Funeral for a Dog: A Novel (29 page)

(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:

1. Hamburg Volkspark Stadium
   , aerial view, 1999
   
2. Monte Brè at Evening,
   poster by Daniele Buzzi, 1950
   
3. Vaccatione en Svizzera
   , illustrator unknown, 1925
   
4. Ticino Village Scene
   , poster by Daniele Buzzi, 1943
   
5. Caffè del Porto,
   b/w photograph, “Invierno 1939/40”
   
6. 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 concerned, 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).

Well, then:

Svensson and she were finished with New York and Chicago, they’d just come to Berlin, when Svensson got a phone call from Felix. At that point they’d thought of Berlin as their city, Svensson was working at night in a hotel on Potsdamer Platz and writing during the day, she applied to the Academy of Fine Arts.
The Story of Leo and the Notmuch
? No, Kiki smiles, he was working on his stories (the first draft of his book). And the phone call? Kiki takes her hands out of the water, dries her fingers on her pajama pants, and points to the house below the yellow church: the phone call was an invitation to come here to Lake Lugano, to Felix’s parents’ house. Svensson heard from Felix and Tuuli for the first time since September 2001 in New York. By telephone, as if nothing had happened. There was something to celebrate, Felix said: he was going to marry Tuuli. She didn’t know anything about it yet, but he’d prepared everything. Felix was apparently a person, says Kiki, who was confident he could always turn things to good account. Because everything always effortlessly sorted itself out for him. On the phone he spoke about a few days on the lake, about his joy and Samy, about Hamburg, where Tuuli and he were living at the time. She was studying again, Felix said, he was taking photographs again. He was calling because he needed a best man! And who would be a more suitable choice than Svensson, Felix asked, no one! Svensson, of all people! She herself was curious, of course, says Kiki in her kitchen, she knew only the difficult constellation of the three, and now there was going to be a wedding (the Borromean rings, for Christ’s sake). Felix threw in that Svensson should of course bring along whomever he was currently living with (that would be me, says Kiki). Two weeks later Svensson took the first train to Frankfurt, where he was meeting Tuuli. She remembers the exact date, August 6, 2002. In Frankfurt Svensson was supposed to meet Tuuli and drive with her to the lake as a diversion from the surprise. That too was Felix’s idea. Kiki smiles. She herself preferred to travel to Lugano at night and by train, to stay out of the way of conciliatory words between the two of them (everyone has to clean up his own mess). During the first days of August, as the day of the trip approached, she could sense Svensson’s impatience more distinctly each day. He worked day and night on his book and was nervous when he and Lua boarded the train to Frankfurt at the Ostbahnhof early in the morning, the manuscript in his bag and the end of the story already in sight (he had planned a happy ending, says Kiki, but never finished the book, I guess). Svensson spoke of the feeling of a homecoming. On the sixth of August she stood at the Ostbahnhof and waved to Svensson and Lua, though only with a napkin from the Viennese pastry shop. She wasn’t worried at all. Kiki unscrews the espresso pot and asks whether I’d like some coffee. Yes, please. Then Svensson called her from Frankfurt, later from a rest area on the A5 near Ringsheim. Their conversation felt artificial, says Kiki in the kitchen with a laugh, almost unreal. To meet Tuuli and the boy was simpler than expected, Svensson reported on the phone, both were healthy, their conversations were pleasant, and Tuuli didn’t have the slightest suspicion of Felix’s wedding plan. Then he whispered: the question of who the father was hadn’t come up yet (well, then, does he look like you, idiot? she asked him, does he seem like your son to you?). Felix and Tuuli had a new car, by the way, he then said at a normal volume again over the roar of the autobahn in the background, a blue Fiat 128 L (the chicken coop outside). Svensson had never been interested in cars and vehicles. In the late afternoon he called again, this time from an amusement park just a few kilometers from the rest area. He seemed in high spirits to her, says Kiki, he said that Tuuli and he were now going to ride the roller coaster. Since she’s known him, Svensson has had a weakness for roller coasters and amusement parks (I’ve read about that). Wasn’t Felix waiting for them on the lake? she asked, but instead of answering, Svensson described to her the foam rubber mascot at the entrance to the amusement park, a giant mouse. The Europa-Park in Rust was a permanent carnival like Astroland in Coney Island, he said, only German and without the ocean. Very close to the phone she heard Samy crying, along with a barrel organ and screaming children (roller-coaster screams from summers past, Kiki says in English). Svensson kept coming back to that mouse (
Astroland
breaks off here). Jealousy isn’t her thing, says Kiki, and tries to pour the coffee into two clean cups, but the coffee spills out the side of the metal pot and over her fingers. Holy fuck! Kiki jumps up and holds her fingers under the cold water. She tries to smile, holy fuck! (That crappy mouse, she smiles, that Euromouse.) She still had a few things to do before her own train’s departure and so didn’t give it any thought later when Svensson’s telephone was turned off. When she boarded the night train to Lugano, she tried again. Svensson’s voice sounded distinctly softer, but content: she shouldn’t worry, they’d eaten cotton candy, they’d taken turns riding the roller coaster and watching the boy. Eventually they couldn’t bear any more loop-the-loops and talked instead until the park closed. They’d straightened everything out. To recover from all the loops and words they were now in a hotel room at the amusement park, Tuuli had insisted: she needed sleep. On his arm the child hadn’t cried a single tear yet, Svensson reported. He was sitting in the bathroom to avoid disturbing her. Yes, Tuuli had kissed him, Svensson then whispered, and he’d only belatedly resisted, but with this kiss he’d meant Kiki. Kiki wraps her hand in a wet dish towel (as long as they didn’t stay in fucking room 219, she says, Svensson has a knack for symbols). They were going to get back on the road immediately to meet her toward morning in Lugano. This decision he’d made in the exact second of the kiss. I believe him, says Kiki (I must have meant Elisabeth when I kissed Tuuli).

the lake awakens

Outside on the water a single Jet Ski, a wasp lands on the kitchen table, finds nothing, and flies away again. On the radio there’s talk of rainfall in central Switzerland, but on Lago di Lugano the sun is shining as it has been for days. The leaves of the sycamore rustle, then the bells toll in Osteno, and seconds later on the opposite shore in Cima or San Mamete (in the distance the clocks run differently). I finish the dishwashing and fill the cups with milk and coffee. Lua is going to be buried today. I’ll leave Svensson and the dog alone, in the Hotel Lido Seegarten I’ll pick up my baggage, toward evening I’ll be in Hamburg. I hear Kiki and Bella in their bedroom, their footsteps on the stairs, then mother and daughter are standing in the doorway, Bella on Kiki’s hip. It’s not so bad, she says, as I look at her bandaged finger. Kiki takes a sip of her coffee and nods when I ask about the end of the story.