Thomas Pletzinger - Funeral for a Dog

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.

IS TODAY SATURDAY? 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.