Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Three

Dad drove some way past the house, down the hill, and then reversed into the lane opposite. Only then could he drive up the short, steep drive.

Grandma’s face appeared in the kitchen window. When we had got out of the car, which was parked close to the wooden garage door with its black wrought-iron fittings, and were heading for the red-brick steps, she opened the door.

“There you are!” she said. “Come on in!” And when we were in the small hallway:

“Oh, how I’ve been looking forward to seeing you two boys!”

She gave Yngve a long hug and rocked him back and forth. He looked away, but he liked it. Then she gave me a long hug and rocked me back and forth. I also looked away, but I liked it, too. Her cheek was warm, and she smelled nice.

“We might have seen a wolf in the zoo!” I said as she let go of me.

“Did you?” she said, ruffling my hair.

“No, we didn’t,” Yngve said. “It was just in Karl Ove’s imagination.”

“Oh no?” she said, ruffling his hair. “Well, it’s good to see you boys anyway!”

We hung up our jackets inside, where there was an open built-in wardrobe, walked across the wall-to-wall carpet and up the staircase. On the first floor, the posh living room was on the right and the kitchen on the left. This living room was used only on Christmas Eve and other formal occasions. By the short wall there was a piano on which there stood three photos of the sons of the house wearing student caps, and above them hung two paintings. Against the long wall there were dark display cabinets, with some souvenirs from their travels arranged on top, among them a shining gondola and a golden-brown glass teapot with a very long spout, adorned with what I assumed were diamonds and rubies. At the back of the room there were two leather sofas, between them a corner cupboard decorated with painted roses and in front a low table. Through the large windows you had a view of the river and the town beyond. However, on a normal visit, which this was, we didn’t go in there, we took the door to the left, to the kitchen and the two living rooms below, the lowest of which was connected to the best room via a sliding door above a little staircase. Half of the long wall was taken up by a window, through which you saw first the garden, then the river stretching out to meet the sea and, furthest away, the white Grønningen Lighthouse, towering over the horizon.

It smelled good there, not only in the kitchen, where Grandma was making meatballs and gravy, which she did better than most, but everywhere there was a fragrance that underlay all the others and was constant, a vaguely fruity sweetness I associated with this house whenever I met it outside, for example when Grandma and Grandad were visiting us, because they brought the fragrance with them, it was in their clothes, I noticed it as soon as they stepped into our hall.

“Well,” Grandad said as we went into the kitchen. “Was there much traffic on the way here?”

He was sitting on his chair, legs slightly apart, wearing a gray cardigan over a blue shirt. His stomach hung over the waistband of the dark-gray trousers. His hair was black and combed back, apart from one lock, which had fallen over his forehead. A half-smoked, unlit cigarette hung from his mouth.

“No, went like clockwork,” Dad said.

“How did you do with the soccer pools yesterday?” Grandad said.

“Not too well,” Dad said. “Seven right was all I managed.”

“I got two tens,” Grandad said.

“That’s pretty good,” Dad said.

“I slipped up on numbers seven and eleven,” Grandad said. “The second one was annoying. The goal was scored after full-time!”

“Yes,” Dad said. “I didn’t get that one, either.”

“Did you hear what one student said to Erling the other day?” Grandma said from the stove.

“No. What?” Dad said.

“He came into class in the morning, and this student asked, ‘Have you won the pools or what?’ ‘No,’ Erling said. ‘Why do you ask?’ ‘You look so happy,’ the student said.”

She laughed. “You look so happy!” she repeated.

Dad smiled.

“Anyone for a cup of coffee?” Grandma asked.

“Yes, please. I’d love one,” Mom said.

“Let’s sit in the living room then,” Grandma said.

“Could we go upstairs and get some comics?” Yngve said.

“You can,” Grandad said. “But don’t make a mess!”

“Nope,” Yngve said.

Treading carefully, for this was not a house you could run in either, we went into the corridor and up the stairs to the second floor. Apart from Grandma and Grandad’s bedroom there was a big attic room there, and along the wall cardboard boxes containing old comics, going right back to when Dad was a child in the 1950s. There was a variety of other objects as well, among them an ancient mangle for wringing tablecloths and bed linen, an old sewing machine, a number of old games and toys, including a tin spinning top, and something that was meant to be a robot made of the same material.

But it was the comics that appealed to us. We weren’t allowed to take them home with us, we had to read them there, and we read plenty from the time we arrived to the time we left. Taking a pile each, we went downstairs and found a chair, and didn’t look up until food was on the table and Grandma called us to eat.

After the meal Grandma washed up while Mom stood next to her, drying. Grandad sat at the table reading a newspaper, Dad stood by the window in the living room looking out. Then Grandma came in and asked if he would like to join her in the garden, there was something she wanted to show him. Mom and Grandad sat at the table, they chatted a bit, but mostly they were silent. I got up to go to the bathroom. It was on the ground floor, I didn’t like it and I had held on for as long as I could, but now I was bursting. Out into the corridor, down the creaking wooden stairs, a quick dash across the carpeted hall surrounded, as it were, by three empty rooms behind closed doors, and into the bathroom. It was dark. In the seconds before the light came on I was shaking inside. But even with the light on, I was afraid. I peed down the side so that the splash of the pee hitting the water would not prevent me from hearing anything. I also washed my hands before flushing the toilet because the moment I pressed the lever at the side of the cistern I would have to rush out as fast as I could, as the noise was so loud and eerie that I couldn’t be in the same room. I stood at the ready, with my hand around the little black ball for a couple of seconds. Then I flushed, darted into the hall, also scary, because every slightest thing there silently “transmitted itself,” and set off up the stairs, not able to run, of course, with a sensation that something down below was following me, until I entered the kitchen and the presence of the others broke the spell.

Outside, in the lane, the stream of people on their way from town to the stadium had increased, and soon also Dad, Mom, and Yngve would be getting ready to go. Grandad always cycled there and left a little later than the others. He was wearing a gray coat, a rust-colored scarf, a grayish cloth cap, and black gloves, I could see him from the window, as he freewheeled down the hill. Grandma took out some rolls from the freezer, we were going to have them when the others returned home, and put them on the counter.

She sent me a mischievous look.

“I’ve got something for you,” she said.

“What’s that?” I said.

“Wait and see,” she said. “Cover your eyes!”

I covered my eyes, and heard her rummaging about in the drawers. She stopped in front of me.

“Now you can look!” she said.

It was a bar of chocolate. One of those triangular ones you don’t see often that are so good.