Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Three

I had almost let go, perhaps I had even fallen asleep, because it was as though I had suddenly been brought back to my bed and my room, summoned by a ring at the front door.

Diing-dong.

Who on earth could that be? No one rang our doorbell, except guests we were expecting, which in nine out of ten cases were Grandma and Grandad, plus the occasional salesman, or one of Yngve’s friends. But none of them would ring so late at night.

I sat up in bed. Heard Mom padding along the landing and down the stairs. Muffled voices from below. Then she came back up, exchanged a few words with Dad, which I didn’t catch, went downstairs, and must have put on her coat there because straight afterward the front door was slammed shut, and straight after that her car started up.

What in the world? Where was she going now ? It was nearly ten o’clock !

A few minutes later Dad went downstairs as well. But he didn’t go out, he went into his study. When I heard that I got up, carefully opened the door, and snuck along the landing into Yngve’s room.

He was lying on his bed reading. Still dressed. He smiled when he saw me and sat up.

“You’re only wearing your underpants,” Yngve said.

“Who was that at the door?”

“Fru Gustavsen, I think,” he said. “And all the kids.”

“Oh? Why? And why did Mom go? Where did she go?”

Yngve shrugged.

“I think she drove them to some relatives.”

“Why?”

“Gustavsen’s drunk. Didn’t you hear him shouting at them a while ago?”

I shook my head.

“I was asleep. But was Leif Tore with them? And Rolf?”

Yngve nodded.

“Jeez,” I said.

“Dad’ll be coming back up,” he said. “You’d better go to bed. I’ll turn out the lights too now.”

“OK. Good night.”

“Good night.”

In my room, I drew the curtains aside and looked across to Gustavsen’s house. I couldn’t see anything unusual. Outside, at least, everything was still.

Herr Gustavsen had been drunk before, he was well known for it. One night that spring a rumor had spread that he was drunk, and three or four of us crept into their garden and stood by the living-room window looking in. But there was nothing to see. He was sitting on the sofa gazing into the distance without moving. At other times we had heard him shouting and yelling, through the open windows and on the lawn. Leif Tore just laughed. But perhaps this was something different? Escaping from him, they’d never done that before.

When I next woke it was morning. Someone was in the bathroom, I could hear, probably Yngve, and from the road outside, along the three-meter-high wall surrounding Gustavsen’s property and supporting the level lawn, came the drone of Mom’s car. She had to go to work early today. Yngve closed the bathroom door, returned to his room, and then went downstairs.

The bike!

Where was his bike?

I had completely forgotten to ask him.

But that had to be the reason he was leaving so early; he couldn’t cycle, he had to walk to school.

I got up, took my clothes into the bathroom, washed in the water he had remembered to leave, today, too, dressed, and went to the kitchen where Dad had made three smørbrød and put them on a plate in my place, as well as a glass of milk. The milk carton, the bread, the cheese, sliced meat, and jams had been cleared away. He was sitting in the living room, listening to the radio and smoking.

Outside it was raining. A steady drizzle, broken by intermittent gusts of wind, pitter-pattering against the windows and sounding like tiny drumming fingers.

Monday was the only day no one was at home when I came back from school. So I had my own key, which I carried on a piece of string around my neck. But there was a problem with the key: I couldn’t get it to open the door. The first Monday it had been raining and I bounded across the gravel in rubber boots and rain gear, the key nestling in my hand, overjoyed at the imminent prospect and filled with pride. I managed to get the key into the lock, but not to turn it. It would not budge however much force I used. The key was unmovable. After ten minutes I started crying. My hands were red and cold, the rain was bucketing down, and all the other children had been at home for ages. At that moment one of the neighbors I didn’t know so well passed — she was old and lived with her husband in the house at the very top by the forest above the soccer field — on her way down the road, and when I saw her, I didn’t hesitate, because she had no connection with my parents, I dashed over and asked, with tears running down my cheeks, if she could help me with the lock. She could. And for her it was no problem at all! She fiddled with the key and it turned. And, hey presto, the door was open. I thanked her and went inside. Knowing there was nothing wrong with the key, there was something wrong with me. The next time this happened it wasn’t raining, so I left my satchel by the step and ran up to Geir’s. Dad made a comment about the satchel when he came home, I wasn’t to leave it lying around, so the following Monday, when the weather was also dry, I simply took it with me, under the pretext of having to do some homework with Geir and thus needing my satchel close at hand.

In the meantime, I had worked out a method I could use when the weather got worse during autumn and winter, like today. In the boiler room there was a little window, more like a hatch, but not so small that I couldn’t crawl through. It was positioned about half a meter above my head. I had worked out that if I opened the window in the morning, and there was no great risk involved because the window stayed close to the frame even when the two catches were undone, I could pull over the trash can when I got home, stand on it, wriggle through into the boiler room, open the door from the inside, put the trash can back, close the window, and be indoors without anyone realizing I couldn’t get the key to turn. The sole doubt in my mind was when to undo the catches. However, if it was raining, it would be the most natural thing in the world to go into the boiler room, because that was where my rain gear usually hung, and all I had to do was lift the catches, impossible to see unless you stood close to the door. And I wasn’t so stupid that I would touch anything with Dad around in the hall!

I ate the three smørbrød and drank the glass of milk. Brushed my teeth in the bathroom, collected my satchel from my room, went downstairs and into the hot, narrow room with the two water cylinders. I stood absolutely still for two seconds. As there was no sound of footsteps on the stairs, I stretched up and unhooked the catches. Then I donned my rain gear, slipped on my satchel, went into the hall where my boots were, a pair of blue-and-white Viking rubber boots that I had been given despite my wanting white ones, shouted goodbye to Dad, and ran out, up to Geir’s, he poked his head out of the window and called that he was still having breakfast but would be down soon.

I walked over to one of the gray puddles in Geir’s family’s drive and started throwing stones in it. Their drive wasn’t covered in gravel as most of the others were, nor brick paving like at Gustavsen’s, but compacted reddish earth full of small, round stones. This wasn’t all that was different about them. At the back of the house they didn’t have a lawn but a little patch where they had planted potatoes, carrots, swedes, radishes, and various other vegetables. On the forest side they didn’t have a wooden fence, as we did, or wire netting, as many others did, but a stone wall that Prestbakmo had built himself. Nor did they throw all their garbage in the trash can, as we did; they kept all their milk and egg cartons to use in a variety of ways and they put all their food remains on a compost heap by the stone wall.