Karate Chop: Stories (Lannan Translation Selection (Graywolf Paperback)) Read online

  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.

  We are now at the point at which the Buddhist becomes the leader of a movement, and it is at this point, just prior to his relocating, that he acquires his puppy dog. The puppy dog is a black Labrador and he calls it Sancho. Buddhists are kind to animals, and leadership is about incorporating soft values into work structures, and Sancho is soft. The Buddhist puts the dog on the floor of his Berlingo, and drives away from the South Harbor. The Buddhist is on his way to Århus with plans for his life and for the world. He has an inflatable mattress on the rear seat and ten pairs of clean underpants. He has plans for the world and the key to a provided residence in Århus. He is the new president of the aid organization People to People and he has been in the newspapers. He is driving toward a greater future than the one he envisaged before. He is driving toward the kind of future that women will appreciate. Who knows, he may even meet the foreign minister one day on a plantation in some developing country with himself as host for the whole thing. He smiles at the thought and stops the car only when Sancho needs to urinate. He himself is a Buddhist and urinates only when he wants to.

  At a rest area west of Odense while the dog is urinating he happens to look at his car, the Berlingo. He thinks about how it is just the right car for him. From headlight to tailgate the Berlingo signals roominess. The design of this particular model with its sliding rear doors makes it easier to get in and out with schoolbags, groceries, and the desire to make a difference in the world. You couldn’t say the Berlingo was a sexy car, the Buddhist thinks. But that’s okay, because the Berlingo is meant to signal inner, rather than outer, values. The design is meant to indicate that the owner is practical, reliable, and flexible. The fact that the Berlingo is a safe car is hardly immaterial either. Around the cabin is a metal frame said to be so solid that nothing bad can ever get to anyone inside.

  The Buddhist puts the dog on the floor of the car again and as he drives away from the rest area he realizes that the Berlingo is yet another sign from the Universe. He is driving the safest car on the market. He is driving a car in which no one can die. But even though dangerous things like death can’t get into the Berlingo from the outside, that doesn’t mean danger is not already inside the car. It strikes the Buddhist that if he were a force of evil in the world, then he would be afraid of himself. If I were evil, I would hate me, the Buddhist thinks. And if I were someone who wanted to do good in the world, what car would I choose? the Buddhist asks himself as he overtakes a Volvo with Swedish license plates. It’s a hypothetical question. The Buddhist has already chosen the Berlingo.

  It appears a short moment after he overtakes the Volvo: the omen. The Buddhist receives an omen, and the omen manifests itself above the Lilleba
elt Bridge, which he is approaching. In the sky over Fredericia, or perhaps even the whole region, he sees a great halo. The closer he gets to the Lillebaelt Bridge, the brighter the halo becomes. The moment the wheels of the Berlingo touch the Lillebaelt Bridge, the gray metal of the Lillebaelt Bridge is transformed into a shining Bifröst arching across the strait and stretching up into the sky. It is like a mirage and yet quite real. The Buddhist is driving on an astral body and he is heading in the direction of the heavens. Down in Denmark, far below him, people scurry out into their gardens and point up at him and the Berlingo. They point at the red Berlingo driving across the sky as though it were Halley’s Comet. The Buddhist feels the energy rushing into him from the Universe and lets himself be driven in great sweeping arcs through the clouds. He waves at Denmark below, and parts of northern Germany, and then eventually he arrives at a shining gateway. He does not inquire of himself whether he is supposed to drive through the gateway. He is the Chosen One. The whole meaning of the gateway is for him to drive through it, and so he does. He drives until the car stops all by itself, high above central Jutland. He takes the dog under his arm, opens the door, and steps out into the heavens. He can walk on the clouds. He cannot fall, and he senses a figure in orange garments, with a clean-shaven head and large spectacles coming toward him. There is no need to look closer; it is obviously the Lama. The Buddhist kneels and hopes that the dog will not urinate at this hallowed moment. He doesn’t dare to lift his head. He feels like a pixie and wants to tell the Lama so, but he doesn’t dare to look at him. He thinks that if pure goodness looks at pure goodness something might explode. Thank you, he says simply. Thank you for your goodness and wisdom, and the Lama lays his hand on his head and replies: Don’t mention it, my boy, and remember now, you need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.

  It is in this scene, which may have taken place in the skies above Jutland, or perhaps somewhere far inside the Buddhist, that we must look for the reason why the Buddhist, four months later, locks himself inside his office with a jerry can full of gasoline and a disposable lighter. It is here that we meet him again. He is sitting at his desk staring beyond the jerry can and yet hardly noticing the room that encloses him. He is locked inside a mental cage. No one can get in, and the chairman of the board wants to speak to the Buddhist. The Buddhist is being dismissed from his position for abuse of office, deceit, negligence, firing people on emotional grounds, creative accounting, manipulating subscription figures, misappropriating public funds, having sex with his subordinates, and similar improprieties. But most of all, the Buddhist is being dismissed on account of his ravings and the trail of chaos he has left behind him through the aid organization People to People. He is being dismissed for having made a charitable organization his plaything, for having big ideas about himself, and he is being allowed to resign nicely if he wants. Discreetly, and with the right to concoct a story. But he is being dismissed, and he won’t go. It’s not because he loves his work that he won’t go. It’s because going just isn’t an option. None of the great mavericks could ever have been dismissed: Stalin, Hitler, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama. He has no qualms about uttering these names in the same breath. They have a lot in common. None of them could have been dismissed, for instance. The Buddhist has locked himself inside his office with the gasoline, the dog, his ex-wife’s phone number, and the female board member tied to a chair with the minutes of a meeting in her mouth. He has locked himself in with his dream of a better world and a jerry can from the Statoil station around the corner. He has locked himself in with his goodness, and the rest is history.

  THE WINTER GARDEN

  IT WAS THE NIGHT DIRCH PASSER THE COMEDIAN DIED. HE COLLAPSED onstage. His heart was sick and he was taken away by ambulance to the hospital, where they said he was dead on arrival. It was September 3, 1980, and the reason I remember it so well is that it was the night my mother and father decided to tell me they were getting divorced. This was announced during dinner and somewhere inside me I think I was relieved. It may sound harsh, but they didn’t match, so when Mom told me, all I did was put down my fork. By ten o’clock the news was out about Dirch Passer. Those two things, his death and me standing by the porch door looking out on the moss Dad always let grow between the paving stones, are inseparable to me.

  The first year and a half, I lived with my mother and visited Dad in his new row house every two weeks. He never really got moved in, my father. He slept on a daybed in the big bedroom and we ate chicken from the hamburger stand when I was there. Then what happened was that Mom found a boyfriend. His name was Henning, he was alone with two daughters, and we would sit in the living room playing cards in the evening. My father was sad when I visited him. He kept saying to me that it didn’t matter. What? I asked him. Nothing, he said, and then I talked to Mom and Henning about it maybe being fair, seeing how Henning’s two daughters lived with them, that I moved into the spare room at my father’s.

  It was June 6, 1982, and as we sat in the car outside Dad’s house my mother kept pulling down the sleeves of my jersey and saying that I should know there was a way back. She stepped inside with me, no more than that, and that was how I got the spare room at my father’s. He’d tried to make the place nice. The furniture was pushed back against the walls, and there was a coffee table with a large ashtray in the living room. He’d bought bookshelves, too, and in his bedroom there was a narrow bed the same as the one he had put in the spare room for me. My room was all cleaned and it was plenty big enough. I don’t know where he got the drapes from, but he pulled them together so I could see they worked.

  There were good and bad things that summer I lived with Dad. One good thing was the World Cup in Spain. Paolo Rossi was the top scorer with six goals, and the Northern Ireland striker Norman Whiteside was the youngest player ever in the finals at seventeen years and forty-one days. We watched the games together, Dad and me, and because the sun was beating down outside we had all the drapes closed. The dark living room, the smell of relish, and the warm television set were good things. But then when we went out together, like to the supermarket, Dad couldn’t help but put his arm round my neck to show that we belonged together, though nobody else could care less.

  Dad had been lucky to get the house, he said, and he was especially happy about the patio enclosure. It would be warm out there even in winter, so Dad filled it up with desert plants and called it the winter garden. Whereas the living room, the kitchen, and the bathroom seemed big, the winter garden was soft and cozy. Sometimes in the evenings if there was nothing on television he would want us to sit out there in garden chairs and talk. He grew succulent plants and onions and fed them with plant food so they grew really big. He had a Crassula, as he called it, that was five feet tall. I was to have it one day, because I happened to say it was the most beautiful. Sometimes to make him happy I said that the warm earth in the winter garden smelled like the jungle. Other times I said his plants were so big he looked like Tarzan when he was standing among them. Then he would laugh and call me Korak, but before he and Mom divorced, he had no hobbies.

  I could definitely have gone on living with my father, but then what happened was that in the middle of September that year a divorced lady from my father’s work discovered that he was divorced, too. Her name was Margit. I saw her one day out in the winter garden going back and forth with a glass of white wine in her hand. While my father was explaining to her how the succulent plants stored water inside them like camels, I saw how she was looking at the wallpaper in the living room. And then she invited Dad and me to her home one Sunday afternoon. It was September 30, 1982, the day Dirch Passer’s national health card would have expired if he had been alive, and the thing I remember most from that day is that this woman Margit had a son.

  He sat on the couch staring sullenly at me. I stared back to make him stop. He stuck his tongue out at my father when he wasn’t looking. That may seem like a petty thing, but it was only then I realized that I was the only
person who thought my father was someone special. It was only my way of looking at him that stopped him from being just some ordinary guy of no importance who could be replaced by any other ordinary guy of no importance. If I didn’t like him he would basically be insignificant, and if he were insignificant, things would look pretty bad for me. So I cut everything I felt for my father into pieces and hid them away where best I could. In my thoughts, I mean. Some went underneath the table in the living room; some went into Margit’s houseplants and into the ugly mouth of her son. That way the boy would have to find it all again before he could stick his tongue out at it.

  I don’t know what happened between my father and this Margit woman that day, but I never saw her again, and when we left there was no time for me to put all the pieces I had hidden together again. Outside in the car, where I sat up front, I remember I didn’t care to look at my father at first. But then I did anyway and it was true. There was just a guy driving a car and I stuck my tongue out at him when he wasn’t looking.

  THE BIG TOMATO

  THE BANGS WORK A LOT AND NEVER SHOP FOR GROCERIES THEMSELVES. Everything in the refrigerator is ordered online. Every Sunday evening they place their order. Every Monday a box is left outside the door with all their food. One of these Mondays the box contains a tomato weighing more than four pounds, which the Bangs do not believe they ordered. The first thing is that they cannot possibly eat a tomato that big. The other thing is that they are paying by the ounce. It’s too expensive, says Mrs. Bang, so Mr. Bang calls the online grocery store to complain. At seven that evening, while I am busy in the guest bathroom, the doorbell rings. As usual, Mr. and Mrs. Bang are not at home and it’s up to me to see who it is. A small man is standing there sweating and says he has come to collect the tomato. I fetch it from the refrigerator and give it to him.