Good Dogs Don't Make It to the South Pole

by Hans-Olav Thyvold

  ‘Come on,’ she says in her sweetest voice, but her tone changes as soon as I refuse to respond to her plea.

  ‘Come on, now!’

  More or less the same words, but her heart rate pushes the irritation level up.

  ‘I can’t get over that massive doorstep.’

  If Mrs. Thorkildsen can play senile, I can certainly play weak and cowardly.

  ‘Nonsense. And guess what? I have a treat for you in my purse.’

  Mrs. Thorkildsen never bluffs. Not when treats are involved. The revolution can wait.

  SECOND BITE

  If the dog is happy, everything is fine.

  ANTARCTIC PROVERB

  13

  My trust in humankind has been reduced just a fraction of a point. I try to tell Mrs. Thorkildsen she shouldn’t take it personally, that it’s just a natural result of our mutual striving, but Mrs. Thorkildsen has always taken life personally and has no intention of stopping now. After a relatively dry period, she has now upped the Dragon Water intake. Sure, a polar expedition now and then is fun, but I’m not so sure that Dragon Water is the solution for Mrs. Thorkildsen in the long run. Or in the short run, for that matter.

  ‘It would probably be better for you if you were a stupid mutt who didn’t know any better,’ she slurred before staggering off to bed last night. I don’t know whether it was meant as nastiness or concern, but I’m afraid it’s mostly an indication that Mrs. Thorkildsen thinks it would be better for her if I were a canis stupidus. It would probably be easier for her to give me a smack with the newspaper if I were dumb as an ox or a goose. Really, if I were more of an animal.

  The line between people and animals is the first tentative sketch of the food chain humans have climbed to the top of. The whole hegemony is built on hunting and taming animals—how convenient, then, that all creatures on the planet except for them fall into the category ‘animal.’

  I must admit that people don’t shy away from treating each other like animals, but that only strengthens my point. According to humans, all species on earth can be divided into two categories. In one category you have one species; in the other you have all other species.

  If it really is true that humans eat animals on a large scale, while animals only rarely eat people, it would be more advantageous, according to our friend Charles Darwin (may he rest in peace), to be a human than to be an animal. So, how does an animal become human? Or, more accurately, exactly where is this crucial line drawn? What is it in the eyes of humans that makes an animal an animal?

  Take, for example, the co-worker of the human in space: the chimpanzee. Not so many years ago, after years of filming them for entertainment, humans came up with the original idea to study how chimpanzees behaved when they were allowed to let down their hair and just be themselves in their own homes. Perhaps humans shouldn’t have done this, at least not if their goal was to preserve their own sovereign place atop the pyramid. With the very first report back from the kingdom of the chimpanzees in Africa’s forests, one of the oldest and most common methods of distinguishing between humans and animals was shattered. They used to say that animals couldn’t use tools! An easy and convenient dividing line that was quickly erased when the chimpanzees in Africa broke the rules of the game and used tools they had fashioned themselves.

  After this, language became the humans’ last resort. Animals don’t understand human language and, even worse, it’s impossible to understand a peep of what they say. That’s the basis of the whole doctrine. In other words, it’s all come down to the shape of the tongue.

  And this is where the chimpanzee—with its opposable thumbs—starts showing it can talk with its hands. First it learns to point, which it doesn’t do in nature, and in time it has learned to communicate pretty well with sign language. The question, dear people, is: How many words must the chimpanzee learn before it is taken seriously? What will people do when the chimpanzee eloquently stands up for its own rights in Hollywood and in the jungles of the Congo?

  ‘Can you please stop cutting down our forests?’ for example. Or: ‘We demand a union contract and benefits. And bananas.’

  What will people do then? Accord them full rights, shield the forests, and put an end to drugged chimpanzees in unflattering diapers?

  Let’s go with that.

  ‘Who were those dogs?’ I finally ask Mrs. Thorkildsen, who seems to have decided to stay home today. Or maybe she hasn’t even decided, maybe it just turned out that way. It can be difficult to tell the difference.

  She’s sitting in the Major’s old chair cradling a big glass in her hands and doing nothing, which you rarely see Mrs. Thorkildsen doing, and it’s rarely a good sign. She’s not reading, sleeping, or watching TV—just sitting there like a Golden Retriever.

  ‘What dogs?’

  ‘The ones who were full of sawdust.’

  ‘Amundsen’s dogs? What about them?’

  ‘How did they end up there?’

  ‘I have no clue.’

  ‘Is there a book about them?’

  ‘Hmmm, I would think someone has written that story.’

  ‘Think? I thought you knew everything about books.’

  ‘Not those kinds of books.’

  ‘What kinds are those?’

  ‘Polar literature. I don’t know anything about that. Not sure whether it’s even good literature. Whether it’s literature at all.’

  ‘All literature is good literature in the sense that all literature is better than no literature.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Says you. When you’re shitfaced.’

  ‘I’m never shitfaced!’

  ‘Really? Drunk, then?’

  ‘I don’t get drunk! Have you ever heard such baloney!’

  ‘Buzzed, then? Tipsy?’

  ‘Tipsy is okay.’

  ‘So what is this polar literature about?’

  Mrs. Thorkildsen drains her glass with warp speed:

  ‘It’s about Fridtjof Nansen and his descendants.’

  ‘Okay. Who’s Fridtjof Nansen?’

  ‘A groundbreaking scientist who saved millions of refugees’ lives. And a Nobel Prize winner, to boot. But what is he remembered for?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘A ski trip! He went straight across Greenland and became a national hero. Tried to go to the North Pole, too, but didn’t make it—not that that put a damper on the hero worship. He didn’t have to succeed, you see. Polar heroes don’t have to succeed. Their fiascos, not to mention their downfalls, can be just as attractive as their victories when the thermostat reads forty below celsius. If you have to cut off a toe or two when the cold sets in, you can use them as chips in the game of glory and honor. Forever. Amen. Who is the most famous polar explorer of all time?’ Mrs. Thorkildsen continues.

  ‘Are you asking me?’

  ‘Robert F. Scott. And what did he do?’

  ‘Well, what did he do?’

  ‘He perished, that’s what he did, in his attempt to reach the South Pole first. The Norwegian Amundsen came first, and the Englishman Scott came last and died on the way home along with the rest of his expedition. Total victory versus total fiasco. But, still, Scott is the one who’s remembered, and the base on the South Pole today bears his name alongside Amundsen’s.’

  ‘The things you know!’

  ‘I only know because there was some racket on TV because the Queen is going to the South Pole. I’ve never been particularly enthused about that woman, but I must say it’s pretty impressive to make the trip to Antarctica when you’re past seventy. That’s worthy of respect.’

  ‘What in the world is the Queen going to do at the South Pole?’

  ‘It’s the anniversary. A hundred years since Roald Amundsen became the first man to reach the South Pole.’

  ‘And his dogs.’

  ‘And his dogs. But what’s the Queen going to do? Well, she’s going to mark our ownership down there, I’d imagine. Little Norway lays claim to a fifth of Antarcti
ca, they said. That’s an area much larger than Norway itself. Pretty ridiculous, really. But I suppose that was part of the reason to be first, that you could lay claim to the land.’

  ‘So, we’re talking territorial pissings?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘But, in that case, the Englishman would be the winner! If he and his dogs came later and pissed out the markings left by the Norwegian and his dogs, his markings would reign supreme!’

  Mrs. Thorkildsen thinks for a moment, and then delivers a triumphant point:

  ‘Scott didn’t have dogs.’

  Well, no wonder he perished, I almost say. But I don’t. Instead I say:

  ‘But men aren’t the only ones who brag about all the terrible things they’ve been through. When you talk on the phone, the lines are full of sorrow and travesty.’

  Mrs. Thorkildsen gets a little defensive, which adds a tightness to her voice, though she probably doesn’t notice it herself:

  ‘Well, that’s different. We don’t brag about our struggles!’

  ‘Welllll …’ I say, unsure whether we should head down that path.

  14

  Those who are human might understand how words become actions, long after they’re spoken, long after you thought they were forgotten. It was my words, you see, that had slowly but surely led us to the door of the Library, and I had to be reminded that I had uttered them.

  ‘Who were those dogs?’ I asked once in a distant past, and although ‘I have no clue’ was an answer I very well could have lived with, the question obviously continues to burn in Mrs. Thorkildsen’s mind, because she thinks I’m still going around asking myself the same thing. Kind of like two people chasing each other’s tails.

  Once again, my high expectations have betrayed me. The Library is nothing like what I had imagined. I had pictured an older, monumental building based on Mrs. Thorkildsen’s reverent description of this temple of knowledge. In the Library, she boasted, lay the answer to all questions, including potential questions about taxidermied dogs, and houses with boats inside them. And I let myself be carried away.

  Instead, it turns out, the Library sits at the top of a worn gray flight of stairs inside a nondescript, two-story house in close proximity to Mrs. Thorkildsen’s usual hunting grounds at the Center. I’ve walked past it countless times without realizing it.

  The next surprise is the scent that hits me right away when Mrs. Thorkildsen cracks open the front door on the ground floor. I must admit, I haven’t spent much time pondering how a library might smell. A library, as far as I could tell, was a house full of books, so it shouldn’t smell too different from home, I figured.

  Instead, a rush of hearty laughter and bitter tears wafts out the door, strongly laced with the scent of plants swaying in the wind on the other side of the world, plus human sweat. And, like an invisible haze hanging above the floor: old, stale Dragon Water.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve been here in ten years,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says. ‘And there’s the Tavern!’

  Mrs. Thorkildsen has made it halfway up the stairs, and she stops dead in her tracks. She stands still, gazing at the door at the top of the stairs, which may be closed but tells a story through the intense aroma that seeps through it.

  ‘We used to go to the Tavern and drink beer on paydays,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says.

  ‘Those were the only days I went to the Tavern, you didn’t want to spend a lot of time there. They had good patty melts, too. Overall, I got the sense it was a real quality kitchen. Simple, but quality. Better a simple patty melt than a fancy paté with all the fuss.’

  ‘I’ll take both, please,’ I say.

  The door with the restless smells isn’t the door to the Library, as it turns out. The Library has its own, more modest door right beside it, and as soon as Mrs. Thorkildsen opens it, the smell is more reminiscent of home. The sticky scent of Dragon Water is clear inside the Library, too. It mingles with the aroma of dusty books to create a pretty good satire of the smell in our home.

  It’s not hard to feel at home in the Library, though I’m still not entirely sure I’m welcome here. At least there was no sign on the door. There was one, I had noticed, on the door of the Tavern.

  Mrs. Thorkildsen stays glued to one spot after the door swings shut behind us. The Library looks empty, but my nose tells a different story. I hear steps approaching from further down the hall, and had I not been so anxious about being kicked out, I naturally would have given a warning bark or two. No howling, just a small, barely audible woof! to wake up the senses.

  The Librarian! Young, barely fully grown, hasn’t given birth, and isn’t drinking milk. Ovulating. Safe, friendly, and welcoming. She’s obviously a surprise to Mrs. Thorkildsen, and when she’s surprised, Mrs. Thorkildsen loses her grip on reality a little. Both her body language and her speech grow jerky and stuttering. Mrs. Thorkildsen stays still a bit too long, gawking at the Librarian before uttering the timeless words:

  ‘Are you the Librarian?’

  ‘Yes,’ the Librarian says, smiling wide enough to reveal a shiny white set of teeth bordering on threatening, ‘How can I help you?’

  I nearly pee a whole puddle in relief.

  Finally!

  Finally, someone’s offering Mrs. Thorkildsen a little sorely needed help.

  Where should we start? There are so many things Mrs. Thorkildsen could use help with. She could use help in hunting, for one. The size and quality of her bounty is markedly lower than before, or maybe it’s just my aversion to the little oven on the shelf that says ‘Pling!’ and kills almost all the scent in the food. Fortunately, my diet mostly consists of good old-fashioned dog food these days. And then there’s the housework, the Dragon Water collecting, the phone chatting, and the diary writing. Truth be told, there are quite a few things she could use help with, now that I think about it, but instead of taking the Librarian up on her generous offer, Mrs. Thorkildsen begins telling an elaborate version of the story she told me on the stairs, about paydays and patty melts, and completely ignores the Librarian’s generous offer of help before capping it all off with a question of her own.

  ‘Aren’t you a little … young to be a librarian?’

  ‘I’m twenty-nine,’ the Librarian responds. Means nothing to me. ‘I finished my Library Science degree last spring. This is my first job.’

  ‘I’m six,’ I say.

  ‘I was forty-four when I started working as a librarian,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says. ‘I was a housewife for ten years before starting my Library Science degree. The sixties, you know. Do you like it out here?’

  The Librarian hesitates, shuffles from one foot to another and folds her arms across her chest.

  ‘It’s nice here, but the branch is being closed down in November, and that takes its toll on the job. There’s a lot I would have liked to do, but it seems a bit … meaningless when we know we’re closing soon.’

  Mrs. Thorkildsen, I can tell by the tone in her voice, is quite seriously perturbed to hear this. Before long I can smell it, too. Her pulse is on the way up when she asks two questions:

  One: ‘Closing down?’

  Two: ‘Are they crazy?’

  The Librarian giggles. More questions from Mrs. Thorkildsen:

  Three: ‘Who made that decision?’

  Four: ‘Was it the county?’

  ‘Yes, apparently it’s the county. They’re shutting down a whole bunch of neighborhood libraries, and unfortunately we’re one of them.’

  Eighty-eight: ‘But what will happen to you?’

  ‘I’m not worried. It’s easy for newly educated librarians to find work, with better pay than I make here. There have been so many jobs in the private sector lately that I can basically choose whatever I want, but I’d prefer to work in the public library system.’

  It’s mainly Mrs. Thorkildsen who does the talking. And so much talking! I can’t remember the last time I heard Mrs. Thorkildsen talk with such joy and force. The Librarian listens, asks questions when there’
s a rare opening, and tells little stories of her own, shorter and more to the point than Mrs. Thorkildsen’s. Mrs. Thorkildsen asks nosy questions. When she likes another human, Mrs. Thorkildsen becomes a mental cannibal.

  ‘We’d love to know more about Roald Amundsen’s trip to the South Pole,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen finally says.

  ‘About the dogs,’ I add.

  ‘About the dogs,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says.

  ‘The South Pole?’ the Librarian says. ‘Let’s see.’

  Her fingers start tapping away. It’s simply incredible what one can accomplish with the help of fingers, I’ll admit. The Librarian’s fingers are able to locate the book Mrs. Thorkildsen needs without her even knowing what she was looking for.

  ‘I’m getting a lot of results for Roald Amundsen and the South Pole … tons, in fact,’ the Librarian says without taking her eyes off the screen. ‘But … I can’t seem to find anything about dogs specifically … The South Pole by Roald Amundsen is the first result here. Two volumes. First published nineteen twelve. That might be a little old?’

  ‘No, no,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says. ‘It might not be a bad idea to hear from the boss himself, what do you say, Tassen?’

  I don’t respond. I see right through Mrs. Thorkildsen’s empty social graces. She doesn’t really care what I think, even when she asks my advice.

  ‘Do you have a library card?’ the Librarian asks.

  And that sets Mrs. Thorkildsen off. To the untrained eye, it might appear that she’s not well, but all we witness is her librarian’s laugh, an almost inaudible laugh that manifests itself not as sound, but as a series of convulsions that seem to completely take control of her small body. She leans forward in her chair as she shakes, and might seem to be in great pain, but this is simply how Mrs. Thorkildsen expresses joy after her long and faithful service in the public libraries. An old work injury, you might say.