Thomas Pletzinger - Funeral for a Dog

We’re sad, you know?

Kiki is drawing, I’m taking notes. The sound of the nocturnal water, the soft breathing of the children, the waxy scratching of the crayons on the paper (Kiki Kaufman and I are practicing our professions). When Kiki finally puts aside her implements, it must be one o’clock. I ask Kiki whether she and Svensson are married, even though she’s now leaning against the wall with her eyes closed. Nein , she says, nein . Why not? No reason. Are these questions too personal? No, Kiki is still whispering, not at all (she doesn’t even open her eyes). The passing thought that Svensson must have felt just as calm with her as I do now (Kiki Kaufman: salvation and insight, he wrote). Svensson and she met by chance, says Kiki, in New York in 2001, those were unambiguous times, either good or evil, and in the middle of all that they crossed paths. Kiki laughs softly and opens her eyes. Of course they could have just gotten married to avoid visa problems, but by the time they became aware of this possibility, they were already sitting in a taxi on the way to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. She asks me whether I’m interested in things like this. Yes, I say, I still have a lot of questions — for example, what’s going to happen with the dog. Kiki stands up and says, I’m drunk. Svensson will bury him under the oleander, she says, nodding toward the window, you want some coffee?

Who exactly was Felix Blaumeiser?

When Kiki brings the coffee, the property is again bathed in cold floodlight beams (against the fox). Tuuli and Svensson are sitting on the dock, the suitcase full of stones and paper between them, the dead dog still on his blanket. The floodlight flashes on when Svensson throws a stone into the water, the light reaches it in midair (the white plunge into the black lake). We’re standing by the window and drinking coffee, Svensson’s stone breaks through the surface and makes ripples, after a few seconds the light goes out (a silent theater). The motion detector is working again, I say. Chickens and rats don’t set off the light, says Kiki, large movements are necessary for that. Lua’s death is actually such a movement, and the next time the light flashes on, Svensson has flung a stone out of the light (we don’t see the bright splash). Even from up here I can see Astroland lying in the suitcase. Svensson and Felix knew each other since they were kids, Kiki now says more to herself than to me, Lua entered their lives the same night as Tuuli, he’s been with them almost ten years. Kiki seems astonished by her words:

Lua is dead now.

Down by the water Tuuli and Svensson are lifting the dog from his blanket and laying him down in the suitcase (Lua doesn’t fit). They grasp his hind legs and push them carefully toward Lua’s body, the lone foreleg Svensson likewise bends into place (they’re curling Lua up like a baby). The floodlight is staying on now, because Tuuli is running back and forth between oleander and suitcase, she’s picking oleander flowers and scattering them handful after handful over the dog in the suitcase. Svensson bends down over the dog and lays his ear on the dog’s chest (he wants to be sure). Kiki is standing in the pale reflection of the floodlight. Do things like that make no difference to her, I ask Kiki, and she looks at me in surprise. This really is sad, she says, brushing the sleeping boy’s hair from his forehead. Lua has always been with Svensson, just as Tuuli and Felix and Samy have always been with him ( hier und hier , she says, pointing to her chest and her forehead). After Felix’s death the rings just weren’t linked anymore, she says, you can see that from a distance (can’t you, Daniel?). By the shore Svensson and Tuuli are now closing the suitcase, they’re pushing and pressing, then the heavy lock catches. On the night of New Year’s Eve between 2000 and 2001 they reached the ideal state, on the coldest night of the year, says Kiki, Svensson has told her that over and over again. She asks whether I can visualize the picture in the kitchen. Yes, I say, Shitty City 2000, right? I remember that early chapter from Astroland : the hotel room, the breakfast, the dog wearing a hood (this isn’t the first time Kiki has told this story, I think, she really is drunk). Svensson puts the suitcase in Lua’s favorite spot on the boat (bulky baggage). The momentary idea that I’ve met Svensson only in the stories that might now become Lua’s funerary object. The man by the lake has remained hidden from me. Exactly, says Kiki, interrupting my memory. After those days everything slowly came apart. Tuuli and Svensson walk across the meadow toward the house. Kiki takes Bella from the mattress as she brushes her brown curls behind her ear. At the thought of Elisabeth in this exact position, bent over her desk as far as I’m concerned, holding her red hair away from her face, over a child as far as I’m concerned, I’m overcome by an unannounced wave of emotion. Good night, Kiki says before she leaves, and I swallow my tears in the dark. I look at the piece of paper she was drawing on while we were talking: the wilting oleander, the dying Lua, the Borromean rings. Kiki has forgotten Samuli. Good night, I say, and remain standing at the window (the last spectator).

the fox

The opening and closing of the bathroom door, then the night. The yellow church on the other side of the lake has long since ceased to glow. It’s dark, the coffee was too much. Shitty City is the name of the Polaroid, and Shitty City is the name of Kiki’s painting in the kitchen (her signature is missing). Shitty City is the Astroland chapter that Tuuli read to me. The story of the turn of a year in Finland. I’m lying on my back and listening to a nocturnal motorboat far out on the lake, I gaze at the mobile in the dark, Samuli, for a while I was still hearing sounds from the kitchen, voices and glasses. I’m waiting for sleep. I think about Elisabeth, about the unwritten profile, about my own story. Tuuli hasn’t come yet to get the boy, the door is wide open (I haven’t heard her singing). I’m lying awake and thinking about a series of New Year’s Eves, early New Year’s Eves and fondue with my mother, later with Hornberg and Eva at the Port of Hamburg, 2001 alone in Berkeley, the first New Year’s Eve with Elisabeth, but then my thoughts find their way back to the supposedly perfect moment in Astroland , the story told by Svensson and Tuuli and Kiki. But Svensson’s manuscript is now lying in Blaumeiser’s suitcase and waiting to be buried (Lua’s coffin). The new computer is on the desk (inner emptiness). I wonder whether Svensson has a copy of Astroland . Kiki seems not to have read it, but she destroyed the computer. Tuuli and I might be the only people who know Astroland (I would be the one who didn’t save it). I turn Tuuli’s hairpin in my fingers. The suitcase is on the boat, in it the perfect moment and Tuuli’s prophesy of its passing. The house is asleep, so I get up. On the desk in front of me the two research folders: I open them and take out the photocopied material. With superficially researched information on Svensson I came here, I will leave with his story. My journalistic precision: I will exchange page by page (Svensson won’t notice). I creep out of the house, past Tuuli’s open door, past Kiki and Svensson and Bella’s room, then through the kitchen and the large room on the ground floor. Nothing. I slide open the glass door and walk barefoot through the damp grass. I notice my fear of Lua, the dead watchdog, of his bark, of his teeth. I walk on nonetheless, and only stop when the floodlight on the house suddenly again illuminates the property as bright as day. Everyone will be able to see me, I think, and once my eyes have adjusted to the brightness, I notice the fox next to the Fiat, stiff as I, frightened as I (the brownish red fur shaggy, its eyes are glowing in the floodlight).