little porno face
During the first few weeks, Elisabeth and I often saw each other in the cafeteria (the unpopular tables facing the courtyard) and quickly began to live off each other (her personal affairs and my personal affairs fused into one big affair). Elisabeth is a smart woman. The first time we slept together I was surprised by her porno face (her mouth an O, occasionally she bit her lips) and the speed with which she fucked me (that’s how she talked, that’s how it was), she by my soundlessness. She said: We don’t fit. But we did fit after all. We met in the evening in bars we didn’t know, we discussed how we could be (we imagined ourselves). As other people introduce their friends, we announced our bodies. She wanted: to be free when fucking. I wanted body and mind to be in step. Elisabeth said: some pain is natural. I said: theoretically. She said: exactly. She could come harder when she was squatting and had a finger lightly touching her asshole (words fail me). I said I like to watch women masturbate. That same week both of us suddenly got new job offers: I was given a regular freelance position at GEO, she became an editor (her still-husband would not have been uninvolved in that, but at that point she hadn’t mentioned him yet). Our theory gave way to my euphoria. I’d already pictured her various faces beforehand (a vein on her forehead during sex as if she were carrying heavy suitcases). Your little porno face, said Elisabeth, as I came with less restraint than I was used to.
Santuario di Nostra Signora della Caravina
Now Svensson’s talking. He explains the mountains: over there Monte dei Pizzoni, he says, and gestures upward at the shores to the right and left, here Monte Cecchi. Svensson throws pinecone after pinecone into the lake. He explains the villages: San Mamete on the opposite shore, Osteno over there behind the trees, Porlezza at the end of the lake. Svensson points to the opposite shore: Cima di Porlezza. Over there, under a rough, jagged mountain, is a village, in the middle of it a church is glowing yellow. Svensson says: Santuario di Nostra Signora della Caravina (a sleeping gecko, the left foreleg a rockslide). Below the church a grand villa (same yellow, in front of it palms, a dock with white posts). The boy examines the shattered monitor. At night the church tower is illuminated and looks like a gladiator, Svensson tells him, do you know what a gladiator is? But the boy looks up from the shards and asks,
Why does your dog have only three legs?
My notebook is still in the shopping bag as even the dog suddenly falls silent and looks at Svensson full of anticipation. Where the fourth leg of the dog is would have been one of my questions too. It took us an hour to cross the murkily reflective lake (long before the shore mosquitoes already swarming over the water), and now I’m sitting next to the small, pretty mother on a stone bench under the oleander (white and red flowers). She’s smoking again. I’m here for my interview, and I have to go back to the city today (Lido Seegarten). I’ll offer her one of my cigarettes. Well, Svensson begins, then he looks at the small woman and falters, he doesn’t answer the question (the dog motionless as a photo, the fourth leg airbrushed out). The boy walks slowly toward his mother. Tuuli moves over and is suddenly close to me, she laughs smoke into my ear, don’t write this, Manteli, she says, Svensson’s stories are made up (I would only have to turn my head toward her).
Why does your dog have only three legs?
Lua was a professional night watchdog, he says in reply to the boy’s almost-forgotten question, he wears the moon over his heart. Svensson lays his hand on the dog’s black fur (dark gray from up close). I found him at full moon on the roadside, a car had hit him, he was lying in a pool of blood, right over there near the church. Svensson points to the other side of the lake. German shepherds are good night watchdogs. I brought him to the hospital in San Mamete, his leg had to be amputated, for a few weeks he couldn’t move. Lua is a sad dog. Svensson goes back to the boat. The boy approaches the sad dog carefully and lifts his hand (hesitation). Svensson looks at Tuuli and says: but after some time dogs get used to any loss. Lua flops heavily on his side, over the shore lies a light mist, there’s a smell of something burning. The boy withdraws his hand and asks, is Lua dangerous? Tuuli’s reply: the dog is old, he’s going to die soon.
Interview (first try)
MANDELKERN: Could you explain to me again what exactly I shouldn’t write, Ms….
TUULI: Call me Tuuli, Karvasmanteli, you can drop the formality, we’re the same age.
M: I was born in 1972.
T: Exactly. You’re in your early thirties and so are we. More or less. Svensson seems older and I younger. Right?
M: And how old is the dog?
T: Dog years? Human years?
M: Either way.
T: It must have been at least ten years ago when Felix Blaumeiser, the idiot, brought the dog back from Brazil.
M: May I ask who Felix is?
T: Felix is the reason we’re here, Manteli.
black dogs
Come with me, says Svensson, taking my plastic bag from my hand, it’s my fault. He apologizes stiffly for the chaos, he’d be glad if I stayed the night, we could talk tomorrow in peace (“please forgive the mess”). Then I’ll bring you back to the city in the afternoon, he says, and because I was early this afternoon at the arranged meeting place, because I burst into Svensson’s private life, at this point I answer unemphatically “okay” (otherwise I’d return empty-handed). Svensson’s house is a ruin: three stories of natural stone and wood built at the foot of the cliff, on the side facing the lake green window shutters (closed). The back section of the roof a skeleton, ivy and vine are growing up the walls and into the frame. The flat shed next to the house slants toward the water (it must be a boat shed). Pigeons are fluttering everywhere, their droppings speckle the stone walls. Come with me, Svensson repeats, and I follow him (I’m here to have my questions answered). Lua trudges ahead, coughing, we walk between the sycamore and the garbage heap around the house. A heavy door, then a dark hallway with a terra-cotta floor, pictures all over the walls and framed photographs with black centers (dogs maybe, Lua maybe). We climb a dark staircase, closed doors on the right and left. The dog breathes heavily in the dark, now the smell of smoke is stronger. Svensson opens a door, then a window, and stands in the backlight (Svensson is an opaque man).
crematorium
Over Svensson’s property and over the lake in front of Svensson’s property lies an acrid stench. That’s Claasen, says Svensson, in answer to my question as to whether there isn’t a smell of something burning (state the obvious and casually open the conversation). Clouds of smoke, stretching long and wide, hang over the lake: burning leaves and underbrush, smoldering green wood, burning paper. Svensson is standing with my bag in a room that looks like a study (empty shelves, only a few books). This was my study, he says. Lua flops down on a carpet in a corner of the room. In the other corner lies a mattress with clean sheets. Claasen? I ask, and Svensson nods as if I should be able to understand everything here, as if I had already been here for a long time. Every day at four, says Svensson, Claasen burns another piece of his life. Claasen is his own crematorium.