Funeral for a Dog: A Novel (27 page)

What exactly are Borromean rings?

On the narrow road through the woods toward Osteno: I’m carrying two garbage bags, Kiki one. The road must have been drivable once, but the woods have reclaimed it, we step over nettles and vines, dried branches, twice there are tree trunks lying across the path. Kiki knows the fauna and flora of Lombardy, she points to the plants on the path, she explains to me the cypresses and crickets, she gestures to an orange tree on the steep slope above us and an African fan palm in the ravine. Walking ahead of me Kiki points to a waterfall I missed the first time, Bella’s asleep on her back. I ask about the Borromean rings and how they work, but Kiki says that I should first take a look at the swallows. She explains to me the birds’ behavior before the approaching storm, which Svensson’s been talking about for days, she explains to me the subtropical underbrush. Last time I was on this road I had to throw up twice, I think, and that it’s simpler now following Kiki and Bella, the honest chaos of her languages, her brown curls with gray strands in them, her pointing finger (she shares Svensson’s gestures, she shares his life). This time my stomach growls with hunger. When we arrive at the end of the road, we throw the plastic bags into the heap. The garbage has been lying here for days, flies are circling the cans (plastic bottles, paper, yogurt cups, fish heads, orange peels, etc.). The fox, says Kiki, pointing to the torn-open bags and the kitchen scraps. The garbage gets collected only on Wednesdays, she explains, there are raccoons here too. The makeshift bench is impossible to use (fish smell, rotten fruit). There’s a red Volkswagen family car with an Italian license plate parked on the gravel, Kiki pulls the key out of the pocket of her green dress and opens the back (MIT1-4737). In the trunk are paint tubes and plastic bottles, a chewed-up baseball, a wool blanket and dog hair. On the backseat a child safety seat, next to it a few canvases, wrapped in spattered sheets. Here, says Kiki, two cases of beer, can you give me a hand, I’ll take the bags. As I lift the beer out of the trunk, I ask again about the Borromean rings. Nothing special, says Kiki, she always compares Svensson and Tuuli and Blaumeiser with these rings. Three linked hoops, one of those mind-fucks, but if one of them is removed, the other two aren’t linked anymore either, get it? Two of them don’t work without the third. I don’t understand: could she draw it for me?
Natürlich,
says Kiki, in the house sometime (I remember a quote from Nigel Barley’s
The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut
: “I was quietly convinced that I would return having learned and understood nothing”).

master of chairs, master of lights

Now two more boats are moored to the dock in front of Svensson’s ruin (Pike Machine and Valsolda), torches are shining on the way to the shore, they stand in a row on the dock, candles on the stone tables, clouds of mosquitoes and moths around the light. Svensson has broken his rickety chairs into firewood and thrown it on the pyre he built yesterday (the screams of the animals). A multicolored string of lights is hanging in the oleander. Kiki leads me around: this is the journalist Daniel,
ciao
Andrea,
buona sera
Signora Gobbi. Nice to see you, she says in English again and again, she kisses and hugs and shakes hands. This is Daniel, says Kiki, this is Francesca (the waitress from the Bar del Porto). We’ve met, says Francesca. Yes, I say, and shake hands and get kissed and pulled along. The blind Prosecco drinker with the long ears, who greeted me like Hitler the day before yesterday in the Bar del Porto, is named Mussolini and is Francesca’s father.
Forza Roma,
he says, he’s the village butcher. That’s not his name, says Kiki as we walk on, though he’s just as old. The paint-and-lacquer man Carlo Materazzi is playing Ping-Pong with the carpenter Luigi Gobbi, they shout, they gesticulate, and Luigi’s mother opens beer bottles (I saw her in the cemetery). The guests drink and chatter and argue. Kiki and I walk around the tables, I try to remember the names: the veterinarian Pompeo Castelfranco, Donata Buti from the dry cleaner’s, the lawyer Pelegrino Rossi. The official from the Guardia di Finanza is in civilian clothing today, he drinks and drinks and gives a thumbs-up when Kiki refills his glass (his outstretched thumb, the bow wave of his boat on the day of my arrival). A bald guy is actually playing mandolin, Kiki explains that he’s Andrea, the shipbuilder, it must have been twenty years ago that he built
Macumba
, back then the sailboat was named
Giulia
, after Felix Blaumeiser’s mother. The bonfire is burning, the fishermen Marco and Alessandro are grilling fish, the cypresses over them paper cuttings against the dark blue sky (the glow of the yellow church on the other side). Lua is lying in the aroma of the good meat and in the warm looks of the guests and isn’t coughing anymore, he has closed his eyes. Samy is kneeling next to him and smoothing the speckled fur with Kiki’s brush, he’s giving Lua beer from the plastic bottle (Lua will be drunk for the last time). What’s the occasion, I ask, and Kiki says
nichts
. There doesn’t have to be a reason for everything. Tuuli is sitting next to the two of them, smoking and observing her son, she’s observing the people under the oleander, she’s observing me. This is Daniel Mandelkern, says Kiki yet again, and a suntanned man in a linen suit stands up from his rusty metal chair, tips his straw hat, and shakes my hand. It’s a pleasure, he says, Claasen is my name.

Claasen talks

Am I from Hamburg too? Someone hands plates to Claasen and me (chicken, fish, tomatoes). Then our evening here is officially an exile meeting. I work on Speersort? Yes, I say. He himself was a magazine man from day one,
Der Spiegel
. Claasen names names, I nod. I name names, Claasen nods. He lives on the slope over Osteno, he always came here with his children and his wife, they spent every summer since 1964 here, his children practically grew up here, such a beautiful place! I agree with him. He took projects with him, even under the old vacation provisions there were always four weeks. Now he writes only occasionally. Claasen bites into a chicken thigh. He values the seclusion, the climate too, the food. Does he occasionally burn things, I ask Claasen, but he doesn’t understand: he has a fireplace, of course, but he spends the winters in Hamburg anyway. Claasen says that he doesn’t know Elisabeth, he’s heard of her ex-husband, yes, but he’s never met him in person. I sit next to him and observe Svensson, the creator of stories, stoking the bonfire. Claasen’s wife has been dead since 1989, his children now have children themselves, and he’s a grandfather. His grandchildren come visit him in the summer, he never thought things would go this far. Claasen laughs. Svensson’s world is a web of reasons and references. A world in which every gesture, every word, every thing has a meaning that I can only suspect (the understanding of cultural systems). It sounds mundane, says Claasen, but I’m a satisfied man.

Lua leaves

Svensson is sitting next to Samy and feeling the dog’s pulse. When the candles have almost burned down and the fire is only glowing darkly, he stands up and taps a wine glass with a spoon (laughter and chatter). Tuuli takes the bottle from the boy, because Lua doesn’t want to drink anymore, and Svensson climbs onto the bench with the lion heads. Claasen and I halt our conversation, the other conversations die away too, all the guests raise their glasses. Svensson climbs onto the lion bench in front of the oleander and looks at Kiki. When he begins to talk, the cicadas cease their screaming, the water black and quiet between the mountains, the large birds are resting. The death of pets and livestock, says Svensson, isn’t usually assigned excessive importance in this region. He will now explain why that’s different in Lua’s case. The guests are sitting on Svensson’s chairs like churchgoers. Svensson is a good speaker, he tells the stories of events I’ve already read about, he varies his themes, he alternates between languages, he talks Italian, German, English, and everyone understands what he’s saying. Svensson tells anecdotes and stories, he makes the guests laugh, he pauses at the right points, the guests are glowing with emotion and affection and candlelight. Svensson praises Lua’s life, his connoisseurship of women and international beer brands, his courage and his political development. Svensson gives the saddest speech of his life, a eulogy for the barely breathing dog, the guard and herding dog of the highest quality, the former police dog of Seraverde, for the good soul of Astroland, Coney Island. As Svensson raises his glass to the best dog in the world, the guests too stand up one after another, they murmur prayers and wishes, they laugh and praise Lua, they pull handkerchiefs from pants pockets and skirts and handbags, they pet his forehead the way people pet dying dogs’ foreheads (animals, the hearts of people, Svensson wrote). Then the talking and Ping-Pong playing resume, the wine and beer, the rattling of plates, the celebrating, the dying of the dog, the chatter and laughter. Around midnight Claasen tips his hat. The guests pat Svensson on the shoulder and kiss Kiki on the cheeks, they tousle Samy’s hair, they nod to Tuuli and me. Then one after another they board the boats at the dock. Today is a special day, today is a sad day. And when the rudders can no longer be heard in the water, when Claasen too has ultimately disappeared into the woods, Svensson kneels down next to Lua and lays his hand on his chest. Grief falls over the lake. Kiki buries her face in her hands, and even Tuuli forgets to smoke (I know how Elisabeth cries). Lua opens his eyes and closes them again, and even in the screaming of the cicadas I can hear the dog’s voice:
Ciao ragazzi
, says Lua,
e arrivederci
. Svensson runs his fingers carefully over the dog’s face, then he stands up and nods to us. Kiki doesn’t bother to wipe away her tears anymore, now they’re running unimpeded down her cheeks, and then Tuuli, too, starts to cry, for the second time today. Samy has fallen asleep with his head on the dying dog’s chest (Lua, the heart of his fathers). I don’t know what to do, so I go back to the house (anything else would be too personal now). Lua isn’t breathing, I hear Svensson say, Lua isn’t breathing anymore.

Knowledge Forwards and Backwards

Svensson came back to the room that I’ve been calling the study up to this point (without knocking, without a word). I stood up from my notes and his desk, and Svensson pulled out Blaumeiser’s suitcase from under the desk. He said that he needed the suitcase now. Could I help, I asked, and he smiled at me with a strange friendliness: no. I stay behind and have to surmise, because I can’t make out anything clearly (for the field researcher wait time is synonymous with work time, his presence is his work).

Why am I still here?

I summarize, because summaries facilitate understanding: Lua is dead. Felix Blaumeiser already died three years ago, he drowned on the other side of the lake. Svensson has struggled as everyone struggles, he’s conceded his defeats. He’s not a player, but he has lost nonetheless. Svensson is no stranger than the rest of us. At some point he decided to stop playing the game, and turned to the tangible things: Svensson and the painter Kiki Kaufman have a daughter named Bella. Bella has two teeth (the research intern did a terrible job). Svensson and Kiki are turning a ruin into a house, they’re turning a study into a nursery, they plant and harvest and breed animals and slaughter and cook. They cry for Lua. Svensson carried the heavy piece of luggage effortlessly down the stairs, but then I could hear his curses through the window (his bulky baggage). I wonder why Svensson has taken the suitcase out of the room this evening, I wonder what’s going to happen with the
Astroland
manuscript. Svensson is carrying his story out of the house, what remain are Tuuli’s golden hairpins, along with Svensson’s books and my ring. The torches have burned down, the motion detector is off, even with the binoculars I can’t make out the dead dog by the water (the moonlight isn’t enough). Kiki and Svensson collect stories and paint pictures, they hang these pictures on their walls (“Knowledge Forwards and Backwards,” Kiki calls it, they want to make their past inhabitable). I wonder what’s done with dead animals here. I wonder where Tuuli is at the moment.

things in the dark

I wonder what Elisabeth would say about these things (I should talk to her). I’ve spent four days taking notes and haven’t completed Elisabeth’s assignment, I’ve asked simple questions and gotten complicated answers. I’ve stayed on the lake instead of leaving. I’ve washed off Elisabeth’s blood in the water, I’ve kissed Tuuli. I turn out the light (maybe things will be discernible in the dark).

Bella & Samy

The crack of light from the hallway illuminates their way, Kiki and the children are standing next to me. Kiki says that she’s now superfluous, as she lays her sleeping daughter down on the mattress. Samy is clinging to the hem of her dress and rubbing his eyes, she lays him down next to Bella and covers the two of them with my blanket, after all, she says, someone has to look after the children. Then she sits down on the floor under the window. She nods. This is now between Tuuli and Svensson and the dog, she says, smiling wearily and seriously at me, she doesn’t necessarily have to watch. I have no idea where to begin, I begin, but Kiki’s whisper interrupts me in English, you said you’re married, Daniel? Yes, I say. No response, we’re sitting in semidarkness: Kiki in the wedge of light, I at the desk. After four days I take the ring from the desk and put it on the proper finger (E. E. E.). Switching back to German, Kiki says that I probably know that everyone has his skeletons in the closet—or, for that matter, in a suitcase. She assumes so, anyway. What do skeletons have to do with my being married, I ask, what does she mean by that (I know what she means). Instead of answering, Kiki asks for a pencil and paper, all her supplies are temporarily stored in the shed. There’s nothing to answer, I give her the hotel bill from the desk and tear a page out of my notebook, I hand her the crayons with which Samy made out his prescription.
Danke
, Daniel, says Kiki. Lua shouldn’t die sad, the little
Dottore
said (Lua didn’t die sad).