Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Three

After we had driven through the little tunnel and come into the town of Songe, he glanced at me.

“Have you been out with Geir today?” he said.

“No,” I said. “They’re in Arendal.”

“We might bump into them then.”

There was another silence.

It bothered me; he was in such a good mood and didn’t deserve to be met with silence. But what could I say?

After a while I thought of something.

“Where are you going to park?”

He shot me a sidelong glance.

“We’ll find somewhere,” he said.

“Maybe in Skytebanen? There’s always room on Saturdays.”

“That’s the last resort,” he said.

He found a parking spot in Tyholmen. He set off at a good clip between the tall timber houses, and I had to jog to keep up. I was ashamed of my clothes, I looked like such an idiot in them, and I kept a close eye on the people we passed to see if they were staring or laughing.

At the fish market Dad scanned the glass counters while waiting his turn.

“Let’s have some shrimp, shall we, eh, Karl Ove?” he said.

I nodded.

“And perhaps that piece of cod?”

I didn’t say anything.

He smiled and looked at me.

“I know you don’t like cod, but it’s good for you. When you grow up you’ll get a taste for it.”

“I doubt it,” I said.

I felt like chatting and telling stories, the way I did with Mom, but I couldn’t even get off the ground with him. However, I was glad he had brought me along and it was important he knew that.

When it was his turn and he pointed out what he wanted to the assistant, one of the other women behind the counter stared at him. Realizing that I was watching her, she lowered her gaze and continued to pack the fish on the cutting board in front of her. There was something about Dad, in the crowd by the counter, his pointing and talking, that made me think he wanted to dispel from his mind everything that existed around him. Not his appearance, not the face dominated by the beard, not the light-blue eyes, not the slightly curled lips, nor his tall, slim body, there was something else, something he “radiated.”

“There we are,” he said as he received his change and held the white bag of fish and shrimp in his hand. “Let’s go then!”

Outside, beneath the gray sky, with people packing all the sidewalks and pedestrian areas, as always on Saturdays, we walked around Pollen, the central bay area, heading for the record shop, I did a few skips beside him, to show him I was happy. When he looked at me I smiled. The wind coming off the sound ruffled his hair and he patted it back in place.

“Could you carry the bag for me for a bit?” he said inside Musikkhjørnet. I nodded and held it in my hand while he nimbly flicked through the records.

My parents used to play music when we had gone to bed, especially on Friday and Saturday evenings. Often it was the last thing I heard before I fell asleep. Every now and again he played records when he was alone in his study. Steinar had told me once that he had brought a Pink Floyd LP into the classroom and played it. He had said this with awe in his voice.

“Wouldn’t you like to choose a cassette?” Dad remarked, without taking his eyes off the records he had in front of him.

“But I don’t have a cassette recorder,” I said.

“You can borrow Yngve’s,” he said. “And then we’ll see you get one of your own for Christmas. It’s good to have a few cassettes lying around. No point having a recorder without any cassettes!”

Shyly I went over to the cassettes, which were not in boxes like the records but in racks on the wall. One was full of Elvis cassettes. I picked out one with the cover showing him in a leather suit, sitting with a guitar in his lap and smiling.

Dad bought two records, and when he placed them on the counter he told the assistant that I would point out a cassette I wanted. He came over to the rack with a little key in his hand. I indicated the Elvis cassette, he unlocked the glass door, took it out, and put it in its own little bag beside Dad’s big bag.

“Good choice,” Dad said as we walked toward the car. “You know Elvis was number one when I was growing up. Elvis the Pelvis, we called him. I still have some of his old records. They’re at Grandma and Grandad’s. Perhaps we should bring them back next time we go? So that you can listen to them?”

“Yes, that would be good,” I said. “Maybe Yngve would like it, too.”

“They must be worth a mint today,” he said. Stopped and took the keys from his pocket. I looked over at the massive oil tankers laid up in Galtesund, on the Tromøya side of the strait. They were so big that, set against the low hills, they seemed to come from another world.

Dad opened the door on my side.

“Can I sit in front on the way home, too?” I said.

“You can. But only today, OK?”

“OK,” I said.

He put the bags on the back seat and lit a cigarette before strapping himself in, which I had already done, and started the car. On the way home I sat partly looking at the cover of the cassette and partly out of the window. There was a line of traffic the entire length of Langbrygga, it started moving more freely in the bay around the headland, with Bai Radio and TV on one side and the fish auction hall, with its low, white-brick buildings and fluttering flags on the other. Across the sound and its choppy white-tipped waves lay Skilsø, a collection of timber houses situated along a hill, with a ferry terminal below, beyond which was Pusnes Mekaniske Verksted, marine suppliers, and then it was mostly forest along the coast of the island, while on the mainland, where the road wound up and down, there were houses and jetties all the way to the gas station, after which came Songe, Vindholmen, and the road that led to Tromøya Bridge. All ruffled and tousled, as it were, by the wind from the south. As we drove, the thought of Anne Lisbet crept up on me and darkened my mood. Perhaps it was the Condeep platform that had triggered it because I had been thinking of going with Geir and the girls up to Tromøya Bridge and watching it being towed out to sea. Now I wouldn’t. Or would I? She still hadn’t been to my room, which I imagined every night before going to sleep, that one day she would be sitting there, on my bed, surrounded by my things, and the thought always set off fireworks of joy in my brain, Anne Lisbet, here, next to me!

Why should Eivind suddenly visit her instead of me? We’d had so much fun!

Eivind had to go. We had to get back together.

But what could be done?

Beneath us Tromøya Sound stretched to the east and the west. A double-ender was coming in, approaching land, I saw a figure standing at the stern with the tiller in his hand.

Dad indicated left and slowed down, waited for two passing cars, and then he crossed the road and arrived at the last hill up toward our house. Leif Tore, Rolf, Geir Håkon, Trond, Big Geir, Geir, and Kent Arne were playing soccer in the road. They glanced at us as we passed them and parked in the drive.

I raised a hand to them as I got out.

“Gonna join in?” Kent Arne shouted.

I shook my head.

“I’ve got to eat.”

As we walked toward the house, out of sight of the boys in the road, Dad grabbed my hand.

“Let me have a look,” he said. “So the warts haven’t gone yet?”

“No,” I said.

He let go.

“Do you know how to get rid of them?”

“No.”

“I’ll tell you. I have an old method. Come into the kitchen afterward and I’ll tell you. You want to get rid of them, don’t you?”

“You bet.”

The first thing I did upstairs was to throw the trousers and the sweater in the dirty linen basket and put on the clothes I was wearing earlier. Then I propped the cassette, face up, against the wall on my desk so that I could see it wherever I was in the room and went to the kitchen, where Dad was sitting with a little bowl of shrimp in front of him. Rice pudding was cooking on the stove; Mom was in the living room watering the flowers.