‘I can handle stairs just fine, thank you,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says, friendly words that don’t sound the least bit friendly. The Puppy tries a new plan of attack:
‘Not to be morbid here,’ he says, ‘but what will you do if something happens and you can’t handle it for some reason? How will you go grocery shopping, for example?’
Grocery shopping? I think.
‘Then I’ll get my groceries delivered. No big deal. I do have a telephone. Had you forgotten that?’ Mrs. Thorkildsen’s tone has turned short.
‘Okay,’ the Bitch says. ‘But, again, what about Tassen?’
I’m almost starting to wonder what about Tassen myself. I don’t mind being an item of conversation—who doesn’t like a little attention?—but this conversation, with its ‘What about Tassen?’ mantra and a homicidal Mrs. Thorkildsen, is a bit unsettling. I’m seriously debating whether I should start whimpering. There’s no dog noise like the whimper for making humans lower their shoulders. People who should know better say ‘Awwwwww’ to even the ugliest pitbull’s mug if only the dumb animal can muster up a whimper.
And I don’t know anything about that biting stuff. Call it cowardly, but I kind of draw the line at biting. As I said, I would have done anything to defuse the nauseating tension roiling in Mrs. Thorkildsen’s living room, but I would never resort to biting. Never. I might be mistaken, but I’ll leave that up to others to judge.
‘Now let’s have a toast!’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says, and there can be no doubt that’s what’s going to happen. This is another part of Mrs. Thorkildsen’s magic—an almost frightening ability to predict the near future. ‘Now Tassen’s going to take a bath,’ she might say. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ I might reply, but she always ends up being right. It can get a little creepy at times, and she seems totally unfazed, almost oblivious to this special talent.
‘What are we toasting to?’ the Bitch asks, holding her glass aloft.
Mrs. Thorkildsen thinks for a moment. She looks at the Bitch, then at the Puppy:
‘To the one who makes it possible for me to live here, and to live a good life. To my rock. Cheers to Tassen!’
All three of them look at me, but I have a feeling only one of them likes what they see.
8
The theme of the day in Dr. Pill’s office: ‘My racist father has to learn to accept the minorities in the family.’ As usual, I can’t understand a word being said, but Mrs. Thorkildsen sums it up for me with a heartfelt ‘Oh, dear!’
‘It’s a good thing I’m not long for this world,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says.
Mostly just to start a conversation I ask, ‘How did it go? Did he learn to accept the minorities in the family?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says. ‘In fact, I think it’s not easy for anyone to learn anything at all. I’m afraid he’ll always be a racist, unfortunately.’
‘But is that so bad? I mean, I’m a racist, and that doesn’t seem to be a problem for you, right?’
‘What do you mean, you’re a racist?’
‘Sure I am. You know I can’t stand German Shepherds, for instance.’
‘Oh, yes, I know that all too well. But does that mean you think a German Shepherd is worth less than you are?’
‘That’s not a fair comparison. Remember that the Major got me at half price. Cash.’
‘What I mean is, do you think you’re a better dog than a German Shepherd?’
‘Well, that depends what you want to use us for. For example, I’d like to see a German Shepherd who’s a better swimmer than me. On the other hand, if I were to bite the nearest bad guy in the shin, I doubt he’d even notice much of anything. So, yes, in some cases certain dogs are better than others. At least that’s my opinion.’
‘But you all come from wolves. You’re all brothers!’
‘Wolves can be put to many uses. And what they can’t do, they can slowly adapt to and learn. You see, flexibility is our trademark. A wolf for every need.’
‘So, I guess you’re a cuddle-wolf, then,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen concludes.
To be honest, the conversation depresses me a bit, as existential questions often do. Afterwards, I lie in the hall, mindlessly munching on a hiking boot before drifting off and dreaming a dream about being in the woods, unable to move while scary smells waft in from every direction. Since I’ve woken up, I feel a little weak and queasy. Mrs. Thorkildsen, on the other hand, has been in a great mood all afternoon, which is becoming clear in her light and springy step even after darkness has fallen. Now she’s reading a book.
‘What are you reading?’ I want to know.
‘In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen replies. ‘I’ve read it before.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘Good question … I suppose the basic storyline is that a man suddenly catches the scent of a cookie.’
‘Promising. Then what happens?’
‘Well, happens is a bit of a stretch. The scent makes him remember everything that he’s experienced since he was a child, which makes us think about the flow of time and how time changes—and doesn’t change—people.’
‘Sounds deep. Any dogs in the story?’
‘None in a leading role, I’m afraid.’
‘Well, do you know any stories where dogs play leading roles?’
‘Hmmm. I have to think about that one. I can’t come up with anything on the spot, except this one book we read in school: Just a Dog by Per Sivle.’
‘Sounds sad.’
‘I do recall it being pretty sad stuff. And then there’s The Hound of the Baskervilles by Conan Doyle.’
‘Oh? What’s that one about?’
‘I don’t think it’s actually about dogs, really. But I can’t think of any others, besides children’s books.’
‘And you’ve read all the books there are?’
‘Far from it.’
‘So, there might be a story about dogs you haven’t read?’
‘Lassie!’ says Mrs. Thorkildsen, sounding pleased with herself.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Lassie is a Scottish Sheepdog who …’
‘Scottish Sheepdogs are primitive and tiresome creatures. Lots of genetic challenges there.’
‘You really are a little racist, aren’t you? But, anyway, Lassie was the world’s most famous dog, and they made a bunch of movies about her. I thought Lassie was just a Hollywood invention, but one time the Major and I were driving around England and we came across a small town in the south of Cornwall, and it turned out to be the town where the original Lassie had lived. And I can assure you that she was no Scottish Sheepdog—she was a mixed-breed.’
‘Even better …’
‘When a ship was torpedoed out in the channel during World War One—which is a different World War than the one the Major fought in—the bodies of the dead sailors were dumped in the cellar of the local pub. The pub proprietor was the one who owned Lassie. As the story goes, Lassie went over to one of the dead sailors and started licking his face. They tried pulling her off, but she wouldn’t move away from the body. A few hours later he came back to life.’
‘And?’
‘There’s no “and”—’ Mrs. Thorkildsen takes a pause ‘—other than the fact that the sailor came back to the pub later on to thank the dog who had saved his life.’
‘So, the mutt became a star just because it could smell the difference between a dead and a living person?’
‘I think so. At least that’s the story we were told. I saw the Lassie movies when I was a young girl. They were usually all about Lassie finding missing kids, as far as I recall. But other than that …’
Mrs. Thorkildsen takes a trip to the kitchen. If I hadn’t been stuffed I might have followed her, but I lay still in my spot, listening to Mrs. Thorkildsen as she opens the fridge, finds the bottle she opened earlier, pours a glass, returns the bottle to the fridge, grabs the glass, and plods back to the living room, where she delivers the following short
and declarative message:
‘Amundsen’s polar expedition!’
She says it with a certain decisiveness, half an exclamation point, calm and confident. Then she falls silent, as if that small comment explained everything.
‘What is Amundsen’s polar expedition?’ I ask.
‘When I was growing up, everyone knew that story. About the Norwegians who made it first to the South Pole, because they used dogs, right under the noses of the Englishmen who were sure they were going to be first—since they were a larger group, with tractors. It was a real underdog story. Ha!’
‘Why was it so important to be first to the pool?’
‘Pole, Tassen. Not pool. Roald Amundsen and his men drove sled dogs to the South Pole, which is … well, the South Pole. How can I explain that? The South Pole is the spot at the very bottom of the globe. It’s on a giant continent covered by ice.’
‘Ice in the south?’ Has Mrs. Thorkildsen gotten confused?
‘When you get far enough south, you see, it starts getting colder again. On the other side of the world, it’s just as cold as here.’
‘Whichever way you turn, your rear is always behind you.’
‘You might say that,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says.
‘What does it do?’
‘The South Pole? Well, I suppose it doesn’t do much of anything. It just sits there, I think. The last place on Earth, they called it. Once upon a time, it became important for people to get there. First. And that’s what Roald Amundsen and his dogs managed to do. But I don’t think the South Pole is actually much more than a white spot in the middle of a big white landscape.’
‘What kind of dogs?’
‘I don’t know. Sled dogs.’
I patiently avoid telling Mrs. Thorkildsen I’ve assumed as much.
‘Could they have been Greenland Dogs?’ I ask, and now I’m suddenly interested, in spite of myself and despite the lackluster premise of the story about Roald Amundsen and his dogs, who were first to get to nowhere. Greenland Dogs, you see, are something else.
Calling a Greenland Dog tough is like calling a cat dumb. A gross understatement. There isn’t a dog on this double ice-capped Earth who more closely resembles a good, old-fashioned wolf, but I’m not even sure if a wolf can measure up to a Greenland Dog on home turf. And on one hand, home turf can be anywhere, as long as it’s covered in snow and ice. On the other hand, its home turf is strictly defined. A Greenland Dog stops being a Greenland Dog when it leaves Greenland. That’s common knowledge, or it should be.
‘They ate dogs,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen continues.
‘Who ate dogs? And why in the world would they do that?’ I try not to let any of my suddenly simmering feelings rub off on Mrs. Thorkildsen, staying calm, although those two words, ‘ate dogs,’ run like an electric shock through my skull and all the way down to the tip of my tail.
‘I seem to recall that they did,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says. ‘I think there was talk of them slaughtering some dogs to get the vitamins they needed to survive. There’s nothing to eat at the South Pole, you see, only ice and snow.’
‘How many?’
One of Mrs. Thorkildsen’s best qualities is her ability to unabashedly admit the following: ‘I don’t know.’ She has no qualms saying that, for the next thing out of her mouth is: ‘But I’m sure we can find out.’
9
Most dogs aren’t as good at feeling guilt or shame as people like to believe. That’s what I would claim, but I’m not alone: in a scientific study, the human guinea pigs—I love that expression—were shown a picture of a dog and tricked into thinking it had done something wrong. No sheep massacre, more along the lines of knocked-over trash cans or doody on the living room rug.
Truth be told, the dog in the picture was most likely innocent. The picture had been snapped in a candid moment, and if the dog was thinking about anything at all as it faced the photographer, it most likely wasn’t what it had done wrong in life. It was most likely thinking about whether there was food on the horizon. Still, people invariably read ‘guilt’ or ‘shame’ in the dog’s eyes.
Sure, dogs lay themselves flat. Raise your paw, anyone who’s never laid flat! But, in most cases, this has very little to do with ethics or morals—it’s usually a result of the dog being smarter than it looks. It recognizes that people are unhappy and dissatisfied. If it makes you feel better, you might call it empathy. And if Bonzo is really smart, he might even realize that it could have something to do with the couch cushion he emphatically murdered while his master was out.
To feel guilt, the dog would need a clear understanding of the difference between right and wrong. And it has no such thing, although it may be able to convince you otherwise. If you’re lucky and the dog is really smart, it might be able to distinguish between ‘preferred’ and ‘not preferred’ behaviour.
I’m not saying us dogs are psychopaths, by all means. We are sociopaths. Like every other amoeba on the planet, we’re born with an ambition of lifting the ‘King of the World’ trophy above our heads. No one can argue that humankind is the current owner of that perpetual trophy, but they seem to have forgotten that the title is up for grabs.
However adorable and harmless a tiny handbag-sized puppy may seem, its natural instinct is to install itself as leader of the pack. The only reason it doesn’t do so is the endless consideration of possible ways to take charge that’s constantly playing out in the dog’s head. Then there are those who are incapable of making these calculations: Chihuahuas and even smaller dogs, who bare their teeth and snarl aggressively at dogs who could swallow them in one bite. There’s plenty of humor in that scenario, but switch out the tiny dog with a Doberman, and the road to eternal hunting grounds suddenly seems shorter. And this happens all the time. The dog who pushes the boundaries, who slowly but surely gets control of first the kids, then Mom, and if its balls are too big, makes a move for Dad. They can’t help themselves. And one fine day when the family is gathered around the dinner table, Fido thinks the time is nigh. He leaps onto the table, lowers his head, looks Dad right in the eyes and snarls so Mom and the kids scurry off, and a chill spreads through the room. Fido doesn’t want to fight, not really. A peaceful transition of power is the best option for all parties and, hey, haven’t there been some great walks through the years? Surrender calmly and gracefully, walk away from the table now, and no one has to get hurt.
Dad pulls back. He knows he doesn’t have a chance. Then again, he does have a shotgun.
‘Volka nogi kormyat,’ the old Russian proverb goes. ‘The wolf feeds off its legs.’
It’s true of people, too. Humankind’s ability to move in packs until they found themselves on the other side of the globe is what made it possible for these not particularly fast, naked apes to not only survive, but climb to the top of the food chain. Dogs and humans lived in perpetual motion, and together they could travel to places neither one would have reached alone.
I don’t know which one of them first realized that the other one was useful. Whether it was the wolves who initially discovered that humans left a trail of food scraps in their wake, or whether it was the humans who understood that having wolves nearby meant never having to worry about other enemies in the wild.
So, they lived in the shadows, man and wolf, in unspoken mutual respect. Roved the same terrain to hunt for prey without catching more than a rare glimpse of each other. If the two met in the woods, each raced off in the opposite direction. Perhaps they should have kept it that way.
Maybe it was a lone wolf who one day broke out of the pack, a wolf low in the ranks who thought that instead of putting up with harassment and humiliation, he might as well try his own luck. The infamous Lone Wolf™! Or was it a group of human puppies who found some wolf cubs and ran home to beg their parents to keep them? Pleeease!
All I know is how it definitely didn’t happen: with a flock of wolves just running into a flock of humans one day.
Maybe that’s precisely why we ended up together?
In the recognition that each of us, one by one, is precious and helpless, but together we become a dangerous mob? The human being is beautiful, but humankind is hideous—is that what it’s all about? I suspect that Mrs. Thorkildsen might see it that way. Hanging from the little cork board in her kitchen is a joke she’s read aloud to me many times:
‘I love human beings. It’s people I can’t stand.’
At least it used to be a joke, once upon a time. These days it’s more like a motto. And I’m no better than she is. We’ve grown pack-shy in our old age, Mrs. Thorkildsen and I.
Me.
Me and you.
Trouble.
10
The doorbell rings. Mrs. Thorkildsen sets down her coffee cup and squints at the clock on the wall.
‘Well, who in the world could that be?’
As for me, I bark my heart out without speculating very much over who it might be out there on our doorstep. Mrs. Thorkildsen reties the belt on her bathrobe and plods down the hall behind me to open the door. I stop the barking as soon as the door is opened, just in case there is a wolf out there. But, luckily, there isn’t. There is, however, a giant, glow-in-the-dark man who is a scary sight, but still smells wonderful. I have the urge to drive my snout into his trouser leg and take a big belly breath, but Mrs. Thorkildsen cuts me off with her slipper.
The delicious-smelling man holds out a green bottle.
‘You have to stop throwing bottles in the trash,’ he says. ‘This is the third time. If it happens again, we can refuse to collect the garbage.’
Mrs. Thorkildsen looks at the bottle, back up at the man, then back to the bottle again:
‘Is that for me?’
She takes the bottle out of the giant man’s hands, who suddenly seems unsteady.
‘Wow … is it my birthday today?’ Mrs. Thorkildsen’s amazement is clear. So is the garbage man’s. But the ball is in his court, and he has to come up with something, so he says:
‘And you have to do a better job of tying up the dog’s poop bags.’ He looks at me. ‘They stink!’
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