Read Online Karate Chop: Stories (Lannan Translation Selection (Graywolf Paperback)) by Dorthe Nors - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Dorthe Nors
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smell of hospitals, he had stayed home instead. It was by no means unlikely that some encoding of basic insignificance and a tendency to neglect one’s own needs had taken place then and left its mark. Or perhaps it was her relationship with her brother. Arne had been good at sports and wouldn’t bother playing with her unless she was able to take the ball from him at soccer. Their mother had always been so quiet, too, and yet to no avail, Annelise thought to herself and pulled the comforter up over her shoulders. Judging from the students she treated, not many children escaped a beating of one sort or another. But that didn’t necessarily turn them into thugs, masochists, and murderers. There had to be more basic psychological traits, perhaps even gender related, that could account for her behavior. Carl Erik’s too, for that matter. He was always falling short, and she could never make an issue big enough. It was no good.
Annelise gazed down perplexed at her right hand, and as she did so she thought about how, when they had started going out together, Carl Erik liked when she was drunk. He wanted her with him out on the town and encouraged her to flirt.
“There’s no one in here you couldn’t have,” he’d say, looking proudly around the bar.
On occasion he picked out some poor guy, preferably with a slight handicap if anyone like that was around, and when Annelise came back from the bathroom he would bundle her onto a bar stool next to the victim and whisper:
“This one’s down on his luck. Show him a good time, it’ll cheer him up.”
She would dance with this other man, or allow him to buy her a beer. She had thought of it as Carl Erik’s way of paying her a compliment. Now it was obvious to her that it was something else altogether. There must be a hundred ways of rolling out the red carpet in front of an ailing store, Annelise thought. Giving a woman away to a cripple is only one of them.
But she had known many men like that. Many men like those reptiles in the zoo that could puff up their faces with fanciful color and raise themselves up onto thin toes and rattle. Every woman in the world would meet one sooner or later. It was all part and parcel. But she was no good at not loving them, even if there were no obvious reason to do so.
She looked into the mirror again and let the comforter slip down her shoulders. She saw how her breasts and hair hung limply from her body. She saw a red mark beneath her collarbone, and maybe the problem was at root sexual. Maybe she just didn’t understand how to deal with male sexuality. As a child, Arne had kept porn magazines under his mattress. Some times when he was out at soccer practice she lifted the mattress and flicked through them. As she gazed at the glitzy images, feeling a tingle inside, she thought a woman would have to love a man very much to put that thing into her mouth, and she thought too that the man would have to love it very much to want to put it inside the woman’s mouth. She found the anal business odd. There was something anatomical about it she still had not fully understood. In her view it was about little more than the instrumental power of the male organ. Because it could be inserted into openings, it had to be inserted into openings. In her hometown there was a man who went around sticking his thing through gaps in fences and the wire baskets on bicycles. Instrumental power, she thought to herself. Technical pleasure ought never to be underestimated as an element of male sexuality, and it wasn’t that she disliked sex, it just wasn’t all kinds of sex she liked, and she could still feel Carl Erik inside her.
Now he lay naked under the comforter and they would never go to bed together again. Never, for now she hurt all over and was unable to see what she had done wrong. But what had happened was that Carl Erik’s son Kasper had been staying with him that weekend. Things had not gone well, she sensed when Carl Erik had come over just
Annelise gazed down perplexed at her right hand, and as she did so she thought about how, when they had started going out together, Carl Erik liked when she was drunk. He wanted her with him out on the town and encouraged her to flirt.
“There’s no one in here you couldn’t have,” he’d say, looking proudly around the bar.
On occasion he picked out some poor guy, preferably with a slight handicap if anyone like that was around, and when Annelise came back from the bathroom he would bundle her onto a bar stool next to the victim and whisper:
“This one’s down on his luck. Show him a good time, it’ll cheer him up.”
She would dance with this other man, or allow him to buy her a beer. She had thought of it as Carl Erik’s way of paying her a compliment. Now it was obvious to her that it was something else altogether. There must be a hundred ways of rolling out the red carpet in front of an ailing store, Annelise thought. Giving a woman away to a cripple is only one of them.
But she had known many men like that. Many men like those reptiles in the zoo that could puff up their faces with fanciful color and raise themselves up onto thin toes and rattle. Every woman in the world would meet one sooner or later. It was all part and parcel. But she was no good at not loving them, even if there were no obvious reason to do so.
She looked into the mirror again and let the comforter slip down her shoulders. She saw how her breasts and hair hung limply from her body. She saw a red mark beneath her collarbone, and maybe the problem was at root sexual. Maybe she just didn’t understand how to deal with male sexuality. As a child, Arne had kept porn magazines under his mattress. Some times when he was out at soccer practice she lifted the mattress and flicked through them. As she gazed at the glitzy images, feeling a tingle inside, she thought a woman would have to love a man very much to put that thing into her mouth, and she thought too that the man would have to love it very much to want to put it inside the woman’s mouth. She found the anal business odd. There was something anatomical about it she still had not fully understood. In her view it was about little more than the instrumental power of the male organ. Because it could be inserted into openings, it had to be inserted into openings. In her hometown there was a man who went around sticking his thing through gaps in fences and the wire baskets on bicycles. Instrumental power, she thought to herself. Technical pleasure ought never to be underestimated as an element of male sexuality, and it wasn’t that she disliked sex, it just wasn’t all kinds of sex she liked, and she could still feel Carl Erik inside her.
Now he lay naked under the comforter and they would never go to bed together again. Never, for now she hurt all over and was unable to see what she had done wrong. But what had happened was that Carl Erik’s son Kasper had been staying with him that weekend. Things had not gone well, she sensed when Carl Erik had come over just
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