Thomas Pletzinger - Funeral for a Dog

(I)

My dear Elisabeth,

You want to know where Ive been? Im sending you seven postcards and a stack of paper, 322 pages. This stack is about me. And about memory and the future. Ive been reading and sorting all afternoon. You were right, Elisabeth: Svensson is a strange man, and: yes, there is a story here. Svenssons childrens book is only the last chapter. Hes 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. Ive saved what I could. This stack of paper is my days with Svensson, my notes and interviews, Svenssons 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), Svenssons dead, his Seraverde and his Williamsburg. Sometimes I feel like Im Svensson, Ive

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

(III)

mixed up our stories. I asked the waiter with the sweaty mustache. Prego, he said, its Wednesday. My reply: Mille grazie e un altro bicchiere di vino per favore. So Ive fallen out of time, but now Im 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. Ive learned to observe such things again. You were right, Elisabeth: this Svensson is a strange man, but hes no stranger than the rest of us. Our stories dont fit on a newspaper page. Im tired of newspaper pages, Elisabeth. Life is a spiral, not a line.

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

(V)

Im eating peanuts and have been feeding them to the rat. You were right, Elisabeth: the hotel is beautiful, but its 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: Caff del Porto, b/w, Invierno 1939/40]

(VI)

Im sending you our story, Elisabeth. The rest is history and blind obedience (obbedienza cieca), and its 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 Br at Morning, poster by Daniele Buzzi, 1950]

(VII)

Dear Elisabeth, Ive learned: we dont have to make such a big deal out of everything. Im 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. Im tired. Im taking the train back. Ive thought about it.

Min 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 cant go on like this. My flight to Milan doesnt leave Hamburg for an hour. Im 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 dont fall asleep. Somewhat farther down the corridor a newsstand: I buy a newspaper (Sddeutsche 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. Im starting to smoke again now, because smoking reduces fertility, smokers sperm dont 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 Sddeutsche Zeitung of August 67, 2005:

Caesarean Risk

Craze for the Mobile Lifestyle

Air in Sunken Mini-Submarine Running Out

Im writing because I always write when things get complicated. Im 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 didnt 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 (shell 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 didnt set off any alarm. Now Im 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 havent exchanged a personal word for days, and professionally shes 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 weekends less time for what Id like to say privately to Elisabeth. Ive heard of Svensson. You cant escape his name these days, hes written one childrens book and is probably on the verge of making a fortune. Im not interested in childrens books or their authors, I dont 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 couldnt 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 childrens book and its sales figures. Id started the research, but then I passed the job on to her intern, because Ive never been interested in childrens books. For weeks the editorial department has been abuzz with talk about him, and for weeks the story has been postponed. Svensson doesnt 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). Svenssons 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 Chtenay-Malabry would be reassigned to Harnisch, since hes a former sportswriter (Harnisch is as athletic as a pencil). Im an ethnologist and get the strange assignments from Elisabeth: Mandelkern writes about anthropological concepts like matrilineality and male childbed, so Mandelkern meets childrens 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.