Karl Knausgaard: My Struggle: Book Three

I saw you were trying to hide it

Until the sensi thin condom split

Long-term plans and our shared visions

Blown to bits in one minute flat

You gave me a hug; I wanted to give you more

But you certainly put paid to that

“Listen now!” Yngve said.

All things pass — all things must decay

You go to sleep; you wake up to a new day

No way back now, nuthin’ to thank you for

Nuthin’ to say, there’s your coat, there’s the door

“Yes,” I said.

We were on the point of going banal

I heard myself speaking and got irritated

We had one too many and went sentimental

But the words were still infected

You broke my heart and gave me the clap

I still haven’t finished the penicillin rap

Why must we bang our heads against the same old wall

When we know deep down we hate it all

All things pass — all things must decay

You go to sleep; you wake up to a new day

No way back now, nuthin’ to thank you for

Nuthin’ to say, there’s your coat, there’s the door

“All things pass,” Yngve said when the song was over and the stylus had returned to its little rest. “All things must decay. You go to sleep; you wake up to a new day.”

“I understand what you’re saying,” I said.

“Did it help?”

“Yes, a bit. Could you play it again?”

Fortunately Mom and Dad didn’t notice that I had been crying when we were having dinner. Afterward, too restless to stay inside, I went out and as the road was empty and the children I knew best were on vacation I ambled down to the pontoons. There was a whole crowd standing around Jørn’s boat, which was brand new. Lots of people had a new boat that spring, both Geir Håkon and Kent Arne had one, a GH 10 and a With Dromedille respectively, a ten-footer as well, both with a five-horsepower Yamaha outboard motor.

I walked over to them.

“Here’s our jessie,” Jørn said as I stopped.

That word again.

They laughed, from which I concluded it wasn’t well meant.

“Hi,” I said.

Jørn started the engine after a few tugs on the cord.

“Come here, Karl Ove,” he said.

“No,” I said. “Not likely.”

“I want to show you something,” he said, looking at his little brother. “You reverse when I tell you, right.”

His little brother nodded.

“Come on,” he said, moving to the bow.

I took a few hesitant steps forward. When I was on the edge of the pontoon he threw himself around my legs.

“Reverse!” he shouted to his brother.

The boat reversed, I went into a crouch, my legs were pulled away from beneath me, I fell and was dragged over the edge because Jørn didn’t let go and the boat continued to reverse. I made a grab for the edge and clung on by my fingers. Jørn’s brother accelerated, the engine revved, and I hung there with my legs on board the boat, my body over the water, and my hands on the pontoon. I shouted to them to stop. I started to cry. The bystanders smiled and looked on calmly at what was happening.

“That’s enough!” Jørn shouted.

The whole incident had lasted maybe a minute. Jørn’s brother revved forward, Jørn let go of my legs, and I climbed up and walked off as quickly as I could, crying. The tears didn’t stop until I was up by the rock face, where I sat down in the hot, perfectly still air, saturated with aromas of the sun-warmed rocks, dry grass, and wild flowers.

I mulled over whether I should call Kajsa and ask her why she had broken up with me, so that I could learn from it for the next time, but it was too complicated, I could hear it all now, her hesitation and my groping for words, for what? It was over, she didn’t want to be with me, simple as that.

Still weak at the knees and shaking, I got up and walked home. Washed my face slowly in cold water in the bathroom, drew the curtains, didn’t want anything from outside to slip in, put on Motörhead, Ace of Spades, but it felt wrong, so I took it off and put on the new solo record by Paul McCartney instead and started a Desmond Bagley book I had bought with my own money called The Vivero Letter. I had read it before, but it was about the pyramids in South America, the enormous underwater grottos, where the protagonists dived in search of a hoard of gold others were also after …

When I sat down to have supper Mom looked at me and smiled.

“It might be time for you to start wearing a deodorant, Karl Ove?” she said. “I can buy you one tomorrow.”

“Deodorant?” I repeated stupidly.

“Yes, don’t you think so? You’ll be starting at the new school soon.”

“You do stink, in fact,” Yngve said. “No girls like that, you know.”

Was that why ?

But when I asked Yngve about it afterward, he smiled and said he doubted it was that simple.

The next morning Dad came in and told me I couldn’t spend the whole summer in bed reading, I had to get out, what about a swim? he said.

I closed my book without a word and walked past him without a second glance.

I sat on the concrete barriers for a few minutes throwing pebbles into the road. But I couldn’t stay there, everyone would see that I had nothing to do or anyone to be with, so I trudged down toward the big cherry tree at the edge of the forest by the road, where Kristen’s field started, to see if the cherries were ripe enough to eat yet. Who owned this tree was unclear, some said it was a wild cherry, others said it belonged to Kristen, but we had still stripped it every summer since we were old enough to climb, and no one had complained so far. Knowing every branch, I climbed almost to the top and along a branch until it began to bend. The berries weren’t quite ripe yet, the skin was hard and green on one side, but the other exhibited a faint redness and that was enough for me to bite into their skins, chew and swallow, and spit the pits as far as I could afterward.

Sitting there, I saw Jørn come cycling toward me. He was holding a canister of gasoline on the luggage rack with one hand and steering with the other. When he spotted me he braked gently and stopped.

“Karl Ove!” he shouted.

I climbed down as fast as I could. It took roughly the same time to clamber down as it took him to get off his bike and come to the tree because by the time I was on the ground he was only a few meters from me. Our eyes met, then I hared off, up toward the forest.

“I only wanted to say I was sorry!” he said. “About yesterday! I heard you crying.”

I didn’t turn.

“I didn’t mean it!” he said. “Come back down, so that we can shake hands on it!”

Ha ha, I thought, and stumbled on up between thickets and bushes until I was at the top and could watch him amble back to his bike, get on, and continue on his wobbly way down to the boats. Then I went back down. But the hard, bitter cherries had lost their fascination, so I gave up on the tree, and instead wandered off in the hope that someone would appear on the road after a while. Sometimes people came out if they saw you from a window, so I went for a walk up the hill, staring into the gardens on both sides as I went. Not a soul anywhere. People were in their boats or they had driven to swimming holes on the far side of the island or they were at work. Tove Karlsen’s husband was lying on a sunbed in the middle of their yellowing lawn with a radio beside him. Fru Jacobsen, the mother of Geir, Trond, and Wenche, was sitting under a parasol on the veranda smoking. On her head she was wearing a white bucket hat. She had covered the rest of her body in light, white clothes. Their two-year-old brother was sitting on the floor beside her; I glimpsed him between the bars of his playpen. Behind me, someone called my name. I turned. It was Geir; he sprinted up with his palms facing inward.