Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Three

I passed it to Dad upstairs in the kitchen with the change, which he pocketed while I waited for him to say I could go. But he didn’t.

“Sit!” he said, pointing to the chair.

I sat.

“Straighten your back, boy!” he said.

I straightened my back.

He took the potatoes, which were covered in soil, from the bag and started peeling them.

What was it he wanted?

“Well?” he said, turning to look at me while his hands worked under the water from the tap.

I looked at him in surprise.

“What did Frøken have to say?” he said.

“Frøken?”

“Yes, Fwøken. Didn’t she have anything to say to all of you on your first day?”

“Yes, she did, she welcomed us back. Then we were given our schedule and some books.”

“What’s your schedule like then?” he said, walking over to the cupboard by the stove and taking out a saucepan.

“Shall I go and get it?”

“No, no. You must remember some of it, don’t you? Did it look good?”

“Yes,” I said. “Great.”

“That’s good,” he said.

That evening I realized what Mom’s absence meant.

The rooms were lifeless.

Dad sat downstairs in his study, and the living room and kitchen were “out there,” dead. I tiptoed toward them, and the feeling that came over me when I was alone in the forest, when the forest was sufficient unto itself and it didn’t want to incorporate me, reemerged here as well.

The rooms were only rooms, a gaping space I entered.

But not my room, thank goodness. It wrapped itself around me, soft and friendly as it had always been.

The next day Sverre and Geir Håkon came over to me in B-Max. Several kids from the class were standing around us.

“Who did you vote for yesterday, Karl Ove?” Geir Håkon said.

“It’s a secret,” I said.

“You voted for yourself. You got only one vote, and that was the one you gave yourself.”

“No, it wasn’t,” I said.

“Yes, it was,” Sverre said. “We’ve asked everyone in the class. No one voted for you. So you’re the only one left. You voted for yourself.”

“No,” I said. “That’s not true. I didn’t vote for myself.”

“Who did then?”

“I don’t know.”

“But we’ve asked everyone. No one voted for you. You voted for yourself. Come on, admit it.”

“No,” I said. “It’s not true.”

“But we’ve asked everyone. There’s only you left.”

“Then someone’s lying.”

“Why would anyone lie?”

“How should I know?”

“You’re the one who’s lying. You voted for yourself.”

“No, I didn’t.”

The rumor spread through the school, but I denied everything. And kept denying it. Everyone knew what had happened, but as long as I didn’t admit it, they couldn’t be absolutely sure. They thought it was typical of me. I thought I was someone. But I didn’t think that. A person who votes for himself is a nobody. The fact that I never went scavenging, never did any shoplifting, never fired a slingshot at birds or a pea-shooter loaded with cherry pits at cars or passers-by, and never joined in when others locked the gym teacher behind the garage door in the equipment room or when others put drawing pins on the supply teachers’ chairs or dunked their sponges until they were sopping wet, plus the fact that I told them they shouldn’t do these things, told them it was wrong, did not do a great deal for my reputation, either. I knew, however, that I was right and what the others were doing was wrong. Occasionally I would pray to God to forgive them. If they swore, for example. Then a prayer might come into my mind. Dear God, Forgive Leif Tore for swearing. He didn’t mean to. I said things like: heck, blast, golly, gosh, drats, jeez, my foot, goodness, fudge, holy cow, bother, and yikes. But despite this, despite not swearing, not lying, except in self-defense, not stealing or vandalizing or playing up teachers, despite being interested in clothes and my appearance and always wanting to be right and the best, which meant my general reputation was poor and I was not someone others said they liked, I wasn’t shunned or avoided, and if I was, by Leif Tore and Geir Håkon, for instance, there were always boys I could turn to. Such as Dag Lothar. Or Dag Magne. And when all the kids got together in big groups no one was rejected, everyone was accepted, including me.

Of course, it was easier to be at home reading.

Nor did it do much for my reputation that I was a Christian. Actually, that was Mom’s fault. One day, the year before, she had banned the reading of comics. I had come home early from school, run up the stairs, happy and excited, since Dad was still at work.

“Are you hungry?” she said, sitting on a chair in the living room with a book in her lap and looking at me.

“Yes,” I said.

She got up and went into the kitchen, where she took a loaf from the bread box.

The rain outside was like stripes in the air. Some stragglers were coming down the road from the bus, heads bowed beneath the hoods of their rain jackets.

“I was looking at some of your comics today,” Mom said, cutting a slice of bread. “What do you read? I’m aghast.”

“Aghast?” I said. “What does that mean?”

She put a slice on the plate in front of me, opened the fridge, and took out some mild, white cheese and margarine.

“What you read is absolutely awful! It’s just violence! People shooting one another and laughing! You’re too young to read stuff like this.”

“But everyone does,” I said.

“That’s no argument,” she said. “It doesn’t mean you have to.”

“But I like it!” I said, spreading the margarine with my knife.

“Yes, that’s what’s so bad about it!” she said, sitting down. “That kind of magazine gives a terrible view of humanity. Especially of women. Do you understand? I don’t want your attitudes to be shaped by that.”

“By the killing?”

“For example.”

“But it’s not meant seriously!” I said.

Mom sighed. “You know Ingunn’s writing a university thesis about the violence in comics, don’t you?”

“No,” I said.

“It’s not good for you,” she said. “Simple as that. At least you understand. That it’s not good for you.”

“So am I not allowed?”

“No.”

“Eh?”

“It’s for your own good,” she said.

“I’m not allowed? But Mom, Mom … Never?”

“You’ll have to read Donald Duck.”

“DONALD DUCK?” I yelled. “No one reads DONALD DUCK!”

I burst into tears and ran to my room.

Mom followed me, sat on the edge of the bed, and stroked my back.

“You can read books,” she said. “That’s much better. You can go to the library, you and me and Yngve. To Arendal, once a week. Then you can borrow as many books as you like.”

“But I don’t want to read books,” I said. “I want to read comics!”

“Karl Ove,” she said, “my mind is made up.”

“But Dad reads comics!”

“He’s an adult,” she said. “It’s not the same.”

“So no more comics ever again?”

“I have to work this evening. But tomorrow we can go to the library,” she said and got up. “Shall we leave it at that?”

I didn’t answer, and she left.

She must have stumbled on a comic in the Kamp series or Vi Vinner, which were about war, in which all the Germans, or Fritz or Sauerkraut or whatever they were called, were killed with a smile on their lips, and the pages were littered with Donnerwetters and Dummkopfs or whatever they shouted to one another in the heat of battle, or she could have found Agent X9 or Serie Spesial, where most of the women wore bikinis and often not even that. It was just great to see Modesty Blaise undressing, though only when I was alone, normally nudity was incredibly embarrassing. Every time Agaton Sax was on children’s TV I blushed if Mom and Dad were there because in the intro he was ogling a naked woman through binoculars. Sometimes there was actually some sex in the cartoons or films on TV, and if it took place when I was allowed to watch, it all became unbearable. There we were, the whole family, Mom, Dad, and their two sons watching TV, and then a couple screwed — in the middle of our living room, where did you look?