Karl Knausgaard: My Struggle: Book Three

The best way up to the top of what we called a mountain went past their garden, and that was the path we were taking now, slowly, because it was steep and the long, yellow grass here was slippery. Now and then I grabbed a sapling to pull myself up. Just below the summit, the mountain was bare and protruded outward, impossible to walk up, at least when it was as wet as it was now, but at the edge there was a crevice between the rock face and a gently projecting crag where you could get a foothold and easily clamber up the last few meters to the summit.

“Where’s it gone?” Trond said, the first man up.

“It was right there!” Geir said, pointing a few meters along the little plateau.

“Oh no,” Leif Tore said. “It’s down there. Look!”

Everyone turned and looked down. The rainbow was over the forest, a long way down. One end was above the trees below Beck’s house, the other near the grassy incline down to the bay.

“Shall we go down then?” Trond said.

“What if the treasure’s still here?” Leif Tore said, in the dialect we spoke. “We could at least have a peek.”

“It isn’t,” I said. “It’s only where the rainbow is.”

“Who took it then? That’s what I’d like to know,” Leif Tore said.

“No one did,” I said. “Are you stupid or what? No one brings it either, if that’s what you think. It’s the rainbow.”

“You’re the one who’s stupid,” Leif Tore said. “It can’t just disappear all on its own.”

“It seems it can,” I said.

“No, it can’t,” Leif Tore said.

“Yes, it can,” I said. “Take a look, then. See if you can find it!”

“I want to look, too,” Trond said.

“Me too,” Geir said.

“Count me out,” I said.

They turned and walked away, glancing from side to side. I wanted to go with them, I could feel myself drawn, but it wasn’t possible now. Instead I looked at the view. It was the best vantage point anywhere. You could see the bridge almost rising from the treetops, you could see the sound, where there were always boats crossing, and you could see the big, white gasometers on the other side. You could see the island of Gjerstadholmen, you could see the new road, the low concrete bridge it crossed, you could see Ubekilen Bay from the landward side. And you could see the estate. All the red and orange roofs among the trees. The road. Our garden, Gustavsen’s garden; the rest was hidden.

The sky above the estate was almost completely blue now. The clouds toward the town, white. While on the other side, behind Ubekilen, they were still heavy and gray.

I could see Dad down there. A tiny, tiny little figure, no bigger than an ant, on top of the ladder against the roof.

Could he see me up here? I wondered.

A gust of wind blew off the sea.

I turned to watch the others. Two yellow dots and one light green one moving to and fro between the trees. The rocky plateau was dark gray, much like the sky beyond, with yellow and, in some places, whitish grass in the cracks. A branch lay there, all its weight resting on the many needle-thin side branches in such a way that the thick main stem didn’t touch the ground. It looked strange.

I had hardly ever been in the forest that lay ahead. The furthest I had gone on the path was to a large, uprooted tree, perhaps thirty meters inside. From there you could see down a slope where nothing grew but heather. With the tall, slim pine trees on both sides and the denser-growing spruces like a wall beneath, it resembled a large room.

Geir said he saw a fox there once. I didn’t believe him, but foxes were no laughing matter, so for safety’s sake we had taken with us a packed lunch and bottles of juice to the edge of the mountain, where the whole of the world as we knew it lay beneath us.

“Here it is!” Leif Tore shouted. “Wow! The pot of gold!”

“Wow!” Geir shouted.

“You can’t fool me!” I shouted back.

“Yippeeeee!” Leif Tore cried. “We’re rich!”

“I don’t believe it!” Trond shouted.

Then it all went quiet.

Had they really found it?

Of course not. They were trying to trick me.

But the end of the rainbow had been on this precise spot.

What if Leif Tore was right and the treasure hadn’t disappeared with the rainbow?

I took a few steps forward and tried to see through the juniper bushes they were standing behind.

“Ohhh, man! Look at this!” Leif Tore said.

I made up my mind in a flash and hurried over, dashing between the trees and past the bushes, then stopped.

They looked at me.

“Gotcha! Ha ha ha! We gotcha!”

“I knew all the time,” I said. “I was just coming to get you. The rainbow will be gone if we don’t hurry.”

“Oh, yes,” said Leif Tore. “We really fooled you. Admit it.”

“Come on, Geir,” I said. “Let’s go and look for the pot of gold down there.”

Feeling uncomfortable, Geir looked at Leif Tore and Trond. But he was my best friend and joined me. Trond and Leif Tore ambled along after us.

“I need a piss,” Leif Tore said. “Shall we see who can piss the furthest? Over the edge? It’ll be one great big long jet!”

Piss outdoors when Dad was down there and might be able to see?

Leif Tore was already out of his waterproof pants and fumbling with his fly. Geir and Trond had taken up positions on either side of him and were wriggling their hips and pulling down their trousers.

“I can’t piss,” I said. “I’ve just had one.”

“You haven’t,” Geir said, turning toward me with both his hands around his willy. “We’ve been together all day.”

“I had a piss while you were looking for the treasure,” I said.

The next second they were enveloped in a cloud of steam as they pissed. I stepped forward to see who won. Surprisingly, it was Trond.

“Rolf pulled his foreskin back,” Leif Tore said, closing his fly. “So he pissed much further from the get-go.”

“The rainbow’s gone,” Geir said, shaking his dick for a last time before tucking it back.

Everyone looked down over the edge.

“What shall we do now?” Trond said.

“No idea,” said Leif Tore.

“Let’s go to the boathouse, shall we?” I suggested.

“What can we do there?” said Leif Tore.

“Well, we can climb onto the roof,” I said.

“Good idea!” Leif Tore said.

We zigzagged down the slope, fought our way through the dense spruce forest, and arrived five minutes later on the gravel road that ran around the bay. The grassy hill on the other side was where we usually went skiing in the winter. In the summer and autumn we seldom went there — what was there to do? The bay was shallow and muddy, no good for swimming, the jetty was falling to pieces, and the little island off the coast was covered with shit from the colony of gulls nesting there. When we wandered around there it was mostly because we were at loose ends, like this morning. High above us, between the sloping field and the edge of the forest, there was an old, white house in which an old, white-haired lady lived. We knew nothing about her. Not her name, nor what she did there. Sometimes we peered into the house, laid our hands against the window, and pressed our faces against the glass. Not for any particular reason, nor out of curiosity, more because we could. We saw a sitting room with old furniture or a kitchen with old utensils. Near the house, past the narrow gravel road, there was a red barn seemingly on the verge of collapse. And at the very bottom, by the stream running down from the forest, there was an old, unpainted boathouse with tarred felt on the roof. Along the bed of the stream grew ferns and some plants with, relative to their thin stems, enormous leaves; if you swept them aside with your hands, in that swimming stroke the way people do, to see past the unresisting foliage, the ground appeared naked, as though the plants were deceiving us, pretending they were lush and green while in reality, beneath the dense leaves, there was almost nothing but soil. Further down, closer to the water, the earth or clay or whatever it was was a reddish color, reminiscent of rust. Occasionally a variety of things got caught there, a bit of a plastic bag or a condom, but not on days like today, when the water gushed out from the pipe under the road in an enormous torrent and only abated when it reached the little delta-like area where the water fanned out before it met the bay.