Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Three

Mom stood staring at the table, probably to check that everything was there. Grandma took the coffee pot off the stove in the kitchen and the steadily increasing noise of the whistle died with a little sigh. Dad deposited the luggage in the room above our heads. Grandad came into the hall after hanging up his beekeeper outfit in the basement.

“The Norwegian population is going through a growth spurt, I see!” he said when he saw us. He came over and patted me on the head as though I were some kind of dog. Then he patted Yngve’s head and sat down as Grandma came in from the kitchen carrying the coffee pot, and Dad and Kjartan both came down the stairs.

Grandad was small, his face was round, and apart from a thin wreath of white hair around his head he was bald. The corners of his mouth were often stained with tobacco juice. The eyes behind his glasses were sharp, but were totally transformed once took them off. Then they were like two small children who had just woken up.

“Looks like I came at just the right moment,” he said, putting a slice of bread on his plate.

“We heard you in the basement,” Mom said. “Nothing to do with luck.”

She turned to me.

“Do you remember the time we heard you in the hall ten minutes before you arrived?”

I nodded. Dad and Kjartan sat down on opposite sides of the table. Grandma went to pour coffee into the cups.

Grandad, who was spreading butter over the bread with his knife, looked up.

“You heard him before he came?”

“Yes, strange, isn’t it?” Mom said.

“That’s a vardøger, that is. A kind of guardian angel,” Grandad said. “It means you’ll have a long life.”

“Is that what it means?” Mom said with a laugh.

“Yes,” Grandad said.

“Surely you don’t believe that, do you?” Dad said.

“Did you two hear him when he wasn’t there?” Grandad said. “That’s what’s remarkable. Is it so remarkable that it has some significance?”

“Hm,” Kjartan said. “You’ve become superstitious in your old age, Johannes.”

I looked at Grandma. Her hands were trembling, and as she poured, the pot was moving up and down so much it was only with the greatest effort of will that she managed to direct the jet from the spout into the cup without spilling the coffee. Mom looked at her, too, and was on the point of getting up, presumably to take over, only to lean back and reach for the bread basket instead. It was both painful to watch Grandma because she was so slow — in fact some coffee did end up in a saucer — and also unheard of that she, an adult, was unable to manage such a simple task as pouring coffee without spilling it, and the strangeness of seeing someone with hands shaking nonstop, almost with a mind of their own, meant that I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

Mom placed her hand on mine.

“Wouldn’t you like a griddle cake?” she said.

I nodded. She reached for one and put it on my plate. I spread a thick layer of butter on it and sprinkled sugar. Mom lifted the jug of milk and filled my glass. The milk came straight from the cowshed; it was warm and yellowish with tiny lumps floating round. I looked at Mom. Why had she filled my glass? I couldn’t drink that milk, it was disgusting, it had come straight from the cow, and not just any cow but one standing outside and pissing and shitting.

I ate the griddle cake and took another while Dad asked Grandad some questions, which he answered in his own time. Kjartan sighed louder than he would have if he’d been alone. Either he had heard all this before or he didn’t like what he heard.

“We were thinking of going up Lihesten this year,” Dad said.

“Is that so?” Grandad said. “Well, it’s a good idea. Yes, it’s nice there. You can see over seven parishes from the top.”

“We’re looking forward to it,” Dad said while Mom and Grandma were talking about an oak and a holly tree they had brought from Tromøya the previous year that they were now growing here.

I decided I would go and have a look at them.

Dad’s glare stopped me in my tracks.

“Aren’t you going to drink your milk, Karl Ove?” he said. “It’s straight from the cow, you know. You won’t get better milk anywhere.”

“I know,” I said.

As I didn’t make a move to drink it, he fastened his eyes onto mine.

“Drink the milk, boy,” he said.

“But it’s warm,” I said. “And there are lumps in it.”

“Now you’re offending your grandparents,” Dad said. “You have to eat and drink whatever you’re served. And that’s that.”

“The boy’s used to pasteurized milk,” Kjartan said. “From a carton in the fridge. They sell it in the shop here, too. Of course he can have some of that! We can buy it tomorrow. He’s not used to milk straight from the cow.”

“That seems unnecessary,” Dad said. “The milk here is just as good. If not better. What nonsense to buy milk just because he’s pampered.”

“I like pasteurized milk best myself,” Kjartan said. “I agree wholeheartedly with your son.”

“OK,” Dad said. “Just so long as you’re not taking the side of the underdog as usual. But this is more about manners.”

Kjartan smiled and studied the table. I put the glass of milk to my mouth, stopped breathing through my nose, tried to think about something other than the white lumps, and drank it all in four long swigs.

“See,” Dad said. “It was good, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said.

After the meal we asked if we were allowed to go for a little walk even though it was late. We were. On with our shoes, into the yard, and down the road to the barn. The dusk was tenuous and hung like a spider’s web all around us. The shapes were intact; the colors were absent or had gone gray. Yngve undid the catch of the cowshed door and pushed. The door was stuck and he had to put all his weight behind it to open up. Inside it was dark. Dim light from the dirty peepholes above the stalls made it possible for us to glimpse contours. The cows, lying in their stalls, stirred when they heard us. One turned its head.

“It’s OK, cows.”

It was nice and warm inside. The small calf, which was isolated in a kind of pen on the other side of the muck channel, was stamping around. We leaned over toward it. It looked at us with frightened eyes. Yngve patted it.

“Don’t be scared, little calf,” he said.

It wasn’t only the door that was overgrown; all the walls and the floor and the windows were as well, as though the room had sunk at some point and was now submerged beneath water.

Yngve opened the barn door. We climbed into the hay that was lying there, clambered up onto the barn bridge, and opened the door to the small henhouse. The floor was covered with sawdust and feathers. The chickens sat motionless on the roosts staring straight ahead.

“Doesn’t look like there are any eggs,” Yngve said. “Want to go up and have a look at the minks too?”

I nodded. When he pushed the tall barn door to, a white cat shot past us like an arrow and disappeared under the bridge. We went down and called it, knowing it was hiding somewhere, and finally we gave up and headed for the three mink huts that stood to the far west of the property, right by the forest. The acrid smell that met us as we approached was almost unbearable and I started breathing through my mouth.

There was a rustling and a banging in all the cages as we stopped in front of them.

How unpleasant it was.

It was darker here by the forest. The minks’ claws clinked against the metal of the cages as they paced back and forth. We went up close to one. The black animal shrank as far back as it could, turned its head, and hissed at us. Its teeth shone. Its eyes were black like black stones and when, twenty minutes later, I was lying on the bed in our room on the first floor, alongside Yngve, who had his head on the pillow at the other end and was reading a soccer magazine, it was them I was thinking of. Of them moving back and forth in the cages all night while we slept. Suddenly voices were raised in the living room beneath us. It was Mom and Dad talking with Kjartan. Raised voices didn’t mean anything worrying; on the contrary, there was something reassuring about them. They wanted something, and they wanted it so much it couldn’t be whispered or mumbled, it had to be shouted.