Thomas Pletzinger - Funeral for a Dog

I wait in the passenger seat as Felix jumps onto the back of the truck, the air thick with smoke from the garbage cans. Felix with a bulging plastic bag in his hand, printed on it is: Supermercadinho e Panificadora Bom Jesus. David turns the key in the ignition back and forth like a screwdriver, the engine sputters and finally starts. We got lucky, says Felix, and I ask: Why lucky? They messed up, says Felix, meu amigo! Look at this bag full of weed, he whispers, the idiots made a mistake, meu amigo, he cheers, this is at least five hundred grams! And are sparks flying from the garbage cans on the road, or is there even an illegal Heckler & Koch rattling behind us, or are the shadows on the road ducking like flowers in the moonlight? I stare at Felix: Are you serious? David steers the pickup out of the favela, but with my twenty-four-hour flight in my bones I have trouble following. With such curves, with such holes in the ground.

Felix and David show me the area through the truck window. The pickup roars along the sea again and then turns into smaller streets, we drive up a hill and back down, past gardens full of orchids and bougainvillea, past iron fences and shining old buildings. I say: There are palm trees everywhere here! Incredible! Olinda, says Felix, is not a city, Olinda is an attraction. The pickup drives over rivulets and streams, through the window I hear cars honking and beggars singing. Felix passes around an Antarctica, then a Skol, then a Brahma. With Felix you always have to be drinking. The pickup drives past glass facades and gas stations, it turns under bridges, there are mildewed election posters stuck to the bridge piers, Burger King shines in the night. Then the billboards and satellite towns disappear, the pickup leaves the city. David signals to move into the passing lane and steps on the gas, he turns up the cassette player and whistles through his teeth, Rudi Ratlos heisst der Geiger, Felix screams to the sky, der streicht uns grad’ ’nen Evergreen! Half a kilo of weed! And I with the twenty-five hours without sleep in my bones sit next to Felix on the synthetic lambskin and scarcely believe my ears and eyes. I ask: What are we actually doing here? I thought this was alternative service in the rural blight of Seraverde, Pernambuco. David laughs and drinks and throws a Brahma bottle into the stalks and bushes flying by on the roadside, in a way it is. Felix laughs louder, in a way it is! Seraverde, he says, is a town of average size and average beauty between rain forest and desert. Seraverde throws its trash on a piece of fallow land behind the bus station, Rodoviária. The poor live off the trash, they wear old shoes and T-shirts, they drink the oily water, they eat melon rinds and gnaw on chicken bones, they beg for sugarcane liquor. That’s why we’re here, my Svensson, says Felix, we’re building a water tower. We cook them soup, we show them how to use a toothbrush, we pay a doctor, we pull rotten teeth, we teach them the alphabet, we change diapers. The Germans and Italians and French donate money, the Catholic Church pays a padre to hear confessions. We provide salvation, we have a fax machine, we throw condoms on Rua do Lixo. The poor fuck like rabbits, then they get into fights, they stab each other and shoot, they die like flies, and we drive the ambulances, we manage the sutured wounds. Felix turns around to me. Rua do Lixo is the ass crack of Seraverde, the garbage street, you understand? We wipe Seraverde’s butt, so it doesn’t itch the medium-sized and moderately pretty city. And since this work is a disaster, David laughs and looks at us instead of the road, we got ourselves some weed. Felix cheers and slaps me on the shoulder, porco dio! The two of us in Brazil, Svensson! The two of us! Warm night air wafts in through the window, and I’m suddenly so tired that I can’t even see straight. I ask: When will we finally get there? Another five hours to Seraverde, says David, then you’ll get a hammock and a mosquito net, then you’ll get electricity, then you two will have a wall around you and glass shards in concrete. And you? I ask. I’m your night watchman, says David, and takes a Heckler & Koch out of the glove compartment, I guard you. Nothing will happen to you! Felix takes the gun out of his hand and aims into the darkness. Old tires on the median strip, and because David is grinning and the music is clanging so beautifully, I lay my head on the lambskin and close my eyes. Urinating is good for you, I hear Felix singing, and as the pickup stops in the middle of the rain forest and Felix pees on a car wreck, in the din of the crickets, in the howling of the jackals, with my twenty-seven hours of anxious anticipation in my bones, I finally fall asleep.

When I wake up, it’s bright. The pickup is parked in the floodlight of an armored car. Police, Felix whispers, come on, Svensson, move your ass! He buries the Supermercadinho e Panificadora Bom Jesus bag under me and the lambskin. I need a few seconds to get my bearings: Brazil, pickup, lambskin, me, Felix, David the night watchman. The policemen are hard to see in the glare of the floodlight, their Heckler & Kochs are shining, the armored car is blocking the pickup. I slide back and forth on the lambskin and feel the bulging plastic bag under me. Just arrived, I think, and immediately thrown in prison. A short policeman approaches the window between tall policemen, he has a sparse mustache but is otherwise clean-shaven, he’s in shirtsleeves and holds a pair of leather gloves in his hand. Next to him is a black German shepherd, it barks deeply and darkly at the pickup. Our night watchman David puts up his hands, the policeman grins into the truck and I don’t move, at least not visibly. Santos! says Felix. Oi, meus amigos alemães , says the policeman, tudo bem? He looks over the rim of the mirrored sunglasses he’s wearing, even though it’s night. Felix nods, so I nod too, as if I understood. The black dog is waiting next to the policeman like death, his chain rattles, the muscles under his smooth fur move, his jowls droop, and when he yawns, I can see his fangs. Get out and put your hands on the roof, the policeman says politely, so we step out and put our hands on the hood, one of the tall policemen pulls my passport out of my back pocket and flips through it. Svensson? Turista ? Yes. The pitch-black dog sniffs Felix first, then I feel his wet nose between my legs. The animal takes his time thinking about what part of this tourist he should bite into first. Just woke up, I think, and already got my balls bitten off. David and the tall policemen seem to know each other, the doors are opened, they take David’s Heckler & Koch out of the glove compartment, hold it up to the light and put it back. P10? No, MK23. Permit? In his pants pocket. Santos laughs, David laughs too, but his laugh sounds angry. Can the dog sniff out the weed? He licks my hand, he licks every single finger with his rough tongue, the weed smell reaches this far. I’m trembling, and the pickup’s hood fogs up under my damp fingers. Then Santos slaps the dog on the nose with the leather glove and pulls him to the pickup by the chain, vambora, Lula, vambora! The dog sticks his nose into the truck and drools on the seat. Does the dapper policeman smell the Supermercadinho e Panificadora Bom Jesus bag under the lambskin? Felix reaches into his pocket and presses a few bills into Santos’s hand. They both laugh. The policeman twirls his fine mustache and smoothes out the money. He sticks it in his shirt pocket, then steps up the negotiations. Santos stands on tiptoe and takes the panama hat off Felix’s head, he turns it and flips it, he puts it on over his thin hair. David holds a forced smile as if he were posing for a painting. If Lula doesn’t find anything, says Santos with the panama hat on his head, you’ll have to reward him, Allemaos . The tall policemen with their Heckler & Kochs in their hands laugh. Vambora, Lula, vambora! Of course, says Felix, meu amigo , of course! Compadres , says Santos, if you still need water for your tower, Lula and I could do a lot for you. All we need is a little favor. Meu amigo , Felix says, of course, and he turns to me. Do you have any money? With the black dog Lula breathing down my neck and the lambskin in the corner of my eye, with damp fingers and weak knees, I hand over to Santos all the dollars from my neck pouch. Beleza, meu irmão , Santos shakes Felix’s hand and claps me on the shoulder. The tall policemen rub their fingers together, Santos tugs on Lula’s chain. He runs a glove across his throat, the floodlight goes out, all of a sudden it’s dark. The policemen get in their car and drive slowly toward the city, Lula has to gallop behind the car, we hear the rattle of his chain on the asphalt along with a jubilant song from the radio of the pickup, “Girl from Mars.” On the hills in the background the lights of Seraverde. Just arrived, I think, and already robbed. Welcome to Seraverde, says Felix, and David crosses himself and curses, if it were up to him, Santos would drop dead, safado , two-faced son of a bitch. Drop dead!