Lars searches for Pock in the night

Lars Haug’s night search for his missing dog brings Trond Sander out of his house and into an encounter shaped by darkness, interrupted sleep, and an abrupt shift from isolation to wary company. Poker is found close by, but the dog’s guarded growl stops the search from ending in a simple reunion.

The Disturbance and Its Cost

Past midnight, Trond Sander is asleep in the small room beside the kitchen, where he has set up a temporary bed beneath the window. A loud, penetrating sound, repeated at intervals and then broken by silence, wakes him. Looking through a crack in the window, he sees a yellow torch beam near the road by the river. The sound is unfamiliar until he recognizes it as a dog whistle; its holder is calling for Poker.

Trond Sander lies down again, already certain he will not fall back asleep. He has become particular about the little sleep he gets: a ruined night, he reflects, can cast a shadow over the days that follow, making him irritable and out of place when he needs to concentrate. The disturbance therefore presents a small but real cost to him, not merely a noise in the night.

Joining the Search

Despite that reluctance, Trond Sander gets dressed. His clothes are cold; he pulls on an old pea jacket, takes a torch from the shelf, and steps outside. The yard is almost completely dark until he switches on the exterior light, which casts a warm glow from the red-painted outhouse wall. He then walks down the road toward the man still searching on the slope.

The man moves his torch slowly in a circle, sweeping the edge of the forest, the road, and the riverbank, and calls Poker before blowing the whistle again. Trond Sander has spoken with his neighbour only a few times while passing the cottage, usually on early walks with Lyra. He briefly considers turning back, unsure what help he can offer, but feels that the neighbour should not be alone out there. By joining him, he makes a decision to share the search even without knowing what practical difference he can make.

Poker Appears

The searchers stand together in the stillness following days and nights of rain and wind. Their torches point from hip height into the dark. Trond Sander describes the night landscape as unlike its daytime counterpart: darkness conceals much, yet has also become familiar and safe to him, an open space in which the body can move freely.

Then a sudden sense of cold makes him feel that something is behind him. Lars Haug directs his torch past Trond Sander, who turns to see Poker standing stiffly on guard. The dog’s posture suggests guilt to the narrator, but the reunion is not immediately affectionate. Lars Haug speaks to Poker in a childlike, scolding manner and steps toward him; Poker flattens his ears and growls. Lars Haug stops and lowers the torch until its beam falls on the ground. In the light, the dog’s white patches are visible while the black ones blend into the night. The passage ends as Lars Haug begins to speak again, without showing whether Poker comes to him or how the encounter is resolved.

Significance of the Encounter

The episode turns an ordinary search into Trond Sander’s first act of contact with a neighbour he barely knows. Its movement is measured in small choices: he wakes, recognizes the whistle, weighs the cost of losing more sleep, and nevertheless goes outside. The darkness both hides the dog and alters the men’s sense of the familiar landscape, while the final growl leaves the meeting between owner and animal unsettled. Trond Sander’s willingness to go out also frames his reflection that he has been lucky: a bad night will affect him for a few days, but he expects to recover.