Funeral for a Dog: A Novel

(On love as a relationship between the sexes there is nothing new to report, literature has depicted it in all its variations, once and for all, it is no longer a subject for literature that is worthy of the name—such pronouncements are being made; they fail to recognize that the relation between the sexes changes, that other love stories will take place.)

–Max Frisch–

hardly art, hardly garbage

–The Thermals–

August 6, 2005

Shut up and play

August 6, 2005

Animals, the Hearts of People

August 7, 2005

Shoot the Freak

August 7, 2005

Capoeira with Heckler & Koch

August 8, 2005

William Wordsworth vs. Robby Naish

August 8, 2005

Lua and the Third Death

August 9, 2005

August 9, 2005

Shitty City 2000

August 10, 2005

August 10, 2005

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Translator

Lugano, August 10, 2005

(I)

My dear Elisabeth,

You want to know where I’ve been? I’m sending you seven postcards and a stack of paper, 322 pages. This stack is about me. And about memory and the future. I’ve been reading and sorting all afternoon. You were right, Elisabeth: Svensson is a strange man, and: yes, there is a story here. Svensson’s children’s book is only the last chapter. He’s been carrying a whole suitcase of stories around with him, a suitcase full of…

[Image:
Hamburg Volkspark Stadium
, aerial view, 1999]

(II)

…tales told and secrets kept, full of stones and flowers. I’ve saved what I could. This stack of paper is my days with Svensson, my notes and interviews, Svensson’s desert and his rain forest, beer cans and streamers, dogs, rats, pigeons, gulls, horses, ravens, swans, snakes, butterflies, fish, the downtrodden animals of creation (black), Svensson’s dead, his Seraverde and his Williamsburg. Sometimes I feel like I’m Svensson, I’ve…

[Image
: Monte Brè at Evening
, poster by Daniele Buzzi, 1950]

(III)

…mixed up our stories. I asked the waiter with the sweaty mustache.
Prego
, he said, it’s Wednesday. My reply:
Mille grazie e un altro bicchiere di vino per favore
. So I’ve fallen out of time, but now I’m back in Lugano, today is Wednesday. Black plastic ducks are floating in the pool at the Lido Seegarten, a rat…

[Image:
Vaccatione en Svizzera
, illustrator unknown, 1925]

(IV)

…is waiting at the poolside, on the floating dock in the lake a heron is standing on green Astroturf. Time is a lake and memory a sad dog. Herons can fly extremely slowly when they want to. I’ve learned to observe such things again. You were right, Elisabeth: this Svensson is a strange man, but he’s no stranger than the rest of us. Our stories don’t fit on a newspaper page. I’m tired of newspaper pages, Elisabeth. Life is a spiral, not a line.

[Image:
Ticino Village Scene
, poster by Daniele Buzzi, 1943]

(V)

I’m eating peanuts and have been feeding them to the rat. You were right, Elisabeth: the hotel is beautiful, but it’s decaying, as all beautiful things decay (roses, geraniums, plastic deck chairs). On the lakeside an old married couple is eating fish under strings of lights while Chopin plays from a tape, next to me is a freezer (the cords yanked out). The sun is setting.

[Image:
Caffè del Porto,
b/w, “Invierno 1939/40”]

(VI)

I’m sending you our story, Elisabeth. The rest is history and blind obedience (
obbedienza cieca
), and it’s rotting away with a three-legged German shepherd (Lua) at what is probably the deepest point in Lake Lugano (288 meters). No light penetrates down there, Svensson said, down there the fish are white and insanely beautiful.

[Image:
Monte Brè at Morning,
poster by Daniele Buzzi, 1950]

(VII)

Dear Elisabeth, I’ve learned: we don’t have to make such a big deal out of everything. I’m staying a few more days. You were right: there is a good Barbaresco in this region (Taleggio & Quartirolo). No cigarettes. I kissed a small, pretty woman and meant you. I’m tired. I’m taking the train back. I’ve thought about it.

Minä tulen sinne, rakkain terveisin
,

Mandelkern

Daniel

[Image:
Porlezza
, 2001]

(And who exactly is Daniel Mandelkern?)

Elisabeth demanded a decision, and I left our apartment without making one. It can’t go on like this. My flight to Milan doesn’t leave Hamburg for an hour. I’m sitting alone and completely exhausted in the waiting area at Gate 8 (on the other side of the airfield, the pines on the edge of Niendorf). At Gate 7 two Italian businesswomen are joking around. I get up, I have to move so I don’t fall asleep. Somewhat farther down the corridor a newsstand: I buy a newspaper (
Süddeutsche Zeitung
), I buy a postcard (image:
Hamburg Volkspark Stadium
, aerial view, 1999), I see Semikolon brand notebooks. The only other place that carries them is a stationery store next to the Academy of Fine Arts on Lerchenfeld, which is always an all-day trip, so I buy three of them. I buy cigarettes. I’m starting to smoke again now, because smoking reduces fertility, smokers’ sperm don’t hold out as long (eventually their sperm give up). Cigarettes have gotten more expensive since my last pack. I buy coffee at a vending machine and go back to the gate, I tear the cellophane off the notebook and make a note of my fatigue and my headache. Then I make a note of the headlines in the
Süddeutsche Zeitung
of August 6–7, 2005:

I’m writing because I always write when things get complicated. I’m alone, I could smoke. I could throw the notebooks into the garbage cans next to me (one red, one green, one blue, color-coded for trash separation). I should get up and go back, back to my wife.

Samsonite

How I got here: Elisabeth and I didn’t raise our voices, I left our apartment in the middle of the night and without closure (we fight in our indoor voices). Took the Svensson file from the kitchen table and carried my half-packed suitcase through the hallway, but then slammed the apartment door behind me much too hard and almost ran down the street in the light drizzle. Away from Elisabeth, the sound of the ridiculous rolling suitcase on the slabs of the sidewalk behind me is louder than expected (for your reporting trips, Elisabeth had said, putting the suitcase in my office). I turned off my phone so I could ignore her calls (she’ll want to have the last word, as always). Gave the taxi driver who took me from the Hoheluft Bridge to the airport an absurdly high tip (ransom). At the only staffed counter in the otherwise empty terminal, I opened my suitcase and buried my phone between suit and shirts (between recording device and shaver). I stuck my toothbrush in my shirt pocket. The ground personnel seemed to have been waiting for me. Milan? Yes. Identification? Herr Mandelkern? Yes. As I began to explain myself and my more-than-punctual arrival, the Lufthansa agent gave a routine laugh: as far as she was concerned, I could fold my whole life into my luggage as long as it stayed below the allowable weight limit (the scale showed 12.7 kilos). There was still a seat available on the earlier, direct flight, did I want it? Okay. At dawn I was the only passenger at the security checkpoint, I put the two folders full of research on Svensson next to my belt in the gray plastic tub. No, I said, I had nothing else with me (I had surrendered everything at check-in). The ring on my finger didn’t set off any alarm. Now I’m sitting here at six-thirty in the Hamburg Airport in the nearly empty waiting area at Gate 8, much too early, because I left our apartment in the middle of the night and without a word. I simply left.

Dirk Svensson?

I asked last Wednesday at the weekly editorial meeting, which Elisabeth leads, because the travel assignment was listed as “Dirk Svensson” on her updated monthly schedule and followed by my name. The passing thought of getting up immediately and leaving, of refusing the assignment outright.

Dirk Svensson: Interview and Profile (
Mandelkern
)

Elisabeth and I haven’t exchanged a personal word for days, and professionally she’s met me with stubborn resolve for weeks. She gave me the assignment as I returned her gaze aloofly and angrily (her urgent mouth). “Dirk Svensson: Interview and Profile” means a weekend’s less time for what I’d like to say privately to Elisabeth. I’ve heard of Svensson. You can’t escape his name these days, he’s written one children’s book and is probably on the verge of making a fortune. I’m not interested in children’s books or their authors, I don’t want to write a story about this Svensson, I could have said at the editorial meeting, I want to talk to you. But I remained seated and looked first at Elisabeth (red hair tied back off her neck) and then at my feet (green flip-flops). Why now? I asked, and Elisabeth gave a completely professional answer: If the piece couldn’t appear next week, she said, or the week after at the latest, then another newspaper would do the story. The appointment had presented itself today, Svensson had called and actually agreed to a meeting (the connection had been really bad). Svensson the man, Elisabeth said at the editorial meeting, the man remains hidden behind this one children’s book and its sales figures. I’d started the research, but then I passed the job on to her intern, because I’ve never been interested in children’s books. For weeks the editorial department has been abuzz with talk about him, and for weeks the story has been postponed. Svensson doesn’t want to travel, he cancels all his appointments, he lives alone with his dog, and apparently this dog is everything to him (a black German shepherd with three legs). Svensson’s exact place of residence is unknown to us: northeast of Milan, somewhere on Lago di Lugano. Elisabeth pushed the two black folders across the table to me. Mandelkern is the perfect man for this story, she explained at the editorial meeting, this assignment suited me better than anyone else. The trip to the anti-doping laboratory in Châtenay-Malabry would be reassigned to Harnisch, since he’s a former sportswriter (Harnisch is as athletic as a pencil). I’m an ethnologist and get the strange assignments from Elisabeth: Mandelkern writes about anthropological concepts like matrilineality and male childbed, so Mandelkern meets children’s book authors and their dogs. On Saturday (today) I would fly to Milan and return on Sunday (at four). Svensson is peculiar, said Elisabeth with a laugh, but profiles and strangeness are your specialties, Mandelkern.

Taleggio & Quartirolo

It’s Elisabeth’s diplomacy in front of our colleagues that I can’t bear, her defiant diplomacy, which, to appear fair, has to be unfair (the evenly distributed green of her eyes). Her intern had done the research, printed it out, and bound it, Elisabeth said later in the hallway outside the conference room, now it was my turn. She pointed to the black folders in my hand, then her telephone interrupted us. Elisabeth answered with her first name. You’ll definitely find Taleggio and Quartirolo down there, she whispered to me, as if I were running out to the Swiss gourmet deli on Grindelallee to pick up a few things (Christl’s Comestibles). And Barbaresco! That was on Wednesday: she wanted to get personal, I turned around and left. On Thursday we lived alongside and past each other: Elisabeth was asleep when I got home, I was asleep when she headed out (since I started working for Elisabeth’s department, our marriage has become more professional). On Friday morning we happened to meet in the kitchen. We should go out to eat tonight, I said, we can talk rationally on neutral terrain (Elisabeth’s red hair in the backlight like a halo, Elisabeth is a holy witch). Elisabeth’s reply: We drink too much. We don’t have to drink, I said, we have to talk.

Black Dogs

We arranged to meet in an extremely loud restaurant on Paulinen-platz (mandolin music and Italian stage noise). At least it’s from Italy, I said, meaning the wine. I wanted to begin the conversation with all due caution. Elisabeth’s reply: Svensson doesn’t have children either, even though he’s a children’s book author, he seems to be a strange man, maybe the two of you will get along. I noticed Elisabeth wasn’t smoking. I don’t think so, I shouted back, straining to laugh, he has a black dog with three legs, I’m averse to black dogs, starting with the color, black dogs stand guard at the gates of hell and wait. Elisabeth gulped her wine down quickly and refilled our glasses. I’d like to have your problems, she said, maybe there’s a good story there. We ordered and gazed into our glasses (Elisabeth’s slender neck when she swallows like a swan). When I asked later why it had to be this weekend, Elisabeth answered: Staff availability. Or would you have preferred to go to Châtenay-Malabry and test the moral content of Lance Armstrong’s frozen urine samples?

But Elisabeth doesn’t have my problems.

She ordered another wine, the same grape variety, this time a glass (Barbaresco). We still had some bottles in our apartment, Elisabeth said, and I replied only reluctantly: Okay. Not much later I opened one of those bottles and we started drinking in the kitchen (our kitchen), and didn’t speak much there either (she on the glass stovetop, I on the floor next to the cases of wine). I ignored the two black folders full of research on Svensson lying on the kitchen table. She informed me she was giving up smoking, like this and that female editor, she talked about yoga and her thirty-eighth birthday. I knew all these things already, I began, these days we only spoke on this surface level, I really needed to talk again sometime to the woman I’d married, we should have an actual conversation again sometime (we’re circling a child). Elisabeth stood up, put down her wine glass and took a breath:

You should actually write something good again sometime, Mandelkern!

So that she wouldn’t keep talking, I stood up and tried to kiss her. We wrestled, we looked resolutely past each other, then she caught me on the upper lip with her elbow, reflexively I grabbed her wrist a bit too tightly. Her incredulous laugh as I let go of her and felt my upper lip for blood (our work is coming between our lives). Somewhat later, and finally drunk, we ended up in bed after all, for the last few weeks sex for Elisabeth and me has been a question of drunkenness, and maybe we had to ignore the condoms next to the bed (her pills in the old pencil box from school, three names carved into the back, I couldn’t find much else from her life before me). As we rolled over each other and I slipped out of her for a moment, Elisabeth said: Nothing is going to grow in me today, now hold still, Mandelkern! Elisabeth suspects my plans for the childless months and years to come (up to now I haven’t been able to say anything to her; I can’t manage to do it). Elisabeth knows: sometimes one wrong word is all it takes, and I shrink and dwindle and get up and go to the window, only to look out at the darker end of Bismarckstrasse and say it can’t go on like this (in summer you can’t see the streetlights through the leaves of the chestnut trees). So I held still (so I decided to take the plane).

Daniel Daniel

Elisabeth and I live in a prewar apartment that is too large and too expensive for my means on the corner of Bismarckstrasse and Mansteinstrasse. Bedroom, living room, study. We got married in the summer of 2003. I love Elisabeth. I’m educated as an ethnologist and work as a freelance journalist writing for the culture pages. I struggle as everyone struggles. We have an empty room that we call a guest room. Elisabeth is a beautiful woman. I drive a twenty-year-old Renault 4. Maybe another life is a better life. With our salaries the only sensible thing, says Elisabeth, is for me to pay the rent and you the telephone bill. Elisabeth is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever lived in a prewar apartment with. For me, ethnology has nothing to do with Papua New Guinea. I wear a wedding ring on my left hand (brushed silver). Elisabeth has stopped taking the pill, now she wants a child. Elisabeth is a sober woman. She had a child, she lost it, she wants to risk it again. Nothing is going to grow in here, said Elisabeth. So I held still. Then Elisabeth cried Daniel Daniel, she cried Daniel right in my face, she must have really meant me.

Barbaresco

Stood in the hallway in front of the floor-length mirror and finished off the wine. Looked at the blood on me, the streaks next to my belly button, and from behind me Elisabeth reached into the dried blood on my cock, into her own dried blood on my cock and in my pubic hair, and said, Tomorrow in the battle think on me (my cock a blunt sword; Elisabeth and I warlike: we grind ourselves dull against each other, we strike our blades jagged). As I was about to wash off the blood in the bathroom, Elisabeth was sitting on the toilet and said, you know, Daniel Mandelkern, I’m waiting for you to decide (the bluntness of pissing women).

Yes / No / Maybe

Elisabeth was waiting for a decision, I was standing all sticky in front of the sink. She brushed her hair back behind her ears and reached for the toilet paper. Mandelkern? I must have been staring at her. Daniel? She wiped herself clean and flushed. Suddenly Elisabeth was everywhere: I saw and heard and smelled and tasted her, her blood on me, her wine in my mouth, I felt for my swollen lip, my tongue ran over the fine cut on the inside, which was still bleeding (her accidental elbow). You look like an idiot staring at a math test, said Elisabeth. Did I understand what she’d said? Yes, I said, and kept staring, no, I said, maybe (dashboardgearshift-Italy-university-Mandelkern-Hamburg-Berkeley-blood-almond-ethnology-time-Barolo-Breton-child-Renault-Anne-Laura-Eva-Hornberg-CarolinaOne-PetShopBoys-Katrin-Britta-paternoster-Kolberg-matrilineality-Geertz-Svensson-octahedron-aquarium-aquarium-couvade-Venasque-Malinowski-nostalgiatourists). One minute, I said, and spit in the bathtub. I turned my back on Elisabeth and shut the bathroom door behind me, I gathered up my scattered clothes and got the folders from the dark kitchen. Then I took the suitcase and left.

my headings, my categories

I’m actually an ethnologist. In America I’m a cultural anthropologist. I observe people, I collect conversations, I probe hierarchies, I take pictures, I sort texts, I catalogue materials, I assemble my ideas. In England I’m a social anthropologist. For almost two years I’ve been writing for Elisabeth’s editorial department. I’ve questioned and profiled people for her, I’ve taken down life stories in shorthand and summarized worldviews, I’ve fulfilled her requests. I conduct interviews and write portraits, framed by days of silence in airplanes, hotels, and bus stations. I take notes because I want to put things in order (I want to sort myself out).