Read Online Karate Chop: Stories (Lannan Translation Selection (Graywolf Paperback)) by Dorthe Nors - Free Book Online
Authors: Dorthe Nors
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keep walking, through the dead birds and the dead mothers, to get to the baby carriages. I have to be careful not to lose my balance, and then I reach my hand down into one of the baby carriages left behind, my hand with a cookie in it, and the child inside looks up at me with eyes full of astonishment. I pick it up. I lift it high into the air, and the movement causes its pacifier and its rattle to fall to the ground. I wish the child no harm; all I want is to lift it into the air before putting it back and walking home through Frederiksberg Gardens.
The heron was there last winter. Sitting with its beard blowing in the wind and its long pale toes clutching the back of the bench. Incapable of fright, tired and sallow in its gaze, smelling of the mites that lived in its underfeathers, and I should have sat down next to it.
KARATE CHOP
SHE HAD ONCE BEEN ADVISED TO LISTEN CLOSELY TO WHAT A MAN said just when he began to sense a woman was showing interest in him. For unknown reasons, most men at that very moment give off important information about their true nature. This was what she had been told, and she had known men herself who, in the middle of an intimate conversation on a very different subject altogether, could say:
“You should know I’m not an easy man to live with.”
Or: “I can be such an asshole at times.”
Mostly, she had considered this to be self-deprecation, if not a form of politeness, and if she did not take it seriously it was because she had not understood that a person could be in possession of disturbing knowledge about himself and still have no wish to change. For that reason, and because she lived for the idea that everything had some deeper reason, she never believed what these men said about themselves. It was hard for her to acknowledge that their words really were intended to be warnings and that her failure to listen would end up costing her dearly, but she went so far as to agree with them when afterward they said:
“It wasn’t like you didn’t know or anything. I told you how I was.”
And indeed they had, yet still the problem recurred with the next one, and the next one again, and every time the man sensed she was about to make herself vulnerable to him, he told her something disturbing about himself. Annelise would smile then and say:
“Oh, stop it.”
But they never did.
When she met Carl Erik Juhl, what made her fall for him, in effect, was his long list of disturbing traits. Working with children with psychological problems and learning difficulties, she was used to meeting adults who were disinclined to acknowledge their own weaknesses, and in that respect Carl Erik’s frankness seemed redeeming. He had been called in for a meeting at the school about her sessions with his son, Kasper, who was in seventh grade, and almost at the very instant he stepped inside her office Carl Erik confessed that he had a temper, was something of a coward and a poor father to boot. Annelise pushed back her chair slightly so as to get a better look at him. And there he was. His face was round, his hair thin and curly. He looked out the window behind her, and his smile was so sweet her heart turned somersaults.
What she wondered now was whom to blame for the wounds her relationship with Carl Erik Juhl had inflicted upon her. She turned her body in front of the mirror in the bedroom and lifted her right arm on which was a bruise. It was quite unacceptable of him, yet at the same time her not listening to what he told her was suspicious. Not one of the traits he had ascribed to himself that day in her office had he failed to demonstrate in practice.
She sat down at an angle on the edge of the bed and frowned. There had to be a reason, and one had first to look to oneself to discover what was wrong. Her upbringing had been decent enough, though one time when she was about ten and had fallen off her bike and ended up in the hospital, her father had not even come to visit. Not caring for the
The heron was there last winter. Sitting with its beard blowing in the wind and its long pale toes clutching the back of the bench. Incapable of fright, tired and sallow in its gaze, smelling of the mites that lived in its underfeathers, and I should have sat down next to it.
KARATE CHOP
SHE HAD ONCE BEEN ADVISED TO LISTEN CLOSELY TO WHAT A MAN said just when he began to sense a woman was showing interest in him. For unknown reasons, most men at that very moment give off important information about their true nature. This was what she had been told, and she had known men herself who, in the middle of an intimate conversation on a very different subject altogether, could say:
“You should know I’m not an easy man to live with.”
Or: “I can be such an asshole at times.”
Mostly, she had considered this to be self-deprecation, if not a form of politeness, and if she did not take it seriously it was because she had not understood that a person could be in possession of disturbing knowledge about himself and still have no wish to change. For that reason, and because she lived for the idea that everything had some deeper reason, she never believed what these men said about themselves. It was hard for her to acknowledge that their words really were intended to be warnings and that her failure to listen would end up costing her dearly, but she went so far as to agree with them when afterward they said:
“It wasn’t like you didn’t know or anything. I told you how I was.”
And indeed they had, yet still the problem recurred with the next one, and the next one again, and every time the man sensed she was about to make herself vulnerable to him, he told her something disturbing about himself. Annelise would smile then and say:
“Oh, stop it.”
But they never did.
When she met Carl Erik Juhl, what made her fall for him, in effect, was his long list of disturbing traits. Working with children with psychological problems and learning difficulties, she was used to meeting adults who were disinclined to acknowledge their own weaknesses, and in that respect Carl Erik’s frankness seemed redeeming. He had been called in for a meeting at the school about her sessions with his son, Kasper, who was in seventh grade, and almost at the very instant he stepped inside her office Carl Erik confessed that he had a temper, was something of a coward and a poor father to boot. Annelise pushed back her chair slightly so as to get a better look at him. And there he was. His face was round, his hair thin and curly. He looked out the window behind her, and his smile was so sweet her heart turned somersaults.
What she wondered now was whom to blame for the wounds her relationship with Carl Erik Juhl had inflicted upon her. She turned her body in front of the mirror in the bedroom and lifted her right arm on which was a bruise. It was quite unacceptable of him, yet at the same time her not listening to what he told her was suspicious. Not one of the traits he had ascribed to himself that day in her office had he failed to demonstrate in practice.
She sat down at an angle on the edge of the bed and frowned. There had to be a reason, and one had first to look to oneself to discover what was wrong. Her upbringing had been decent enough, though one time when she was about ten and had fallen off her bike and ended up in the hospital, her father had not even come to visit. Not caring for the
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