Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Three

I was looking forward to her coming. The few times we had visitors it was always fun, perhaps because when they came they filled the house with something new and different. And it was good because they always showed Yngve and me some attention. “So those are your boys, are they?” they would say, if they had never seen us before, or, “How tall they’ve grown,” if they had, and sometimes they even asked us questions, such as how school was going or about soccer.

After eating I slipped into Yngve’s room. He took a cassette from the rack, it was Status Quo, Piledriver, and put it in the recorder.

“I saw you on the bus,” I said. “Where were you going?”

“To town,” he said.

He lay on the bed and started reading a comic.

“What did you do there?”

“That’s enough questions,” he said. “I had to buy a part for my bike.”

“Is it broken ?”

He nodded. Then he looked me in the eye.

“Don’t tell anyone. Not even Mom,” he said.

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” I said.

“It’s up at Frank’s. You know the part the handlebars are attached to, well, it broke. But his father promised he would fix it for me. I get it back tomorrow.”

“Imagine if Dad had seen you,” I said. “In Arendal. Or someone he knows had seen you.”

Yngve shrugged and continued reading. I went into my own room. After a while the doorbell rang. I waited until Mom was downstairs in the hall before leaving my room. Shortly afterward an elderly, somewhat plump or perhaps I should say broad, lady with gray hair and glasses came up the stairs.

“This is Karl Ove,” Mom said. “Our younger son.”

I nodded to her. She smiled.

“My name’s Fru Hjellen,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll become good friends.”

She patted my shoulder. I felt a warmth suffuse my whole body.

“Our elder son, Yngve, is in his room,” Mom said.

“Should I get him?” I said.

Mom shook her head. “No need.”

She started showing her around, and I went back to my room. Outside, dusk was falling. The rain was drumming softly on the roof and wall. The gutters were swirling and gurgling. Large raindrops hit the window and rolled down in patterns it was impossible to predict. The headlights from a car lit up the spruce tree above the mailbox stand. Jacobsen returning from work. The green boxes and the stand to which they were attached glinted silently in the glare. No, no, they said. Not the light, not the light. I lay down on my bed and thought about Anne Lisbet. Tomorrow we would go there again. But first of all I wanted to see her at school! And it was enough to see her. I needed no more than that for the pleasure to spread through every part of my body. One day I would ask her to go out with me. One day I would be in her room and she would be in mine. Even though I wasn’t allowed to have anyone in my room, she would be allowed to come here, I would fix that. Even if we had to climb in through the little window in the boiler room!

I sat down at my desk, took the books from my satchel, and did my homework. Fru Hjellen left, and then I heard Yngve going to the kitchen. It was Monday today, and every Monday he had started making scones or waffles in the evening. I would sit in the kitchen with Mom while he worked, it was warm there, the aroma of scones or waffles was good, and we talked about everything under the sun. After Yngve had finished we ate the scones with butter, which melted on them, and brown cheese, or waffles with butter and sugar, which also melted, and drank tea with milk. Now and then, but not often, Dad joined us. By and large, though, he went back down to his study pretty quickly.

I did my homework at breakneck speed. I could do the letters, of course, it was just a question of scribbling down enough of them, and then I went into the kitchen, too. A light shone from the empty oven. Yngve stood stirring a bowl on the counter with his sleeves rolled up and an apron on. Mom sat knitting.

“Haven’t you finished yet?” I said, sitting down at my place.

“Another day or two,” she said, pulling at the wool, as though she were in a boat and jig fishing. “It depends on how much I get done.”

“Geir and I were up at Anne Lisbet and Solveig’s today,” I said.

“Oh?” Mom said. “Who are they? Some girls in your class?”

I nodded.

“Have you started playing with girls now?” Yngve said.

“Yes. And?” I said.

“Are you in love or what?”

I glanced at Mom hesitantly, then at Yngve.

“I think so,” I said.

Yngve laughed.

“You’re only seven! You can’t be in love!”

“Don’t laugh at him, Yngve,” Mom said.

Yngve blushed and studied the bowl in front of him.

“Feelings are feelings whether you’re seven or seventy. It means the same, you know.”

There was a silence.

“But it can’t go anywhere!” Yngve said.

“You might be right about that,” Mom said. “But you can feel something for others despite that, can’t you?”

“You were in love with Anne,” I said.

“I was not,” he said.

“You said you were.”

“Well, never mind,” Mom said. “How’s the mix going? Will it be ready soon?”

“Think so,” Yngve said.

“May I have a look?” Mom said, putting her knitting in the basket at her feet and getting up.

“Will you grease the tray, Karl Ove?”

She took the little pan with the melting butter off the heat, passed me a brush, and took the baking tray from the drawer at the bottom of the stove. The butter was ready; you could see that by the color: there were several inlets and some large lagoons of light brown in the thin yellow liquid. If you heated it slowly the color became fuller and purer. I dipped the brush in the pan and swept it over the baking tray. Butter heated slowly could make the bristles stiffen, so you had to dab rather than stroke it on, whereas with a thin brown liquid it was easier to cover a surface. It took ten seconds and the tray was ready. I sat down again and Yngve started shaping the scones. Downstairs a door opened. Straight afterward came the sound of Dad’s heavy footsteps on the stairs. I straightened up in my chair. Mom sat down again, put her knitting on her lap, and looked up as Dad appeared in the doorway.

“Everything’s in full swing here, I can see,” he said, tucking his thumbs through the loops of his belt and pulling up his trousers. “Soon be something to eat, I presume.”

“In a quarter of an hour or so,” Mom said.

“Are those scones you’re making, Yngve?” he said.

Yngve just nodded without looking up.

“Good,” Dad said. He turned and went into the living room. The floor creaked lightly under his weight. He stopped by the television, switched it on, and ensconced himself in the brown leather chair.

I knew that voice. It was the man on the doctor program. A bit hoarse, it sounded rusty, it issued from a face that always leaned backward as though addressing itself to the ceiling while his eyes always looked down, as though to direct his voice to the right place.

I got up and went into the living room.

The screen showed an open wound with blood and skin and flesh surrounded by blue linen.

“Is that an operation?” I said.

“It is indeed,” Dad said.

“May I watch?”

“Yes, I don’t think there would be any harm in that.”

I perched on the edge of the sofa. You could see deep into the body. There was a kind of shaft into it, held open by several metal clips, revealing a layer of flesh that the blood appeared to have just left, and a glistening, membrane-like organ at the very bottom, also stained with blood, all illuminated by a sharp, almost white, light. A pair of rubber-gloved hands rummaged around, apparently at home in these surroundings. Occasionally you saw a fuller picture. Then it became clear the shaft had been opened in a patient lying on a table otherwise completely covered by a blue plastic-like material and that the hands belonged to a surgeon who constituted the focal point of a circle of five people, all dressed in green, the two in the center leaning over the body under a saurian lamp, the other three next to them with trays of instruments and all sorts of equipment I had never seen before.