Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

‘One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six!’ I counted. ‘A new record!’

She noticed that something extraordinary had happened because she was beaming over all her face. Perhaps she was full of the sensational feeling of walking.

I put on her outdoor clothes and carried her to the buggy in the bike room. The day was bright and spring-like, even though the sun wasn’t shining. The tarmac was dry. I texted Linda about our child’s first long walk. ‘Fantastic!’ she texted back. ‘Home at half past twelve. Love you both!’

I went into the supermarket down in the Metro station by Stureplan, bought a grilled chicken, a lettuce, some tomatoes, a cucumber, black olives, two red onions and a fresh baguette, popped into Hedengrens on the way back and found a book about Nazi Germany, the first two volumes of Das Kapital , Orwell’s 1984 , which I had never managed to read, a collection of essays by the same author, a book about Céline by Ekerwald and the latest Don DeLillo until Vanja brought my browsing to an end and I had to go and pay. The DeLillo I regretted buying the instant I was outside because even though I had been a fan of his, especially the novels The Names and White Noise , I hadn’t been able to read more than half of Underworld , and since the next book had been terrible it was evident that he was in decline. I was on the point of going back and exchanging it, there were a couple of other books I had seen and fancied, for example, the latest Esterházy novel, Celestial Harmonies , which was about his father. But I preferred not to read novels in Swedish, it was too close to my own language, it constantly threatened to leach in and destroy it, so if the title was available in Norwegian I read it in Norwegian, also because I read too little in my mother tongue. Besides I was strapped for time if I was going to make lunch before Linda got home. And Vanja obviously felt that I had already looked at enough books in the shop.

Upstairs in the kitchen I made a chicken salad, sliced some bread and set the table, all while Vanja sat on the floor banging small wooden balls through holes in a board with a tiny mallet, down a slide and onto the floor.

Five minutes later she had to stop because the Russian woman started hammering on the radiators. I hated the sound, hated waiting for it, although her reaction wasn’t always unjustified now, the banging could drive anyone insane, so I took the toy off Vanja, put her in the chair instead, tied a bib around her neck and was giving her some bread and butter when Linda came in the door.

‘Hi!’ she said, coming over to hug me.

‘Hi?’ I said.

‘I went to the chemist this morning,’ she said, looking at me with a sparkle in her eyes.

‘Yes?’ I said.

‘I bought a pregnancy test.’

‘Yes? What are you actually telling me?’

‘We’re going to have another child, Karl Ove!’

‘Are we really?’

There were tears in my eyes.

She nodded. Her eyes were moist too.

‘I’m so happy,’ I said.

‘Yes, I couldn’t talk about anything else in therapy. Haven’t thought about anything else all day. It’s fantastic.’

‘Did you tell your therapist before you told me?’

‘Yes, and?’

‘What have you got between your ears? Do you imagine it’s only your child? You can’t tell other people before you tell me! Is there something wrong with you or what?’

‘Oh, Karl Ove, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think. I was just overwhelmed. I didn’t mean to. Please, don’t let this come between us.’

I looked at her.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I don’t suppose it makes much difference. In the bigger picture, I mean.’

In the night I was woken by her crying. Sobbing her heart out as only she could. I placed my hand over her neck.

‘What’s up, Linda?’ I whispered. ‘Why are you crying?’

Her shoulders shook.

She turned her face to me.

‘I was only being dutiful!’ she said. ‘That was all it was.’

‘All what was?’ I asked. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘This morning. I went into the chemist and bought the test because I wanted to know. I couldn’t wait! And so after I had the answer I had to go to therapy! It didn’t occur to me that I could come home! I thought I had to go!’

She started sobbing again.

‘I could have come home and told you the fantastic news! Straight away! I didn’t need to go to therapy, did I!’

I stroked her back, ran my hand through her hair.

‘But, Linda love, it’s nothing!’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter! I was a bit put out, that was all. Hell, the only thing that counts is we’re going to have a baby!’

She looked at me and smiled through the tears.

‘Do you mean that?’ she said.

I kissed her.

Her lips tasted of salt.

That November evening I sat on the balcony of our flat in Malmö in the darkness after having taken Vanja to the birthday party, and almost two years had passed. The child, barely conceived back then, had not only been born but was now a year old. We had christened her Heidi, she was a happy blonde girl, more robust than her sister in some ways, just as sensitive in others. During the christening Vanja had shouted No! No! No! so loudly it resounded around the church as the priest was about to splash water over her sister’s head, and it was impossible not to laugh, it was as if she was reacting physically to the holy water, like some tiny vampire or devil. When Heidi was nine months old we moved to Malmö on a kind of impulse, neither of us had been there before, and we didn’t know anyone, but we went there to have a look at a flat and made the decision after being in the town for a total of five hours. This was where we were going to live. The flat was on the top floor of a block in the centre, it was large, 130 square metres, and since it was so high up light flooded in from dawn to dusk. Nothing could have suited us better; our life in Stockholm had become darker and darker until in the end we had no choice but to get out. Away from the crazy Russian, with whom we had been engaged in an unresolvable conflict and who continued to send complaints to the owners of the block, who then summoned us to a meeting, not that that led anywhere, because even though they believed us, which in the end they did, there was nothing they could do. We took matters into our own hands. After a further incident when she had come up to our flat and I, holding Vanja and Heidi in my arms, had told her to leave us in peace, to which she had said she had a man in her flat and was going to tell him to beat me up, we rang the police and reported her for harassment and threatening behaviour. I never thought I would go that far, but I did. The police couldn’t do anything, but that wasn’t important because they set the social services on her, two people who came to inspect her living conditions, and for her there could be no greater humiliation. Oh, how I relished the thought of that! But it didn’t make relations with the neighbours any better. And with two children in the middle of a large city, where the only car-free green zones were parks, where we walked them like dogs, the question was not whether but when we would move. Linda wanted to go to Norway and I didn’t, so the choice was between two towns in Sweden, Gothenburg or Malmö, and since Linda had negative associations with the former, having broken off her studies at Litterær Gestaltning, the writers’ school, after a few weeks because of illness, the matter was decided: we moved to Malmö as we liked the feeling we had in the few hours we were there. Malmö was open, the sky above the town high, the sea close by, there was a long beach only a few minutes from the centre, Copenhagen was three quarters of an hour away, and the atmosphere in the town was laid-back, in holiday mode, quite different from Stockholm’s tough, stern, careerist ambience. The first months in Malmö were wonderful, we went swimming every day, sat on the balcony eating when the children were in bed, buoyed with optimism, closer to each other than we had been for two years. But the darkness crept in there as well, slowly and imperceptibly it filled all the other parts of my life, the novelty wore off, the world slipped away, leaving quivering frustration.