Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

Again I was stupid enough to meet her gaze. She smiled at me, my eyes moistened and then, no, oh no, she got up and wanted to give me a hug.

The other guests clapped, I sat down again, full of disgust with myself, because even though losing control of my emotions made a good impression, gave extra emphasis to what I had said, I was ashamed that I had revealed such weakness.

A few seats down, mum’s eldest sister, Kjellaug, got to her feet, she spoke about the autumn of our lives and was met with a couple of good-natured boos, but her speech was good and full of warmth, and after all sixty wasn’t forty, was it.

During the speech Linda came in, sat down beside me and placed her hand on my arm. Everything all right? she whispered. I nodded. Is she asleep now? I whispered, and Linda nodded and smiled. Kjellaug sat down, and the next speaker rose, and so it went on until all the guests around the table had spoken. The exceptions were Vidar and Ingrid, of course, since they didn’t know my mother at all. But they were enjoying themselves, at least Vidar was. Gone was the slightly rigid old man’s slow-wittedness, occasionally noticeable when he was at home; here he was at his ease, happy and smiling, his cheeks and eyes ablaze, with something to say to everyone, genuinely interested in what people said and quick to respond with a rich variety of anecdotes, stories and arguments. It was harder to say how Ingrid felt. She seemed excited, laughed out loud and cast around superlatives to excess — everything was wonderful and fantastic — but that was as far as she got, she seemed to be stuck there, she didn’t really get into, or come down into, the mood of the evening either because she was unable to tune in, they weren’t people she knew, or because her state of mind was too exalted, or simply because the distance from the life she usually led was too great. I had seen that many times with old people: they couldn’t manage abrupt change very well, they didn’t like being moved from their environment, but first of all something stiff and regressive came over them, which did not exactly describe Ingrid’s behaviour, it was more the opposite, and secondly Ingrid was not old, at least not by today’s yardstick. When we travelled back next day to get ready for the christening her manner persisted, but with more space around her it was less conspicuous. She was anxious about the food, tried to prepare as much as possible the night before, and when the day of the christening arrived she was afraid the door of the house might be locked and she wouldn’t be able to have everything ready for the guests, and, on her own in the kitchen, she might not find the necessary equipment.

The priest was a young woman, we stood around her by the font, Linda held Vanja as her head was moistened with water. Ingrid left when the ceremony was over, the rest of us stayed seated. It was a communion. Jon Olav and his family stood up and knelt before the altar. For some reason I got up and followed suit. Knelt before the altar, had a wafer placed on my tongue, drank the communion wine, was given the blessing, got up and went back, with mum’s, Kjartan’s, Yngve’s and Geir’s eyes on me, disbelieving to varying degrees.

Why had I done it?

Had I become a Christian?

I, a fervent anti-Christian from early teenage years and a materialist in my heart of hearts, had in one second, without any reflection, got to my feet, walked up the aisle and knelt in front of the altar. It had been pure impulse. And, meeting those glares, I had no defence, I couldn’t say I was a Christian. I looked down, slightly ashamed.

Many things had happened.

When dad died I had spoken to a priest, it had been like a confession, everything poured out of me, and he was there to listen and to give solace. The funeral, the ritual itself, was almost physical, something to hold on to for me. It turned dad’s life, so miserable and destructive towards the end, into a life.

Wasn’t there some solace in that?

Then there was what I had been working on over the last year. Not what I wrote, but what I was slowly realising I wanted to explore: the sacred. In my novel I had both travestied and invoked it, but without the hymnic gravity I knew existed in these tracts, in these texts I had started to read; and the gravity, the wild intensity in them, which was never far removed from the sacred, to which I had never been or would ever go, yet which I sensed all the same, had made me think differently about Jesus Christ, for it was about flesh and blood, it was about birth and death, and we were linked to it through our bodies and our blood, those we beget and those we bury, constantly, continually, a storm blew through our world and it always had, and the only place I knew where this was formulated, the most extreme yet simplest things, was in these holy scriptures. And the poets and artists who dealt with similar themes. Trakl, Hölderlin, Rilke. Reading the Old Testament, particularly the third Book of Moses with its detailed accounts of sacrificial practices, and the New Testament, so much younger and closer to us, nullified time and history, it was just a swirl of dust, and brought us to what was always there and never changed.

I had thought a lot about this.

And then there was the trivial matter of the local priest being somewhat reluctant to christen Vanja because we weren’t married, I was divorced and when she enquired about our faith and I couldn’t say, yes, I am a Christian, I believe that Jesus was God’s son, a wild notion I could never entertain as a belief, and instead just skirted round it, tradition, my father’s funeral, life and death, the ritual, I felt hypocritical afterwards, as though we were christening our daughter under false pretences, and when the communion came I suppose I wanted to revoke this, with the result that I appeared even more hypocritical. Not only had I had my daughter christened without being a Christian, now I was taking bloody communion as well!

However, the sacred.

Flesh and blood.

Everything that changes and is the same.

And last but not least, the sight of Jon Olav walking past and kneeling up there. He was a whole person, a good person, and in some way it also drew me up the aisle as well and down on my knees: I so much wanted to be whole. I so much wanted to be good.

On the church steps we, the parents, the child, the godparents, stood for photographs. Vanja’s great-grandmother had been christened in the dress she was wearing here in Jølster. Some of my maternal grandmother’s sisters were there, among them Linda’s favourites, Alvdis and her husband Anfinn, all of mum’s sisters, some of their children and grandchildren, in addition to Linda’s friends from Stockholm, Geir and Christina, and of course Vidar and Ingrid.

And while we were standing there Ingrid came running up the hill. The fear she’d had that the house would be locked was not ungrounded, for mum, who was so scatter-brained, had indeed locked the door. Ingrid was handed the key and dashed back. When we arrived half an hour later she was in despair over some dish she could not find. But all was well, of course, the weather was brilliant, we held the celebration in the garden with a view of the lake, in which the mountains were reflected, and the food was praised by everyone. But once the food had been served and Vanja wandered from lap to lap without needing any one-to-one supervision, Ingrid had nothing to do, and perhaps that was what was difficult for her. At any rate she went up to her room and there she stayed until we began to miss her, at five, half past five, when the first guests had already left. Linda went to find her. She was sleeping and almost impossible to wake. She had always been like this, I knew. Linda had told me before how scary it was when she was fast asleep and how impossible it was to have any contact with her for the first five to ten minutes after she woke up. Linda had a theory that sleeping tablets were involved. When she did come outside she almost staggered across the lawn, and her laughter was inappropriate, in the sense that it was too loud for what was going on around the table where she sat and slightly out of synch with the places where the others laughed. I was concerned to see her like that, there was something wrong, it was obvious. She wasn’t really present, she was loud and overwrought, with glittering eyes and a flushed complexion. Linda and I talked about this after all the others had settled down for the night. It was the sleeping medicine, as well as all the stress in connection with the party. After all, she had made food for and served twenty-five guests. And everything was new and strange for her.