Thomas Pletzinger - Funeral for a Dog

(9) Eva. To this day Hornberg doesn’t know anything about it (Eva taught me betrayal). Eva was Hornberg’s second girlfriend and for two years mine at the same time (turn of the millennium on the Port of Hamburg; her tongue piercing rattled against my teeth while Hornberg peed off a landing pier). When he returned from Tanzania in July after three months of field research, Eva was pregnant (Hornberg was depressed from the malaria prophylaxis). I sat in the waiting room of the gynecologist and observed the colorful tropical fish in the octagonal tank (different perspectives through different plates of glass). Eva had decided against the child without asking my opinion (she must have been thinking of Hornberg). She didn’t want to deprive us of all other possibilities, she said. This time I would have been the father (I wanted to live up to the responsibility; I would have managed). When Eva awoke from the sedation, the doctor’s assistant brought coffee and cinnamon buns and stroked her cheek (I didn’t touch her, it struck me as inappropriate). When she called Hornberg in the afternoon and asked him not to contact her anymore, I was sitting on the floor of her room and felt the need to go far away. Hornberg later wrote to me in confidence that he’d wanted to have the child (he wrote “my child”). Then he got the Renault for a few years.

(10) Anne. Shortly thereafter, Professor Jansen’s offer to me of the opportunity to go to Berkeley (winter semester 2000). I’m not eager to see you go, Mandelkern, said Jansen, putting his hand on my shoulder, but you have to get out of here! My dissertation fit the Berkeley department’s profile (media-theory-oriented inquiries into the ethnographic film). There, Anne from Zurich sat in the office next to mine, we talked about documentary and feature films and strategies of direction and of authenticity and were silent at the decisive points (our bodies didn’t mesh; we were nothing but words). Only after a few weeks did we sleep together in her small, shabby room near Ohlone Park (the smell of the seafood restaurant under her fire escape). Our dissertations progressed (our careers, our lives). In March 2001 we found an apartment to share on Delaware Street and San Pablo Avenue, we had a shared language that no one else in Berkeley seemed to speak (children were out of the question; we were academics). Shortly before an important lecture on Stéphane Breton’s strategy of authenticity through the subjective camera, the two airplanes flew into the World Trade Center towers in New York. My lecture and the doctoral conference were postponed until further notice (I never gave the talk). Anne and I fell into a panic. She decided to take the first flight back to Europe and immediately drove to the airport, either I would come with her to Switzerland or we would have to make do with e-mails. I stayed in Berkeley, grieved, and continued to tinker with my dissertation for a while (I wanted to wait and see). Anne discovered her interest in European ethnology. I read my paper again and again, gradually I found myself learning it by heart more than writing it. After a few weeks we broke up amicably and via e-mail (the affection had lost its tangibility).

(11) Laura. In early 2002 I had asked Jansen for permission to cut back on the dissertation for a few months due to financial difficulties. The scholarship had run out, I needed money and was compiling glossaries for GEO (but hurry, Mandelkern, said Jansen, in two years I’m leaving here!). On the way to work one morning someone threw himself in front of the train between Sternschanze and St. Pauli stations, Laura and I sat next to each other on the U-Bahn until the police and the forensic specialists had finished their work (a week before I met Elisabeth in the cafeteria). Laura had a vague resemblance to the second Carolina. We had a coffee in the Portuguese Quarter, she lived not far from there in Neustadt. This story was an attempt (it failed miserably).

(12) Elisabeth. You don’t consider the number eleven an impressive tally, Elisabeth. You in the bathroom next to me, your blood on me. You sing “The Linden Tree” (the Renault in front of the house sticky and gray with linden blood). You and I in a parking lot on the Atlantic coast of Brittany, on Mont Ventoux, in a hotel room in Venasque. You and I on a traffic island in Lyon when the Renault gave up in the middle of the summer (we had to replace the engine). You on the bank of the Parseta (our honeymoon). The scar under your belly button. Your red hair, the a in your name, your athletic height, your long-limbed beauty (the green of your eyes).

Adho Mukha Svanasana

I got distracted. First, with the sun, the noise of the birds, the ledge outside Svensson’s window is thickly crusted with pigeon droppings. Elisabeth is a consistent woman, she will now be jogging along the canal on the way to yoga, as she does every Sunday morning. After the wedding she kept her maiden name, I’m not you, she says, and you’re not me, Mandelkern (Elisabeth Edda Emmerich). For the two of us a double name was out of the question. It’s only logical that her spine is all but stiff despite years of practice, says Elisabeth. I practice and practice and practice, she says, and you bend like green wood in the slightest breeze. She’s right: I can do the crow, I can do the crane, I can do the dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana). Later Elisabeth will have a cup of tea in the Schanzenviertel area. She stopped drinking coffee, she doesn’t use her espresso pot anymore. Though caffeine in the months before pregnancy has no known harmful consequences, she says, there’s no need to tempt fate (these days there’s chai everywhere). I left the apartment without a word.

Method Section: Participant Observation

I know the first sentence of my dissertation by heart: “Since Malinowski’s field studies on the Trobriand Islands, participant observation has been regarded as a standard method of ethnographic field research.” Svensson has told me nothing of significance since yesterday afternoon. I should be patient (ethnological principle: “Silence is the older brother of the word”). I should observe the structure of the ethnos under investigation (the animals wake up first). I should find a main informant (Tuuli). I could work with the pitiful scientific methods I have at my disposal here, I could count (three chickens), I could measure (Tuuli’s height), I could time (the minutes for the return journey to Lugano).

my pitiful methods

Now the wasps are buzzing in the undergrowth below the open window. Svensson and the dog are slowly walking toward the shore through a haze of dew and spiderwebs (Optolyth). I hear the chickens clucking. Lua’s gait is heavy, only the missing leg puts some motion into the animal. Svensson, wearing blue shorts and sneakers, grabs Lua’s ears and ruffles the fur on his head. Svensson is shirtless, he’s much more robust than in the photo in his book, he stretches his thighs and calves, then he does sit-ups and push-ups. On the smooth lake two fishermen in a wooden boat are floating by incredibly slowly, one of the two catches a fish at this very instant, frees it from the hook, and throws it back in the water (the whistled melody of the other). Suddenly Svensson stands up, puts on the purple T-shirt, and disappears in the undergrowth behind the Fiat (the purple of a Mass vestment). With the binoculars I can see how the coughing shakes the dog’s flanks (under “C” as in “cough” in the Great Encyclopedia of Dog Breeds various possibilities: canine distemper, for example; for dogs amputations are almost always accompanied by intense arthrosis of the compensating joint, in contrast to human beings, dogs do not perceive missing extremities as a psychic burden: “dogs live in the moment”). The suitcase is still under the desk, the paper clips still bend in the lock (an advertising sticker scrawled over with a felt-tip pen: Beer makes you schmart, it made Thrifty Felix wiser!).