“Karl Ove”

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Once there was a man who lived in a country made almost entirely of rock, pristine glacial pools, and the type of lichen favored by reindeer. He had no wife, so he lived with his mother for convenience. His mother, however, was growing old, and as Kúnt had no wish to care for her in her dotage and would rather die than put his own mother on the toilet, he began to think he might as well leave home. His middle years were upon him, and he’d begun to suffer an aching discontent. It was the little things that chafed him most:  ice skating to work and wearing wool hats to bed and eating a diet of oily fish—superabundant in omega-3s but little else. He asked his mother what to do.

Sitting in her chair by the window to soak up all three hours of daylight, she heard his complaints. Kúnt’s mother had been a librarian all her adult life and had some idea of the world and its workings. For her part, she would rather die than have her only son put her on the toilet, so, when he finished speaking, she said sagely, “What would Karl Ove do?”

At first Kúnt did not understand what she was asking. He was no Karl Ove—he had no dogs and no wife. His father had long ago slipped from the deck of a salmon trawler into the sea, and he did not know his uncle or his grandmother. At his mother’s suggestion, he began to read Ove’s volumes of breathtaking personal plunder, and at the end of book six, he understood the question and knew he would have to leave.

One day, Kúnt visited the tobacconist where he was in the habit of purchasing tobacco and cigarette papers. The owner of the shop was a tall man who had a single fierce eyebrow that unfurled like a banner across his dusky face. Kúnt often felt his own wispy white brows inadequate and feeble by comparison, which kindled in Kúnt’s breast a form of respect for the man.

As he waited for his change, Kúnt asked, “Khalid, if you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?”

Khalid thought for a moment. He had a vision of a great ocean of bone-colored sand whirling into a haboob. He saw women attired as mourning ghosts floating above a sizzling sidewalk, flashing eyes belying their silence. He shrugged. “Here is fine. But if you want to leave, go someplace you can smoke on the street.”

After some consideration, Kúnt knew where he would go.

~~~

When he got there, he obtained work in a grocery store that sold laundry soap and expensive cat food and eggs with mysterious sallow yolks. He was given a blue vest and a nametag to wear.

“I beg your pardon,” Kúnt told his employer, “but you have misspelled my name. It is Kúnt, with a K.” He tapped the plastic shield over his breast.

The man narrowed his mean little eyes and flipped a wedge of greasy hair off his forehead. “Well, Kúnt with a K, that’s how we spell it here. If you don’t like it, go home.”

 ~~~

At first Kúnt was happy enough. He found it wonderful to witness the extraordinary freedom shoppers enjoyed. They ate whatever they wanted! He held a package of frozen meatballs and marveled that meat, even the precious mammalian beef, could be had so cheaply. But as he dragged endless packages of sandwich cookies and corn chips over the glowing eye of the scanner, a mild depression overtook him.

Fat blackberries in clamshell cases languished on their sale display and beautiful yellow bananas turned brown and collapsed on themselves while mothers purchased fruit-flavored candy for their children. They had fish in this place, but it was stuffed into cans or hashed into breaded lumps—he barely recognized it.

Everything felt wrong. He began to toss and turn at night, awake at all hours.

Did Kúnt miss his mother? Not especially. This town was thick with old women, and you couldn’t throw a stone without hitting a librarian. Did he miss Khalid? No, he bought packaged cigarettes that offered convenience in exchange for satisfaction. He took the bus to work; he never wore a cap to bed; his food contained no omega-3s or anything else of nutritional value. He was free.

What, then, was the cause of his malaise?

He wanted to write his mother, itemize his discontent, but when he tried, he found he couldn’t put words to it.

What would Karl Ove do?

Kúnt pondered this as he waited on the bench at the bus stop. He rolled enormous bottles of cola and cans of sweet corn over the scanner and mused. He pushed boxes of dog biscuits and packages of toilet paper onto shelves and ruminated. At last, he thought he knew what Karl Ove would do.

The next day, waiting for the bus to take him to work at the grocery store, Kúnt turned to the woman sitting beside him. She was familiar because they often waited for the same bus. She wore elaborate eye makeup and colored her hair a violent shade of red that existed in nature only on the rump of the baboon. Today, as every day, she held a greasy paper bag on her lap, and now and then thrust her hand into it, rummaging.

“My mother is a librarian. She thinks she’s shrewd, but she’s never left the town of her birth,” he blurted, blushing ferociously.

The woman blinked, mouth hanging slightly open. “And?” The smell of fried food wafted toward him on her breath. It was the most intimate contact he’d shared with someone since he’d left home.

“I’m just—”

She buried her arm to the elbow in the bag and refused to look at him.

He’d gotten it wrong. Desperate, he pictured Karl Ove in the blue vest, sitting in this very spot and having this very conversation.

 “I’ve lived in this town for several months, and I haven’t made a single friend.” Kúnt wrung his hands. “I’m lonely.”

Her lipstick had retreated to the far reaches of her mouth, ringing her lips in a savage purple O. Pursed tightly to keep a mouthful of potato inside, they gave Kúnt the visual impression of an inflamed anus. Still, he waited, hopeful.

Finally, she tongued the mash into a cheek and answered, “Not interested, dude.” She rose and moved to the far end of the bench.

~~~

Every letter from his mother brought news:

“Karl Ove is separated from his wife.”

“Karl Ove has quit smoking.”

“A man entered a bookstore in Mälmo and set the O shelf on fire because he had such contempt for Karl Ove.”

Kúnt thought about quitting smoking, but he realized it was his sole source of pleasure here in the land of opportunity.

“You have too much freedom,” his mother wrote him. “It paralyzes you. You don’t know where to turn.”

Kúnt thought it was closer to the truth that he was paralyzed by other people’s freedom: to poison themselves, to behave cruelly, to reject him completely.

At the bus stop the next day, he lit a cigarette. The red-haired woman’s face curdled. She fanned the air rapidly with a sheaf of oily paper napkins.

 “Are you some kind of idiot? You can’t smoke here,” she said. Ten words, aimed directly at him. A question, even! A hook on which a conversation might be hung.

If only he had realized earlier that this was all it took.

He would tell his mother she was wrong about Karl Ove. It was Khalid who was the prophet.