Dorthe Nors - Karate Chop - Stories

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.

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.