garbage bags and oleander
We put away the remaining dishes in the cabinets, we mop the floor, we help Samy with his farewell gift, we wait for Svensson. Kiki has told me everything. We move on to simple subjects, foreign languages and boats and baby food. Around noon Tuuli’s singing from upstairs, her cigarette-lighting in the kitchen and her forehead-kissing (smoking, she kisses first the boy, then me on the forehead!). On the lake a pleasure steamer is chugging, Samy explains his picture: Lua in his spot on the boat, his flowers, a can of his favorite beer (I drew the oleander). Suddenly Svensson is standing in a sweaty basketball jersey in the doorway to the kitchen: could someone help him with the dog? Sit down first, says Kiki, Tuuli nods in her green nightshirt (the sun at her bare feet). Svensson sits down at the table, he drinks the glass of milk that Kiki hands to him, he buries his face briefly in his hands. Then he looks up and gazes at the boy and his picture. He looks tired. For the first time I understand that Svensson strikes me as much older than he is (the years cling to him). I sit on my chair and observe these people, how they’re still sitting barefoot around a table and drinking coffee, in the smoke of the past years, with sleep-creased faces and unbrushed teeth. On the fridge hangs Felix Blaumeiser’s smile, on the picture on the wall the red wine has dried, down by the water waits the suitcase with the dead dog, and Svensson in the kitchen pours Tuuli coffee, because he knows how she likes it: with milk and no sugar. She takes the cup without a word. Kiki sets plates on the table in front of us, Svensson gets knives from the drawer, Tuuli wipes pap off Bella’s chin. Life goes on, between pictures and children, between plates and cups and animals, between chairs and oleander, between the dead and ghosts and stories. I want to go back to mine. I take the pack of cigarettes out of the plastic bag and put it on the table in front of Tuuli.
I have to go!
I say into the kitchen and point first to my dirty shirt, then to the plastic bag: I’m four days late. The people look up from their life. Svensson doesn’t contradict me, and Kiki puts the milk in the fridge. Manteli? Tuuli asks with her mouth full, pointing to the cigarettes. I don’t actually smoke, I say. She takes a crayon and pulls the newspaper out of my bag, she writes two phone numbers on the front page. “Air in Sunken Mini-Submarine Running Out,” I read, and wonder whether the air will have lasted long enough for the eight Russian crew members, I’ll be able to find out. I read “Caesarean Risk,” before my eyes the sticky Renault under the trees of Bismarckstrasse, Elisabeth, the linden blood on the windows, the green of the chestnut trees. Tuuli folds the newspaper and pushes it back into the bag, from up close I smell sleep and smoke and milk. Call me if you’re in Berlin, she says, the first number is my cell phone, the second the office number in the Charité. She takes Samy from my knee, I stand up and reach for the bag. It would be my pleasure! Thank you, I say, and then Tuuli stretches herself toward me and kisses me a bit too clearly on the mouth, as if the others weren’t there. Kiki’s voice interrupts us: are you taking Lua to the vet? she asks, and Svensson answers, yes, and says I could accompany him, half an hour won’t make a difference at this point. Right, Mandelkern?
288 meters
Svensson pushes Macumba off the dock and pulls at the motor’s cord. Now he’s wearing a white shirt and gray pants as in the picture of him that people know (the picture of him that I had). The suitcase is now lying in the water on the floor of the boat. Tuuli didn’t touch it, Kiki ran her fingers several times over the cracked leather. No one opened it. Samy’s wearing the life vest again, he’s holding his farewell gift in one hand and his fishing rod in the other as I hand him to Svensson on board (does he know about Lua in the suitcase?). The motor starts, and Svensson turns it as far as it will go, the screw whisks the green water, Macumba leans. The two women stand by the water and wave as they grow smaller (the dark green of the woods, the light green of the water). I’m sitting next to the child on the bench,
the small, pretty possibility on the shore
is the first to lower her hand, and I memorize the dark of her eyes, the green of her nightshirt and her Converse, next to her Kiki’s bright dress. The mountain grows ever mightier and larger over the women as we move farther away from the shore (the possibilities are put in a different pespective). Samy is silent in the face of the wind and spray and gesticulating, with each wave Lua’s suitcase slides closer to Svensson. The old man in the white shirt steers Macumba directly into the middle of the lake, past a few rocking sport boats in the late morning sun. I look for the heron and can’t find it, but the houses on the opposite shore can be made out better than they could four days ago: the church of Cima, below it Blaumeiser’s parents’ house (how things acquire a story). In the wooden beat of the waves under the bottom of the boat, for the first time in weeks the feeling of heading in the right direction, but just as I’m about to ask where Svensson is going to bring me, he turns off the motor at full speed. Macumba glides another few meters, then we’re standing still in the middle of the lake. The owners of the sport boats, tan and in too-skimpy bathing suits, seem to be trying to ignore us. During the ride Samy was clutching a handhold and trying to protect his picture from the lake water (he’s forgotten the dead dog). Out here the water is a deep green, under us are more than two hundred meters of darkness. Samy seems to remember this position of the boat and moves closer to me. Now we can only vaguely perceive the women on the shore. Macumba drifts sideways into the waves, and Svensson has trouble keeping his balance. He kneels in the water on the floor, takes a small key out of his pocket and unlocks the suitcase. Are you afraid too, Manteli? asks Samy, and I answer, speaking more to myself than to him: we don’t actually have to be afraid. When Svensson opens the suitcase, wilted oleander flowers fall on the floor of the boat. Svensson turns the suitcase so that Samy can’t see Lua, and the dog’s wrapped body remains hidden from me too (I know that his head is lying on Astroland, I see Svensson’s watery eyes). We can now smell death. Can you give me the farewell gift? Svensson asks the boy, but Samy wants to explain his picture: this is the mountain, this is the lake, and this is Lua. He holds the paper out to Svensson, Svensson balances as he walks across the boat toward us and takes the picture from his hand: lots of blue, lots of green, lots of red (he doesn’t have a black crayon). When Samy asks about the dog, about his fear and his dying and where they will bury him, Svensson doesn’t answer. The lake, the mountain, repeats the boy. Lua’s happy with the picture, Svensson then says, Lua loves water (the paper a white flag in his hand). He bends down over the sodden suitcase, throws the blanket aside and presses his forehead to the dead animal’s forehead (he wants to be sure that Lua existed). Svensson puts the picture in the suitcase, and Samy suddenly seems to understand that Svensson is not going to bury Lua like a normal pet (I suspected it).