The reason I still enjoy listening to the story is that Mrs. Thorkildsen, after explaining how she didn’t want a dog at all, always rounds it off by declaring:
‘The Major knew what he was doing when he brought us Tassen!’
And when she says that, I feel like my dignity is close to being regained. Dignity is important to us dogs, although it may be hard to spot when we’re rooting through the garbage or scratching our ass with the carpet.
As everyone knows, dog training is no exact science. The Major didn’t believe in the old stick and carrot idea. More like a stick and little chunks of meat. Not to say that he beat me. That wasn’t required. His grip on the scruff of my neck told me everything I needed to know about his strength. And his strength was my strength. No one messed with Major Thorkildsen’s dog.
The Major had been home a lot since he got so weak he had to go to the sick house where they didn’t allow dogs, but he rarely spent the night with us. The last time that happened, they came to get him in the middle of the night. So, in a way, we’ve had plenty of time to get used to the thought of it being just the two of us, Mrs. Thorkildsen and me. Still, something is different now. Mrs. Thorkildsen sits in her usual chair by the window, while I, since it’s no longer forbidden, curl up in the Major’s cowhide chair, a major no-no while he still lived with us. We’ve sat like this so many nights, just the two of us, that we thought we’d gotten the hang of it, but as it turns out the finish line has become a starting line. There is life after death, after all.
The Major’s breath was always more like mustard gas than roses but, one day, there was a tiny, distant hint of something else, too. It grew into a nearly invisible yellow aroma that seeped into the room not only through his mouth, but through the pores in his skin as he sat there reading a book about the War. The Major, you see, read all the books about the War. Mrs. Thorkildsen read all the other books; that was the division of labor.
Mrs. Thorkildsen didn’t become a librarian until she was an adult, but it seemed to be an inborn disorder. The signs were there early on. As a child, she owned two large books covered in deerskin (which I’ve later verified by independent sniffing), full of fantastical stories she never tired of listening to. And she had to listen, because she didn’t know how to read.
With a book under one arm and a short stool under the other, she went out into the world. She asked every single person she met on the street: ‘Will you read to me?’
‘People were poor,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says whenever she tells that story, and she sometimes does, since it was one of the Major’s favorite stories. At least according to Mrs. Thorkildsen. I’m not so sure of that; I would have liked to consult with the Major on that issue before drawing any conclusions.
‘People were poor,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says, ‘but everyone knew how to read.’
I don’t think we were poor, but we sure did read, the Major, Mrs. Thorkildsen, and I. I’m saying ‘I,’ although technically speaking I didn’t read. Dogs can’t read, you see. But sometimes, in short paragraphs and turns of phrase, while curled up in the corner of the couch in a haze of meatballs and sauce, I could dimly sense the Major’s War books as they silently seeped into his head. Once inside, they turned into noise, clamor, images, smells, fear, and chaos. He sat perfectly still for hours in that cowhide chair, and you couldn’t tell by looking at him what was happening. While Mrs. Thorkildsen both laughs and cries while she reads, the Major’s reading was silent and deep, with the same steady heartbeat, the same even sigh out his nostrils, page after page, book after book. He read with such intensity that I doubt there was much left over for the next reader in the books he devoured. Sometimes he’d stop reading to mention or read aloud something from the book he was holding. This is how Mrs. Thorkildsen had some sense of where in the War he currently was. It was a big War he was dealing with, you see, not a simple dogfight.
We hunted together, the three of us. We drove to the hunting grounds, where I always stayed back and protected the car while the two of them handled the actual hunting. It was hell. A French friend of Mrs. Thorkildsen’s once said hell was other people. I’d say that depends on the people. Hell is waiting alone in a car. Standing guard over a car while people are walking by in all directions is a near-impossible task for one dog, so there was a lot of barking to be on the safe side. And I was worried about how the hunt would go. You see, it wasn’t small prey the Major and Mrs. Thorkildsen were up against. They returned to the car weighed down with oxen and birds, deer and swine, and on top of it all they’d also gathered everything they might need in terms of fruit, mushrooms, herbs, and vegetables. They could have that to themselves. They had good luck as fishermen, too, which was excellent, since dogs can’t fish, and I love fish. If I was human, I’d sit on the dock and pull in stockfish all day long.
I can’t remember us ever coming back from a hunt empty-handed. Never an empty bowl of food. At night, after they’d eaten a long dinner where you never knew what might fall on the floor, the Major and Mrs. Thorkildsen sat in front of the big windows in the dark and sipped Dragon Water as they talked late into the night.
There won’t be any more of those long, comforting nights, but we’ll have to get food somehow. The thought concerns me, I have to admit. Mrs. Thorkildsen had usually accompanied the Major when he went hunting and, for all I know, she is just as good a hunter as he was, but after seeing her come across a rat in the cellar, I genuinely doubt whether she’ll be able to feed us. It’s true that the Major, as he liked to point out, had filled the cellar with a year’s supply of food and drink, but what will happen at the end of the year if Mrs. Thorkildsen can’t bring herself to go hunting alone? I am worried, and a worried dog can easily become a sad dog. And what use is a sad dog?
So the surprise is even bigger and happier when Mrs. Thorkildsen, after her very first solo hunting trip, returns to the car (where I am overjoyed just to see her again) with fish and birds and the dog treats that come in a yellow bag with a picture of a sufficiently smarmy-looking Jack Russell terrier, but still taste heavenly and have just the right consistency.
The last stop of the day is the best one, since I get to go, too. It is so unexpected that I hesitate slightly when Mrs. Thorkildsen, after climbing out of the car, says: ‘Come on.’
Those two words can be so beautiful.
I’m smart enough to realize when it’s best to go on foot, and this is one of those instances. Mrs. Thorkildsen leads me through the crowd of people with a steady hand, and her sturdiness makes me feel safe.
A smell that is both familiar and strange tickles my nostrils. Mrs. Thorkildsen leads us in the direction of that smell, to the innermost corner of the room. There is a cavern into which I follow Mrs. Thorkildsen, and it isn’t long before I realize where we are: in the Dragon’s Cave.
‘We should probably get a cart,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says.
And that’s how it is. With me shuffling along behind her on the leash, Mrs. Thorkildsen moves slowly but deliberately through the premises while pulling one bottle after another off the shelves. She puts some of them back, but most end up in the cart. When the cart is full, she heads for the exit, and I am excited to get back to the car and go home, where there will probably be a treat in store after such an expedition. But it isn’t that easy.
First, Mrs. Thorkildsen has to remove everything from the cart and give it to the man behind the counter. He strokes the bottles one by one while Mrs. Thorkildsen explains that she is having guests over since her husband is dead and there is going to be a memorial. That seems to be reason enough. The man behind the counter says he is sorry to hear that, and Mrs. Thorkildsen gets all her bottles back. Now for the next problem. It arises after Mrs. Thorkildsen puts her bottles into plastic bags. There are simply too many bags for her to carry alone.
‘How on earth am I going to get all this to the car?’ she says. And I want to say that she could forget about it, she doesn’t have a chance in hell, she should just grab whatever she can carry and
we’ll hightail it out of there, but then a burly, bearded young man offers to help. Mrs. Thorkildsen doesn’t have to carry anything at all—the man takes all her bags and we walk to the car while she tells as much of her life story as time allows, and a little bit about me. Mrs. Thorkildsen can’t thank him enough—she would have loved to keep talking, but the man surely has a life to get back to.
3
Mrs. Thorkildsen’s not eating. Instead of cooking for herself after serving me a late breakfast, she pours herself a glass of Dragon Water, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen her do this early in the day. But what do I know? That might be normal when your husband dies. She doesn’t drink it. Not yet. Just stays there sitting on the kitchen stool and turning the glass around in circles.
Mrs. Thorkildsen looks at me and I look at Mrs. Thorkildsen and maybe we’re thinking the same thing:
Which one of us will go first?
I’m six years old.
Mrs. Thorkildsen is seventy-five.
Most dogs don’t have a very good understanding of numbers; don’t have any idea about numbers at all, I’d almost say. Numbers don’t have much use for dogs other than for counting, and here’s all the counting the average dog needs:
Me.
Me and you.
Pack.
A pack can be ‘small’ or ‘big,’ of course. It’s all relative, as we know. I can see how a number could be ‘small’ or ‘big.’ But that’s as far as I get. There’s nothing about ‘sixty-five’ that tells me whether it’s a ‘small’ or ‘big’ number. Sure, I know that five mosquitoes is more than four elephants. So, ‘sixty-five’ is probably more than ‘sixty-four.’ Okay, I’m pretty sure. Even if we convert from elephants to chickens, multiply by herrings, and divide by polar bears. But just because I know that much, one shouldn’t assume that most dogs do. Ask a Gordon Setter, for example—that is, if you can get him to stop licking his balls for a moment—whether one plus one is two, and the answer you’ll get is starling, starling, and more starling. I’m not being prejudiced. Gordon Setters just aren’t smart. It’s a simple fact.
As for me, I’m an above-average smart dog. Playful, intelligent, and eager to learn, as a matter of fact, I’ve seen it in print. And I have to agree. Intelligent. At least according to human criteria. Sure, it doesn’t take a whole lot for a dog to seem intelligent to human eyes. If you master both Sit! and Shake! you’re well on your way to being declared a genius. I can’t deny that I like low expectations. I exploit them shamelessly.
So, my human friends see me as Top Dog. But as a dog among dogs, my ranking is slightly lower. Significantly lower, in fact. One hundred and eighty-six, maybe. Or fifteen. Or maybe a little of both. A kind of cross between one hundred and eighty-six and fifteen.
As a dog, I come up short in almost every way. Strength, size, instinct, sense of smell, aggressiveness: I score so low in all these categories that in a world run by dogs I probably wouldn’t even be coupled—that is, if I were to survive the puppy stage against all odds. There’s a reason most animals give birth to multiple kids at a time, and that’s the fact that they sometimes end up with the likes of me. We traditionally end up as fox feed long before our testicles have descended.
In short, it’s purely thanks to human intervention that I get food, a roof over my head, belly rubs, warmth, and love. Yes, love. I need a lot of love, I have no problem admitting that. I give a lot of love, too. Especially when you need it. I’m a companion dog. An oversized lap dog who could stand to lose a few pounds, but how is that supposed to happen when the treats come as close together as they do in Mrs. Thorkildsen’s home?
Still, like every other dog on Earth, I’m a wolf. Somewhere deep inside, I’m still carrying all the information I need as a wolf, hidden behind memories of every single genetic link from there to here.
A wolf on paper.
At least that’s something.
Simply put, a dog’s memory has about the same shape as the universe. That is, something like an hourglass, or the opposite. All dogs are like this. Whether you open up the memory bank of a Chihuahua or a Bernese Mountain Dog, you’ll see about the same thing on a different scale, though of course memories smell different for each individual.
Many of the recollections we carry around are inherited, along with the mystical instincts that aren’t so mystical when it comes down to it. At the risk of sounding like a Briard who’s sniffed a few too many socks:
It’s all one continuous stream of consciousness. In its most basic shape, it takes the form of a Border Collie, a dog who needs no training to do as humans wish. All you have to do is insert the batteries, and he’s up and running. And running. And running. But is he happy? You can philosophize over that next time you run into an example of the species with a tennis ball in his mouth and super-alert eyes. A wolf who herds sheep instead of eating them—is that a wolf you can trust in the long run?
Many, even most, of the words of wisdom I was given as a child have turned out to be truths with sometimes major modifications, unless they were completely false. ‘Eat shit to avoid stomach issues!’ for instance. Probably great advice for another time and another place, but in densely populated areas, you just can’t get away with it anymore. They bust you based on your breath, if you don’t cheerfully come home with poop in your moustache, that is. And they have an incredibly strong reaction. The same dog poop they pick up off the street in black plastic bags, which they carefully tie closed and deposit in the nearest dog poop receptacle, suddenly becomes reason for loud, agitated disgust.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ they yell. Some of them hit you, and that’s another subject, but what’s even worse is that afterwards, after you’ve been humiliated under the garden hose and slowly wag your way back towards the company, you find out you’ve dropped down a rung on the ladder. There aren’t any new individuals in the pack who have challenged you and pushed you down, you just aren’t quite as high up as you were before. It’s a kick in the balls to your aspirations. You’re at the bottom of the ladder, but perfectly content and full of ambitions about climbing, who knows, maybe all the way to the top, until one day, through one unlucky event or another, with or without poop in your moustache, it becomes crystal clear that just above you on the ladder is a leap that seems impossibly large. A gap between you and the rest of the pack that will never close. ‘Eat shit!’ is a word of wisdom that’s lost its wisdom around these parts, and that leaves just the word part. And, as we all know, words can’t always be trusted.
4
They appear at the door after the Major’s death, three humans I can’t recall having met before, but it takes me just a few sniffs to ascertain who we are dealing with.
The man is Mrs. Thorkildsen’s Puppy, the woman is his Bitch, and the Boy Puppy is their shared offspring.
The visit is obviously a surprise, and it puts Mrs. Thorkildsen in a mood whose scent I have never caught before. You don’t even need a sense of smell to perceive it. Her soft voice gets stiff and her movements are jerky.
They are there to help, the Bitch says, and Mrs. Thorkildsen gives her a hug that makes her uncomfortable and makes me suspicious as a result.
I don’t think Mrs. Thorkildsen appreciates the visit very much. Like I said, there is something in her voice. That, and the fact she suddenly develops the bad habit of going to bed early.
Unlike the Major and Mrs. Thorkildsen, the Puppy and the Bitch mostly talk about things in the future. Things that need to be done, as they call them. Life can’t just be lived, it has to be planned and managed. ‘When?’ When do we have to be at the funeral home? When are we going to empty out the garage? When are we going to church? When are you coming to visit? When is dinner?
It is unsettling to watch the interaction between the Bitch and Mrs. Thorkildsen. The Bitch is both friendly and eager, maybe a little too much of both. She wants Mrs. Thorkildsen to like her so badly, but Mrs. Thorkildsen, whom I’d describe as a thoroughly friendly and approachable woman up to thi
s point, is having none of it. Like an old Labrador sick of food, she ignores the Bitch. The comparison isn’t really a metaphor. Mrs. Thorkildsen’s disciplining techniques are by and large the same ones an older bitch would use on a younger one. And the result is the same: the Bitch grows more and more uncertain and clumsy in her eagerness.
The funeral is a disappointment as far as I am concerned, but I only have my own expectations to blame for that. It might just be the word ‘funeral’ that fools me. Keeping in mind that we dogs are known for burying things, mostly dead things, I suppose I imagined I’d have a role in the proceedings, but that isn’t to be. Mrs. Thorkildsen obviously intends to dig on her own.
‘You’ll stay here,’ she says without a trace of emotion as she shuts the front door and leaves for the Major’s funeral. And that was that.
A few days later, the little pack vanishes again. I remember the exact day because of a person who would come to play a not insignificant role in our future, an important man in Mrs. Thorkildsen’s life after her husband passed:
‘Remember, the cable guy will be here on Thursday,’ is the last thing the Puppy tells his mother as he leaves.
‘I don’t want no cable guy,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says.
I don’t have any desire for a cable guy either, but the cable guy comes, and just as the Puppy predicted, he comes on Thursday. He is a pleasant man, too. Young and hairy and not without a certain penchant for dogs. A skilled neck scratcher, and that’ll do it. Mrs. Thorkildsen serves up coffee and cinnamon rolls, although the young man politely declines. He drinks the coffee anyway, and as he bites into the first cinnamon roll—just to be polite, mostly to stop the old lady’s nagging—he is sold. Of course, Mrs. Thorkildsen knew he would be, not that I think she had any ulterior motives. At any rate, the cable guy ends up in a deep cinnamon roll haze, and despite Mrs. Thorkildsen’s mild protestations that she only needs one TV channel, he sets her up with dozens. The cable guy is sent off with a bag of cinnamon rolls, and the whole thing is lovely, but after he leaves, Mrs. Thorkildsen asks me:
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