Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Three

Quite a long time ago he had chopped down a birch tree by the fence in the kitchen garden. All that remained of it was a pile of logs that he wanted to split now. I wasn’t supposed to do anything, just stand there and watch, to “keep him company,” as he called it.

He removed the tarpaulin, took a log, and placed it on the chopping block.

“Well?” he said, raising the ax above his shoulder, concentrating for a second, and letting fly. The blade bit into the white wood. “Everything going well at school?”

“Yes,” I said.

He lifted the log with the ax wedged in and hit it against the block a few times until it split into two. Held the parts and split them, placed them on the ground by the rock face, wiped his brow with his hand, and straightened up. I could see from his body that he was happy.

“And Frøken?” he said. “Torgersen was her name, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. “She’s nice.”

“Nice?” he said, taking a new log and repeating the procedure.

“Yes,” I said.

“Is there anyone who isn’t nice?” he said.

I hesitated. He suspended his chopping activities for a moment.

“Well, since you say that she’s nice, there must be someone who isn’t nice. Otherwise the word loses all its meaning. Do you understand?”

He resumed his work.

“I think so,” I said.

There was a silence. I turned away and saw the water rising above the grass beyond the path.

“Myklebust, he’s not so nice,” I said, turning back.

“Myklebust!” Dad said. “I know him.”

“Do you?” I said.

“Sure. He comes to the meetings at the Teachers’ Association. Next time I see him, I’ll tell him you said he wasn’t nice to your class.”

“No, please don’t do that!” I said.

He smiled.

“Of course I won’t,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

Then there was another silence. Dad worked, I stood there with my arms hanging down by my sides, motionless, watching. My feet were beginning to get cold. I wasn’t wearing thick socks. And my fingers were beginning to get cold.

There was no one out. Apart from the occasional car that went past, there wasn’t a soul around. The lights in the houses were beginning to get brighter, apparently regulated and intensified by the nascent twilight, which, in contrast with the open sky, seemed to rise from the ground. As though beneath us there was a reservoir of darkness that seeped through thousands, no, millions of tiny holes in the ground every afternoon.

I watched Dad. Sweat was running down his forehead. I rubbed my palms against each other several times. He leaned forward. Just as he was grabbing the log and about to straighten up, he farted. Caught in the act.

“You said we should only fart in the toilet,” I said.

At first he didn’t answer.

“It’s different when you’re outside in the open air,” he said, without meeting my gaze. “Then you can, well, let your farts go free.”

He brought down the ax onto the log and split it in half at the first attempt. The sound of the blow rebounded off the house wall and the cliff above, the latter with a strange delay, as though there were a man up there swinging an ax exactly one second after Dad.

Dad swung again and threw the four pieces of wood on the pile. Took another log.

“Could you start piling them up, Karl Ove?” he said.

I nodded and went over to the small pile.

How should I do it? What did he have in mind? Alongside the rock or coming off it? A narrow pile or a wide one?

I looked at him again. He didn’t notice. I squatted and picked up a piece of wood. Placed it up against the rock, on end. Placed another piece next to it. When I had laid five in a row, I laid one crosswise on top of them. It was exactly the same length as the width of the five logs. So I laid four more on top, making two equally large squares. Now I could either make two squares next to it, identical, or start a new layer on top.

“What are you doing?” Dad said. “Are you completely stupid? You don’t stack wood like that!”

He bent down and scattered the logs with his big hands. I watched him with tears in my eyes.

“You lay them lengthwise!” he said. “Have you never seen a woodpile before?”

He looked at me.

“Don’t stand there weeping like a girl, Karl Ove. Can’t you do anything right?”

Then he went on chopping. I started stacking the logs the way he told me. Sobs shook me every so often. My hands and toes were freezing. At least it wasn’t difficult stacking them lengthwise. The only question was when to stop. When I had laid them all in a row I stood up with my hands down by my sides and watched him as I had done before. The glint in his expression was gone; I saw that as soon as he glanced at me from the corner of his eye. But that didn’t necessarily mean something would happen, as long as I didn’t say or do anything that might irritate him. At the same time the thought of the match on TV was gnawing at me. It must have started ages ago. He had forgotten about it, but I couldn’t remind him, not the way the situation was. My toes and fingers were hurting me more and more. Dad just kept chopping. He paused and occasionally flicked back his hair in a typical gesture of his, a kind of slow toss of his head along with his hand.

We had just been given a post office box in Pusnes, which meant we no longer received mail in our mailbox on the hill, only a newspaper, and Dad had to drive there to collect our mail. Last Saturday I had sat in the car with him, and he had combed his hair in the mirror, perhaps for a whole minute, patting his thick, shiny locks afterward, and then got out. I had never seen that before. And when he went in, a woman had turned to look at him. She was unaware that someone who knew him was sitting in the car watching what went on. But why had she turned? Did she know him? I had never seen her before. Perhaps she was the mother of someone in his class?

I put the new logs he threw over on top of the first row. Wriggled my toes backward and forward in my boots, not that it helped, they hurt, hurt, hurt.

I was about to say that I was freezing cold, took a deep breath, but then I paused. Turned again and looked at the shiny pool that shouldn’t have been there. Watched a large transparent bubble breaking the surface right above the rusty manhole cover. When I turned back, Steinar was walking along the road. He was carrying a guitar case over his back, with his head bent, his long black hair falling over his shoulders and swaying gently to and fro.

“Hello there, Knausgård!” he said as he passed.

Dad stood up and sent him a nod.

“Hi there,” he said.

“Doing a bit of wood chopping, I see!” Steinar said, without slowing down.

“I am,” Dad said.

He resumed work. I paced backward and forward, backward and forward.

“Stop doing that,” Dad said.

“OK, but I’m freezing cold!” I said.

He sent me an icy stare.

“Oh, you’re fweezing, are you?” he said.

My eyes filled with tears again.

“Stop parroting me,” I said.

“Oh, so I can’t pawwot you now?”

“NO!” I yelled.

He stiffened. Dropped the ax and came toward me. Grabbed my ear and twisted it round.

“Are you talking back to me?” he said.

“No,” I said, looking down at the ground.

He twisted harder.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you!”

I raised my head.

“Do not talk back to me! Have you got that?”

“Yes,” I said.

He let go, turned, and put another log on the block. I was crying so much I could barely breathe. Dad ignored me and kept on chopping. There were only a couple of logs left now, then he was finished.

I walked back to the low stack of wood and added the new logs. Wriggled my toes in my boots. The tears receded, there was just the odd surreptitious aftershock in the form of an untimely and wholly uncontrollable sob. I dried my eyes on my sleeve, Dad tossed four logs over, I put them on the stack, when a thought fluttered in to lift me out of my misery. I wouldn’t watch the soccer. I would go straight to my room and let Yngve and him watch it without me.