Thomas Pletzinger - Funeral for a Dog

Shitty Paradise City

As fast as the light came, the fox is gone again (we stared into each other’s eyes). I walk to the edge of the property and wait for the darkness. When the floodlight goes out, I decide to take the risk (I have to be fast to avoid notice). I inhale and run to the dock. With a slight delay the light flashes on, I jump into the boat and duck as low as possible. The suitcase is now lying in Lua’s spot in the stern. After a few seconds the light disappears, and because I approach the suitcase in slow motion, it stays dark. I take Tuuli’s hairpin out of my pants pocket, I exhale, I turn it in the suitcase’s lock and feel the slight resistance of the metal (I’ve been practicing the movement for days). I keep turning, the lock opens with a soft click (even in the moonlight “Felix Blaumeiser” can be read on the tag). Macumba is rocking, I balance out the automatic light. In the shallow water near the shore, the swan is sleeping, its head under its wings. I open the suitcase. Only a single cicada is louder than my research. Wrapped in the blanket, Lua is lying stiff and strangely bent between oleander flowers and paper and is pretending to be asleep ( Astroland under his head a pillow, stuffed with memory). I have to lift up his bony head briefly so as to be able to pull away the manuscript under him. In the moonlight Lua seems to nod, his fur has grown cold (the ethnologist as grave robber). Despite the darkness, I find the chapters I’m looking for, and replace them page by page with photocopied book plugs, reviews, brief bios. Then I wrap up the manuscript again and push it under the black dog’s head. I’m careful not to bend his ears, I stroke his snout, I wish the brave Lua a good night. Älä pelkää , Lua, I say, sleep well, you’ve earned it.

WHAT YOU DON’T HOLD ON TO DISAPPEARS. A HOTEL ROOM ON the second floor, a clock was ticking. I lay between Felix and Tuuli and smelled the darkness yawning. A double bed and Tuuli’s hand on my neck, her smell in my ear and Felix’s leg over mine. It’s bitterly cold in Oulu, I thought, and the darkness is a black dog. We lay under blankets and jackets, the heat vent was breathing dryly and uselessly, at midnight the champagne in the glasses was frozen. The darkness rose and sank calmly, through the closed blinds fell the red remains of the neon sign next door: Ravintola , firecrackers exploded on the street. The darkness lay at our feet. Felix: in this cold having your own fur doesn’t help anymore. So he put his blue parka on Lua and tied the left sleeve in a knot. Lua lay there like a disabled veteran. In this cold only liquor and other bodies help, said Felix, at which point Lua yawned and I could smell his yawn, it must have been morning now, even if I couldn’t see the clock, the morning of the first day of the new year, and I asked into the dark, is anyone hungry? and Tuuli said, breakfast for three.

The bright light downstairs in the lobby: three anti-depression lamps over the buffet. In the constant night of the train station hotel Turisti there was only a Japanese man in a Santa Claus costume sitting at a table and drinking his Crazy Reindeer as he’d been doing last night. He blew a streamer toward me. At reception a woman with a fur cap and a cigarette was mopping the remnants of New Year’s Eve off the floor, the cleaning bucket was boiling, the water was steaming on the linoleum. Outside the window someone had spray-painted black letters on the wall across from the hotel: Paska kaupunki. I loaded up a tray. Breakfast for three, Tuuli had said, so I took toast for three and cranberry marmalade and butter and milk, corn flakes and coffee and packaged cheese on a stick. Lua liked Lapin Kulta beer, so I took a few cans, Tuuli loved apples, I took a Braeburn. Then: two vodkas in little plastic bottles and orange juice, because Felix chased liquor with juice. I took the last three mandarin oranges and juggled, then one fell on the floor and rolled to the feet of the cleaning woman with the cap. The Japanese man was waiting in the Finnish night and humming in the empty lobby, he was waiting for the air guitar world championships of Oulu and for the next morning sometime in March, he was sitting in the antidepressant light of the hotel lobby and plucking Guns n’ Roses on his invisible instrument. Breakfast wasn’t included here, I paid at reception and got permission to take the toaster with me. Shitty city, said the woman with the cap, when I asked about the writing on the wall, paska kaupunki means shitty city.

At least this: Felix with the Polaroid camera. In the room the breakfast was waiting on the floor, I was standing by the window and observing the frost patterns on the glass. The snow on the train station plaza was glowing orange, we could still hear individual firecrackers exploding and shards clinking. Behind me Tuuli and Felix lay intertwined in the blankets and jackets. Our car was parked under the streetlamp, freezing. We’d come from Rovaniemi, we were on the way to Helsinki, now we were stuck in Oulu, because the car couldn’t go on at thirty-nine degrees below zero. The coldest day of the year. In Rovaniemi Tuuli’s father had a snail farm, and in the winter he sold the deep-frozen animals in the shopping mall, eat, eat, he said on Christmas, please eat! Breakfast! I said now, opening a can of Lapin Kulta for the dog, please eat! Lua woke up and rolled off the bed, under Felix’s hood he looked like a monk. Tuuli reached out her hand to me, and I poured the beer in Lua’s plastic bowl. The monk drank beer, the disabled veteran greedily emptied the bowl, my thermal underwear struck sparks into the darkness as I took off my ski pants and Tuuli’s hand followed into her cave of blankets and jackets. Tuuli’s smell might have condensed, she bit into the apple, and Felix said: stay still! The coffee’s getting cold, I said to Tuuli’s mouth, and her warm tongue made the word “cold” melt. I drank the apple taste from her mouth. Felix put aside the camera, his hand moved between Tuuli’s legs, our breath hung over us in the cold like a cloud, Lua drank his New Year’s beer, firecrackers exploded, we wore our caps. We are here, said the dog, lying down in front of his bowl, we are here where we belong.

We leaned our heads together, and Felix held up one picture after another over us. Santa Claus is waiting down in the lobby, I said. Once, whispered Tuuli, Santa Claus wore a white coat and shone in the sky like the brightest star with the longest tail. Tuuli took Felix’s right hand and my left in her small fingers, I could smell Felix’s liquor breath and Tuuli like hot lemonade on his fingers. Santa Claus rode on his noblest elk, whispered Tuuli, the most faithful animal with fur like snow and a heart of gold, it carried him everywhere and always brought him back home. But one day they ended up in the worst snowstorm since the beginning of time. Tuuli’s fingers trembled. It was so terribly cold that the lakes froze to the bottom and the air cracked. Santa Claus and his faithful friend were buried in the high snow of Rovaniemi and looked death in the eye, his red beard turned to ice, and his heart froze. If we warm each other, master, said the elk, then we’ll live. But Santa Claus grabbed an icicle and stabbed the elk with his fur like snow and his heart of gold, he opened the soft belly with a sharp shard, he buried himself inside the animal, he soaked his white coat in warm blood, he slept between the stomach and the heart of his faithful friend and so survived the cold and the storm. On the street someone was shooting flares, and we read the colors on the walls of the room. Nothing, said Tuuli, nothing is true and nothing lasts forever. We’re not alone, said Felix, clasping our hands, we’re three. Paska kaupunki , said Lua on the floor. Felix threw aside the blanket and got up, take me down to the paradise city. The cold crept between our bodies. A good year, said Tuuli, kissing me on the forehead and Felix on the neck, happy New Year, you two. My loves, she said.