After some consideration, Mrs. Thorkildsen, without taking her eyes off the note, says:
‘Well, that’s shit.’
Since Mrs. Thorkildsen had given the book she had to return directly to the Librarian after the famous dinner, she is now completely purposeless in front of the Library’s shuttered doors. That must be why she begins sniffing around the shelf with the books looking for a new home, I think. And what does she find there in the shelf of discarded library books, can you guess?
‘A Life on the Ice: The Polar Chef Adolf Lindstrøm,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen says.
Then she says no more. Just stands there with the book in her hand and shows no sign of moving.
‘Well, I suppose there’s no point in going to the Tavern now that the Library is closed?’ I say, referring to Mrs. Thorkildsen’s ‘food for the belly and food for the soul’ doctrine. The Tavern visits were connected to the Library visits, and without the Library, the Tavern loses all meaning. I think.
Mrs. Thorkildsen considers this, and sets Lindstrøm back on the shelf. He’ll have to find himself a new home.
Mrs. Thorkildsen just stands there, staring at the letters on the sign hanging on the Library door, as if she is hoping they’d change. Switch positions and alter their message. The same letters that warned of the Library’s closure could simply rearrange to instead announce the Library was more open than ever, but this wasn’t meant to be. So, Mrs. Thorkildsen and the wheely bag go to the Tavern. Not fair.
37
After an eternity, maybe two, Mrs. Thorkildsen is still sitting in there, feasting on the most luscious patty melts and washing them down with one beer after another, apparently without giving a thought to me as I sit tied up, lonely and forgotten out in the hallway. Sure, there was an Elkhound bastard here when I arrived, but we chose to ignore each other completely, which worked out just fine, then his owner came and took him away and everyone was happy. His name was Growl, and his owner made it very clear that Growl was a good boy, without specifying why. Good at chasing elk, I guess, but beyond that I’m not quite sure exactly what Growl has to offer.
The door opens and, God help me, here comes Mrs. Thorkildsen! She’s moving slowly, but somewhat steadily, although the wheely bag seems to have grown even heavier.
I get so irrationally happy I don’t quite understand it myself. It’s a joy that takes hold of body and soul and shakes me up and down until I’m dizzy, and I would have loved to throw myself in Mrs. Thorkildsen’s arms, but I stay on the green astroturf mat while Mrs. Thorkildsen drags the wheely bag over the threshold. And continues. Before I realize what’s happening, Mrs. Thorkildsen takes the first step down the stairs, and before I can say anything, she’s on to the next. Moment of truth. The wheely bag is on its way down the first step, and Mrs. Thorkildsen still hasn’t noticed me. I should bark to alert her, but I’m dumbstruck with anticipation, afraid I’ll scare Mrs. Thorkildsen, who’s obviously in trouble.
Right behind her, you see, comes an ugly little gnome. The gnome reeks of old cooking fat, but that’s pretty much the only good thing I can say about him. His voice is angry and sharp.
‘Hey!’ he yells so loudly that Mrs. Thorkildsen jumps and sways momentarily, until she grabs the banister.
‘You ran out on the bill!’
Mrs. Thorkildsen is filled with shame on the spot. Like a broad brushstroke by a master’s hand, it colors the moment sad and scary and pitiful. Mrs. Thorkildsen is afraid now, so afraid I could have nuzzled my nose against her knee, maybe shot her the handsome look she loves, tilted head, broad smile, but it’s impossible. Mrs. Thorkildsen, standing there in the stairs, accused as a thief and a swindler in her old age, has one witness against her. And that witness is me. Because I’m not there on the stairs with her, I’m still here tied up by the door.
Mrs. Thorkildsen has forgotten me!
The surprise between us is palpable. It’s a deeply humiliating moment. I simply don’t know what to say. This might change the whole game. We’ll see.
‘Have I forgotten?’ she asks.
‘Yes, you’ve forgotten,’ I say. Say it like it is. I’m about to offer some words of consolation, add that it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, let’s just go home so I can get some food in my stomach, but I don’t have time before Mrs. Thorkildsen breaks out in a warm smile, wherever that came from.
‘Oh, of course!’
Her admission/acknowledgment floods me with relief, but then it’s not my turn anyway, not this time either. She’s not talking to me but to the gnome in the stinky apron, the one I would have bitten and chased away if I weren’t helplessly bound.
‘It seems I’ve forgotten to pay,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen stutters, and the shame drives both her voice and her hand as it frantically digs around in her purse as if it were a newly planted flower bed where a juicy bone lies buried.
‘Come and pay!’ barks the gnome.
‘I can’t find my wallet … it was just here …’ stutters Mrs. Thorkildsen.
‘Don’t have money?’
It’s not a question, it’s an accusation.
Mrs. Thorkildsen’s hands and voice shake.
‘Someone … maybe it’s up there, did I leave it?’
Mrs. Thorkildsen turns around to re-attempt the stairs she had just begun precariously descending, and only then—then!—does she look at me with her perplexed eyes, and my instinctive elation over being seen vanishes quicker than a chocolate biscuit on a dog’s snout. Because she doesn’t, to tell you the truth. Mrs. Thorkildsen sees a dog, but she doesn’t see me until it’s been so long that there simply is no comfortable explanation.
‘I’m calling the cops!’ the gnome shouts.
‘Thank you, would you be so kind?’ Mrs. Thorkildsen smiles a forlorn version of her sweetest smile.
‘I mean I’m calling the cops on you!’
‘Oh, thank you. I’m sure it’s best to report these things right away. Perhaps they can find the thief? And if there is no thief, I suppose one has to report it anyway, the insurance company probably requires it, I’m sure.’
‘Shit, you drunk or what? I’m calling the cops to come and get you. For fuck’s sake, trying to run away!’
What a rude dude! I’m furious, but I’m tied up. And I can instinctively sense the stinky gnome is a kicker, a demon who with power and gusto and great satisfaction would plant his boot in the belly of any defenseless creature who happens not to be human. He probably even kicks humans, too. That’s normally how it goes: from animal abuse to human abuse.
Mrs. Thorkildsen sees me and Mrs. Thorkildsen trips. Trips so slowly that for a moment it looks like she’s floating, as if she’s had enough of this bizarre situation and has decided to leave it behind. Fly up to the sky like a soaring spirit. But the soaring is short before it becomes a fall, and Mrs. Thorkildsen stumbles backwards on the stairs. It all happens without a sound, takes forever, and ends with a short, awful thud. And afterwards, when Mrs. Thorkildsen is done falling, it gets even quieter.
‘Fuck,’ the gnome says.
Maybe he thinks it’s his fault. It’s not. It’s my fault.
Fuck.
LAST BITE
Imprisoned
Me
In Prison
FROM TASSEN THORKILDSEN’S POEM-CYCLE PRIMAL BARKS FROM THE DEPTHS OF AN OKAY KENNEL IN OUTER ENEBAKK
38
From one moment to the next, I went from being a relatively free creature to being a relatively unfree creature. I say ‘relatively,’ because it’s such a convenient word on these occasions, relatively speaking. It puts whatever precision a statement may have out of commission with a mocking sneer, and I can use that now, in my captivity. Relatively unfree. Oh, yes. On the other hand, I can see now how relative my freedom was.
Gassestranda Dog Home. Don’t let the welcoming name fool you like it fooled me. Gassestranda Dog Home is a good old-fashioned dog prison of the medium-security variety. Yard time during the day. Locked cell door at night. No
probation. No education with a focus on rehabilitation. Death Row. I know as little about how long I have left here as I know about how long I’ve been here. Time works differently in prison. Chases its own tail. Life mostly consists of sleeping and moping around. In one way, everything is as it should be. I get the food I need, though it’s nowhere near as varied or beautifully arranged as it was at home. Far too much kibble. (I have a conspiracy theory about kibble, that kibble is a plot hatched by a greedy veterinary industry who profit grossly from removing the plaque dogs inevitably get from eating this crap, but we can talk about that another time.)
If Amnesty International, which Mrs. Thorkildsen has single-handedly funded for years, did a raid on Gassestranda Dog Home, they’d find a whole range of poor conditions, including indefensible lack of gravy, dog snacks, and other goodies. I’ve always said that you never know when there might be a treat in store, but at Gassestranda Dog Home, this rule doesn’t hold sway. In here, you know there’s never a treat in store, and that realization does something to a dog. I must admit that the Gassestranda Diet is probably better for me in the long run than the Thorkildsen Diet. I’m in better shape than ever but, as I said, I fear the plaque.
The terrain around Gassestranda Dog Home is, well, it’s terrain. Hard to take it seriously when none of the young people who work here can be bothered to bring weapons when we go out in the woods, despite the fact that the moss reeks of game. On the whole, life, despite the lack of gravy, smells more interesting here than it does at home. With my eternal romantic dreams of being part of a pack, I suppose I’ve never philosophized much about what it might entail, aromatically speaking. Well, it stinks, to put it that way. Being locked up at night in a room with sad dogs of all sizes and ages is like trying to sleep in a hurricane of senseless, more or less desperate information. Smells crisscross each other at an exhausting pace, even when the whole flock is asleep. Pink clouds and green gas everywhere. The snoring. The whimpering. The horrors.
The yard is, well, a yard. The gangs are in charge out here. First and foremost Rusty and Rover, bird dog hybrids who are brothers and can never agree about which one is boss, but instantly lay all strife aside when they encounter the rest of the prison population. Those two jerks win over all the easily swayed dogs, many of them yesterday’s or tomorrow’s bullying victims, and they terrorize whomever they please. Everyone’s afraid of them. Everyone, except Ruffen Rasmussen.
Unlike all the other inmates and staff at Gassestranda, Ruffen Rasmussen, a light brown furball of a teddy bear, is always in a good mood. A lighthearted spirit for the simple reason that he feels sure he’s going to get out of here. Ruffen Rasmussen is not a believer, Ruffen Rasmussen is a knower.
‘The Lord shall return!’ Ruffen Rasmussen exclaims, sure in his convictions. He’s done this before, you see, or so he claims. He appeals to patience and loyalty, then once again tells the story of his family vacationing in a land where dogs were forbidden and they parked him at Gassestranda Dog Home for a while.
‘Just like you, brother,’ Ruffen Rasmussen says, to one dog after the other, ‘I was a lost soul when I first got here. When The Lord said: “You just stay here, Ruffen, and we’ll be back to get you!” and then left me, I thought my heart was going to break into a million pieces. Everything went black as a Labrador. I became a listless shadow of myself. Instead of bringing joy to others, which I was born to do, I brought misery on myself. I started shitting on the floor again! And why did I do that, Tassen?’
I know the routine by now, I know what’s coming, I deliver my line:
‘Because you doubted, Ruffen. Because you doubted.’
‘Because I doubted!’ Ruffen is triumphant. ‘I doubted that The Lord would come back. And when you doubt The Lord, how can you ever trust yourself?’
Doubt is the root of all evil, according to Ruffen Rasmussen, and he might just be right. ‘You must trust Your Lord blindly,’ he lectures, ‘and you’ll be rewarded and live a long life in the house.’
‘What if you don’t have a Lord?’ I asked him one day we—or he, really—were discussing this in the yard. ‘Or if the Lord has fallen down the stairs and disappeared, for instance?’
‘The Lord will always come back!’ Ruffen Rasmussen said empathically, with a little snort. ‘The question is: will you be here when he comes back?’
‘She. My Lord is a lady. I doubt she’ll be back to get me anytime soon,’ I said.
‘You see!’ Ruffen Rasmussen said. ‘You are a doubter!’
Otherwise, the clientele is like any other prison: Half of those who are here should never have been here. The other half should never have been anywhere else. That is, some of them should maybe be somewhere else entirely. I mean, what are Romanian street dogs doing in Outer Enebakk? I’m not a racist, far from it, but I have my own thoughts about the prison population’s background. There isn’t a surplus of Norwegian Elk Hounds here, to put it that way.
‘There’s a meaning behind it,’ Mrs. Thorkildsen would say when life didn’t go the way she thought it should. It was, as far as I could tell, her mother who at some point had first discovered this phenomenon. I hold tight to those words in here, but it’s not easy to get a whiff of meaning behind these locked doors. I’m safe here in my cage, might even go so far as to say that I like my cage—I’d love to have one at home—but I’m not too stupid to realize that I’m captive. But, like I said, I’m getting food and exercise, and were it not for Ringo’s snoring below me, I wouldn’t have much to complain about.
Ringo, on the other hand—he has a great deal to complain about. Still, he has only himself to blame. Ringo, you see, has bitten a child. You might say he was acting on behalf of many, and that there was probably a very good reason for doing what he did, but it doesn’t matter. Ringo’s been a bad dog, and he knows it. He regrets it so much it haunts his sleep, he sounds like an anxious poodle when he dreams, but it doesn’t matter. Ringo’s been here a long time, since before I got here, and to tell you the truth, I don’t think he should get his hopes up about getting out, which I won’t mention to him, of course. I’m worried Ringo’s not going to make it. And Ringo isn’t a dog suited for just anyone. I’d like to see Mrs. Thorkildsen handle a dog like that, who weighs more than her to top it all off. But, who knows, maybe Mrs. Thorkildsen is a born dog-subduer. Maybe she would simply beat Ringo until the whip handle snapped and he became her obedient servant. Then Mrs. Thorkildsen would zoom through the woods on a sled made of skin and bones, pulled by Ringo with ice in his moustache and a steely gaze. Who knows?
I hope and pray that’s not the case, but as far as I know humans and especially Mrs. Thorkildsen, her absence might be explained by the fact that she’s withdrawn in order to make good on her threat to write a book about the Chief and his dogs. It’s a bad idea I unfortunately may have nourished simply by listening to her attentively, asking a question now and then. But I’ve learned my lesson now. If you listen to people, you’re only giving them something to say.
‘Don’t do it, Mrs. Thorkildsen,’ I’d say if she were here. ‘We can just go to town and buy a book, you don’t need to write it yourself. On the contrary. You need to read.’
Mrs. Thorkildsen might sneer in disgust at these warnings. Might look at me askance with her serious, mocking eyes.
For my part, I can’t honestly say that I see a deeper meaning in my existence the way it looks these days, but I’m not blind to the fact that a cage may be the most appropriate frame for the last chapters in the story about the dogs who went around the world to Nowhere.
It would be wrong to claim that I eventually tired of the story about the wolves who went to the South Pole. On the other hand, the damn dramaturgy of the story was such that any feelings of pride or victory were tainted with blood long before they reached their destination.
But what happens if we try to break the performance in Le Théâtre Antarctique down into a classical three-act structure? That is:
1) Chase a man up a tree.
2) Threaten him with a stick.
3) Get the man safely down from the tree.
Let’s give it a try:
1) Chase a dog up a tree.
2) Whip the poor bastard.
3) Get the dog down from the tree with a well-aimed shot.
As you can see: total narrative collapse. No need to wonder whether there will be a happy ending. You won’t get Hollywood to make that movie. Not until they’ve made Lassie Goes Down the Well and 101 Dead Dalmatians.
39
Strictly speaking, I don’t have much to complain about in prison—almost nothing at all, from a dog’s point of view. But some of the problem, perhaps the problem, is that my needs have long since exceeded a dog’s natural needs, and there’s no going back. For me either. I simply missed the sound of human voices, the sweet hum. And gravy, of course. There isn’t a drop of gravy in there, did I mention that?
Human voices make mornings the best time of the day. There are usually two guards on duty, and I feel a sense of inner calm as I listen to their voices chatting away, weaving in and out of each other when they’re not barking orders to the inmates, who bark back whether they’re being spoken to or not.
‘Tassen,’ I hear a voice say one sweet morning. Life behind bars has taught me to be careful with spontaneous reactions of joy, it’s so easy to be misunderstood, so all I do is perk up my ears and raise my head. But I am curious and realize I haven’t felt this way in far too long.
Two pairs of feet in front of the cage. A familiar smell. Or to be specific, several familiar smells with the same origin. Home! The smell of Mrs. Thorkildsen didn’t seem to belong here at Gassestranda Dog Home, and it brings me more joy and despair than the place could handle.
I am in no way in the process of forgetting her, far from it, but it is a longing that is so hard to bear, I’ve tried to hide it away as much as I can, a little bit like Mrs. Thorkildsen did after the Major wandered off unarmed to the eternal hunting grounds.
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