Karate Chop: Stories (Lannan Translation Selection (Graywolf Paperback)) (2 page)

MUTUAL DESTRUCTION

HE WHISTLES HIS DOG TO HIM, PUTS A COLLAR ON IT, AND PULLS IT a short way back from the edge of the wood so they’re not stuck out like a sore thumb. It’s late in the day and there’s a big fallow field between him and Morten, so he can remain standing here. Morten is going about the farmyard with the red bitch at his heels. It’s lean and rough haired, and he’s always only ever had dachshunds. Small, aggressive animals that chew the lead and the floor mats in the car, and Henrik doesn’t like small dogs. But when they go hunting foxes, Morten takes his dachshund, and when they go shooting by the fjord, Henrik takes his small munsterlander and the decoys. They’ve sat many times in the caravan on the Gardeners’ land down in the bog, drinking weak coffee from plastic cups, the air dense with the smell of wet dog, talking about how practically things divided up, Henrik having a big dog for the one thing and Morten having dachshunds for the other. But now Morten’s down there in the farmyard alone. A single light is shining from the kitchen window. He must have forgotten to switch it off, and the dog reaches only to his bootlegs. It looks like he’s trying to fix some part of the door in the gable wall. There’s a lot needs fixing now. There’s a lot needs to sink in. Henrik, for instance, always thought it was the wife’s fault, because she gave you the feeling that one of the things she liked best about Morten was that he wasn’t good enough. It can’t have been easy for Morten, being married to someone who was always looking for the horizons in everything. She talked big, and Morten must have felt awkward about the students at school calling her Skylark, and you can see it in the house down there as well. The windows are the sort with narrow wooden bars and they’re painted red like in Sweden. There’s some wickerwork by the main door, and when you come in it’s all long tables in the living room and hand-sewn cushions, and on the walls what they called expressive art.

You always ended up feeling a bit wrong when you visited Morten and his wife. Tina, in particular, came across as the kind of person who had nothing against sticking her hand into a duck and pulling out the gizzard. It was because she was brought up in the country. She knew how most things looked on the inside. And she wasn’t bothered if it smelled, as long as it was useful for something. She didn’t mind taking her turn and getting her hands dirty, but Morten’s wife was one who hoarded from her surroundings. Things had to have diplomas, titles, and certificates. Even Morten’s dogs had to have pedigrees and long names, but Morten liked that about Tina. And he thought she looked fantastic with her school-bag, her blond hair, and her little smocks. He liked that his dogs, which he called Muggi and Molly and Sif so as not to be laughed at, underneath had sophisticated names. One of them was called Ariadne Pil-Neksø. The last part after a kennel in Northern Jutland, and Morten liked to say how much Ariadne Pil-Neksø had cost, but Ariadne Pil-Neksø had never been able to flush a fox out of its hole, and Henrik shot it on the little patch of land behind the house while it was digging in a molehill.

Like it should be, he thinks to himself and puts his hand down to his big dog. It’s twilight, and its wet tongue licks the palm of his hand. He watches his hunting pal going about the yard, back and forth, with what looks like an electric drill. Morten has his dog with him, too. A lively little thing, all instinct, but basically slight and always in danger of coming out worst. This strange bond between dog and hunter, he feels unable to put it into words, but maybe it’s something like crossing piss streams, and it’s why a hunter should always be able to shoot his own dog. That’s the way it is: shoot your best friend, but know your limits, too. That was how Morten had put it back then, almost ten years ago when they’d been sitting in the kitchen and he’d said that the dog he had then had cancer.

“You’ve to know when you’ve not got it in you,” Morten had said. “If you shoot this one, I’ll take yours when its turn comes.”

He’d gestured with a finger at Henrik’s first hunting dog. Such a lovely big dog, lying there in front of the radiator looking up at him.

They’d agreed to keep it to themselves, and he shot Morten’s dog, the one with cancer, as promised, and three years later Morten shot the first of his. They were quits then, for the next of Henrik’s died all by itself. But it had been different with Morten’s, and nothing wrong with that. From the dog’s point of view, and the hunter’s, a clean shot was the best thing. It wouldn’t be right for an animal to be crammed inside a car and driven to the vet. A clean shot when the dog’s doing something it likes is a good death for a dog. He wouldn’t mind going that way himself one day when he was as far up in Tina as he could get. That’d suit him fine, but still he’s standing here at the edge of the wood with an unpleasant feeling inside him while Morten goes about the yard in a way that makes it plain his wife and children are gone. It can’t have come as much of a surprise, though. Everyone had known for years she was the leaving kind. Everyone had thought for years that Morten looked so small alongside her. It had always been good company in the Gardeners’ caravan, even though Morten had become such a bigmouth. They’d always been friends, but there was a lack of balance in it. He had never let him down. He shot the first of Morten’s dogs as it came up out of a foxhole. The next one he shot in the plantation with the Christmas trees. The third had been in such pain for some reason; Morten said it had been run over, but it could just as well have been something else entirely. It was so bad Henrik had to lay it in place for the shot, and the dog with the stupid name he took care of on the little patch behind the house. The fifth he shot in the back garden one day when the wife wasn’t home, but now it was the last of them, the last dachshund, going about the yard at Morten’s heels down there. A man and his dog in the twilight, but something more. He had to take it in. Take a good look, because that’s how it was: there was something inside Morten that shunned the light. Something Tina said was a kind of complex. He didn’t know what it was. He didn’t know what to say about it, other than that it smelled like offal, and that the smell was spreading.

THE BUDDHIST

BEFORE THE BUDDHIST BECAME PRESIDENT OF THE AID ORGANIZATION People to People, he was an ordinary Christian and a government official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was the one who wrote the foreign minister’s speeches and thereby put words into the foreign minister’s mouth. It was a way of lying and at first it didn’t bother him any. Then it started bugging him because he realized he was a Buddhist. It didn’t come to him all of a sudden that he was a Buddhist. It was more like the Buddhist, as an idea, crept up and settled in him shortly after his wife said she wanted a divorce. The Buddhist came in and sat down at the opposite side of his desk at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He contemplated the Buddhist and thought it was a good format to step into. Buddhists are good people. They’re deeper than most. Buddhists can see connections no one else can. These were all qualities he recognized in himself, but which all could be improved upon, and so he became a Buddhist. If he hadn’t become a Buddhist, the divorce would have hurt that much more, but a Buddhist gains insight through pain. The more it hurts, the wiser the Buddhist becomes, the government official thought, and stopped being a Lutheran.

Shortly after the Buddhist has divorced and become a Buddhist, he stands in front of the mirror looking at his face beneath his thin, mousy hair. His skin is pale, but the exterior isn’t what matters. The Dalai Lama would never lie on behalf of a government minister, and he would never tell international lies. More importantly, the Dalai Lama would never shy from pain. The Dalai Lama smiles when things hurt, and the more burdened the Dalai Lama, the more the world senses the Dalai Lama’s presence.
Aim high
, the Buddhist thinks to himself, and decides to write an article in a national newspaper. The article is about his place of work, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. More than that, it is about the lies that issue from the mouth of the foreign minister.
The prime minister is a thief, and the foreign minister is a liar. I should know, because I’m the one who writes the speeches
, the Buddhist writes in the newspaper, and the next day he is not afraid to go to work. Resistance builds character, and because the Buddhist is a government official employed by the state, the foreign minister cannot dismiss the Buddhist from his position. However, the permanent undersecretary can ride the elevator and have serious words with him, which is what he does. Up and down, up and down. Up and down with the Buddhist at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Shortly after the article and the elevator ride with the permanent undersecretary, the Buddhist’s situation looks like this: he is divorced. At his request he has been granted leave of absence from his position in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

And now there are three things hurting. The foreign minister hurts. His wife wanting to sell the big house in Charlottenlund hurts. And last but not least, it hurts that his aptitude for implementing lasting change in the world, both as a Buddhist and as a former government official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is not being put to use. His desire to do good is overwhelming. His need to implement positive change in the world around him keeps him awake at nights. He drives around Copenhagen, anxious to get to work and ready to adapt. He drives around in his red Citroën Berlingo and keeps an eye on his wife. He drives around in his red Citroën Berlingo and keeps an eye on the foreign minister. He wishes both of them well. Yet he also wants to do them harm. It’s a paradox, but the Buddhist loves them both while at the same time wanting to harm them.
I want to harm them
, he says out loud to himself, and just at the very moment he hears the word
harm
rush between his teeth, he sees himself in the rearview mirror. What he sees there is a Buddhist.
A good thing I’m a Buddhist
, he thinks to himself.
God knows what I might have done if I hadn’t been a Buddhist.

But he is a Buddhist, and Buddhists have expanding souls. He drives around in the affluence of northern Copenhagen in the night and learns that it is the Buddhist inside him who is stronger. Inside him is an abundance of goodness. He can sense this is good, and he senses how meaningful it all is. The Universe is plotting coordinates for him. The Universe wants something from him. If the Universe hadn’t wanted something from him, then (a) his wife would never have left him, and (b) the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would never have pressured him into quitting. There is a meaning behind everything, and the Buddhist has had the feeling for a long time that he is the kind of person who is able to grasp the meaning behind things. He has also had the feeling for a long time that the world needs a strong, solitary man to save it. He is a Buddhist and a former government official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Two birds with one stone. He is a Buddhist, a former government official, and used to lying. Three in one.

It is not long before the Buddhist sees an advertisement in a national newspaper and takes it to be yet another sign from the Universe. The aid organization People to People, based in the city of Århus, is looking for a president.
Aha
, thinks the Buddhist, who at this point is also a divorced, unemployed subtenant in an apartment in the South Harbor district of Copenhagen.
Aha
, he thinks,
an organization is a good place to begin if you want to change the world.

There are two reasons why an organization is a good place to begin changing the world. First, an organization sells convictions rather than products. Second, selling convictions is all about ideals. The Buddhist has plenty of ideals. But that’s not all. Ideals attract young people and other idealists. The young people and the idealists are all going to work for the Buddhist and the Cause. He can pretty much decide for himself what the Cause is going to be, as long as it involves
people
and
aid.
Both things appeal to him. It would be good to have a world in which everyone was equally fat; not too fat, but happy. The Buddhist decides in his sublet apartment in the South Harbor that he wants to be president of the aid organization People to People. He also decides to call the volunteer workers World Ambassadors. The Buddhist wants to be their boss, or even better: he wants to be their leader.

To get the job he must lie. No, put that another way: to get the job he must put words into his own mouth. Which is allowed in a good cause, and he has lots of experience at it. He puts together a good, inaccurate letter of application. He has no problem omitting the fact that he is actually no longer married to the woman named as his wife. He has no problem either with his mail being redirected from the address in Charlottenlund. Removing various sticking points from his résumé is easy, and when it is done he sends the application. If he lies awake on his inflatable mattress on the floor in the South Harbor apartment, it is not because he has lied. He has accepted that the end justifies the means. If he lies awake it’s because he is tense thinking whether there is any way the organization’s board of directors can get around him. Which of course there isn’t. The chairman of the board is convinced as soon as he opens the envelope and sees the letterhead of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The board is in complete agreement, and calls the Buddhist right away. The board likes the sound of the Buddhist’s voice on the telephone. The board likes the way the Buddhist is “ready to drive to Århus immediately.” At the interview the board likes the way he drinks water from his glass. It likes the sound of his wedding ring when it chinks against the glass and taps against the desk. It likes his commitment to the problems of the world. It likes his dreams of a bigger, stronger People to People. The Buddhist is a visionary. The Buddhist is a family man. The Buddhist once held a diplomatic passport. The board has never seen the like. It is dazzled and ought to be wearing sunglasses. The Buddhist is more than convincing. There was, as the board would later state, “absolutely no getting around him.” Or, as the female member of the board told a reporter from the Århus daily:
He wore leather elbow patches. We thought he was an intellectual.
But she doesn’t say that until later.