Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Three

What was that smell?

Grandma?

Was Grandma here?

No, out of the question, that was impossible.

Perhaps Dad had been to Kristiansand and had brought the fragrance back with him?

No, for Pete’s sake, there was someone talking in the kitchen!

I had my boots off in a flash, registered that my socks were wet, so I couldn’t walk in them, they would leave marks, and I jogged through the hall into the boiler room, where there was a fresh pair hanging from a line, put them on, strode up the stairs as fast as I dared, stopped.

The fragrance was stronger here. There was no doubt: Grandma was here.

“Is that you, champ?” Dad said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Come in here a moment!” he said.

I went into the kitchen.

There was Grandma!

I ran over and hugged her.

She laughed and ruffled my hair.

“How big you’ve grown!” she said.

“What are you doing here?” I said. “Where’s the car? Where’s Grandad?”

“I caught the bus,” she said.

“The bus?” I said.

“Yes. My son is alone with his children, I thought, so I can go and give him a bit of a hand. I’ve already made some dinner for you, as you can see.”

“How long are you staying?”

She laughed.

“Well, I’m catching the bus back tomorrow, I think. Someone has to look after Grandad as well. I can’t leave him alone for too long.”

“No,” I said, hugging her again.

“All right,” Dad said. “You go to your room for a while and I’ll call you when the food’s ready.”

“But he must have his present first,” Grandma said.

“Thank you for my Christmas present, by the way,” I said. “It was great.”

Grandma leaned forward, lifted her bag, and took out a little packet, which she passed to me.

I tore off the paper.

It was an IK Start mug.

It was white, with the Kristiansand club logo on one side and a soccer player in a yellow shirt and black shorts on the other.

“Wow, a Start mug!” I said and gave her another hug.

It was strange having Grandma there. I had hardly ever seen her without Grandad, and hardly ever on her own with Dad. They sat chatting in the kitchen; I could hear them through the door, which I had left ajar. There were intermittent pauses when one of them got up to do something. Then they chatted a bit more, Grandma laughed and told a story, and Dad mumbled. He called us, we ate, he was quite different from how he normally was, coming closer to us and distancing himself all the time. Sometimes he was completely in tune with what Grandma was saying, then he would be gone, looking elsewhere or getting up to do something, then he would look at her again and smile and make a comment that would make her laugh, and then he was gone again.

She left the following evening. She gave Yngve and me a hug, then Dad drove her to the bus station in Arendal. I put on Rubber Soul and lay down with a biography of Madame Curie. When the second song came, Norwegian Wood, I took my eyes off the book and gazed at the ceiling as the mood of the music in some incomprehensible way got into me and raised me to where it was. It was a fantastic feeling. Not only because it was beautiful, there was something else present that had nothing to do with the room I lay in or the world I was surrounded by.

I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me?

She showed me her room, isn’t it good, Norwegian wood?

Fantastic, fantastic.

Then I went on reading about Madame Curie until ten and I switched off the light. As I drifted into sleep, as whatever existed in my room was somehow diluted with images, where they came from I had no idea, but I accepted them nonetheless, the door was suddenly thrust open and the light switched on.

It was Dad.

“How many apples have you had today?” he said.

“One,” I said.

“Are you sure? Grandma said she gave you one.”

“Really?”

“But you had one after dinner, too. Do you remember?”

“Oh yes! I’d forgotten that one!” I said.

Dad switched off the light and closed the door without another word.

The next day after dinner he called me. I went into the kitchen.

“Sit down,” he said. “Here’s an apple.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He handed me an apple.

“Sit here and eat it,” he said.

I glanced up at him. He met my gaze, his eyes were serious, and I looked down, started to eat the apple. Once it was finished, he handed me another. Where had he got it from? Had he got a bag behind his back or what?

“Have another,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. “But I only eat one a day.”

“You had two yesterday, didn’t you?”

I nodded, took it, and ate it.

He handed me another.

“Here’s another,” he said. “This is your lucky day.”

“I’m full,” I said.

“Eat your apple.”

I ate it. It took me longer than the first two. The bite-sized chunks seemed to be lying on top of the food from dinner; it was as though I could feel the cold apple flesh down below.

Dad handed me another.

“I don’t want it,” I said.

“There were no limits yesterday,” he said. “Have you forgotten? You must have had two apples because you wanted them. Today you can have as many as you want. Eat.”

I shook my head.

He leaned down. His eyes were cold.

“Eat your apple. Now.”

I started eating. Whenever I swallowed my stomach contracted and I had to swallow several times not to throw up.

He was standing behind me, there was no way I could trick him. I cried and swallowed, swallowed and cried. In the end, I couldn’t go on.

“I’m so full!” I said. “I simply can’t eat any more!”

“Eat up,” Dad said. “You like apples so much.”

I tried a couple more bites, but it was no good.

“I can’t,” I said.

He looked at me. Then he took the half-eaten apple and threw it in the trash can in the cupboard under the sink.

“You can go to your room,” he said. “Now I hope that has taught you a lesson.”

Inside my room there was only one thing I longed for, and that was to grow up. To have total control over my own life. I hated Dad, but I was in his hands, I couldn’t escape his power. It was impossible to exact my revenge on him. Except in the much-acclaimed mind and imagination, there I was able to crush him. I could grow there, outgrow him, place my hands on his cheeks, and squeeze until his lips formed the stupid pout he made to imitate me, because of my protruding teeth. There, I could punch him in the nose so hard that it broke and blood streamed from it. Or, even better, so that the bone was forced back into his brain and he died. I could hurl him against the wall or throw him down the stairs. I could grab him by the neck and smash his face against the table. That was how I could think, but the instant I was in the same room as he was, everything crumbled, he was my father, a grown man, so much bigger than me that everything had to bend to his will. He bent my will as if it were nothing.

That must have been why, unwittingly of course, I was converting the inside of my room into an enormous outside. When I read, and for a while I did hardly anything else, it was always the world outside I moved in as I lay still on my bed, and not just the world that existed in the here and now, with all its foreign countries and foreigners, but also the one that had been, from Stokke’s Bjørneklo, the Stone Age boy, to the one in the future, such as in Jules Verne’s books. And then there was the music. It, too, opened my room with its moods and the strong emotions it evoked in me, which had nothing to do with those I normally felt in life. Mostly I listened to The Beatles and Wings, but also to Yngve’s music, which for a long time was bands and solo artists like Gary Glitter, Mud, Slade, The Sweet, Rainbow, Status Quo, Rush, Led Zeppelin, and Queen, but who in the course of his secondary school years were changing, as other, quite different, music began to sneak its way between all these old cassettes and records, like The Jam single and a single by The Stranglers, called No More Heroes, an LP by the Boomtown Rats and one by The Clash, a cassette by Sham 69 and Kraftwerk, as well as the songs he recorded off the only radio music program there was, Pop Spesial. He started to have friends who were interested in the same music and also played the guitar. One of them was called Bård Torstensen, and one day at the beginning of May when Dad was out for a few hours and thus the house was left unguarded, he joined Yngve in his room. They sat playing guitar and listening to records. After a while there was a knock at my door, it was Yngve, there was something he wanted to show Bård. I was reclined on the bed reading and got up when they came in.