Rude bastard, I think. Ringing the doorbells of respectable old ladies early in the morning to harass them and talk bullshit. If the Major was alive, the guy would end up in the dumpster himself. But the Major is no longer around. It’s all me now. It’s up to me to make the right calls.
‘Get the shotgun,’ I tell Mrs. Thorkildsen.
‘Can you wait one moment?’ Mrs. Thorkildsen tells the glow-in-the-dark garbage man, and without waiting for an answer, she moves purposefully through the entryway door and shuts it behind her, probably out of old habit. This causes a somewhat awkward situation. I am practically locked in a tiny cage with my nemesis. Thoughts race through my head. How long will it take Mrs. Thorkildsen to get the shotgun out from under the bed? Does she have the right ammo? What’s for dinner? I give a half-hearted bark mostly to buy some time, but the garbage man calmly sinks to his knees and begins saying sweet things to me.
‘What a gooooood boy,’ he says, and before I have time to bark in response, my tail is in full swing, and then there is that smell. Before I know it, his gloves are off and I get a few good scratches just above my hip bone. This is a man who has run his fingers through a dog’s fur before. Right on par with the Major. I squirm under his hand and forget where I am for a second, before I hear the door click behind me.
‘Don’t shoot!’ I was going to shout, but there is Mrs. Thorkildsen, armed not with a rifle but with a coffee cup and a cinnamon roll.
‘Congratulations!’ she says.
‘Eh … it’s not my birthday,’ the garbage man replies as he unfortunately stops scratching.
Mrs. Thorkildsen laughs heartily:
‘I know that, silly. It’s our wedding anniversary.’
Afterwards, Mrs. Thorkildsen is so pleased she has to call a few cousins right in the middle of the morning to tell them about the showdown that ended with the garbage man slowly pulling away with a cinnamon roll in one hand, safely convinced that Mrs. Thorkildsen had lost it.
‘Wasn’t that kind of wrong?’ I ask when she’s done with her victory lap on the phone. ‘I have heard you say that we should never lie about illness, because then you get sick.’
‘Lie? Who said anything about lying? All I did was deliver him safely into the hands of his own prejudices. If I’d been young and behaved that way, he would have assumed I was a drug addict. If I’d been African, he would have thought I was acting in a strange African way. Since I’m old, he jumped to the conclusion that I’m senile. And speaking of dementia: Bring it on!’
‘I’ll remind you of those words later.’
‘You’ll have to, won’t you? I’m going to tell you a secret.’ Mrs. Thorkildsen lowers her voice slightly. ‘Namely, there are many old folks who aren’t as foggy as they pretend to be.’
‘Sure, but to be fair, you have to admit there are plenty of old folks who are considerably more confused than they look, too. Clean clothes and combed hair may hide spiritual ruin, but you can’t fake the scent of a clear head.’
‘The point is that when it’s used correctly, old age opens up surprising opportunities for mischief. No one expects an old rascal, and that can be used to advantage. Uncle Peder, for instance, lived to be almost a hundred and became a formidable tax evader in his golden years. One day the tax collector turned up on his doorstep, and Uncle Peder graciously invited him in. He asked the man to take a seat in the living room while he made coffee, and then Uncle Peder went to his bedroom and simply went to sleep. When he woke up, the tax man had left. The same thing happened again with another tax collector with the same result and, after that, Uncle Peder had no issues with the tax man.’
11
Mrs. Thorkildsen has had a good day, and she claims it’s thanks to me. It’s been a pretty confusing day for me, and I would argue that Mrs. Thorkildsen is to blame. It’s my word against hers, but this is what happened:
This morning, as far as I can recall, everything was within what we broadly speaking might call ‘normal.’ Eggs, milk, crispbread, and coffee. No surprise appearances in the obituaries. In hindsight, I guess I might say Mrs. Thorkildsen was being a tiny bit secretive.
‘Today we’re going to make packed lunches,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be a long day.’
‘That sounds like a good idea,’ I said. Compromised as I am by my eating habits, it didn’t occur to me to ask Mrs. Thorkildsen why we might be facing a long day. The knowledge that there was a treat awaiting me somewhere out there in the long day was enough of an answer to any questions I might have.
So I felt secure in my immediate future as we sat on board the Tunnel Train, Mrs. Thorkildsen and I. The Tunnel Train was delightfully free of little kids and dogs and feet, and I enjoyed the trip. At least until Mrs. Thorkildsen unexpectedly got up and pulled me behind her out of the train, which now seemed to have stopped inside a house, but I barely had time for a few whiffs of its complex and exciting mosaic of smells before Mrs. Thorkildsen, with exaggerated purpose, pulled me up a flight of stairs, and then we were out in a boiling chaos, at least seen from human knee height.
Mrs. Thorkildsen, who was naturally superior to any dog in a situation like this, teeming with people, noisy cars, suffocating gases, and an overall clattering cacophony, steered us calmly through the crowd until she reached her destination. A spot on the sidewalk, not unlike any other spot on the sidewalk. She stopped and stayed still.
I didn’t know why we were paused in a place where it was so uncomfortable to stand around, and had a moment to worry whether Mrs. Thorkildsen really knew what she was doing, before she again blew me away with her paranormal ability to predict the future. Perhaps she sensed I was feeling a little insecure, because when I needed it the most, she bent down, gave me two pats on the head, and said:
‘We’re going to take a bus now.’
No sooner had she uttered the words than an enormous red bus rolled up in front of us, and Mrs. Thorkildsen climbed aboard with the wheely bag and me in tow, and found a spot in the back of the old clunker. I didn’t even bother to try climbing onto the seat next to her, it was both too high up and probably forbidden.
The bus stopped, spat out some people, rolled on, stopped again, spat out more people, and rolled on again until Mrs. Thorkildsen and I were the only passengers left on board. Finally, Mrs. Thorkildsen announced:
‘This is our stop!’
‘Our?’ I asked.
‘We’re getting off here,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen replied.
We climbed off the bus. Mrs. Thorkildsen and the wheely bag and I stepped out into the wind that came roaring in heaving bursts from the ocean, which seemed scarier than I had imagined. I remembered then and there something the Major had said on a few occasions, that I was built for duck hunting. Possibly, but not in this weather.
Still, our destination on this voyage wasn’t the frothy, white-capped sea in front of us, but an enormous building that didn’t resemble a building at all. A steep, pointy roof stuck out of the earth and straight up into the gray sky above us. The building seemed oddly unsettling to me, without being able to say exactly why. Negative vibes, plain and simple.
‘Are dogs allowed here?’ I asked.
Mrs. Thorkildsen didn’t answer my question, she just started making her way towards the front door with small, trudging steps. The wheely bag squeaked, squeaked, squeaked until we were standing in front of the door and I could see that right in the middle of the glass door, someone had taped up a sign:
‘Let’s not go in here,’ I said, a little anxious to be honest.
‘Now what is this nonsense you’re saying?’ Maybe she hadn’t registered the ominous sign. The Mrs. Thorkildsen I know would never have set foot in a house with that sign on the door, but since she had come all this way it seemed wrong for her to have to turn around because of me. I tried to weasel my way out of the situation.
‘I’d rather stay out here and enjoy the weather,’ I lied and added a quip: ‘Since it’s raining cats and dogs, heh-heh. Tie me up to the fence over there,
and I can stay there in peace and quiet while you’re inside doing … come to think of it, what exactly are you doing here?’
Mrs. Thorkildsen still didn’t listen. Kept pulling me onwards, attached to the wheely bag. I was mortified at the thought of entering a territory where I so obviously wasn’t welcome, and if I could have turned myself invisible as easily as I could keep quiet, no one would have seen an inch of me.
We went straight over to the window where a relatively young man with no fur on his head, who smelled like lemon and hemp and the same stuff that killed the Major. Mrs. Thorkildsen smiled her friendliest smile, wished him good morning, and asked for a senior ticket.
‘Dogs are unfortunately not allowed here, I’m sorry,’ the man said, in such a friendly tone that the contrast to his aggressive message was all the more striking.
‘Did you hear that!’ I said to Mrs. Thorkildsen, with more than a hint of reproach. ‘He even said “unfortunately.” I think we should be content with that.’
‘It’s a service dog,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen told the man in the window.
‘Service dog?’ he replied, before getting to his feet, leaning forward and peering down at me; I could have sunk into the floor in shame. I had no idea what kind of pose or expression was expected of me. I took a chance and wagged a little, slowly and cautiously. But no sooner had I started getting my rear in gear than it occurred to me it might be a little unprofessional—perhaps service dogs don’t wag, especially not at work?—so I cut it out at once, which just made me feel even dumber. The man stared at me for a while, then he looked back at Mrs. Thorkildsen.
‘Do you have poor eyesight?’ he asked.
Mrs. Thorkildsen chuckled:
‘No, I don’t. It’s not a seeing eye dog. I don’t think Tassen would be much use as a seeing eye dog, no, but it is still a service animal. It can sense when I’m unwell, so I don’t feel safe without it,’ she said. As much as I resent being called ‘it,’ I was of course happy to hear what she had to say after the humiliation of being written off as a seeing eye dog. Still, I was a little surprised to hear that I was a service dog. She could have told me that earlier.
It grew quiet behind the window.
‘Well, well,’ the man said. ‘It’s quiet here today, so … But you have to keep it leashed.’
‘Thank you very much,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen said. ‘How kind of you. Tassen has been looking forward to this.’
Now Mrs. Thorkildsen was lying straight to the poor man’s face. I wouldn’t have thought her capable until the episode with the garbage man this morning. I mumbled a thank you while I tried to keep moving in the style of a service dog, as best I could.
It wasn’t easy, bound as I was to Mrs. Thorkildsen’s wheely bag. Luckily, she parked the bag at the end of the counter. She didn’t assume anything, but politely asked the man in the window whether she could leave it there.
‘At your own risk,’ came the reply.
I’m still wondering what he meant by that.
Mrs. Thorkildsen grabbed the leash, and it immediately became easier to impersonate a service dog. I pulled with all my might and laboriously dragged Mrs. Thorkildsen further into the strange premises, which had yet to make a definite impression on my nose. Newly washed floors with significant chemical traces, doesn’t give you much to work with. We might have been anywhere, but we were somewhere very specific.
I had expected the ceiling to be high, but it was red and sloped oppressively down towards the floor, and the floor in the middle of the room was dug out so the ceiling wouldn’t crash into it. A strange design, and no place to hang around. I kept pulling to drag Mrs. Thorkildsen onwards, expecting some resistance, but before she had time to pull the leash back, I stopped dead in my tracks. In front of us, raised on its hind legs, just a few feet away, was a polar bear. Yes, a stinking polar bear. A huge monster of a polar bear with claws and teeth and a dead stare.
I was terrified, of course, and instinctively wanted to flee this grotesque madhouse, I should never have set paw in here, but Mrs. Thorkildsen was ice cold. Her little heart kept beating at the same rate, and with a voice as calm and pleasant as if she were in her own cozy living room with a cozy blanket pulled around her shoulders and a cozy drink in her hand, she said:
‘Well, isn’t that a scary polar bear! Do you see that? I bet it would eat you for breakfast if it were alive!’
She kept walking towards the polar bear, and I had no choice but to follow. Not alive? What was it then, if not alive? With no prior polar bear experience, I was no expert, of course, but it didn’t exactly seem dead as it stood baring its teeth at us.
‘What’s wrong with it?’ I asked.
‘It’s taxidermied,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen replied.
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means it’s dead, and everything that was inside the bear—heart and lungs and intestines and muscles—that’s all taken out and replaced with …’
Mrs. Thorkildsen took a pause so long that I had time to think, ‘There goes that thought’, but then:
‘I’m not sure, actually. Sawdust, maybe? Yes, I think sawdust is what they use.’
‘Let’s keep going,’ I said.
So, we kept going, but there was an endless parade of new signs for Mrs. Thorkildsen to read and objects for her to gawk at. Pretty boring, really. Go. Stop in front of next sign. Read. Boring. Go. Stop. Two taxidermied dogs. TWO TAXIDERMIED DOGS!! And not just any dogs. Greenland Dogs.
‘What the hell?’ slipped out of me.
Mrs. Thorkildsen said nothing, and good thing she didn’t, since in the blind rage that now washed over me, I might have torn anyone to shreds (not Mrs. Thorkildsen, of course, but I may well have accidentally nipped her in the calf in all the excitement) for the sole reason that they belonged to the same human race that stuffs dogs full of sawdust.
I should probably have more instinctive solidarity with the polar bear; I am more closely related to it than I am to Mrs. Thorkildsen, for instance. I should probably have taken it personally and sat down on my hind legs right away, but I admit that it wasn’t until the sight of the taxidermied dogs that the gravity of the situation clearly appeared to me, like fresh piss on new snow.
They were two large, statuesque former Greenland Dogs exuding raw power and grit, invincible, indomitable, proud, with dead eyes and, apparently, stuffed with sawdust. Saying it was a sad sight is a gross understatement. The dogs were as dead as can be and even deader than that; still, I didn’t feel totally safe that they wouldn’t at any moment leap over the rope separating the little tableau in the corner from the rest of the room.
How on earth does a scruffy old dog end up stuffed full of sawdust, on display for all the world to see? What could he have done wrong? Chewed up one slipper too many? Wiped his ass on the forbidden sofa?
Mrs. Thorkildsen wanted to keep going, up two flights of stairs that looked dauntingly long. We managed the first flight one way or another, but as we attempted the second, Mrs. Thorkildsen’s steps grew slower and slower, and her little heart was working hard. But again, with her small, trudging steps, Mrs. Thorkildsen made it to the top. She stood still there for a while, waiting for her heart rate to settle down.
‘You see?’ she said. ‘That’s the Fram.’
‘It’s a boat.’
‘It’s a ship,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen said. ‘A polar ship.’
‘What’s a boat doing inside a house?’
Mrs. Thorkildsen had no answer to that. She shortened the leash. And then we climbed on board.
12
You can overhaul a vessel from keel to mast, store it indoors and let tourists step all over it for nearly a hundred years, but you’ll never get rid of the smell. The polar ship Fram lay there resting in its giant house, warm and plump and dry, while she oozed fear and resentment.
I can sense the stench as we plod up the little footbridge. It doesn’t smack me in the face exactly, but it’s there. It doesn’t take much. I’m reminded that my species can ea
sily find any amount of drugs, no matter where on your polar ship you hide it.
Dust and dirt and old varnish, layer upon layer of faint odors and scents and aromas, and then, like a dull nail suddenly shoved up into my snout, an old, but disturbingly sharp odor of sheer and simple terror. I don’t know what kind of yardstick humans use to measure that, but we’re most likely talking craploads (the Major’s expression) of fear buried in the ship’s hull. It’s everywhere, and everywhere is a pretty big area—the deck of the polar ship is the size of a small park.
‘I want to go home,’ I say.
Mrs. Thorkildsen is either enraged or surprised, I can’t quite tell. She responds in a tone that would make you think I had just left a steaming doody right in the middle of the polar ship’s deck.
‘What nonsense! We’ve come all this way to the Fram Museum for your sake. And we’ve lied to the nice young man in the window for your sake.’
For my sake. There’s the cat out of the bag.
‘I feel sick,’ I say. ‘And I never asked you to bring me to this terrible place. Had I known we were coming here, I definitely would have parked on my hind legs and refused, you can be sure of that. Maybe there’s a reason they put that sign on the door downstairs. It never occurred to you that it might be out of consideration for dogs, not people?’
It takes a lot for me to call Mrs. Thorkildsen careless. But I can’t find a better word for the way she chooses to ignore my objections. This whole damned boat makes me unsettled and afraid, but it seems to make Mrs. Thorkildsen thrive. Where is this sudden energy coming from? What does this energy want with this small feeble human?
‘Just think, this is the boat they used to sail from Norway to Antarctica a hundred years ago, with a whole pack of Greenland Dogs, ready to conquer the South Pole. Just the sled ride to the South Pole and back was almost two thousand miles, can you imagine.’
For some reason, Mrs. Thorkildsen wants to see the ship’s interior. I do not. I don’t have many remedies at my disposal, but as Mrs. Thorkildsen clambers her way over the highest doorstep I’ve seen in my whole life, I resign myself to passive resistance. I simply sit down, pulling a classic ‘sitting on my hind legs.’ Mrs. Thorkildsen doesn’t register what’s happening until she tries to move further in and the leash grows taut.
Good Dogs Don't Make It to the South Pole Page 6