Thomas Pletzinger - Funeral for a Dog

The Encyclopedia of European Trees

Piccolo Mondo Antico by Giovanni Fogazzaro

Selected Poems by William Wordsworth

I lie down on the mattress in the corner of the room (headache) and fall asleep.

ATTENTION FRAGILE/ACHTUNG ZERBRECHLICH

At twilight I wake up and look around. Under the desk are an abandoned power strip and a huge brown leather suitcase with a heavy lock. On the ceiling a mobile that I didn’t notice earlier dangles over me (small colorful airplanes). On the floor next to my head a cheap stuffed animal (a gray mouse in blue overalls, “Euromaus” on the bib). The dog must have forgotten it. I sit down at Svensson’s desk and take Elisabeth’s ring out of my pants pocket (E. E. E.). According to the intern’s research, Svensson has no kids, even though he’s a children’s book author, and, Elisabeth added, that’s exactly what makes him interesting. Outside the dog is coughing as if he really were going to die soon. I sit down at the desk and leaf through Svensson’s books: the German shepherd, withers height 50–60 centimeters, weighs up to 40 kilos, thick undercoat, thick covering of fur, back straight and firm, life expectancy with good care and breeding fifteen years, even temperament, strong nerves, child-friendly, good-natured, and brave. My legs are too long, the desk is too low, the suitcase under the desk is too high (I’d have to sit with my legs askew). I try to move it, to pull it out, but the suitcase is defiant and drags only reluctantly across the wood, the sound must be audible in the whole house (its weight an invitation to open). I push it back into its place. Old leather, metal-reinforced corners, nicks and stickers, on the handle hangs a nametag: Felix Blaumeiser (this name for the second time already today, Tuuli called him an idiot). But Dirk Svensson is not Felix Blaumeiser, I think, unless it’s a pseudonym (inquire at some point). I take a paper clip from the yogurt jar, bend it into a hook and try to open the suitcase, but the heavy lock refuses (copper is softer than people think). I sit back down at the desk, my legs aslant on the suitcase, and write down:

— What should I write about?

— What shouldn’t I write about?

— Is the boy Svensson’s son?

— Where will his pretty mother sleep?

— How do I get out of here?

— What’s in the leather suitcase?

— Who exactly is Felix Blaumeiser?

stone smoke

No computer, no printer, no typewriter. I take the binoculars and look out the window across the lake. In Lugano and Cima the lights come on little by little. The smoke has dispersed. Tuuli and the boy are out of sight. Svensson is sitting on the dock, next to him lies the dog (shaking). I should call Svensson, I should conduct the interview immediately and get a ride to Lugano tomorrow morning at the latest if I don’t want to miss my return flight. Svensson kneels down next to Lua, and I’m not sure whether his hand is trembling. He strokes the dog and talks out over the water. Maybe he’s talking to the lake, maybe to the other shore, maybe to the yellow light on the other side of the lake (Santuario di Nostra Signora della Caravina). No wind is blowing, cicadas can now be heard.

THE BOY WAS BORN, TWO MONTHS EARLY, AND I’M DRINKING milk and vodka out of Grace’s belly button. Eventually the milk is gone, and Lua wakes up. Take it again from the top, I decide, and again close the door from outside and leave someone behind, but that can’t matter to Grace and the porcelain greyhound, because when someone says good-bye to you by whispering “fuck you, weirdo, you and your dog,” turns over and goes on sleeping, forgetting isn’t far off. Today is Sunday or Monday, I take a walk through the West Village, along Houston Street, through SoHo. I should think and calm down, I should reflect. Lua and I walk past dogs with sunglasses and masters with sunglasses, it’s autumn in New York, the leaves are yellow, the leaves are red, the flags flutter, and on the corners men are playing “America the Beautiful” on the fiddle. The tourists show their generosity, their coins jingle in the fiddlers’ caps, in my pants pocket I have my credit card. I buy a suit and a shirt, I buy white sneakers, I buy Aspirin and Lysol, I buy a hundred-pack of vitamin C, I buy a toothbrush, I buy champagne for forty-seven dollars and ninety-nine cents. I buy Lua two cheeseburgers, Lua loves cheeseburgers, I buy him a green leather leash, exactly like the one the Chihuahua in front of the West Village bakery had. On Broadway we get into a taxi, at Times Square we get out, and I don’t know why I’m here or where to go, but the sun is shining and the advertisements are glowing. I buy chicken soup, I buy chocolate, and in Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library women with sun hats sit on the steps between shopping bags, muffins, and coffee cups. Behind a pavilion I tie up Lua and give him the second cheeseburger. I’ll be right back, I tell him, I have to calm down. I lean against a stone lion on its pedestal in front of the library and dip the chocolate in the chicken soup. A library is a good place to get to the bottom of things and figure out where to start. The security guard at the entrance searches my plastic bags for weapons, hi, how are you today? he asks, and I say, so-so.

In the bathroom I change my clothes. I try to flush my bloody T-shirt down the toilet, but the toilet gets clogged and overflows. So I’ll have to throw my pants in the river, maybe in the Atlantic, my telephone and the calls and the hanging up right afterward, the waiting for Tuuli and Felix and for a boy whose name I don’t know because I hung up too fast this morning. In the bathroom of the New York Public Library I raise the champagne for forty-seven ninety-nine toward the boy, toward Brooklyn, toward the towel dispenser. No drinks in the reading room, so I drink half the bottle of champagne here. The suit fits, I take an overdose of vitamin C. Too much vitamin C gets excreted without consequences, unlike too much love. Too much love afflicts the stomach and the liver, it goes to the kidneys. I brush my teeth, I spray Lysol in the hole in my hand against tetanus, I spray Lysol on my cock against AIDS and against hepatitis and against gonorrhea, it burns in my eyes, it would be too late anyway and the wrong method, it burns and burns and burns and I feel my way to the sink and hold my face under the cold water, I flush my eyes with it, splash some on the back of my neck. This is not a public washroom, sir, says a security guard, handing me my plastic bags, I have to ask you to leave.

In the reading room I take the book given to me by the woman with the camera out of my pants pocket and put it on a table, “646-299-1036 Kiki Kaufman!” The security guards don’t bother people who are reading, so I’m glad to have the book. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser. I leaf through it as the champagne hits me, I find champagne just the right thing for an afternoon. I skim the sentences marked in red and green, many are true, sometimes things are just simple and right and good, sometimes the world can be better understood in black and white, sometimes you need red and green markings. The book goes roughly like this: the not beautiful but unusual Carrie comes to Chicago from the countryside and doesn’t find work, then she falls in love with the traveling salesman Drouet and ultimately with the bar manager Hurstwood. Carrie leaves Drouet and goes with Hurstwood to New York. Yes, that’s where I am too right now, I think, and fall asleep on page seventy-six, New York, New York. When the library closes and the security guard shakes my shoulder, I wake up on page seventy-seven. Hurstwood is serving a bottle of sec, as he calls it. Alcohol is a good idea, I say to the security guard, and close the book. I put it in the bag, the guard asks, you all right, sir? and I say, so-so. Do you know the hotel with the best martinis in the city?