Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

This way of thinking, putting others’ reactions before your own, I recognised from myself, and as we walked towards Folkets Park in the rain I wondered about how she had picked that up. Was it just there, around her, invisible but present, like the air she breathed? Or was it genetic?

I never expressed any of these thoughts I had about the children, except to Linda of course, because these complex questions belonged only where they were, in me and between us. In reality, in the world Vanja inhabited everything was simple and found simple expression, and the complexity arose only in the sum of all the parts, of which naturally she knew nothing. And the fact that we talked a lot about them did not help at all in our daily lives, where everything was a mess and constantly on the verge of chaos. In the first of the Swedish ‘progress conversations’ we had with the nursery staff there was a lot of talk about her not making contact with the teachers, not wanting to sit on their laps or be patted, as well as her shyness. We should work on toughening her up, teaching her to play a more dominant role in games, taking the initiative and talking more, they said. Linda replied that she was tough enough at home, took the lead in all the games, always showed initiative and could talk the hind leg off a donkey. They told us the little she said in the nursery was unclear, her Swedish wasn’t correct, her vocabulary was not that large, so they were wondering if we had considered speech therapy. At this juncture in the conversation we were handed a brochure from one of the town’s speech therapists. They are crazy in this country, I thought. A speech therapist? Did everything have to be institutionalised? She’s only three!

‘No, speech therapy’s out of the question,’ I said. Until that point Linda had been the one to do all the talking. ‘It will sort itself out. I only started talking when I was three. Before that I said nothing, apart from single words which were incomprehensible to anyone except my brother.’

They smiled.

‘And when I started speaking it came in long, fluent sentences. It all depends on the individual. We are not sending her to a speech therapist.’

‘Well, that’s up to you,’ said Olaf, the head of the nursery. ‘But you’re welcome to hang on to the brochures and give it some thought.’

‘OK then,’ I said.

I collected her hair in one hand and stroked her neck and the top of her back with one finger. Usually she loved this, especially before going to sleep, until she settled for the night, but this time she squirmed away.

On the other side of the table the stern woman had struck up a conversation with Mia, who gave her her undivided attention while Frida and Erik had begun to clear away the plates and cutlery. The white layer cake, which was the next item on the agenda, stood proudly on the worktop, decorated with raspberries and five small candles, beside a column of square cartons containing Bravo, a sugar-free apple drink.

Gustav, who until now had been sitting beside me with his back half-turned, swivelled round to face us.

‘Hi, Vanja,’ he said. ‘Are you having fun?’

As he didn’t get a response, nor any eye contact, he looked at me.

‘You’ll have to come and play with Jocke one day,’ he said, winking at me. ‘Fancy doing that?’

‘Yes,’ Vanja said, regarding him with eyes that suddenly dilated. Jocke was the biggest boy in the nursery. Going to his house was more than she dared hope for.

‘We’ll fix something up,’ Gustav said. Raised his glass, took a swig of red wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘Are you writing anything new then?’ he asked.

I shrugged.

‘Yes, I’m keeping busy,’ I said.

‘Do you work at home?’

‘Yes.’

‘How do you go about it? Do you sit waiting for inspiration?’

‘No, that’s no good. I have to work every day like you.’

‘Interesting. Interesting. There are not many distractions at home then?’

‘I manage fine.’

‘Ah, you do, do you? Well…’

‘Let’s all go into the living room then,’ Frida said. ‘And we can sing for Stella.’

She took a lighter from her pocket and lit the five candles.

‘What a wonderful cake,’ Mia said.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Frida said. ‘And it’s healthy too. There’s hardly any sugar in the cream.’

She lifted it up.

‘Will you go in and switch off the light, Erik?’ she said as people began to move from their seats and leave the room. I followed holding Vanja’s hand, and just managed to find a position against the wall furthest away when Frida entered the darkened hall with the illuminated cake in her hands. As she came into view from the table she began to sing Ja må hon leva , whereupon the other adults immediately joined in, and the birthday song rang around the small room as she placed the cake on the table in front of Stella, who was watching with gleaming eyes.

‘Shall I blow now?’ she asked.

Frida nodded as she sang.

Everyone clapped afterwards, me too. Then the lights came back on, and for a few minutes slices of the cake were distributed among the children. Vanja didn’t want to sit at the table, but on the floor by the wall, where we settled down, her with a plate of cake on her lap. It was only then I noticed she wasn’t wearing her shoes.

‘Where are your golden shoes?’ I asked.

‘They’re stupid,’ she said.

‘No, they’re not, they’re lovely,’ I said. ‘They’re a proper princess’s shoes!’

‘They’re stupid,’ she repeated.

‘But where are they?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Vanja,’ I said.

She looked up at me. Her mouth was white with cream.

‘Over there,’ she said, motioning towards the other room. I got up and went in, looked around, no shoes. I went back.

‘Where did you put them? I can’t see them anywhere?’

‘By the flower,’ she said.

Flower? I went back, peered between the flower pots on the windowsill, no, not there.

Could she have meant the yucca?

Yes, indeed. They were in the pot. I grabbed them, brushed the earth off over the pot, took them to the bathroom and wiped off the rest, then put them under the chair where her jacket was.

The interruption for cake, which had occupied all the children’s attention, might give her a chance for a new beginning, I thought, perhaps it would be easier to be there after that.

‘I’m going to have a piece of cake too,’ I said to her. ‘I’ll be in the kitchen. Just come and find me if there is anything you want, OK?’

‘OK, daddy.’

It was only half past six according to the clock above the kitchen door. No one had left yet, so we would have to wait for a while. I cut myself a thin sliver of the cake on the worktop, put it on a plate and sat at the other side of the table as my seat was occupied.

‘There’s coffee as well if you’d like some,’ Erik said, looking at me with a kind of pregnant smile, as if there lay more in the question and what he said than met the eye. For all I knew, it was a technique he had learned so as to appear important, more or less like the tricks the average writer resorts to when trying to lend his stories the semblance of immense profundity.

Or had he really seen something?

‘Yes, please,’ I said and got up, took a cup from the pile and filled it with coffee from the grey Stelton pot nearby. By the time I got back to my seat he was on his way out of the room. Frida was talking about a coffee machine she had bought, it was expensive and she had been torn, but she had no regrets, it was definitely worth the money, the coffee was fantastic, and it was important to spoil yourself with such things, perhaps more important than was generally thought. Linus talked about a Smith and Jones sketch he had seen once, two guys sitting at a table with a cafetière in front of them, one presses the plunger, but everything is pushed down, not just the coffee grains, until the jug is empty. No one laughed, and Linus hunched his shoulders and raised his palms.