from me, I talk about the mixing of work and private life. The music on the radio suddenly sounds like Schubert. I go to the radio and turn up the volume: not “The Linden Tree,” but one of Elisabeth’s songs (her voice in me sings the lyrics to it). Kiki listens to my chatter, Schubert sounds like Elisabeth. I actually talk about love. Suddenly the desire to finally return to her, on any ship, bus, train, or airplane whatsoever (every song sounds like her). I stand still and observe Kiki’s hands in the dishwater, the paint on her fingers doesn’t come off even in warm water. What’s going to happen now with the dog? I finally ask, so as to turn the conversation away from me, the suitcase is still down by the water. Kiki gives me the next plate as if I were staying. What’s going to happen now with the dog? I repeat into our dishwashing, but Kiki points to the kettle on the stove, which begins to whistle now, of all times. She takes the fresh dishwater from the stove and resumes our conversation of yesterday:
Dirk Svensson and Felix Blaumeiser
were opposites, Kiki tells me, she says so even though she never saw Blaumeiser alive and even his corpse she saw for only a few minutes. Kiki squirts German dishwashing soap into Italian water. Even in a white shirt and the dark coffin, despite the unconcealable head injury, Blaumeiser appeared reckless and carefree, a joyful drinker, a blond surfer, a stoner, a blue-eyed daredevil, as far as I’m concer
ned, says Kiki (a popular kid). Svensson has told her their twenty-year history (in detail, let me tell you). Svensson’s family isn’t rich, but Blaumeiser’s is. Kiki nods out the window, Felix’s parents still spend the late summer over there in Cima di Porlezza, Kiki says, even though their son died there. In any case, Svensson and she got this boathouse here rent-free. That’s how the Blaumeiser family is, she explains with her hands in the dishwater, no melancholy, completely unsentimental. Felix was the exact same way, she says (the Svensson family is the exact opposite). Kiki rinses and rinses, I dry the dishes from the dinner that turned into a farewell party. Blaumeiser died of a head injury? I ask, taking another plate from Kiki’s hands. You want the whole story? she replies, and I say, yes, very much (my new main informant).
Funeral for a Dog: A Novel Page 26