Flamingo

Flamingo is the severely neglected, foul-smelling dog kept by the school caretaker, Wohlgemuth. In the summer heat, covered almost entirely by flies and too exhausted to move, he is rescued by WH 3, whose care for him draws Petra Schulz into an unexpected first conversation with WH 3. Flamingo’s suffering is presented in grotesque physical detail, but his desperate, smiling response to the boy gives the episode its fragile point of contact: an animal treated as a burden is met, for a moment, with tenderness.

Identity and Circumstances

Flamingo belongs to Wohlgemuth, the school caretaker. The narration describes him as an exceptionally ugly dog, apparently the result of one unsuccessful crossbreed after another, and as so foul-smelling that even the veterinarian has no explanation for it. His name, Flamingo, sits absurdly against this description. The contrast is part of the episode’s dark comedy, but it also marks how little the dog’s actual condition matches the appealing image his name might suggest.

The dog’s smell governs his ordinary existence. Unless the temperature falls to minus thirty degrees, Wohlgemuth has to leave him outside. The account does not suggest that the caretaker is cruel: it calls him a kind man, incapable of malice or cynicism, who has taken responsibility for the dog despite its condition. The couple have no children, and Wohlgemuth regards looking after Flamingo as an obligation fate has assigned him. This care is imperfect and shaped by practical limits, but the story distinguishes it from indifference.

Wohlgemuth privately considers tying Flamingo up at a motorway rest stop at the start of the holidays and leaving him there. Even this imagined abandonment is undercut by the dog’s passivity: the narration suggests that Flamingo would simply stay put and wait to be collected. Wohlgemuth cannot bring himself to carry out the plan. The dog is thus defined not only by his repellent smell and appearance but also by the helplessness that makes even a contemplated abandonment seem especially bleak.

The Heat and the Flies

On the last day of school, during the hottest weather of the year, WH 3 finds Flamingo standing motionless in front of his kennel. The dog is exhausted and trembling despite the heat. Flies cover him in dense clusters, gathering on his eyes, coat, ears, mouth, and genitals. The narration repeatedly enlarges their number until they seem almost beyond counting, and explains their presence through Flamingo’s powerful odor, which evokes decay. The scene makes his neglect visible as an immediate bodily crisis rather than a general misfortune.

Flamingo cannot escape the insects or call for help. He remains still, hoping that his short life will soon be over. When he sees WH 3, however, he smiles—a crooked, desperate expression that the narration insists is genuinely a smile. The image holds vulnerability and recognition together: Flamingo is still suffering, and the flies are still consuming him, but he directs this small, perceptible response toward the person who has noticed him. The episode gives him a moment of presence beyond his smell, ugliness, or use as the subject of someone else’s disgust.

WH 3’s Intervention

WH 3 picks Flamingo up. The rescue immediately transfers part of the ordeal to the boy: the flies swarm around him, their buzzing described as aggressive as they lose the prey they had seemed certain of. He carries the dog around the schoolyard in the blazing sun, making one circuit after another until Flamingo is almost free of flies and WH 3 is completely exhausted. The care is physical, uncomfortable, and limited; it does not transform the circumstances that have left the dog exposed.

After the circuits, WH 3 carries Flamingo back to his kennel and pours the remaining water from his bottle over him. The narration makes the limit explicit: there is nothing more he can do for the dog. That ending prevents the act from becoming a simple rescue triumph. WH 3 relieves the immediate torment as best he can, but the scene offers no assurance that Flamingo’s broader condition has changed. The water, the exhausted boy, and the returned dog make compassion tangible while keeping its power bounded.

Petra as Witness and Narrative Significance

Petra Schulz is also leaving late on the last day of school, though her delay has a different cause: poor academic performance has earned her a reprimand from her teacher. Crossing the yard, she witnesses WH 3 caring for Flamingo. The sight of one suffering creature showing solidarity with a still more wretched one moves her. She follows WH 3, quickens her pace, and catches up near the kiosk. Her approach turns the dog’s ordeal into the beginning of a human encounter.

WH 3 has previously been known to Petra only by sight. He is unprepared to be approached, and his sweat-soaked shirt, wet hair, and painful, dry eyes heighten his embarrassment. For him, this is the first time a girl has spoken to him. Petra greets him, asks whether he too is late, and suggests that they share a route; she buys cigarettes and two colas, then offers him a drink and a cigarette. Flamingo’s suffering does not make WH 3 suddenly comfortable or confident, but it creates the circumstance in which Petra sees him doing something compassionate and chooses to speak with him.

Flamingo therefore matters both as a vulnerable character in his own right and as the center of a consequential encounter. The narration lingers on the dog’s bodily misery rather than reducing it to a passing detail, while his smile interrupts the grotesque spectacle with a small expression of connection. His rescue also reveals something about WH 3 through action, not self-description, and gives Petra a reason to approach him. The scene does not claim that the dog’s situation is solved; its significance lies in the brief chain of attention and care that begins when WH 3 stops for him.