Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

That was when I was young and had no options.

Now I was thirty-five years old and wanted as few disturbances and as little mental agitation as possible, I should be able to have that, shouldn’t I, or at least be in a position to get it?

Didn’t really look like it.

I sat on a rock outside and smoked a cigarette while skimming through the speech I had written. I had hoped to the very last minute I would slip through the net, but there was no escape — Yngve and I had decided she would get a speech from both of us. I dreaded it like the plague. Sometimes when I had to do a reading or an interview or participate in a discussion on stage I was so nervous I could barely walk. But ‘nervous’ in no way covered my state, nervousness was a transient phase of nerves, a minor aberration, a quivering of the spirit. This was painful and unyielding. It would pass though.

I got to my feet and trudged down to the road, from where you could see the whole district. The fertile moisture-green fields between the mountainsides, the wreath of deciduous trees growing beside the river, the tiny village centre on the plain with its handful of shops and residential blocks. The adjacent fjord, bluish-green and totally still, the mountains that towered up on the other side, the few farms, high on the slopes, with their white walls and reddish roofs, their green and yellow fields, all gleaming in the bright light from the sun, which was sinking and would soon disappear in the sea far beyond. The bare mountains above the farms, dark blue, black here and there, the white peaks, the clear sky above them, where the first stars would soon appear, imperceptible initially, a vague lightening of colour, then they became clearer and clearer until they hung there twinkling and shining in the darkness above the world.

This was beyond our comprehension. We might believe that our world embraced everything, we might do our thing down here on the beach, drive around in our cars, phone one other and chat, visit one another, eat and drink and sit indoors imbibing the faces and opinions and the fates of those appearing on the TV screen in this strange semi-artificial symbiosis we inhabited and lull ourselves for longer and longer, year on year, into thinking that it was all there was, but if on the odd occasion we were to raise our gaze to this, the only possible thought was one of non-comprehension and impotence, for in fact how small and trivial was the world we allowed ourselves to be lulled by? Yes, of course, the dramas we saw were magnificent, the images we internalised, sublime and sometimes also apocalyptic, but be honest, slaves, what part did we play in them?

None.

But the stars twinkle above our heads, the sun shines, the grass grows and the earth, yes, the earth, it swallows all life and eradicates all vestige of it, spews out new life in a cascade of limbs and eyes, leaves and nails, hair and tails, cheeks and fur and guts, and swallows it up again. And what we never really comprehend, or don’t want to comprehend, is that this happens outside us, that we ourselves have no part in it, that we are only that which grows and dies, as blind as the waves in the sea are blind.

Four cars came from behind me down the valley. These were my mother’s guests — her sisters, their husbands and children, as well as Ingrid and Vidar. I walked up to the house, saw how excited and happy they were, getting out of their cars, clearly the glacier had been a fantastic sight. For the next hour they were going to arrange their rooms, then we would collect in the living room and eat venison and drink red wine, listen to speeches, drink coffee and cognac, gather in small groups and chat and take it easy as the evening turned into the light summer night.

Yngve was the first to take the floor. He handed over our present, which was a single-lens reflex camera, and gave a speech. I was so nervous I didn’t catch a scrap of it. He concluded by saying that she had always had great confidence in herself as a photographer, but her confidence had always been unjustified as she had never owned a camera. Hence the present.

Then it was my turn. I hadn’t managed to swallow any of the food. And that despite the fact that I had known virtually all of those who were now staring at me all my life, and their expressions were without exception friendly. But the speech had to be given. I had never told my mother that she meant anything at all to me. I had never said I loved her or that I liked her. The mere thought of saying something like that could make my stomach turn in disgust and abhorrence. Of course I wasn’t going to say that now either. But today she was sixty years old, and I, her son, had to honour her with a few words.

I rose to my feet. Everyone looked at me, most with a smile. I had to concentrate with all my might to be able to hold the piece of paper, for my hands not to tremble.

‘Dear mum,’ I said, and turned to her. She sent me an encouraging smile. ‘I’d like to start by thanking you,’ I went on. ‘I’d like to thank you for being such an unbelievably good mother. That you’ve been an unbelievably good mother is just one of the things I know. But of course it’s not always easy to put into words what we know. In this instance it is especially difficult because the qualities you possess are not always so easy to see.’

I swallowed, stared down at my glass of water, decided not to take it, raised my head and looked at the eyes staring at me.

‘There’s a film by Frank Capra about this precise point. It’s a Wonderful Life , from 1946. It’s about a good man in a small American town who, at the outset of the film, is in deep crisis, and he wants to give up everything he has. Then an angel intervenes and shows him what the world would have been like without him. It’s only then that he can see what significance he in fact has for other people. I don’t think you need the assistance of an angel to understand how important you are for us, but perhaps now and then we might. You give everyone the space to be themselves. Now that might sound like a commonplace, but it isn’t; on the contrary, it is a very rare quality. And sometimes it’s hard to see. It’s easy to see those who push themselves forward. It’s easy to see those who set limits. But you never push yourself forward and you never set limits for others; you take them as they are and adapt to that. Which I think everyone in this room has experienced.’

A mumble ran around the table.

‘When I was sixteen or seventeen, this quality was so important for me. We were living alone in Tveit, and it was a tricky period, I think, but I always felt that you had confidence in me, that you trusted me, and, not least, that you believed in me. You allowed me to learn from my own experiences. While this was happening, of course, I didn’t realise this was what you were doing. I didn’t have a picture of either you or myself, I don’t think. But I do now. And I’d like to thank you for that.’

In so saying, I met my mother’s gaze and my voice cracked. I took the glass, gulped down water, tried to smile, but it was not so easy, I had a sense that some sort of sympathy for me had arisen around the table, and I found it difficult to cope with. All I wanted to do was give a speech, not plumb the depths of my own sentimentality.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘Now you’re sixty. The fact that you’re not planning life as a pensioner and that you’ve just finished your main subject in your studies says a lot about who you are: first of all, you’re lively and energetic and you have intellectual curiosity; secondly, you never give up. That applies to you in your life, but it also has something to do with how you are with others: things have to take time. Things have to take the time they need. When I was seven and about to start school, I didn’t know how to appreciate this. You drove me to school on my first day, I remember it well, you weren’t a hundred per cent sure of the way to school, but you were sure we would be fine. We ended up in a residential area. Then in another. I sat there in my light blue suit with my satchel on my back, hair combed, and we drove around Tromøya while my new friends stood in the schoolyard listening to all the speeches. When we finally made it to the school it was all over. There’s an endless list of similar anecdotes I could tell. For example, you’ve driven a fair few kilometres completely lost, literally, kilometre after kilometre through unfamiliar territory without realising you were not on the Oslo road until you ended up on a tractor path in a dark field at the end of some remote valley. There are so many of these I’ll limit myself to the most recent. A week ago, on your sixtieth birthday, you invited colleagues to your house for coffee. They came, but you’d forgotten to buy coffee, so all of you had to sit there drinking tea. Sometimes I think the absent-minded side of your personality is the very precondition for you to be so present in our conversations and in those you have with others.’