Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

That was as far as the thought got, it hit a wall. If fiction was worthless, the world was too, for nowadays it was through fiction we saw it.

Now of course I could relativise this as well. I could think it was more about my mental state, my personal psychology than the actual state of the world. If I spoke to Espen or Tore about it, who were now my oldest friends, whom I had known long before they made their debuts as writers, they would utterly reject my view. Each in their own way. Espen was the critical type, yet at the same time he had this burning curiosity, he had a voracious appetite for the world, and when he wrote all his energy was focused outwards: politics, sport, music, philosophy, the history of the Church, medical science, biology, painting, great events of the present, great events of the past, wars and battlefields, but also his daughters, his holiday trips, minor events he had witnessed: he wrote about everything, and with his characteristic lightness, which he had because he wasn’t interested in the in-turned gaze, introspection, where his criticism, which was so fruitful on the outside, could easily contrive to destroy everything he tried to understand. It was this participation in the world that Espen liked and craved. When I first got to know him he was introverted and shy, self-contained and not very happy. I had seen the long way he had come, to the life he lived now, which he had managed so that everything that depressed him was gone. He had landed on his feet, he was happy, and if he was critical of much in the world he didn’t despise it. Tore’s lightness was of a different kind: he loved the present and took a great interest in it, which perhaps stemmed from his deep fascination with pop music — the anatomy of the charts, one week’s top songs being replaced by others the next, the whole aesthetic of pop, big sales, high media visibility, touring with his own show. He had transferred this to literature, for which of course he was castigated, but nevertheless he carried on with typical resolve. If there was one thing he hated it was modernism because it was non-communicative, inaccessible, abstruse and endlessly self-important, though he never bothered to elaborate. But what do you say to have any impact on a man who at one time admired the Spice Girls? To influence a man who once wrote an enthusiastic essay about the sitcom Friends ? I liked the direction he was taking, towards the pre-modern novel, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Dickens, but I didn’t share his belief that the form could be transferred to today. Hence the only thing I was doing that he really criticised was the form, which he thought was weak. I also liked the direction Espen was taking, towards the scholarly but digressive and overflowing, all-encompassing essay which had something Baroque about it, but I disliked the standpoint he took, in which for example rationalism was lauded and Romanticism ridiculed. Nonetheless, Espen and Tore didn’t do anything by halves, and I saw nothing wrong in that; on the contrary, that was what I also had to do, affirm life, in a Nietzschean sense, for there was nothing else. This was all we had, this was all that existed, and so should we say no to it?

I took out my mobile and flipped it open. The photo of Heidi and Vanja shone up at me. Heidi with her face pressed against the display, one big smile, Vanja a little more tentative behind.

It was a quarter to eleven.

I got up and went to the payphone, inserted forty kroner and dialled Linda’s mobile number.

‘How was it this morning?’ I asked.

‘Terrible,’ she said. ‘Absolute chaos. Uttterly out of control. Heidi clawed John again. Vanja and Heidi had a fight. And Vanja had a temper tantrum on the street as we were about to go.’

‘Oh no. Oh no,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘And then when we got to the nursery Vanja said. “You and dad are always so angry. You’re always so angry.” I was so upset! So unbelievably upset.’

‘I can understand that. It’s terrible. We’ll have to sort this out, Linda. We have to. We have to find a solution. It’s no good what we’re doing. I’ll have to pull myself together. A lot of this is my fault.’

‘Yes, we must,’ Linda said. ‘We’ll have to talk about it when you come home. What drives me to despair is that I only want us to be happy. That’s all I want. And I can’t do it! I’m such a terrible mother. I can’t even be alone with my own children.’

‘No, that’s not true. You’re a fantastic mother. That’s not what this is about. But we’ll get there. We will.’

‘Yes… How was the trip?’

‘Fine. I’m in Kristiansand now. Off to the university soon. I’m dreading it. I really hate this. I can’t think of anything worse. And then I go and do it again and again.’

‘It always goes well though.’

‘That’s a qualified truth. Sometimes it does. But I don’t want to keep grumbling. It’ll be fine, and I am fine. I’ll ring again tonight, OK? If there is anything, ring my mobile. It’s OK for incoming calls.’

‘All right.’

‘What are you doing now?’

‘Walking in Pildamms Park with John. He’s asleep. It’s nice here and I should be happy. But… this morning has shattered me.’

‘It’ll pass. You’ll have a nice afternoon together. Linda, I’ve got to go. Bye!’

‘Bye. And good luck!’

I hung up the receiver, collected my bag and went out for a last cigarette.

SHIT. SHIT, SHIT, SHIT.

I leaned against the wall and looked at the forest, the grey rock face between all the yellow and green.

I was so sad for the children. I was so angry and irritable at home. It took nothing for me to tell Heidi off, nothing to shout at her. And Vanja, Vanja… When she had her bouts of defiance and not only said no to everything but also shouted and screamed and punched, I shouted back, grabbed her and threw her onto the bed. I was completely out of control. Then came the remorse afterwards, the attempts to be patient, kind, nice, friendly, good. Good. And that was what I wanted to be, all I wanted to be, to be a good father to the three of them.

Wasn’t I a good father?

SHIT. SHIT. SHIT.

I tossed the cigarette away, grabbed my bag and left. As I had no idea where the university was, nothing like it had existed when I lived here, I took a taxi all the way. It went from the car park with me on the back seat, alongside the runway at first, then over the river, past my old school, which I couldn’t care less about, up and down the hills and past Hamresanden, the campsite, the beach, the hills with the estate behind, where most of my classmates had lived. Through the forest to the Timenes crossroads, where we followed the E18 to Kristiansand.

The university was on the other side of a tunnel, not so far from the gymnas I had attended but completely isolated from it. It lay like a little island in the forest. Large attractive new buildings. There was no doubt that money had flowed into Norway since I lived here. People were better dressed, their cars were more expensive and building projects were under way everywhere.

A bearded bespectacled lecturer-type met me at the front entrance. We shook hands, he showed me the room where the talk was to be held and went about his business. I made a beeline for the canteen, stuffed down a baguette, sat outside in the sun, drank coffee and smoked. There were students everywhere, younger than I thought they should be, they looked more like they were attending a gymnas . Suddenly I had a vision of myself, an ageing man with sunken eyes and a bag, sitting on his own. Forty, I would soon be forty. Hadn’t I almost fallen off my chair when Hans’s pal Olli had once told us he was forty? I hadn’t believed it at first, but then his life appeared in a very new light, what was that old boy doing with us?