I need your help, Mandelkern.
Suddenly Svensson is kneeling next to me and putting his hand under Lua’s bony head. His eyes are bluer than usual, almost watery. Lua hasn’t eaten anything for days, he says, I have to bring him to the vet in the village (the soft clucking of the widowed hen). When I look around, Tuuli and the boy are also standing behind me, though I didn’t hear them coming. This morning Tuuli is wearing a bright green short-sleeved dress that I haven’t seen on her yet. In it she doesn’t have the laxness of our first encounter, she looks more deliberate and older (as I look up: the heron far out over the lake). Tuuli spreads a wool blanket on the ground. The boy is waiting for the departure with the yellow fishing rod in his hands, he’s wearing a children’s life vest and Svensson’s Lakers cap. By the time I’m nodding at his request, Svensson has already jumped in the water and is swimming to the boat moored to buoy 1477. He hoists himself over Macumba’s railing and starts the motor. Svensson overlooked his freshly ironed shirt and his towel in my hand. You should help him with the dog, Manteli, says Tuuli, and as Svensson maneuvers the boat with a quiet motor to the dock, I catch the rope as I did on the Lugano pier. Tuuli kisses the boy on his forehead, älä pelkää, Samy. Minä en pelkää, Äiti, whispers the boy, he’s not afraid. Then he climbs into Svensson’s outstretched arms. Tuuli and I roll Lua onto the wool blanket, and the three of us lift him onto the bow, the swan hisses. Once the disconcertingly light dog is finally lying in his spot and the boy with his fishing rod is sitting next to him, Svensson nods to us, Tuuli should take a seat in the stern with him, I in the bow (the sluggish movement of the remaining legs). But Tuuli shakes her head:
Manteli and I are staying here!
He should make the best decision for Lua on his own. Svensson hesitates and looks first at Tuuli, then at me. Svensson nods, he seems to have more important things on his mind, his eyes tear. He turns the gas lever, the screw stirs the water. He steers Macumba in the same wide curve as yesterday around the rock shelf (he knows his lake). The swan takes a running start and soars into the air after ten, maybe twenty slapping steps on the water’s surface. The bird’s squawks and the noise of the motor can still be heard when the boat itself has long been out of sight. What remains are: the cicadas, the pigeon droppings, Tuuli and I.
buoy 1477
The water splashes up over me. I open my eyes and see green. I plunge and count the breaths, 27, 28, below me the dark green, above me the light. At 29 my air is running out. I manage another six or seven increasingly rapid strokes, then comes the dizziness, then I have to surface. When I turn toward the shore, the ruined house is reflected in the smooth water. The midday sun flings itself over the green of the sycamores and palms, over the rampant vines on the walls (the oleander is shining). Tuuli is nowhere to be seen, she must have gone inside after Svensson’s departure, and the cypresses are blocking my view of the door. I want to swim to the white buoy, I want to catch my breath. But as I’m about to reach for the metal ring, the water between buoy 1477 and me breaks apart, a watery spraying and slapping, a bright thrashing, I paddle backward and kick around me, I don’t hit anything. Then it’s over. Only a few bubbles on the surface and several seconds of complete silence. I hold on to the mossy buoy, I rub the water out of my eyes (around buoy 1477 dance mosquitoes). The fish down there are white and insanely beautiful, Svensson said, and I think I see a bright shadow plunging away below me. The passing thought of calling for help, but no one would hear me (I’m alone with the monster of Lago Ceresio, I think). But then there’s a soft splash, and behind me Tuuli says,
You almost got me, Manteli!
Her hand grasps my shoulder before I can even turn my head. Tuuli holds on to me and buoy 1477, I paddle with my legs. We’re alone, she says, Karvasmanteli. I’m sorry, I say, I didn’t mean to hit you (her skin underwater, the fabric of her green bikini is missing). That’s fate, says Tuuli, you hit what you’re supposed to hit.
Interview (1477)
MANDELKERN: I thought you were Moby Dick.
TUULI: That’s a strange mix-up.
M: I thought a fish was attacking me.
T: You were almost about to kill me.
M: I would have caught you and then thrown you back. You’re far below the permissible catch weight.
T: Is this a fishing lesson, Manteli?
M: We’re clinging to the buoy here side by side, I would only have to turn around.
T: So turn around.
M: The water is much warmer than I expected.
T: Only on the surface. What’s your wife’s name, Manteli?
M: Elisabeth.
T: Why don’t you wear a ring?
M: The ring is upstairs on the desk. We’re swimming around here. I could lose it.
T: It’s a ring, Manteli. You’re getting almost as dramatic as Svensson.
M: It’s a lake. And apparently it’s deep.
T: Shall we swim back, Manteli?
Oscar and Corner Store Oscar
Tuuli and I still side by side holding on to buoy 1477, we don’t swim back. The wind is getting stronger. When I try to change the subject and ask about the vet, about Lua, his leg and his faithfulness, Tuuli answers that she once knew someone, his name was Corner Store Oscar, in the last days of the Vietnam War he had to be retrained as a medic. The guy from Svensson’s manuscript? I ask, and Tuuli laughs at me and my curiosity. Yes, from Lorimer Street, she says, Corner Store Oscar really liked Lua (our Lua, she says). Instead of a theoretical training each of the candidates had to go out one afternoon and shoot a dog in the street. The soldiers waited next to a garbage dump on the outskirts of Hanoi for the hungry street mutts. The animals weren’t allowed to die, each soldier had only one shot. The medics were supposed to aim for the extremities or the underside, typical wounds comparable to those of people. After the shot the shooter had to rush immediately to do first aid on the most severely wounded animal. The others could take this opportunity to perform a simulation of covering fire. Each animal was given the name of its shooter, each shooter ministered to and took care of his victim from that point on. The surviving dogs quickly befriended the medics. Shortly before the dogs recovered, the medics had to tear open their wounds again, rub salt, shards and latrine contents in the leg and stomach wounds so they got infected. Then these infections were themselves treated for training purposes, in further training steps came fevers, gangrene and emergency amputations. But meanwhile the animals’ faithfulness grew, they no longer left their medics’ sides, they followed their torturers wherever they went. Dogs stay with the people who hurt them the most. That’s why the camp was full of medics and dogs of the same name with compresses, casts and splinted legs, Fred Smith and Freddy, Jack White and Jack Black, Corner Store Oscar and Oscar, says Tuuli, and we laugh, our heads half underwater, half above the surface. In the end there was often a tacit euthanasia, that is, the stepping up of the symptoms until death. There were also soldiers, Tuuli recounts, who simply opened their animals’ veins, even though that was punishable by several days’ arrest. Corner Store Oscar ultimately killed Oscar out of pity with a shot in the head, declared his training finished, and the next day was immediately sent back to the front, where his lower jaw was accidentally shot off on the second morning by a soldier of his own unit (friendly fire, says Tuuli). But that dog follows Corner Store Oscar to this day, you see, Oscar the dog remains faithful to Oscar the man beyond the grave. Lua, she says, is exactly the same way. I ask whether those were really tears in Svensson’s eyes before, as we were lifting the dog onto the boat. No, says Tuuli, rubbing the water out of her eyes, no, no, she says, no. Then she lets go of the buoy and plunges under me toward the shore, I swim after her (I can’t do the crawl).