Lua & the Third Death.
Lua and the Third Death
I SEE SAMULI FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A BURGER KING ON THE A5. There’s something to celebrate, Felix said on the telephone. What’s to celebrate is his secret, and I packed my bag without a great deal of thought. You two meet in Frankfurt in two weeks, then drive down to Lake Lugano. I’ll be waiting for you. This morning Lua and I took the train from Berlin Ostbahnhof to Frankfurt, Kiki is coming later on the night train, she has things to do. I haven’t seen or spoken to Tuuli and Felix for months, the last time Felix said that the boy was born: Samuli, almost two months early, but everything was all right. Then came a year of silence. Now Felix is waiting at his parents’ house in Italy, Tuuli is leaning on Felix’s blue Fiat and smoking outside the west exit of Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, as Lua and I emerge from the train station. Tuuli has short hair. Samuli is still less than a year old, I’m amazed that his feet reach his mouth, I’m amazed that Tuuli is smoking again. Svensson, she says, stroking Lua’s head, how are you? Good, I say, throwing my bag in the Fiat. Lua jumps into the footwell as always, and we set off heading south, Felix’s secret is waiting for us.
The boy is hungry when Tuuli parks the Fiat in a Burger King lot on the A5 beyond Heidelberg. Samuli has to eat, Tuuli says, I don’t have enough milk. In the parking lot a giant foam rubber mouse in overalls is walking around between the parked cars and sticking advertising leaflets under the windshield wipers: I’m the Euromaus, she sings, from the Europa-Park in Rust! Thrills galore, she shouts, and gives Tuuli a flyer, the sensational Silver Star roller coaster! Tuuli reads and hands me the boy, I touch him for the first time, his hair color is hidden under the blue cap. We have a bottle of milk warmed up in the microwave, Lua gets a Whopper. We sit outside the Burger King in the sun with our milkshakes, and I give the boy the bottle. Tuuli talks about the past year without me and how it has come to this, she tells me about life in Hamburg and this and that. I nod, Samuli drinks. Tuuli has stamped out her cigarette and is petting Lua, then she leans her head on my shoulder, for the first time in months I can smell her hair and her smoke. What’s this secret Felix mentioned? I ask, even though I know what it is. No idea, she answers, it’s not that important. For a few seconds in the parking lot of the Burger King at exit 57 on the autobahn, Tuuli, the boy, and I are a family, then the foam rubber mouse in overalls interrupts us: the Silver Star — breathtaking fun! No thanks, I say, but Tuuli takes another leaflet and says that we
August 9, 2005
(The pretty mothers)
Down by the water: Lua motionless, then Svensson steps onto the dock from the right. A few minutes ago I woke up with a stubborn erection and between manuscript pages (the empty soup bowl on the floor). For the first time in days I’m not tired or drunk. The door is ajar, the window open. It comes back to me: last night Tuuli was lying next to me on the mattress and reading. I fell asleep, even though she now and then touched my shoulder (her occasional laughter in my half-sleep). I gather up the manuscript pages and put them in the suitcase with the stones. I sit down at the desk as if nothing happened, I open my blue notebook (my rapid recovery). Down below on the dock Svensson scoops lake water into a light blue cleaning bucket and pours it on the dried chicken blood. As they do every morning, the two fishermen glide along the shore, the blood-scrubbing Svensson on the dock raises his brush and shouts something Italian. The fishermen laugh. Svensson scrubs and scours and rinses the blood into the light green lake. Then he bends down to Lua and watches the boat (Pike Machine). Svensson is kneeling there and looking across the lake to the opposite shore, to the glowing yellow of the church. I gaze at the villa below it in the morning sun. That villa belongs to Blaumeiser’s family, Tuuli said. Blaumeiser drowned. Svensson’s hints come back to me (Tuuli’s reproaches). He’s standing on the shore like the sad Jay Gatsby, I’m observing as unreliably as Nick Carraway. Svensson has come up against a limit, he hasn’t finished writing his autobiography (his stories don’t extend into the present). I’m waiting for my cock to give way, but the thought of Tuuli remains. This morning the swallows are sailing their sharp turns just over the water’s surface on a wind I can’t feel yet, they’re avoiding the storm that’s supposed to come soon (Svensson’s been talking for days about a storm caught in the St. Gotthard Pass). The sycamore is shedding its leaves due to dryness, the oleander is spitting its flowers at our feet (the question of whether this storm will come).
The Story of Leo and the Notmuch
In the next room Tuuli is reading softly to the boy from the children’s book, Samy is reciting along. The two research folders still on the desk. “The Story of Leo and the Notmuch doesn’t downplay anything,” writes the Frankfurter Allgemeine, “it’s more than another illustrated trivialization. It explains death to children as what it is: loss.” And “against loss it is above all memory that helps” (literary supplement of the 2005 Leipzig Book Fair). The Neue Zürcher Zeitung speaks of “potent images that create a palpable grief and then dissolve this in imagination and memory.” The Story of Leo and the Notmuch tells a story of loss because Felix Blaumeiser is dead (naïve biographism, Elisabeth would call that; but she sent me here). Svensson is a collector, he wants to retain memories in stones, chairs, pictures. He wrote the Astroland manuscript. Lua has almost always been there, the dog has seen and heard most of it. I’m sitting by the window and surmising: The Blaumeiser family’s house is in Cima di Porlezza on the other side of the lake, so Svensson lives directly opposite. The blue Fiat once belonged to Felix, that’s why Svensson has parked the car probably forever in his yard. At the cockfight in Olinda they bet on Wordsworth and Naish, so Svensson gave two roosters those names (I can’t tell the ages of animals). Tuuli and Svensson were in the Fiat on the way to Felix on Lake Lugano. There was something to celebrate, Blaumeiser apparently said. His death remains a mystery. Tuuli and the boy can no longer be heard (my main informant must know the solution).
chicken blood
I’m lying on the mattress again, my erection won’t go away on its own. Under the white sheets my fingers summon the memory of Elisabeth’s dried blood (my wife’s blood), my nose smells Tuuli’s tobacco and milk, I think about last night (the missed opportunity). I could consider myself lucky that Tuuli didn’t come closer to me last night. I’ve fallen out of time, I haven’t been able to wash myself, I haven’t brushed my teeth for days. The bed bears her smell, her golden hairpin is no longer lying where it was still lying last night. A line of thought: if Tuuli doesn’t open the suitcase for me now, it will remain locked, and I won’t be able to save Svensson’s story. Without the story I need not even go back to Hamburg at all. I could jump in the lake to get rid of Elisabeth’s blood, I could jump in the lake to wash off my wife. Down below on the dock Svensson is scrubbing the animals’ blood from the planks, in his study I want to expel my strategies, my fingers work on the usual mechanics, in my pants pocket I search for and find the necessary handkerchief. Tuuli’s singing and Svensson’s footsteps are nowhere to be heard, only a single pigeon is sitting silently on the windowsill, and I help myself to the images in my head, Elisabeth and Mandelkern, suddenly