Funeral for a Dog: A Novel (23 page)

“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?”

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.

I
SEE
S
AMULI FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A
B
URGER
K
ING 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.

(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 supplement 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

I and you

in the white of our bed like a single body, we’d been reading to each other (
Das Dekameron
). When I eventually fell asleep in the sun and woke up again, Boccaccio was lying open between us. You were sitting next to me with open mouth and open legs (your eyes fixed on my face, your right hand between your legs). It won’t take much longer, you said, you were almost there (you had to concentrate on those words). My cock had already anticipated you in sleep. Then you actually came, before I could help your fingers, there was enough time only for our open mouths. It was of no consequence who came how and when (we talked about our orgasms).

I just wanna fuck you right here

And now this mattress (another awakening). With my cock in my left hand the realization that I’m not going to write a 3,000-word profile of Svensson in this room. I would tell about Tuuli, her somewhat too-tired eyes and her blonde hair, how she was suddenly standing in the room yesterday, in a purple T-shirt, a bowl of chicken soup in her hand, her note from the day before still on the floor: Tuuli wants to show me things that are worth it. I jerk off the way I write (I mingle past and present, Tuuli Elisabeth, Elisabeth Tuuli, etc.). I mix Elisabeth’s image with Tuuli’s smell on the sheets around me, I help my thoughts to Elisabeth’s heavy breasts and Tuuli’s small ones, also briefly to the first and the second Carolina, to their open mouths, to Svensson’s stories (“I just wanna fuck you right here”). Suddenly the shouting of the boy penetrates through the window to me from the water (under the chestnuts in Hamburg: bicycle bells and children’s noise). And then the suitcase comes into my view, and the situation. I’m still on the mattress, unwashed and alone, the research folders on the desk (the blood still on me).

I break off,

because the boy’s voice suddenly seems to enter the house downstairs, and in this house, too, doors are opened suddenly and without knocking. I won’t get myself caught. I remember Elisabeth and me, purely professional and businesslike: in the spring of 2002 in the Renault on the way back from the Côte d’Azur. I drove and Elisabeth read me articles from the culture pages of
Die Zeit
(her still-husband had just gone into retirement). Then she switched to the road map. The Renault had already been sputtering for a few days and burning more gas than usual. After an eight-hour drive on coastal roads and toll highways we reached the Lyon city highway around midnight (we were looking for the Hotel Imperial, which her writer friends had recommended to us). Through a tunnel, said Elisabeth, then down and two lefts (her freckled feet next to the dashboard gearshift). The engine conked out. Because there was no shoulder, I steered the Renault on its last legs onto an emergency strip in front of the entrance to the tunnel. While honking French people passed on the right and left, we let the engine cool down and drank warm mineral water (we spoke about marriage as a possibility). The telephone interrupted us, and Elisabeth’s husband mentioned a position he’d heard about on the culture staff of the weekly newspaper (they had meanwhile become friends). Starting when? asked Elisabeth, and he answered, starting now.

Lyon Garage

In my head this image remains: Elisabeth and I on a whitewashed boundary stone in front of a Renault-authorized garage on the outskirts of Lyon, she was sitting on my thigh. In the garage two burly Frenchmen were working with gum in their mouths and disparaging looks in their eyes, they were repairing the engine. Elisabeth had briefly negotiated the prompt repair and an appropriate payment, now she was taking pictures of us (the euphoria of her imminent promotion). She photographed us in the windows of the office (in the garage yard, white pebbles and a tall linden). The first photos of us as a couple, in the background three new cars and an agricultural utility vehicle. Would it be okay with her if I remained a penniless academic, I asked, and Elisabeth took my head in her hands. Not for long, Daniel, she said, and photographed our kissing tongues, you could write for me! The mechanics didn’t take their eyes off us (they’d never seen anyone like Elisabeth before).

Barbaresco

Elisabeth speaks fluent French and Italian, a smattering of Polish. Nothing’s going to get in our way, she’d decided, and I’d agreed (the feeling of knowing the other). A few days after my first day of work in her editorial department we traveled to Berlin for some British writer’s book launch, Elisabeth was supposed to moderate and lead the discussion to follow. The Literaturhaus in Wilmersdorf was sold out, it was Elisabeth’s first appearance of this sort and magnitude, she nonetheless seemed not the least bit nervous. Not even when she was told that the simultaneous interpreter was stuck at Tegel Airport. She stepped onto the stage before the author, I was sitting in the second row and drinking Barbaresco (at Elisabeth’s recommendation). I was sure that I knew my wife and her history, but when she opened the event and invited the author onto the stage, I choked on the wine. I was flabbergasted by her perfect British accent. I’d never heard her speak English before.

things that are worth it

It’s my indecisiveness that I become aware of as I lie on Svensson’s mattress and listen to the footsteps on the stairs. I hesitate because a decision makes every other path impossible (we’ve never had to make final decisions). I came here to write an article about Svensson, instead I’m thinking about other things: Tuuli is a mystery, Elisabeth is my wife, Svensson has committed himself to things. I, too, should exchange my thoughts for something concrete: find out the recipe for the chicken soup, touch the dog, gather the wilting oleander flowers, renovate a ruin. I should pull myself together, I should be more precise. I should reflect on my work approach (my pitiful methods).

—What exactly are Borromean rings?

—Is another life a better life?

his shirts

Is anyone here? On the top landing the oil-covered gull in the pictures is first dead, then awakens laggingly and gradually to life as I descend the stairs. Next to those are pictures of the heavy, black dog: Lua with bandaged stump on a Brazilian beach, a cliff with a hole through its base in the background, Lua wearing a hood on a hotel bed, Lua on cracked concrete slabs, in the background Manhattan and the column of smoke (we’d discussed the Thomas Hoepker image and its supposed actuality in the editorial department). Finally the framed pictures of garbage: blue and black sacks, burst-open plastic bags, overturned cans, knocked-over dumpsters, shattered bottles, soaked-through paper bags, beer cans and plastic bottles, cardboard boxes, a naked doll without arms, lamps, armchairs, solitary shoes. But then there’s the kitchen, cleaned up, sun on the tiles, flowers on the table. From the fridge Tuuli and Blaumeiser are smiling at me (death is everywhere).

Svensson? Is anyone here?

Another look at Svensson’s white room: in the small mirror on the wardrobe my shirt and I look equally rumpled. I’ll jump in the lake and iron myself out, I think, and take a white shirt from the wardrobe. Svensson will notice (I don’t care). I take a towel from a wooden shelf, it smells like laundry detergent, on it is a disintegrating piece of embroidery, white on a white background (Hotel Turisti).

the animals and us

Lua doesn’t move. I take off the creased shirt and imitate Svensson, I have only enough strength for seven push-ups and seventeen sit-ups. Then I lie on the dock breathing heavily (no trace of the animals’ blood). It must be eleven o’clock, the sun is burning on my shoulders and my head (lizards on the stones). A thin water snake between the stones, a school of tiny fish (a mosaic of escape). I kneel down next to Lua in the oleander flowers. What I couldn’t make out through the binoculars: his fur is dull with scattered gray, the longer hairs on his chest are matted and pale. Lua is lying on his side, his eyes half closed. His mouth is hanging open, his jowls are blotchy and dry (Lua smells putrid). From up close the dog is much thinner than expected. In the shallow rhythm of his breaths his ribs stick out, the fur on his belly hangs down in tangles (an old and ill-fitting suit). His strangely thin neck seems no longer capable of holding his head. I examine Lua’s stump. The leg wasn’t amputated with clean cuts and cleanly sutured flaps of skin, but rather severed close to the body. What remains is a rough and crudely healed web of scars (Svensson wrote of a bolt cutter, and Tuuli speaks of her first amputation). Lua’s left ear is flopping open, here too lighter skin, scabby and mottled (a small white spider slowly crawls inside).

I need your help, Mandelkern.

Suddenly Svensson is kneeling next to me and putting his hand under Lua’s bony head. His eyes are bluer than usual, almost watery. Lua hasn’t eaten anything for days, he says, I have to bring him to the vet in the village (the soft clucking of the widowed hen). When I look around, Tuuli and the boy are also standing behind me, though I didn’t hear them coming. This morning Tuuli is wearing a bright green short-sleeved dress that I haven’t seen on her yet. In it she doesn’t have the laxness of our first encounter, she looks more deliberate and older (as I look up: the heron far out over the lake). Tuuli spreads a wool blanket on the ground. The boy is waiting for the departure with the yellow fishing rod in his hands, he’s wearing a children’s life vest and Svensson’s Lakers cap. By the time I’m nodding at his request, Svensson has already jumped in the water and is swimming to the boat moored to buoy 1477. He hoists himself over
Macumba
’s railing and starts the motor. Svensson overlooked his freshly ironed shirt and his towel in my hand. You should help him with the dog,
Manteli
, says Tuuli, and as Svensson maneuvers the boat with a quiet motor to the dock, I catch the rope as I did on the Lugano pier. Tuuli kisses the boy on his forehead,
älä pelkää
, Samy.
Minä en pelkää, Äiti
, whispers the boy, he’s not afraid. Then he climbs into Svensson’s outstretched arms. Tuuli and I roll Lua onto the wool blanket, and the three of us lift him onto the bow, the swan hisses. Once the disconcertingly light dog is finally lying in his spot and the boy with his fishing rod is sitting next to him, Svensson nods to us, Tuuli should take a seat in the stern with him, I in the bow (the sluggish movement of the remaining legs). But Tuuli shakes her head: