Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

Around the bend, perhaps twenty metres ahead of us, came a man dressed in a red anorak. He had a ski stick in each hand. It was Arne.

‘Hi, so it’s you out walking, is it!’ he said as he got closer.

‘Hi, Arne. Been a long time,’ Linda said.

He stopped beside us and cast a glance into the buggy. The scandal didn’t appear to have crushed him.

‘She’s so big,’ he said. ‘How old is she now?’

‘Turned one two weeks ago,’ Linda said.

‘Really! Time goes so quickly,’ he said, meeting my gaze. One of his eyes was rigid and filled with water. In recent years he had been plagued by all manner of illness, there had been a brain tumour, and after it had been removed he hadn’t been able to shake the taste he had acquired for morphine, so he was taken into rehab for a while. When this was over he suffered a stroke. Now it was pneumonia he’d just had, wasn’t it?

But even though he looked wilder and more ravaged every time I saw him, even though he walked with greater difficulty and his movements were slower, he did not seem any weaker, there was no shortage of energy, a lust for life still burned inside him, he marched on with all his defects, and he still put to shame what could have been said about him two years ago, that he hadn’t got long left. It must have been this spark, this lust for life, which had kept him going. Almost anyone else exposed to what he had experienced would have been two metres under the ground.

‘Your book’s going to be translated into Swedish, Vidar told me,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘When? I really don’t want to miss it.’

‘Next autumn they’re telling me, but it’ll probably be the autumn after.’

‘I’ll wait then,’ he said.

How old was he? Late sixties? It was hard to say, there was nothing old-man-ish about him, the one eye that worked glinted with youthfulness, and even though it was the sole feature of his face that did and even though other parts were wrinkled and worn, bloodshot and blotchy, life shone through in other ways, most of all in his enthusiastic tone of voice, which was forced into a slowness that didn’t suit it, but also in the total impression he gave, his aura, which strangely enough, despite all the resistance his body offered, appeared indefatigable. He had grown up in an orphanage but hadn’t wandered off the straight and narrow like his friends. He had played football at a high level, at least if you believed what he told you, and worked as a journalist on Expressen for many years. Furthermore, he had published several books.

His wife always sent him indulgent glances when he made comments, in the way that all women married to boys do. She was a nurse and was approaching the limits of her tolerance, for in addition to an ailing husband she had to look after their child, who had just had twins and needed lots of support.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Nice to meet you, Linda, and you, Karl.’

‘Same to you,’ I said.

He raised his hand to his brow and then he set off, his sticks raised high with every stride he took.

His rigid watering eye, which had stared ahead during the whole conversation, might have belonged to a troll or some mythological creature, and even though I didn’t have the image constantly in front of me the feeling it generated lasted all day.

‘He didn’t exactly seem crushed, did he?’ I said after he had disappeared round the bend and we had started walking again.

‘No,’ Linda said. ‘But it’s never easy to see how people really are.’

Another roar sounded in the distance, from the other side now. I sat Vanja up as she lay blinking in the buggy, and turned her so that she could see when, soon after, the train sped past us between the trees. It didn’t go by unnoticed; she pointed and shouted as it passed, so close that a thin layer of powdery snow was blown against my face, to melt in a trice.

Barely a kilometre later, by a railway embankment, the path came to an end. The field on the other side, where horses grazed in the summer, lay white and untouched like a tablecloth between the trees. To the left, in the east, there was a clump of houses, behind them a path, and if you followed it you came to a beautiful large manor owned by Olof Palme’s brother. One summer evening Linda and I had been out for a bike ride and we ended up there, lost, pushing our bikes down the gravel road between the houses where a white-clad party was sitting outdoors and eating with a view of the great lake and Gnesta town centre far on the other side. However careful I had been to look in another direction, I still had the image of the party on my retina: them sitting there so Bergman-like on the white garden furniture and eating, between austere white farmhouses and modern red office buildings, in the midst of the green rolling Södermanland countryside.

I took Vanja from the buggy and held her in my arms as we turned to walk back the same way we had come.

Arriving half an hour later on the incline in front of the house, we heard loud voices coming from indoors. Through the kitchen window I saw Ingrid and Vidar standing on either side of the sitting-room table shouting at each other. I suppose we had come earlier than they had expected, and the snow had muffled our arrival. It was only when I stamped my boots a few times on the front doorstep that the voices stopped. Linda took Vanja, I pushed the buggy into the garage beside the house that Vidar had built in the spring and summer. When I returned he was standing in the hall and putting on his overalls.

‘Well?’ he said with a smile. ‘Did you walk far?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Just a little way. The weather’s really grim!’

‘Yes, it is that,’ he said, stepping into tall brown rubber boots. ‘I’m just off to fix a few things.’

He slipped past me and walked slowly up the slope to his workshop. In the kitchen, which started half a metre from where I was removing my outdoor clothes, Ingrid had put Vanja in a high seat by the worktop while she peeled potatoes. I put my hat and gloves on the hat shelf, kicked my boots off against the door frame, she put a bowl of water and some plastic measuring spoons in front of Vanja. That could occupy her for hours, I knew. I hung my coat on a hanger and pushed it between all the other jackets, capes and coats hanging there and walked past them.

Ingrid looked upset. But her movements were considered and calm, her voice to Vanja was gentle and kind.

‘What’s for dinner? Something nice?’ I asked.

‘Lamb,’ she said. ‘Wedge potatoes. And red wine sauce.’

‘Ah, that sounds good!’ I said. ‘Lamb’s my favourite.’

‘I know,’ she said. Her eyes, enormous behind glasses, regarded me with a smile.

Vanja smacked the set of measuring spoons against the water.

‘You’re having a good time here, Vanja, aren’t you,’ I said. Tousled her hair. Looked at Ingrid. ‘Has Linda gone for a lie-down?’

Ingrid nodded. From the sleeping alcove, which was out of eyeshot, although no more than four metres away, came Linda’s voice: ‘I’m in here!’

I went in. The two beds were at ninety degrees to each other and took up almost all the room. She was on the one further away with the duvet pulled up under her chin. Even though the curtains were not drawn it was dim, almost murky inside. The dark coarse-wood walls soaked up all the light.

‘Brr!’ she said. ‘Are you going to have a nap?’

I shook my head.

‘Think I’ll do some reading. But you sleep.’

I sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her hair. On one wall there were photos of Vidar’s children and grandchildren. The other was covered in books. An alarm clock and a photo of Vidar’s youngest daughter were on the windowsill. I always felt uncomfortable in other people’s bedrooms, I always saw something I didn’t want to see, but that was not the case here.