Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Three

Anne Lisbet’s lips seemed so vital; they opened and smiled with such ease, now and then of their own accord when her eyes remained unmoved. They seemed to obey the slightest impulse of her mind. She thought of something, they spread across her hard white teeth, soft and red, occasionally followed by an exclamation or a glow of happiness in her eyes, occasionally unconnected with anything else.

“You’re sailors,” she said out of the blue. “And you come home to us. We haven’t seen each other for ages. Shall we play that?”

I nodded. Geir nodded, too.

The two girls jumped onto land and went a little way into the forest.

“You can come now!” Anne Lisbet shouted.

We moored, leaped ashore, and walked toward them. But we weren’t quick enough for them, Anne Lisbet was impatiently dancing from one foot to the other, she set off running, toward me, and when she reached me she threw her arms around me and hugged me and pressed her cheek against mine.

“I have missed you so much!” she said. “Oh, my darling husband!”

She took a step back.

“Again!”

I ran back to the lake, jumped onto the little island, waited until Geir was on the other one, then we repeated our actions with one difference, this time we ran as fast as we could to the girls.

Again she wrapped her arms around me.

My heart was racing, for I was not only standing on the ground in a forest with the sky far above me, I was also standing on the ground inside myself and looking up into something light and open and happy.

Her hair smelled of apples.

Through the material of her thick padded jacket I could feel her body. Her cold, smooth face against mine, almost glowing.

We did this three times. Then we delved further into the forest. After only a few meters it sloped down, and as the trees growing there were mostly deciduous, the ground was covered with red, yellow, and brown leaves, a floor to the bare walls of trunks. There was the sound of a rushing stream somewhere nearby. The forest tapered to a path running steeply down to the main road, which we couldn’t see until we came out a couple of meters above it.

On the other side, a field sloped down, beyond lay Tromøya Sound, as gray as clay, while the sky that opened above was a shade lighter.

The traffic was fast moving, and we kept to the ditch as we walked along. The bottles we usually found here were always new and shiny while those we found in the woods were often covered in grass and had leaves stuck to them, sometimes they were also full of little insects and lifting them up was like lifting up a bit of the field.

Today, however, there were no bottles to be seen. When we reached Larsen’s house — a dilapidated, shed-like construction that had once been part of a farm but was now squeezed into a corner between the forest and the road, whose owner was a teacher at the same school as Dad and according to rumors had turned up for work drunk several times — we crossed the road and followed the steep gravel road down to Gamle Tybakken. We looked for bottles on the way, but our efforts became more and more halfhearted. Soon we came to a built-up area. Old white houses set far back in well-established gardens full of fruit trees and fruit bushes. Where we were walking, the colors were so sharp, all the leaves were brilliant yellow and piercing red, and so matte in the sky’s pale, slightly frigid gray, it gave me a sense I was walking at the bottom of a tin can, with the sky the lid and the hills that rose all around me the sides. After a few hundred meters we walked past a large property with a lawn stretching up toward the forest above. The house at the top was surprisingly small, considering the size of the land. A narrow gravel track led up to it, and we stopped by the mailbox at the end because, outside the house, beside a large stream that plunged down from the forest, an old lady was pulling at a tree that had got wedged in it.

The tree was perhaps three times bigger than her, with a broad panoply of thin branches around it.

Somehow or other she noticed us standing there because the very next moment she straightened up and looked across at us. She waved. But not in greeting, she was pointing to herself, she was beckoning us to come over.

We ran as fast as we could up the gravel track, across the soft, wet lawn and stopped in front of her.

“You look strong,” she said. “Can you help an old lady, do you think? I need to get this tree out of the stream. It’s gotten stuck.”

Flattered, we got down to work. Geir waded into the water as far as he could and grabbed a branch, I did the same on the other side while Anne Lisbet and Solveig pulled the trunk. At first it wouldn’t budge, but then Geir began to shout, Heave-ho! Heave-ho! to make us pull in unison and bit by bit we managed to drag it out. When it was free the current caught the end and pushed it onto our side, but we held on and hauled it onto dry land.

“Oh, how wonderful!” the old lady said. “Many, many thanks! I would never have managed that on my own, you know. You are so strong! Well done. Wait here and I’ll give you a little something as a sign of gratitude.”

She scurried off to the house with her head bowed and disappeared through the front door.

“What do you think we’ll get?” I said.

“Few cookies maybe,” Geir said.

“Or a bag of bread rolls,” Anne Lisbet said. “Mom always keeps some handy.”

“I think apples,” Solveig said. And when she said that, I agreed wholeheartedly because beyond the gravel track there were lots of apple trees.

But when the old lady reappeared, with her head still bowed, she came toward us empty-handed. Hadn’t she found anything?

“Now look here,” she said. “This is for you with my thanks. Who’s going to take care of it? It’s for all of you.”

She held out a coin. It was five kroner.

Five kroner!

“I can look after it,” I said. “Thank you very much!”

“It’s me who should thank you,” the old lady said. “All the best now!”

Elated, we sprinted down the hill. Then without a second thought we walked back the way we had come, discussing what we would do with the money. Geir and I wanted to go to the shop straightaway and buy candy with it. Anne Lisbet and Solveig also wanted to buy candy, but they didn’t want to go to the shop now, it would soon be dinner and they had to go home. We decided to save the money for the day after and then buy candy.

Anne Lisbet and Solveig took the path home. Geir and I continued along the main road to the shop. Standing outside, we couldn’t wait as we had agreed, the five-krone coin was burning a hole in our pockets, it was all we could think about. Waiting to spend it was simply not an option, so we decided to buy the candy now and save it until the following day and surprise Anne Lisbet and Solveig with them.

And so we bought them.

However, after we had done so and started walking to the road, Geir’s father came along in their Beetle. He pulled over beside us, leaned over the seat, and opened the door.

“Hop in,” he said.

“Can Karl Ove come too?”

“No, not this time, we’re not going home. We’re going to town. Another time, Karl Ove!”

“OK,” Geir said. Turned to me and said in his dramatic whisper, “Don’t eat any of the candy!”

I shook my head and stood watching until Geir was in and the car had driven off. Then I ran to the concrete barriers, jumped over them, scampered down the slope and into the play area, past the wreck of a car, across the soccer field, through the forest, and along the edge past the bog. Just before I could be seen from our house I stopped and divvied up all the candy, which until then had been in one bag, and put them into the four pockets of my jacket. I threw the bag away and ran onto the road, down the side of the house — there was a light on in the living-room window — and into the drive. Dad’s car was there and, leaning against the wall in its usual place, Yngve’s bike!