When the left corner puts Wordsworth on the ground and lets him feel the clay under his claws, Lua wakes up. The shack holds its breath, the berimbau player stops plucking and beating, Lua’s chain rattles softly. The bettors are staring at the cocks and their handlers, the strings of lights, the blood. They’re waiting for the timekeeper and his signal, they throw the last bills into the pot, stack the last coins. I look at Tuuli, her eyes shift between me and Felix, they shift between the animals and the people. The second the bell rings and the cocks are released, I suspect the worst. I suspect that the fun stops this instant, I suspect that Wordsworth will lose his forty-fourth fight, I suspect the winnings of the victors and the losses of the defeated, I suspect the knife for the loser, I suspect Wordsworth’s blood-spatters on Naish’s rosewood spurs, I suspect Tuuli and Felix in Seraverde and myself alone on an airplane over the Atlantic, jacarandá, I suspect, jacarandá.
The fight lasts less than a minute. When their handlers release them, the two cocks stay where they are on the blood-soaked floor. No frantic fluttering, no squawking rage, and no flashing blades. Wordsworth opens his wings and closes them again, Naish just stands there and crows. The handlers shout their commands, vambora! Vambora! the spectators fold their hands, vambora! Vambora! they make their signs of the cross, they yell and whisper, the air in the shack is burning. And then the champion flies the first attack. Wordsworth half flies, half charges at the challenger, he slams with all his might into Naish’s side, and even though the white cock jumps up and strikes out around him, I already see the first steel-spur cut on his body. Now the audience is screaming, the roosters’ owners are screaming, the birds are screaming, the first white feathers are falling to the ground. Wordsworth is suddenly a blur of beak-pecking, spur-kicking, and wing-storm, he drives the challenger against the light blue wooden wall, he pecks at the snow-white rooster’s head, he deals him another two or three blows, then Naish manages to break free. He jumps over Wordsworth, he beats his wings wildly and almost touches the ceiling of the shack. The spectators back away, but Naish doesn’t end up over the barrier, he turns above their heads and then swoops down on Wordsworth. With both claws and both rosewood spurs, he lands on the champion and digs into his back. Now Naish is pecking insistently at the champion. I notice the first plucked spots on William Wordsworth’s neck, his first wounds, the first blood. The spectators are holding their breath, I see the red in the colored plumage, his torn and shredded feathers, his down in the air over the ring. But then Naish pushes himself off Wordsworth’s speckled back and flutters through the arena, he dances around his wounded adversary, he grazes the battlefield only rarely. Wordsworth has to stay on the ground and react, he turns in a circle and follows Naish with bloody eyes. Naish attacks Wordsworth from above, he doesn’t let up, he penetrates the colored birds’ defenses, he seems to be proceeding tactically and playing with Wordsworth, he moves with the lightness of the sure winner. Float like a butterfly, says Felix, grabbing the nape of my neck, sting like a bee! I bet on Wordsworth, and Felix’s rooster seems to be winning. Tuuli isn’t laughing anymore, she’s observing the fight with her mouth open. She just watches us, I think, as we gamble her away. When Naish flies another airstrike, Wordsworth falls to the side, and this time he manages to drive his claws into Naish and hold on to him. Naish can’t get back in the air, and they roll in each other’s embrace through the dust of the arena, a cloud of feathers and blades and blood, the noise in the shack is deafening. The cock handlers pull the birds apart, Naish’s beak is caught in Wordsworth’s eye. The roosters are again put head to head in the middle of the ring, both can neither fly nor walk, they crawl toward each other and again go directly at each other. The shack roars the real fighting names of the animals, which I don’t understand, the names of the owners, the names of their colors. Lua looks at me with drunken eyes. The pecking gets slower and ceases, the cocks lie twitching on top each other, then Wordsworth’s head flops to the side and stays there. The bird is dead. The handler in the right corner lifts Naish over his head, Felix and Tuuli are embracing. I’ve lost the bet. Without saying a word I get up, take my cap, and go outside, I lie down in the back of the pickup. On the horizon an illuminated tanker, on the shore the fishermen’s boats, over me airplanes or stars. With the return ticket in my bag I wait for Tuuli, I wait for the morning of my departure, eventually I fall asleep next to Lua.
August 8, 2005
(The screams of the animals)
In the afternoon the lake is smooth like oil. Tuuli’s prescription for me was to stay. My headache has gone away, I drank Tuuli’s Chiarella with all due caution (tepid water is good for the stomach). From the window: an oddly flat tourist steamer, its foghorn can’t be heard until a few seconds after a white cloud comes out of it (time can be seen). I’m sitting in front of my notebook again, I’m observing the steamer on its way across the lake toward Lugano. Svensson is no stranger than I am (we both write ourselves). He looks to the past, Tuuli looks to the future, I look at the ships. Everything that’s more than a hundred meters away exists in a different time (Elisabeth).
Profiles & Strangeness
In the autumn of 2004 I temporarily broke off my dissertation, because Elisabeth’s editorial department could use me (I wanted to be with her). In editorial meetings my wife thinks of me as Mandelkern, the freelance cultural journalist. My dissertation has been shelved, I haven’t added a word for months (the abortive ethnologist). Elisabeth and I have confused our life with our work. Participant observation is the reflexive gaze upon others and therefore upon oneself (Bronislaw Malinowski was nonetheless a ladykiller). I’m Mandelkern when I write my articles, my profiles, my reviews of strangeness. From time to time I’m paid reasonably for my work. Elisabeth is a woman with history and a future. She calls me Daniel when I don’t talk back to her. Why don’t you go ahead and do something with actual consequences sometime, she said, you need to be somewhat more decisive for this world (Elisabeth’s voice).
Are Svensson’s stories made up?
I put aside the notebook and pick up the binoculars (a mixture of conscience and anticipation). By the water: Tuuli and the boy are feeding the swan, Svensson is chopping wood with an ax, Lua is still breathing. Svensson keeps carrying new wood from the open shed, he stands amid logs and tinder (Svensson is building a pyre). As long as I hear the splintering, I can open Blaumeiser’s suitcase again. It takes me less than two seconds, the lock and Tuuli’s hairpin click into place. Next to all sorts of stones (flat, light, dark, angular, small, large) and a map of Brazil (little crosses at places with interesting-sounding names) lies Svensson’s stack of paper.