‘I didn’t even think about that!’ she giggles at last. ‘No, I don’t have a library card, so I do need one.’
The Librarian laughs, too, so all must be well.
After an interrogation so riddled with numbers that one has to wonder whether it was designed specifically to prevent dogs from signing up for library cards, our errand at the Library is done and it’s time to make our way home.
Now we’re halfway there, I think to myself. Good boy.
Mrs. Thorkildsen, however, has other plans. Or not really. For once, Mrs. Thorkildsen is following an impulse. I could see that it was an impulse, because she was already leaning her body weight into the first of many small steps down the stairs and home, when she caught herself, stopped abruptly, made a decision, and told me:
‘You know, I think I’m going to have a patty melt and a beer at the Tavern.’
‘Are dogs allowed in the Tavern?’ I ask, and I know the answer.
‘I don’t think they’re allowed, no,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says.
‘So, we’ll drop it, then,’ I respond. ‘Let’s go home and be cozy instead. Dr. Pill probably has something exciting on his show today. Maybe that pedophile grandfather you really liked will be on again today!’
‘No!’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says with a resolve that is surprising, beautiful, and frightening all at once. ‘I am going to have a patty melt and a beer. Waiting for half an hour won’t hurt you, Tassen. And he wasn’t a pedophile, by the way. His stepdaughter just wanted revenge on him because he had a new girlfriend.’
I can hardly believe my ears. I patiently wait for her while she goes hunting; that’s for the common good of our little fellowship. The struggle for survival. It’s no small sacrifice, but it’s necessary for our existence, it’s part of the deal. What’s not part of the deal is Mrs. Thorkildsen tying me up and slamming the door in my face, just so she can stuff her face with patty melts. I’m speechless. And I’m alone.
15
There was once an old Eskimo, the oldest one in the tribe, who didn’t want to live in the new way. He wanted to live the way he always had, the way his forefathers had, with dogs, hunting for food in the cold, snowy wilderness. His family, his pack, did what they could to convince the old man to move into a house, but it didn’t help, for none of them could explain to him why he should stop living the way he always had.
They took his old tools and weapons. They took the knives, the ropes, the sled—so he had no choice. Without tools, even an Eskimo can’t live in the cold.
The old man begrudgingly agreed to sleep in the house—on one condition. Like most old people and dogs, he considered it an abomination to do his business indoors. To shit in the house like any old cat! The old man still wanted to go out whenever he needed to pull down his sealskin trousers.
When night fell, he would stand on the stoop of the old house with a hot beverage in his hand and wait for the time to come, and when it did, he emptied the cup’s remaining contents into the snow and went out into the dark to take care of business.
One winter night, when the cold was even more biting than usual, someone registered that the old man hadn’t returned from the toilet, and they went out to look for him. They followed the old man’s tracks to where he had relieved himself. But there was no trace of his activities there, and the tracks kept going to the dog yard, where they beheld a sight that told the oldest among them what had happened.
The old man had stood out on the stoop with his coffee, waiting for the right moment to go into the darkness. When he poured out the small splash of hot drink that was left, he could see it was cold enough. The warm drops froze into ice before they hit the ground. This was all the old man needed to know. He went to his usual spot, but instead of letting it fall to the ground, he took the warm mass into his hands. Just as he’d learned from his grandfather, who had learned it from his grandfather, he began to meticulously shape the dough. He kneaded and spat until his shit slowly began to take the shape of a knife.
When the knife was sharp and solid enough, he walked over to the dogs. He picked out two of them, and without it making a sound, he cut the throat of one of them and drank his fill of the blood that gushed forth. He butchered the dog and ate his fill of fresh meat before using the remnants of the dog’s hide and bones to build a small sled. He made reins and a whip out of the intestines. The old man let the second dog eat his fill of dog meat before strapping it to the sled, cracking the whip, and disappearing out into the polar night.
That’s the kind of man Roald Amundsen was. So Mrs. Thorkildsen says. The Chief, she calls him. At first I think this is an expression of her somewhat unsophisticated ironic sense of humor, but she could parry the fact that Roald Amundsen’s own men called him that—so why can’t she?
Mrs. Thorkildsen shows me a picture of a man surrounded by white and wrapped in the fur of an animal I don’t immediately recognize. This is the Chief. The Chief has skis strapped to his feet, and leans forward onto his poles as he gazes majestically out over the endless white.
‘What in the world is he wearing?’ I ask Mrs. Thorkildsen, who is friendly enough to hold the book open right in front of my snout.
‘Wolf,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says. Silence.
I feel a mix of revulsion and awe. What kind of man dresses himself in wolf hide, and what is a poor mutt supposed to do if he encounters such a man along the road?
Keep in mind that Mrs. Thorkildsen is not particularly enthusiastic about the Chief. Sure, the man might be a polar hero and a national icon—Mrs. Thorkildsen doesn’t dispute that. But, as she determined early on in her studies of what she’s taken to calling ‘The big trip to the middle of nowhere’:
‘The Chief is a liar!’
Well, who isn’t? Mrs. Thorkildsen also resorts to lies on occasion, like when she says she’s just ducking out for a little bit and is gone for years on end, or when she fools the nice garbage man into thinking she’s senile, but I know it would be futile to discuss. For some reason, Mrs. Thorkildsen seems personally offended by the Chief.
‘His poor mother thought he was studying to be a doctor, and he let her believe that, even if he barely knew how to crack open a book. She was a widow, too. Roald Amundsen was sixteen when Nansen came home after traipsing across the Greenland ice, and the sight of the hero greeted by cheering crowds gave him his life’s calling. Not to be a polar explorer, as he himself claims, but to be celebrated. He wanted to be a star. A polar star!’
‘Well, okay, so what if he didn’t want to be a doctor?’ I object, but Mrs. Thorkildsen barely notices.
‘Fortunately for him, his mother dies. And, sure enough, the Chief might be a little embarrassed but ultimately thanks his good fortune for clearing this obstacle out of the way. Since he had it in his head that he’d studied medicine, the Chief didn’t think it necessary later on to bring a doctor on his expeditions. He managed to convince himself he was a good enough doctor.’
‘Well, okay,’ I say. ‘Most people seem to think they’re born veterinarians, so why not?’
‘The whole trip to the South Pole was a lie. He said he was going to the North Pole!’
‘Well, okay, so maybe he didn’t want to go to the North Pole after all. I can sympathize with that.’
‘But that’s the point! He never had any intention of going there, it was all a bluff. The North Pole had once been this big trophy but, as it happened, two other men both laid claim to being the first one there, and it turned into a real dogfight. Pardon the expression.’
‘I beg of you.’
‘The Chief hustled up some money, borrowed a boat, hired a crew, bought a pack of dogs, and set sail letting everyone think he was headed north. Where else would he be going? The Chief wanted to go where there were no other people,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen explains. ‘Not to settle there. No, if the Chief went somewhere, it was with the intention of leaving it behind.’
These are the kinds of places called ‘No man’s land.’ You find them everywhere, but the Chief
preferred a ‘No man’s land’ that was far, far away from anywhere else, so cold that no humans could live there.
‘I still find it hard to understand, even when Amundsen himself explains it, what is so great about exhausting oneself and putting one’s life in danger,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says. ‘On the other hand, they only gambled with their own lives. That’s how it was with the Major’s flying, too. I was anxious for him, but in the end he was only risking his own life. And he was a good pilot, anyway. Survived four or five plane crashes relatively unscathed.’
‘If a pilot crashes four or five times, how good can he really be?’
Mrs. Thorkildsen overhears me. She likes to talk about the Major:
‘It was only after he stopped that I realized how much the flying had meant to him. I wouldn’t say he became a different man. But it became possible to picture him helpless.’
Mrs. Thorkildsen is a little emotional now. And a little thirsty. She plods out to the kitchen, and for a moment I consider following her (you never know when a little treat is in store), but I lie still. Don’t want to get off track, and I know myself well enough to know the tiniest bit of sausage makes me forget everything else. In fact, just the thought of it makes my mouth water. Self-control. Stay!
Back in the living room, glass in hand, Mrs. Thorkildsen picks up the story as she’s crossing the floor on the way back to her chair.
‘That is to say, at first he compensated for the flying by buying a motorcycle. Not a big loud showy motorcycle, but a nice yellow one, just the right size for the two of us. A Honda. We used it intensely for a few weeks, took a few long rides and visited friends all the way out in Enebakk. And then it was left in the garage to get dusty, until he sold it to Neighbor Jack across the street. But I think the worst thing for him was giving up his driver’s license.’
‘You make him sound like a control freak,’ I interject. ‘That’s not how I remember him.’
‘He was just a man, like any other man. Just like the Chief, that’s what I’m trying to say. And I don’t think you could ever use the word “freak” to describe the Major,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen continues. ‘He hated freaks and gave his own son a massacre of a haircut on several occasions. Plus, he thrived on chaos. Like most men, he sought control over life by collecting tools and equipment and technical gadgets. And weapons, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘His weapons bothered me from the start. They jutted out of dressers and drawers and scared the living daylights out of me. But there was nothing to be done about it. He slept with a revolver under his pillow until we met. He didn’t know I knew that. When he got old, it felt oddly comfortable to keep weapons in the house. Or at least less uncomfortable. I think he would have felt terribly vulnerable without them, and he had trouble enough sleeping as it was. But in the end there were no weapons or tools that could help him, and he became as helpless as I had feared he would become. It didn’t bother me, actually. In fact, it was good for me. Our marriage was a sacred, ordinary, wretched marriage, but in many ways the last years were the best. In the last ten years, we probably spent more time together than we had in the first thirty. No one wants to wither and die, of course, but I know part of the Major enjoyed getting old. Not to have to worry about surviving at any cost.’
‘What happens if one of us gets old?’ I ask, but Mrs. Thorkildsen is lost in thought. A while later, after I’ve stopped waiting for her to say more, she chimes in:
‘What a drag it is getting old.’
16
I would probably not have survived the sail to Antarctica. That’s what Mrs. Thorkildsen thinks. I would have kicked the bucket before even making it on board the good ship Fram, she says. If I’d survived the five-month boat ride against all odds, I would probably have met certain death in the three-month-long march to and from the South Pole. And even surviving that was no guarantee of making it further. Did I still want to hear more?
‘I want to hear about the dogs,’ I say.
‘It does no good being impatient. The story of the dogs is part of a bigger story. A story within a story, so to speak. There are things you need to know.’
‘About what?’
‘About ice, for example.’
‘What is ice, other than solid water?’
‘Antarctica is mostly made up of water. So much water,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says, ‘that nearly all drinking water on earth can be found there. Almost ninety per cent.’
‘Is that a lot?’ I ask.
‘It’s a lot,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says.
‘Compared to what?’ I say, feeling smart.
‘Compared to almost anything, I’d say,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen replies, and I no longer feel so smart. Mrs. Thorkildsen thinks for a moment. When she’s done thinking, she gets up and goes into the kitchen. I follow—you never know when there might be a treat in store—but she’s only going to pour herself a glass of water. Two glasses of water. Three glasses of water. Four glasses of water, and another and another and another and another and another and yet another.
Afterwards Mrs. Thorkildsen goes out to the laundry room and gets her wonderful tea trolley, the one she normally only uses when she has company. She meticulously places the glasses she has poured on the trolley, then she wheels it slowly, slowly into the living room, for once without launching into the waiter’s battle cry:
‘All in one trip!’
This doesn’t unnerve me; on the contrary, it seems like a sensible solution that will save her many risky trips to the kitchen when the Dragon Water makes her unsteady later on. But then something gives me pause. Instead of setting the glasses on the table, which I’d been led by all past experience to believe she would do, Mrs. Thorkildsen parks the wonderful wheely cart in front of the fireplace, where she begins unloading the water glasses off the cart. One by one, she places them very gingerly on the floor.
Mrs. Thorkildsen places the glasses like this:
OOOOOOOOO O
Like a spirit passing over the waters, Mrs. Thorkildsen sweeps her arthritic hands over the glasses in large, circular motions as she guides me through mathematical mysteries to which I don’t think many dogs have been exposed.
‘All these glasses,’ she says as she waves her hands, ‘that’s a hundred per cent. A hundred per cent is everything. Do you see?’
‘One hundred per cent is everything,’ I repeat like a brainwashed cult member, and that’s all the encouragement she needs to continue.
‘This,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says, placing a finger on the glass standing apart from the others, ‘is the drinking water on Earth that’s not at the South Pole. While this,’ she points to the rest of the glasses, ‘is the drinking water on Earth that you find in Antarctica. Ninety per cent. Nine out of ten.’
‘That’s ninety per cent?’
‘That’s ninety per cent.’
‘And what’s the one glass?’
‘Ten per cent,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says, ‘of all the water. Do you see?’
‘I think I do,’ I respond, but I don’t have a clue.
Imagine if I did!
Considering hers is a life where nothing happens, I’d say there’s quite a lot of activity around Mrs. Thorkildsen these days. There may not be that many people showing up at the door since the Major vanished, but it’s as if every one of them, other than the Puppy’s Puppy, causes significant change in our lives. And like most changes, there are pros and cons to each of them. Many pros and cons. There may be changes that are purely good or purely bad, but I haven’t gotten the scent of them.
In Mrs. Thorkildsen’s case, it can be hard to tell the difference between a ‘pro’ and a ‘con.’ Both of them unfold mostly in silence, in the same surroundings. A good day is a day without rain, and on a bad day she’s asleep. Personally I have nothing to complain about—even on rainy days the food bowl is filled and Mrs. Thorkildsen opens the door so I can take a walk around the backyard on my own. Which is just fine, even though I don’t like getting wet. Not in that way.
Although it knocks her out, it’s also mostly the Dragon Water that gets Mrs. Thorkildsen out of the house at all. It’s when the supplies of Dragon Water are dwindling that Mrs. Thorkildsen equips herself for an expedition. And if we’re going to the Dragon Water well, there might also be a trip to the Library in store. One accompanies the other, the only question is who came first: hangovers or literature?
Every time the Librarian mentions that the Library will close in the new year, Mrs. Thorkildsen gets just as upset. It’s as if her mind contains a drawer where she can stuff and forget undesirable thoughts like that. Like the thought of calling the bank, the thought of the Library closing, and many other thoughts she can have all to herself.
And so we go home with another book in the wheely bag. That is, first Mrs. Thorkildsen goes to the Tavern to eat a patty melt and drink a beer. These tavern visits are a mixed experience far as I’m concerned.
At least I’m no longer tied up on the street, brutally exposed, I’m shielded from the worst of my fears of suddenly being assaulted by grabby human kid hands or loudmouth mutts. But that doesn’t mean I can let my guard down. You never know what might come out of the Tavern doors, or what mood it might be in.
There’s a friendly bowl of water placed in the corner for me, but I never quite manage to settle down and be calm in front of the Tavern gates. And I’m not the first poor dog to be left out here in limbo. Through the chemicals smeared all over the stone floor, I can pick up on the distinct scent of lonely dog.
Sometimes it feels comforting that other dogs get left out here, sometimes not. As with so many other things in life, it depends on the dog. There’s something about the whole situation that brings out the most pathetic part of us. A little dutiful sniffing around, followed by every dog for himself, in awkward silence and endless strain that mostly consists of avoiding each other’s stares. In a revolving-door pack like that, when anyone could come and go at any moment, staring is just an invitation to trouble, but you can imagine how hopeless it would be to avert your gaze once you’ve locked eyes with someone. Awkward and drawn out, except one time, which actually made all the other times worth it. One time, which arrived in the form of a greyhound-family mongrel bitch with black and white hair. Her name was Janis. I’ll never forget her.
Good Dogs Don't Make It to the South Pole Page 8