Funeral for a Dog: A Novel (19 page)

Ceresio 13:20

I’m watching the ship depart. The swallows high in the sky, the fog has dispersed. I already missed my return flight yesterday, the 13:20 ferry has just cast off with a loud blast of its horn and is crossing the lake (I can no longer leave this place today, not even if I wanted to). I will stay. My body will recover, I remember that “the ethnologist should physically work and dance, but also suffer. Stoller stresses the importance of experiences of illness and temporary paralysis” (here Spittler is referring to Stoller,
The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology
). I’ve already filled the first notebook (Semikolon, blue), the second and red notebook is lying in front of me and waiting.

How can someone really tell his own story?

I follow the waitress’s recommendation and don’t drink any more coffee (the gray chewing gum under my fingernails after I scraped it off the coin slot). She asks if I’d like Prosecco instead.
Grazie
, I say,
grazie
(everyone wants decisions). I pay. Svensson still hasn’t returned, I can no longer wait for him and
Macumba
(I have to finally sleep). The waitress takes my money and points along the shore to the end of the Via San Rocco and farther into the woods (the extension into nothingness). Then another kilometer. She’ll tell Svensson that I’ve already left, she says, and points to a stack of letters behind the bar, he comes every afternoon for the mail anyway.
Arrivederci, scrittore,
she says (apparently she means me).

with his back to the wall

High above the village, at the end of the Via San Rocco, there’s a thrown-together park bench between two dumpsters: two blocks of stone, two screwed-on planks (civilization reaches to this point). The road peters out in a gravelly dead end. Next to the dumpsters lie the same black plastic bags as on Svensson’s property. From up here Osteno is indistinguishable from the other villages on the lake (wood, stones, and ferryboats are the same color in this region, a weathered red or orange). Svensson’s ruin is somewhere down there on the water to the north, wedged between the green lake and the wooded cliff wall of Monte Cecchi. It can be reached only by a narrow road that must have been drivable at some point years ago (now Svensson’s chickens live in the Fiat, the ivy creeps over the mossy windows). Here the trees don’t have it easy, I think, but trees grow on the steepest slopes (Svensson lives with his back to the wall).

Ficus elastica

On a Sunday morning during our first summer Elisabeth and I ended up at the Hamburg fish market, the market vendors cried their wares, we ordered coffee and bratwurst, we didn’t want to stay long. Away from the stalls we fed two ducks in the oily harbor water. Our few mutual friends we’d forgotten in the Pudel Club (the red of her hair between the strings of lights). Elisabeth dispelled my caution, I peed in the entrance to a warehouse. On the Elbe a single pilot boat. When I returned, Elisabeth had bought a rubber plant (
Ficus elastica
). For us, she said, taking the flowerpot off the quay wall: now we should get out of here (the rust on the bollards). Later, in the taxi heading toward Hoheluft, she said that starting now I had to really touch her, she wasn’t made of cotton candy (Elisabeth’s tangibility).

Let’s push things forward

In the late summer Elisabeth and I grew together. When it got dark we smoked barely dried weed from our neighbor’s window box, we walked through cobblestone streets, our footsteps resounded between the buildings (Elisabeth was the only woman in the city). When the bars chained up their chairs, we lay down by the Eimsbüttel canals or next to the rose beds in the Planten un Blomen park. Elisabeth said that she wanted to see me always, and I fell asleep early in the morning only so as to wake up next to her again around noon. We bought ice cream at the twenty-four-hour gas station (Langnese, Aral), we listened to British pop music, we waited for the
Hamburger Morgenpost
. Most of the time we awoke in my apartment on Marthastrasse, sometimes at her place too. Once I got up and said I had to go now, sometimes it was too much. Yes, said Elisabeth, but it’s never enough (we were both right).

Are Svensson’s stories made up?

Over the lake in front of Osteno a gray haze has replaced the fog. Claasen is his own crematorium, Svensson said yesterday, but the smoke isn’t coming from the woods above Svensson’s house (Claasen’s direction). The cloud is spreading over the lake from beyond the village. This morning Svensson mentioned a quarry in Osteno, its lack of orders (Svensson makes up his stories as he pleases; I shouldn’t believe him). At the path’s entrance a sign:
Attenti al Cane/Warnung vor dem Hund/Beware of the Dog.

What exactly do you actually want, Elisabeth?

Elisabeth and I on a Thursday evening in autumn on the way to the Literaturhaus on the Outer Alster Lake, we were supposed to meet her still-husband. I’d like to introduce Mandelkern to you, Elisabeth had said on the phone, Mandelkern makes my everyday life easier (I stood next to her and felt like a teenager). Elisabeth had already been living alone for years, she was still married only on paper. There was still some time and it was a clear evening, so we got out of the taxi on Schöne Aussicht, we wanted to walk the last stretch. When I asked why this meeting was necessary, Elisabeth pulled me into a rhododendron by the Wolfgang Borchert memorial. We’re reasonable people, said Elisabeth, clamping my head in her hands (vise). Take your finger, Mandelkern, she said, I want you to mark my pussy (words fail me). But she showed consideration for the people out for a stroll and came only softly or not at all,
We are the generation without ties and without depth
was engraved on the Borchert stone, a large dog crawled to us in the undergrowth and was whistled back (different generation, different abyss). Elisabeth believed in clear boundaries and was about to set one. Wash your finger, said Elisabeth, he doesn’t have to smell us right away. What exactly do you actually want? I asked. Elisabeth’s reply: I want to sense where I belong (we once belonged to each other, I remember). Later we were sitting at one of the back tables in the large hall of the Literaturhaus Café, when Elisabeth’s husband canceled our meeting. Not much later he went into retirement, the divorce they settled the next spring, I never met him.

Attenti al Cane!

I’m sitting at the end of the Via San Rocco in front of my last bile and my inability to leave (coffee and soul), when Tuuli is suddenly standing next to me. The boy behind her seems intimidated by the sight of the helpless man (Mandelkern). She’s holding a black garbage bag in her hand. My body’s acting crazy, I say to Tuuli between two retches, an influenzal infection maybe. We would definitely detect a fever, I say, but then I can’t go on talking because I have to gag (one has a high temperature when the body is fighting something, says Elisabeth). When not even bile is coming up anymore, Tuuli tosses the garbage bag into the heap and hands me a handkerchief:

It’ll be over soon,
Manteli

she says, I already thought you’d left without a word. No, I say, wishing I weren’t sitting in front of my own vomit. The boy observes me and his mother (her hand on the back of my head). Of course I would have said good-bye, I say, if I’d left, for me politeness is a cardinal virtue (where am I now getting such words?). Tuuli laughs, the boy doesn’t. Bile, says Tuuli, is produced in the duodenum,
Manteli
(such facts, such details). Then she lays her hand on my back. I will stay. I have to take a closer look at Tuuli, I think, I want to see behind Svensson’s stories, I have to ask her.

Samy! Antakaa hänelle vesipullo!

says Tuuli with her small hand on the nape of my neck. The boy holds a bottle of water out to me, and I rinse the sourness out of my mouth. We slowly walk deeper into the woods, back to Svensson’s house, back to his pictures, his animals, his stories (sometimes people find themselves on a journey together: we arrived together, we could leave together).

my curiosity

Back in my room Tuuli holds the thermometer up to the light (her gap-toothed smile). She says, 36.7º might seem slightly low, but it’s completely normal for an adult body, even in this heat. Do you usually smoke as much as you did yesterday,
Manteli
? No? I’m lying on my back in Svensson’s room, Tuuli puts the boy’s thermometer back in the light blue plastic case (Thermex for Kids). There are no viruses involved,
Manteli
, she says, it’s not an infection and nothing bacterial. Tuuli gets up and leaves my room, it must be your curiosity,
Karvasmanteli
.

I
TURN THE RADIO DIAL AND SAY TO THE PADRE:
F
OR DAYS THEY’VE
been playing nothing but
forró
here. Urinating is good for you, the padre replies, stopping the car. He leaves the engine running, gets out and pisses on a horse corpse on the roadside, his piss drums on the swollen belly like rain on a car roof. But for days it hasn’t rained, for days Tuuli and I haven’t understood a word, for days there’s been no sign of Felix. Tuuli is lying on the backseat and sleeping, sometimes I turn around and observe Tuuli and her sleep, curled up and her mouth slightly open. I wonder whether Felix was arrested, I wonder how the Seraverde prison smells, I wonder how we can get him out of there. And whether we can at all. For days I’ve been seeing Felix in every cactus on the roadside, in every desert dog, in every palm tree. Felix speaks my language, Felix understands me. Get away from here and recover, he said, and sat us in the padre’s Peugeot on Sunday afternoon, you guys go along on the donation tour, then things will look different before long, you’ll get to know the country and people, don’t forget your passports! I’ll stay here, I’ll deal with the police and the dog, we’ll meet on Sunday in Tupanatinga on the BR-232, Pousada Majestic. Then we’ll see the country, desert and rain forest and sea, the
seleção
and cockfighting. So for days I’ve been sitting in the passenger seat of the Peugeot 405 and counting cacti, 517, 518. Sometimes Tuuli wakes up and rolls a cigarette, sometimes she tells stories from Finland, sometimes she touches me with all due caution. For days we’ve been listening to
forró
and watching the padre drink, for days the padre has been buying gas and a cooler full of water in the morning at some gas station. I drink with him, because without Felix I’m not touching a sip of alcohol. The padre takes off his cap, crosses himself and puts the cap back on. We drive through the steppe, sertão, until dusk, we stop every afternoon and every evening in a different village, Itaporanga, Sera Bonita, Guanumbi. I’ve forgotten the days of the week. I stand next to the padre and piss on the corpse too.

I paint my world in the darkest colors. The black horse, I think, the second corpse. For days I’ve been seeing the dark blood of the district policeman and city council candidate oozing. For days I’ve been explaining to the padre what happened. Santos was lying outside the door, I say, his abdominal wall shot off, blood everywhere, on the steps, on the wall, on the iron door. But the padre with his right hand on the priestly cock isn’t listening, he’s rolling his hips as if he were dancing the limbo. He’s trying to hit the flies on the horse’s milky eyes, with his left hand he adjusts his cap. José Santos Tourão Splitter had pissed all over himself, I say, from a frayed hole in the middle of his belly flowed light blood. José Santos Tourão Splitter? asks the padre, Partido dos Trabalhadores? I haven’t drunk enough water to keep up with the padre, he shakes his cock.
Safado
, says the padre, buttoning his pants. His chest hairs were stuck together, I recount, like gulls’ feathers in oil. Santos was lying in his blood and looking at us, someone had left him on the doorstep, the tracks of the donkey cart could still be seen. The padre takes a cold chicken leg from yesterday out of the cooler and strolls around the Peugeot. We lifted him onto the pickup, I say, following the padre, we drove him to the hospital, we got there too late, the man was dead! His dog was injured too, we don’t know whether he’s pulled through. We amputated his leg with the bolt cutter. We don’t know how the Seraverde vote was decided, who has won the elections and who has survived. We don’t know anything! The padre climbs into the Peugeot and gnaws at the chicken leg. Do you know Lula? I ask the padre. The padre smiles, Tuuli’s still sleeping. I thought this was peace service in deprived areas of Latin America, I say to the padre, and the padre says, urinating is good for you.

The horse corpse is shining, the car is parked on the roadside in the middle of the desert, then the padre engages a gear and things go on as they have been for days, on the right and left cacti, now and then a rocky hill, then hours of steppe, occasionally an intersection, occasionally an armadillo, occasionally a road sign. The names mean nothing to me, I don’t know where I am or where we’re going. Tuuli has even less of a clue, she just closes her eyes and sleeps, her hands folded into a pillow. The padre throws the chicken leg out the window, the car lurches to the left and lurches to the right, in the rearview mirror the black horse is lying on the roadside, and I take another bottle of water out of the cooler. Where are we actually going, I ask the padre, and are you even listening to me?
Sim
, says the padre, shaking his head. He takes his hands off the steering wheel and nods toward the backseat, he traces a curvy silhouette of a woman in the air and winks at me. The church doesn’t understand me, I think. Is Santos really dead? Felix asked the doctor in the state hospital. Election night here is Sodom and Gomorrah, she replied, stubbing out her cigarette, we can’t save everyone. So I ask the padre whether salvation exists, and the padre points to the horizon, Tupanatinga, he replies. For days the padre starts talking and singing around noon, Tuuli and I can’t follow his song and talk. He never gets tired, the padre might be saying, he can always drive straight through the desert. In two hours it’s lunchtime in Tupanatinga, we believe we understand, he has to sleep there, and the mayor is a friend. In every town the padre has a friend, in Sera Bonita the chicken grills are fired up, in Itaporanga the beans are cooking, in Macarimba the donation managers are waiting.
Saúde!
the padre laughs, throwing a water bottle out the window,
mais uma água!
I turn the radio back on. Still
forró
. The sun shows three o’clock, Tuuli talks to me only at night. Five hundred twenty cacti are a lot of cacti, I say to the padre, next to the horse corpse there were three tall, thin, flowerless ones.

We really do arrive in Tupanatinga. The town hall is a brick hut with a coat of arms over the door, a rearing black horse. Large and small pigs run across the marketplace, they root around in the dust and in the garbage bags. In front of the town hall the mayor of the town turns a bottle upside-down and the beer spills on a small brown pig, it drips in the dust, and the pig shakes itself off like a dog. Celina, cries the mayor,
cerveja!
and the mayor of Tupanatinga’s wife sets two bottles of Antarctica in a styrofoam cooler on the table. The padre only drinks water. Celina has served meat on a skewer, feijoada, bean stew and rice, fried cheese and onions.
Saúde
! cries the padre,
saúde!
cries the mayor, kicking at the small pig, it evades the mayor’s shoe and escapes under the Peugeot. Tuuli pushes her plate away from her and rolls a cigarette, she throws a few potatoes under the car for the small pig. The mayor eats, the padre drinks, they’ve taken care of business, they seem content. The padre has opened the door of the Peugeot, the radio is now playing international hits. The mayor of Tupanatinga loves Sinatra: I got you, he sings, under my skin. The mayor loves Celina: he kisses her painted lips, he kisses her hair, he kisses her golden cross in her impressive décolletage. Celina runs her fingers through his chest hair in time to Sinatra. The hairs like gulls’ feathers in oil, I think, the hole in the middle of the belly, I remember, the lighter blood. I’ll switch to beer now after all, I decide, even though I usually drink only with Felix. Celina fills my and Tuuli’s glasses. The mayor cheers in the eternal summer of the Pernambuco desert and grabs his head in his hands. Fat from the chicken with garlic and coriander drips on his blue uniform shirt. New York, New York, he sings softly, scratching his beard, his laughter resounds over the noon emptiness of the marketplace. The padre too takes off his Los Angeles Lakers cap in all the enthusiasm, he tosses it into the air. Tuuli smokes and smiles. I say: I don’t understand anything that’s happening here. You? Suddenly Tuuli leans toward me and kisses my ear. Me neither, she says, but I understand you. I feel the first beer in my head and Tuuli’s left hand on the nape of my neck, her right hand feeds the small pig under the Peugeot bread. Its squealing sounds like happiness. I wonder where the Pousada Majestic is, here there’s no hotel or inn to be seen. I wonder whether Felix is waiting there, I wonder whether Felix will show up there at all.

On we go! The padre pounds on the table and stands up, on we go! and I think, where are we even going? The padre reaches for the water and takes a sip from the pitcher. On we go! We’re waiting here for Felix as planned, Tuuli whispers in my ear, in Tupanatinga on the BR-232, she murmurs, just the two of us. Let’s go! says the padre, taking the key from the table, but Tuuli says no. I remain seated. Celina presses her pink lips on the priestly cheek, the mayor of Tupanatinga presents to the padre a packet of meat,
Obrigado, padre
, he says. I’m astonished by Tuuli’s lips on my ear, by the pink on Celina’s mouth. The padre blesses the house, he flings his arms around Celina’s neck and throws himself at the mayor’s feet. With his eyes closed he draws a pig in the visitors’ book of Tupanatinga, and I kiss Tuuli. I kiss Tuuli, and the padre jumps into the Peugeot, he turns the key in the ignition. Tuuli kisses me as the engine whines and the bells toll. The mayor of Tupanatinga and Celina stand arm in arm in front of the town hall and wave goodbye to the Peugeot, the dust wafts from the desert and toward the desert. The padre jiggles the gearshift, finds the right gear and slams on the gas. The stones spray, the pigs flee, the dust swallows up the view. The Peugeot bumps where there are no bumps at all, then it drives straight across the marketplace toward the church, toward the road, then it vanishes, honking, between the houses. The padre has forgotten his cap. Tuuli leans her head on my shoulder, and as the cloud of dust and diesel subsides, Celina is kneeling over the small pig, moaning and wringing her hands. Blood in the dust yet again, I think, blood yet again. The black horse, I say to Tuuli, the red candidate. The small pig, she says, the small pig.

I
S TODAY
S
ATURDAY?
I ask, stroking Tuuli’s rib cage, her belly, her small breasts. Tuuli and I have found the Pousada Majestic, on a side street behind the marketplace. We’re lying in room 219 under the fan, I’m drinking water. I’ve slept the beer out of my head, I’ve showered for the first time in days. Now I’m lying on my back next to Tuuli and reading the only English book in room 219: William Wordsworth’s
Selected Poems
. The inn is a colonial building with high ceilings and window shutters, our pants and shirts flutter freshly washed in the back courtyard. Outside the window an empty plaza, the Praça de São Geraldo, a turned-off fountain and dry palm leaves, yellow streetlamp light and here too street pigs and dogs, over everything the smell of desert and fire. Tuuli wakes up and pulls my head to her lips. She seems not to know the answer. I don’t want to tell the days of the week apart anymore, she says. Tuuli and I are lying in room 219 of the only and therefore best hotel in Tupanatinga, in the middle of the
sertão
. We’ve stopped counting the days of the week. We could inquire at the reception desk, but we don’t ask. Instead Tuuli leans first over my mouth and then over my body. The padre has left the village and forgotten us without the supervision of the Catholic Church in a room with wooden shutters and high ceilings, we drink water with ice from each other’s mouths, our lips tell who we are and our fingers report how we look. I’ve told Tuuli about myself as a child, about the Ruhr area, across the gap between the beds she reached for my hand and described Helsinki to me, the snow and her parents’ snail farm. And so on, Tuuli said. For example, I replied. Each morning the squawks of the parrots in the lobby wake us, we start again from the top and stop only to order abacaxi, pineapple, water, and coffee. Tuuli asks about Felix, and I tell her about my oldest friend. I say: Felix will find us. I say: We’re where we’re supposed to be. The sun and the days of the week, the desert dogs and the tolling of the bells, the small pigs and black horses vanish beyond the corners of the Praça de São Geraldo.

A few days later I’m woken up by a honk and shouting under our window. It’s evening, on the plaza an accordion is playing, the parrot in the lobby is squawking to itself. Tuuli is asleep. I fling open the shutters of 219. In the moonlight or in the streetlamp light the pickup is parked next to the fountain. Felix in a panama hat is kneeling in the back of the truck and ruffling the fur of the district policeman’s heavy dog, David is leaning on the hood and smoking.
Oi, Svensson!
he shouts, come down, we’re late! The dog barks, and Felix laughs. For the first time in days I have to go outside, for the first time in weeks Felix and I clap each other on the shoulders. Not missing, Svensson? Not in jail, Felix? Not dead, dog? We have a table and chairs put out on the Praça de São Geraldo of Tupanatinga, Felix gesticulates for Antarctica and small glasses, and the innkeeper sets a bottle in front of him. David fills the glasses, the dog gets a bowl with beer, and Felix summarizes: no one got thrown in jail, as you can see of course, the pipelines are now officially approved, the Fundação Ajuda de Nossa Senhora has fresh water. Rua do Lixo didn’t vote, the decision was postponed, but there are no longer any candidates, the blue candidate Gonçalves Meirinho deeply regrets the death of the red Santos, under such circumstances he cannot enter the city council,
porco dio!
Maybe later. The reports in the Seraverde newspapers came fast and furious. Toward morning Santos had been strolling all in red across the blues’ square, he laughed at blue drunks, pointed to the blue
trio elétrico
, he’d wrapped his dog Lula in the red flag of the PT and was pulling him along behind him on the chain. The blue musicians were long since in bed, only the last remnants of the blue celebration were still sitting there under the blue garlands or lying under the benches. Of course they mocked and laughed at Santos as much as he had them, Felix says, they told him off in the most un-Christian manner. But then a shot rang out, and the red candidate was suddenly lying on the ground and in his own blood, in front of the silent
trio elétrico
and amid the last guests of the blue celebration. From one second to the next the square emptied out, no one had seen anything, they’d heard nothing but the shot. No one called the police, the fire department or an ambulance. Santos must have been lying there for several minutes among the drunks and sleepers and waiting for his death, says Felix. He raises his glass to clink, and David nods. But then, and this the police have since verified, a street sweeper passed by in his donkey cart and immediately thought of us and the Fundação’s pickup. With the cart he never could have reached the hospital on Avenida Osvaldo Cruz in time. He didn’t want any trouble either, and therefore didn’t inform the police. Santos left the blue celebration square and the political stage on, of all things, the donkey cart of a garbage collector, Felix recounts, he was left outside the door on Rua do Lixo so we would save him. We, of all people! Felix and David’s laughter comes fast and furious and resounds on the empty plaza in front of the Pousada Majestic, the bandaged Lula is lying at their side. Felix has forgotten the blood on the door, the gulls’ feathers in oil, the crack of Lula’s bones, Lula’s eyes and his own vomit, I think, and toss back another glass. I waste too much time on memory. The hotel’s shutters are still closed, Tuuli must still be asleep, I’ll tell her this story later, but Felix interrupts my thoughts. There’s fresh water on the garbage street now! Santos was shot, okay, it was in a certain sense a political murder, okay, in his own way he provoked this end himself. The dog sat next to Santos and licked his face, police dogs are faithful souls, but he couldn’t prevent the shots, he couldn’t get help. The doctor on Avenida Osvaldo Cruz phrased it right, it was Sodom and Gomorrah, you can’t save everyone. Still, the dog is a good dog, the stump has healed, the doctor ministered to him movingly, the dog didn’t slobber or bite, he simply lay still for a whole week and waited to heal. And then he healed. He stood up and was a completely different dog, Felix says, and pets this completely different dog, sweet and friendly. On the night of the full moon a few days ago they then came up with the idea of giving this new dog a new name too. The dog is lying on the cobblestones and looking at me, without batting an eyelash. I notice Lula’s clear eyes, I notice the bandages on his stump, I sense the healing itch under those bandages. The sharp police dog and corrupt PT candidate’s four-legged mutt Lula has become the three-legged Lua, purified and named after the moon, four letters have become three. Felix laughs and pets the dog’s head. To Lua’s health! he says, refilling the dog’s bowl. Lua’s accident, says Felix, if he may call the incident with the Heckler & Koch that, should be understood as a catharsis, the corruption has literally been shot out of the reds’ bones. Lua is calmness itself. Even Felix’s own guilty conscience has sort of gone up in gun smoke. I ask: Sort of? Sort of, says Felix, and at the same time the wooden shutters open on the third floor of the Pousada Majestic. Tuuli looks down at us from above. We’re doing fine, says the black dog Lula or Lua, don’t worry, he barks up to Tuuli.