Thomas Pletzinger - Funeral for a Dog

What are the stakes, Svensson? asks Felix. When the first preliminary fight is announced, the spectators begin to gesticulate, they pass money through the room, there’s shouting at the bar, coins jingle. The hall goes silent, and two roosters are brought in. As in a boxing match, the handlers stand in the corners, they give their birds a light shake, they pull at their roosters’ heads and bodies as they talk relentlessly at them. The men are now wearing small bags around their bellies, in them Vaseline and bandages, needle and thread. They put the birds in the ring, they hold the scratching roosters tight for another few seconds, then comes the signal, and the audience begins to scream. The cocks flutter toward each other, they assail each other, they peck and kick, they want to tear each other to shreds. The spurs cut deep wounds in their wings and bodies, their beaks peck at the eyes. After a few seconds the first cock is lying and flailing on its side, its belly is covered in blood, on its neck an open cut is gaping. The handlers take their animals out of the ring, the loser draws a knife and puts his dying rooster out of its misery with a single slash, the winner gets the executed rooster. For honor, says David, for soup. One bird after another is put in the ring, sometimes it goes fast, sometimes it takes the cocks several rounds. During the short breaks, their handlers tape up their wounds, they blow air into their lungs and pry open their encrusted eyes, sometimes they pray. If both animals are injured, the rule is: whoever moves last is the winner. A brown cock flies over the barrier, and the audience immediately jumps out of the way. Fear of the spurs splits the crowd, I think, and see Tuuli laughing as she clings to Felix. When the cock notices the absence of his adversary, he turns, and immediately his owner is there, the spectators yell and whistle. I can’t tell who here is betting against whom and how much. David bets a few reais on a speckled cock named Iguaçú and wins, Felix bets everything and loses everything to a man with a pink tie. Tuuli gives all the roosters her own names: Nightingale and Orchid of Olinda and Moby Dick. In the second-to-last fight of the evening, Tuuli says with an announcer’s voice, Don Quixote finishes off a rooster named Sancho Panza in three tragic rounds. Both birds are lying in the bloody dirt, the owners shake hands, they cut off their animals’ heads.

The clay floor is saturated with the blood of the animals, the audience is getting nervous, at the tables in the first row the bets are increasing. Now comes the main fight, David shouts. I register the iron smell in the air, the cigarettes, the sweat of the gamblers. The owners of the champion rooster have taken their position in the left corner of the ring, the champion is fed chili seeds, the handler whispers something in his ear and makes the sign of the cross three times over his comb. Forty-three fights, I remember, not a single loss. The challenger is the whitest rooster I’ve ever seen, says David, look at the spurs! Black as hell! In the other corner the snow-white cock is being prepared for the fight. That one’s mine! shouts Felix, I’m betting on the white cock! Is that wood? I ask. Exactly, says David, jacarandá, rosewood, filed sharp a hundred times. Tuuli’s hair is fragrant as Felix and I bend down to ask her for the names of the roosters. We’ve drunk and gambled away our money, I’m the only one who still has a few reais for a last round. I say: Everything on the champion! Our former police dog is lying under the table and snoring, the heat and the squawking of the cocks can’t wake him. How Tuuli’s foot caresses Lua’s flank, I think, following every word from her mouth. Shall we bet? asks Felix, and I answer, yeah, let’s bet! Tuuli smiles. And? asks Felix. And? I ask. The names of the next combatants, says Tuuli, are William Wordsworth in the left corner and Robby Naish in the right. Your bet, please! Sodom versus Gomorrah, David laughs, Sodom versus Gomorrah. Tuuli is the top prize, says Felix.

When the left corner puts Wordsworth on the ground and lets him feel the clay under his claws, Lua wakes up. The shack holds its breath, the berimbau player stops plucking and beating, Lua’s chain rattles softly. The bettors are staring at the cocks and their handlers, the strings of lights, the blood. They’re waiting for the timekeeper and his signal, they throw the last bills into the pot, stack the last coins. I look at Tuuli, her eyes shift between me and Felix, they shift between the animals and the people. The second the bell rings and the cocks are released, I suspect the worst. I suspect that the fun stops this instant, I suspect that Wordsworth will lose his forty-fourth fight, I suspect the winnings of the victors and the losses of the defeated, I suspect the knife for the loser, I suspect Wordsworth’s blood-spatters on Naish’s rosewood spurs, I suspect Tuuli and Felix in Seraverde and myself alone on an airplane over the Atlantic, jacarandá , I suspect, jacarandá .

The fight lasts less than a minute. When their handlers release them, the two cocks stay where they are on the blood-soaked floor. No frantic fluttering, no squawking rage, and no flashing blades. Wordsworth opens his wings and closes them again, Naish just stands there and crows. The handlers shout their commands, vambora! Vambora! the spectators fold their hands, vambora! Vambora! they make their signs of the cross, they yell and whisper, the air in the shack is burning. And then the champion flies the first attack. Wordsworth half flies, half charges at the challenger, he slams with all his might into Naish’s side, and even though the white cock jumps up and strikes out around him, I already see the first steel-spur cut on his body. Now the audience is screaming, the roosters’ owners are screaming, the birds are screaming, the first white feathers are falling to the ground. Wordsworth is suddenly a blur of beak-pecking, spur-kicking, and wing-storm, he drives the challenger against the light blue wooden wall, he pecks at the snow-white rooster’s head, he deals him another two or three blows, then Naish manages to break free. He jumps over Wordsworth, he beats his wings wildly and almost touches the ceiling of the shack. The spectators back away, but Naish doesn’t end up over the barrier, he turns above their heads and then swoops down on Wordsworth. With both claws and both rosewood spurs, he lands on the champion and digs into his back. Now Naish is pecking insistently at the champion. I notice the first plucked spots on William Wordsworth’s neck, his first wounds, the first blood. The spectators are holding their breath, I see the red in the colored plumage, his torn and shredded feathers, his down in the air over the ring. But then Naish pushes himself off Wordsworth’s speckled back and flutters through the arena, he dances around his wounded adversary, he grazes the battlefield only rarely. Wordsworth has to stay on the ground and react, he turns in a circle and follows Naish with bloody eyes. Naish attacks Wordsworth from above, he doesn’t let up, he penetrates the colored birds’ defenses, he seems to be proceeding tactically and playing with Wordsworth, he moves with the lightness of the sure winner. Float like a butterfly, says Felix, grabbing the nape of my neck, sting like a bee! I bet on Wordsworth, and Felix’s rooster seems to be winning. Tuuli isn’t laughing anymore, she’s observing the fight with her mouth open. She just watches us, I think, as we gamble her away. When Naish flies another airstrike, Wordsworth falls to the side, and this time he manages to drive his claws into Naish and hold on to him. Naish can’t get back in the air, and they roll in each other’s embrace through the dust of the arena, a cloud of feathers and blades and blood, the noise in the shack is deafening. The cock handlers pull the birds apart, Naish’s beak is caught in Wordsworth’s eye. The roosters are again put head to head in the middle of the ring, both can neither fly nor walk, they crawl toward each other and again go directly at each other. The shack roars the real fighting names of the animals, which I don’t understand, the names of the owners, the names of their colors. Lua looks at me with drunken eyes. The pecking gets slower and ceases, the cocks lie twitching on top each other, then Wordsworth’s head flops to the side and stays there. The bird is dead. The handler in the right corner lifts Naish over his head, Felix and Tuuli are embracing. I’ve lost the bet. Without saying a word I get up, take my cap, and go outside, I lie down in the back of the pickup. On the horizon an illuminated tanker, on the shore the fishermen’s boats, over me airplanes or stars. With the return ticket in my bag I wait for Tuuli, I wait for the morning of my departure, eventually I fall asleep next to Lua.