Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Three

The tingle of excitement I felt when I looked at her never waned, she was so beautiful it hurt. Her thick, light-blue jacket with the shiny material. The white cap. The rim of wool around the top of her boots. Her face when for some reason she sent us a fierce look. Her smile, as radiant as a billion diamonds.

When the snow began to fall we wandered around searching for suitable places to jump from, slide down, or dig holes in. Her hot, red cheeks then, the gentle but distinct smell of snow that changed so much according to the temperature, but that was everywhere around us nevertheless; all the possibilities that existed. Once the mist hung between the trees, the air was thick with drizzle and we were wearing waterproof clothing that was so frictionless on the snow we could slide down it like seals. We climbed to the top of the slope, I lay on my front, Anne Lisbet sat astride me, Solveig astride Geir, and we slid down on our stomachs all the way to the bottom. It was the best day I had ever experienced. We did it again and again. The feeling of her legs clamped round my back, the way she held my shoulders, the howls of delight she gave when we picked up speed, the fantastic somersaults when we reached the bottom, rolling around with our legs and arms entwined. All while the mist hung motionless amid the wet, dark green spruce trees, and the drizzle in the air lay like a thin film of skin on our faces.

We discovered lots of new places that winter, such as the deciduous forest below the road, which surrounded the whole estate and the area above the Fina station, two places that had been totally separate in our consciousness but that were now suddenly connected. The old gravel lane that led down there, the last part of which we had joined when we were going to the Fina station, also had a top end, where the children we had never seen lived, they also had a soccer field in the forest, small, it was true, but with decent goals. Or the road below Anne Lisbet and Solveig’s, where the houses highest up were only a stone’s throw away from theirs. Dag Magne, who was in our class, turned out to be Solveig’s neighbor. It came as a surprise that their houses were so close to one another, they belonged to two different worlds and there was a belt of forest between them. Presumably it was the forest that had deceived us. It was no more than twenty, perhaps thirty meters wide, but it represented so much more than houses that, emotionally, the distance felt like several hundred meters. This was the same across the whole estate, and not only there, it was like that by the dumping ground, too, for if you took the road from Færvik and continued straight on, which very few people did, instead of turning right onto the road to Hove, you were there. And if you bore right at the end of the long, flat stretch, on the road east toward the school, it was only a couple hundred meters before the dumping ground revealed itself in all its glory between the trees. Areas that had previously been isolated, in their own worlds, so to speak, were suddenly connected. How many people knew that Lake Tjenna was actually located right by Lake Gjerstad? Lake Gjerstad, which you could walk to from Sandum, on the other side of the island! Or reach via a shortcut off the road to school!

Another surprise was that Fru Hjellen, our houskeeper, lived with her husband in the house next to Anne Lisbet’s. They had no children, she was always happy to receive visitors, and I went there both on my own and with the other three. When she cleaned our house I told her all sorts of things, even things I didn’t tell Mom and Dad. She taught me how to open the front door with the key I had been given — the trick was to pull it out a tiny bit after fully inserting it and then turn.

And so it was Fru Hjellen I confided in when one of the rocks we regularly dropped on cars from the road below us finally hit one. I was the one who dropped it. We were standing by the green fence, Geir had just missed his car, when I picked up a stone and waited for another car to come. The stone was bigger than my hand and so heavy that I pushed it rather than dropping it. There, a car was coming round the bend. Racing across the flat stretch. Now!

The stone flew through the air. The instant it left my hand I knew it was going to hit. However, I had not anticipated the bang on the car roof would be so loud. Nor that the very next second there would be a squeal of brakes and locked tires screaming across the tarmac.

Geir looked at me with terrified eyes.

“Let’s scram!” he said.

He crawled up the rocks, dashed across the road, climbed up the little knoll, and was gone.

Absolutely paralyzed, I didn’t move. I simply couldn’t move a muscle. I was too frightened. Even when I heard a car door slamming below, the engine starting, and the car heading for where I was standing. I didn’t move.

Thirty seconds later the car came up the road. With tears running down my cheeks and my legs trembling so much I could barely stand, I watched it stop on the road three meters above me. The driver didn’t open the door and get out; he hurled it open and leaped out, his face red with fury.

“Did you throw that rock?” he yelled, already on his way down the slope.

I nodded.

He grabbed both my arms and shook me.

“You could have killed me, do you understand? If the rock had hit the windshield! Do you understand! And whatever happens, the car’s a WRITE — OFF! Do you know how much it costs to repair a roof? Oh, this is going to cost you a bundle!”

He let go of me.

I was crying so much I couldn’t see.

“What’s your name?” he said.

“Karl Ove,” I said.

“Surname?”

“Knausgård.”

“Do you live here?”

“No.”

“Where do you live then?”

“Nordåsen Ringvei,” I said.

He straightened up.

“You’ll be hearing from me,” he said. “Or your father will be hearing from me, I should say.”

He took the slope in one stride with his long legs, got into his car, slammed the door hard, and drove off with a jerk.

I sat down on the ground sobbing. All hope was gone.

A moment later Geir called from the terrain above. He came sprinting down, bursting with questions about what had happened and what had been said. I knew he was glad it was me who had thrown the rock and that I had given my name. But what he wanted to know most was why I hadn’t run. After all, we’d had plenty of time to get away. If I’d run he would never have caught me and never known it was me who had dropped the stone.

“I don’t know,” I said, drying my tears. “But I couldn’t. Suddenly I couldn’t move.”

“Are you going to tell your mom and dad?” Geir said. “That’d be best. If you tell them the truth they’ll be angry, but it’ll be over and done with quickly. If you don’t say anything and he rings, it’ll be worse.”

“I don’t dare,” I said. “I can’t tell them.”

“Did you tell him your father’s name?”

“No, just mine.”

“But your name’s not in the phone book!” he said. “And he’ll have to ring your dad. But you didn’t tell him his name!”

“No,” I said, with a flicker of hope.

“In that case, definitely don’t tell them anything,” Geir said. “Perhaps nothing will come of it!”

When I got home, Fru Hjellen was there. She could see I had been crying and asked me what was wrong. I asked her not to say a word to anyone. She promised. Then I told her. She stroked my cheek and said it would be best if I told my parents. But I didn’t dare, I told her, and so we left it at that. Whenever the phone rang in the following days, I froze in a fear that was greater than any I had ever experienced. An immense darkness hung over those days. But it was never him on the phone, it was always someone else, and I was beginning to believe that everything would pass and disappear of its own accord.