Good Dogs Don't Make It to the South Pole

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Hans-Olav Thyvold was born in Norway in 1959. He has published several nonfiction books and also been a journalist, radio host and tv host. In 2017 he published his first work of fiction, Snille hunder kommer ikke til Sydpolen. The novel has now been translated into English and is published as Good Dogs Don’t Make It to the South Pole. Thyvold has previously written and published books about Roald Amundsen as well as Fridtjof Nansen.

  First published in Australia and New Zealand in 2019 by Allen & Unwin

  First published in Norway in 2017 as Snille hunder kommer ikke til Sydpolen by H. Aschehoug & Co., Forlag

  Copyright © Hans-Olav Thyvold 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76087 546 6

  eISBN 978 1 76087 340 0

  Translation by Marie Ostby

  Set by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Cover design: Lisa White

  Cover photo: Rebecca Spencer/Stocksy

  Pour Jacqueline

  CONTENTS

  First Bite

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Second Bite

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  Last Bite

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  Acknowledgments

  FIRST BITE

  What are days for?

  To wake us up.

  To put between the endless nights.

  What are nights for?

  To fall through time into another world.

  LAURIE ANDERSON

  1

  So, this is Death. The last day of Major Thorkildsen’s life. I know that as soon as I set paw into the sick room. How do I know? The Major is a shadow of himself, he lies wheezing in the sick bed. But that’s how he looked yesterday, too, and the day before, and the day before. I don’t remember the day before that, or the day before that.

  Mrs. Thorkildsen lifts me onto his bed, the way she’s done every day for way too long now. The Major likes having me on his bed. That may be why I exist. One time an Afghan Hound called me an overgrown lap dog, and that’s fine with me. I’d like to know what a shaky daddy longlegs of an Afghan Hound has to contribute to the bed of a dying man. Now that the time has come for tenderness and love, being an overgrown lap dog with fur and empathy is the best thing in the world.

  I give the Major just the kind of lick from head to toe he’s started to love in his old age, but there is no joy left in him, just a foul odor. The smell of the pain that grows inside the Major has been there since long before he got what they call ‘sick’ and they came to get him but, now, the room is filled with the smell in all its nuances. The bitterness of death. The sweetness of death.

  Always the same, always the same, your bum’s behind you whichever way you aim.

  The Major taught me that rhyme, but I had to test it out in practice before accepting it as truth. I chased down my tail with great power and endurance, and was always so close to catching that bastard, but at last I resigned myself to the truth:

  Your bum is behind you whichever way you aim.

  Mrs. Thorkildsen is asleep. I was afraid she’d be the first one to go if she didn’t get some rest, but she has to wake up now if she’s going to catch the Major’s last hours on Earth, which I don’t want her to miss.

  The simplest thing would have been to wake her by barking, but I don’t want to make noise here. I’ve had a genteel upbringing and can’t shake the fear of being thrown out. No idea where that fear comes from, since I can’t remember ever being thrown out of any place, but that’s the way anxiety works—it doesn’t need proof in order to blossom.

  I stride across the Major’s feet, sneak down from the bed, and pitter-patter across the floor over to Mrs. Thorkildsen’s chair. I nudge her leg, carefully, so she won’t be startled, but of course she is. She’s befuddled as she always is when suddenly awoken, but still jumps to her feet in what would be a tiger’s leap if she had the strength. It’s still quick enough that it startles me.

  Mrs. Thorkildsen lays a hand on the Major’s forehead. Cranes her neck and rests her ear against his mouth. Holds her breath. For a long time. Mrs. Thorkildsen looks at me. For a long time.

  ‘Do you have to go out?’ she asks.

  Really? I’d be pushing my paws against the door, scratching and whimpering. Doesn’t she know me better after all these years? She’s both smart and well-read, the missus, but sometimes she’s just so slow to get what I mean. Maybe it’s because of my nature. I’m a one-man dog, and I’ve never tried to hide it. On the contrary. Mrs. Thorkildsen has fed and bathed me, groomed and walked me ever since the day the Major picked me up—no, even before that—but I am and will always be the Major’s dog until the day he dies. When the day of death has passed and I’m a widower dog, it occurs to me that I haven’t given a second thought to the question of what happens to Mrs. Thorkildsen and me from then on. Cross that bridge when you come to it. That’s a good rule. Set meal times, however, that’s a dumb rule.

  Mrs. Thorkildsen softly mumbles to her husband as she moistens his mouth with a little sponge, speaks in low tones with her mild, singsongy voice, the one that contrasted the Major’s gruff words so well as they sat at home in the dark, each with their own Dragon Water, and hummed songs to which they’d forgotten the words. And then talked about all the weird things they’d done together. About treacherous great-aunts and Nubian kings. About the War there was and the War to come. Sometimes they talked about things they should have done. And then there were many things, done and undone, that they never talked about.

  When she’s done dabbing, Mrs. Thorkildsen stands still, gazing at her husband, who looks to be sleeping peacefully, but on the inside is fighting with all his last strength to die. It’s not as easy as it once was.

  Something must have sparked a decision in Mrs. Thorkildsen’s little white head. With a clumsy heaving effort, she climbs onto the Major’s giant metal bed. She almost has to squeeze herself in between the bed frame and his still-giant body, and then she falls to rest on his arm, just like I usually do.

  The room grows quiet again, and I don’t know what to do with myself. The bed is a little too high, I can’t get up there without Mrs
. Thorkildsen’s help, and seeing as she has already struggled her way onto the bed, I suppose I can’t really hope that she’ll climb back out to lift me up and then finagle herself back into position. I remain standing on the floor and weigh my options:

  Option A: Whining is out of the question due to my aforementioned ejection phobia.

  Option B: Restless pacing back and forth across the floor. It can’t hurt; then again, it probably won’t help either.

  Option C: Sit stiffly at attention, like one of those sweet spaniels grieving at the grave of their long since deceased owner. ‘Fido sat by the gravestone for nine years.’ So? Couldn’t Fido have shot himself instead and joined Dad in the great beyond? But then there is that damned opposable thumbs problem. Someone needs to build a handgun for dogs. There’s a market there.

  Mrs. Thorkildsen must know that the Major is leaving us tonight, too, but she talks to him as if this is just another day on his journey back home. When he gets there, they’ll sit together with a nice glass and watch day glide over into night. Light a few candles. Play a little Haydn. Build a fire in the fireplace. Talk softly and tenderly. That’ll be nice.

  Mrs. Thorkildsen can say whatever she wants, but I’m afraid it’s too late. That part of the body she’s pressing herself against tonight is about to shut off. The Major’s in there somewhere, a mechanic systematically strolling around, flipping off one switch after the other, closing pipes and turning off lights. The little mechanic smells like liquor and wretchedness, and that’s exactly how he wants to smell.

  ‘I hope I don’t have to tell you that I love you …’

  Mrs. Thorkildsen’s words are so obvious that they almost cover over the shock that she’s uttering them at all. I’ve never heard Mrs. Thorkildsen say anything of the sort!

  The Major lets out three loud sobs. He’s here, and although Mrs. Thorkildsen can’t hear it, I can hear him calling me. Only the mothers of wolves know where I’m summoning my strength from, but with a giant leap I’m back on the bed. I slink in between the wall and the Major and find my spot with my nose nudged into his hand that, through sickness and death, still smells of ocean and phosphorus. I’m not afraid anymore.

  He stops breathing right before his heart stops beating. A dead heat. The last thing he does is to emit a sound he’s never made before. The sound of his voice trying to sneak out before the mechanic grabs it, too.

  He’s gone.

  It takes a little while before Mrs. Thorkildsen realizes it’s happened. I don’t know if she’s dozed off, but she’s wide awake now. She says his name. Hand on his forehead, ear against his mouth, holding her breath. The central heating whistles. Then Mrs. Thorkildsen starts sobbing softly, and I’m back at it with the nose again. It takes a little while and three nudges before she senses me. She sniffles and puts her bony hand on my neck. She’s a decent scratcher; she lacks the Major’s perfectly measured solid grip, but she has nails to make up for it. That takes her far. She looks at me a while before saying: ‘Well, Tassen, I guess it’s just you and me now.’

  Then we go to sleep, all three of us.

  2

  I was born in the countryside. The barn smell has disappeared over the years, but I’m a farm dog at heart. Six in my litter. Late in the spring. I never knew my father, but I don’t think we should put too much stock in that. I’m a little suspicious of psychology. At least for dogs.

  The siblings I grew up with disappeared one by one, and I would have, too, if I hadn’t been born this way.

  The wrong color.

  My life turned out the way it did because my face is a different color than what’s considered ‘right.’ And it doesn’t take much. In my case, the top of my snout is the only part of me covered with white instead of black fur. One white spot on my nose, and I became a second-rate animal, useless as a show dog, less than. The one left over when the rest of the litter is sold.

  An outcast.

  Of course, I didn’t understand any of this then. Like most puppies, I was happy every time a competitor disappeared from the trough. Those were good days, and they only got better through a summer so long and full of impressions for all the senses that when the first snow fell, it felt like the first time.

  With the new snow came a new life, or several new lives, in the form of new siblings. Don’t ask me who the father of this batch was, but from the day they were born, they were the bane of my existence. Mother, who had grown more and more distant over the past few months, now became directly hostile towards me. You don’t know how it feels to be growled and snapped at by your own mother until you experience it yourself.

  I went from a blessed only-child existence to be the pariah in my litter overnight. Pariah is too mild. I wasn’t even part of the litter. My brother and sisters were nice enough, and they smelled good, but my relationship with Mother was never the same again. I think that’s taken its toll on me but, like I said, we’ll steer clear of Freud. Pavlov, too, for that matter.

  From morning to night, people of all ages, shapes, and sizes came stomping through the house, all with the same goal: to see the puppies! It was that time again, and it gave me hope that we might get back to a state of peace and quiet, if only we could get rid of the little brats. I could always forgive, or worst case avoid, Mother’s growling and barking.

  Despite the wide range of types and ages, the people who came by almost all reacted in the exact same way. Their voices grew soft, their heartbeats calmed down, their blood smelled sweeter. They all sang variations on the same tune, and they were all there to find a favorite. To pick a dog. The only comparison is walking into an orphanage and buying the kid who strikes your fancy.

  People who compare having dogs to having kids have it all wrong. Only a few people see their dog at birth (sadly!), and even fewer take their own offspring to be put to sleep as the endpoint of a loving life together. And while your child will hopefully grow apart from you after a few years and get the hell away from you and your personal crazy, a dog stays with you their whole life, a life in which you at last become God almighty himself:

  Should I let my dog live, or should I let my dog die?

  It was during this second tasteless beauty pageant that I really became aware of my flaws. For no one even glanced at me until they’d had their fill gazing at the little puppy faces, and when they spotted me, they all asked the same question:

  ‘Why is that one so big?’ they asked, and then came the same bigoted reply about the white spot on my nose. But even without that white spot, I would have been no match for the four tiny creatures who hadn’t yet figured out that their tails were behind them and that life was full of scary twists and turns.

  is what most people said when they saw the puppies, and I never could figure out what they really meant by that. They pinched and they petted and they scratched until it was impossible to say who was dizzier, them or the puppies. Kids and adults, women and men, they let themselves be hypnotized one by one. I got scratched and complimented, too. When it rains it pours on all dogs, as they say, but I, a dog in the prime of my youth, still felt like an old elephant.

  When I pictured a life in the hands of the nasty kids who stopped by, a chill ran down my spine and all the way to the tip of my tail. You can’t give a dog to an untrained child. There were a few little girls who didn’t even want a dog, they wanted a rabbit (!), but Mother and Father had decided that they would be getting a dog. A wise choice, but what would it do to a poor dog to grow up as a rabbit substitute?

  Still, I’m glad I got to see this meat-and-fur market, and even gladder to escape it thanks to my white spot and my advanced age. I had no idea what a ‘dog show’ was, but the words were a punch in the gut whenever I heard them. To me it wasn’t just okay, it was liberating to know that I wasn’t made for dog shows, although I was curious about what they actually entailed. I cultivated some unhealthy fantasies around that term, yes.

  When it was my litter being shown at auction, I’d been too young and dumb to see just how cynica
lly the selection and sale of puppies was organized. I had to grin—sarcastically—at the fortune in my misfortune. I had, it turns out, a perfectly wonderful dog’s life, thanks to the fact that, despite tens of thousands of years of living with dogs, people still hadn’t understood the meaning of the first commandment, point 1.1 in the user’s manual: ‘A dog’s bark is worse than its bite.’

  He stood out from all the others who had stopped by to rejoice over the furballs as soon as he entered the room. He was the only one who came alone. And he was the oldest. And the largest. When he stepped across the threshold, the room became his, his rules were the ones that mattered now. An old alpha who roamed around alone, hard to know what to make of that but, in my situation, any news felt like bad news. He was the only one who showed no sentimentality when he met our little flock. Without a single

  he pointed straight at me and asked:

  ‘What’s wrong with that one?’

  Once again, I was forced to hear my own inferiority stated and explained. I had no desire to leave, but I didn’t want to be humiliated either. The big alpha didn’t finish listening to the answer, but interrupted:

  ‘Half price. Cash.’ And that’s how the Major became my owner.

  It all happened so fast that I had no idea what was happening until I, for the first time in my life, found myself in a car. At first, I thought it was not the car, but the landscape around us that was moving, which turned the trip into a nightmare. No matter where I positioned myself, I was being pulled in all directions by invisible forces until I couldn’t tell up from down. Neither did my stomach. It all came up. Normally I would have wolfed down such a delicacy, but I just felt awful and laid there in my own vomit until we arrived and, without realizing it, I was home.

  Sickly and weak as I was, I didn’t absorb a lot that first evening, or it might just be the familiar erasing the memory of the unfamiliar. But I’ve heard the story told many times of how one day, with no agreement or warning, the Major came home with a stinky puppy to a Mrs. Thorkildsen who had already started dreading the Major’s death, long before he got sick. Of how I was hosed down in the tub, wrapped in an old bathrobe, and photographed. Mrs. Thorkildsen delights in showing off that mortifying picture, even to complete strangers.