Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

He was glad to see me, I noticed, and perhaps he also felt some relief that his mother was dead, not so much for his own sake as hers. One of the first things he mentioned was what importance her fear had now. None… but that was the point, we were as trapped in each other as in ourselves, we couldn’t escape, it was impossible to free yourself, you had the life you had.

We talked about Kristiansand. For him it was only a town, for me it was a place where I was unable to stay without the old feelings welling up. Mostly they were of hatred, but there was also my own inadequacy, not being able to live up to any of the demands made of me. Geir thought this was all about the place where you were brought up, it was coloured by the time, but I disagreed, there was a big difference between Arendal and Kristiansand, even the mentality was different. Towns also have a character, psychology, mind, soul, whatever you like to call it, which you notice the moment you enter them, and it marks the people who live there. Kristiansand was a commercial town, it had a mercenary soul. Bergen also had a mercenary soul, but it had wit and irony in addition, that is to say it had incorporated the world outside, it knew very well it was not the only town.

‘By the way, I read Shallow Soil this summer,’ I said. ‘Have you read it?’

‘A long time ago.’

‘Hamsun pays tribute to the businessman in it. He’s young, dynamic, the future of the world and the great hero. He has nothing but contempt for artists. Writers, painters, they’re off the scale. But the man of trade! It’s amusing. Can you understand how contrary the man was!’

‘Mm,’ he said. ‘There’s a section in the biography about when he hits on serving girls. The colophon takes a prudish stand with regard to this issue, or is unable to understand. But in fact Hamsun came from the lowest echelon. That’s what you forget. He was a working-class writer. He came from the poorest of the poor regions. For him serving girls were a rung up the social ladder! It’s impossible to get anything out of Hamsun if you don’t understand that.’

‘He didn’t look back,’ I said. ‘It’s as if his parents weren’t a part of his psychology, if you get what I mean. I’m left with the impression of some old grey people hugging the wall in a room somewhere in northern Norway, so old and grey that you can barely distinguish them from the furniture. And so alien to Hamsun’s later life that they have no relevance at all. But it can’t have been like that.’

‘Can’t it?’

‘Well, I suppose it could, but you know what I mean, don’t you? There isn’t a single portrait of childhood in Hamsun apart from in The Ring is Closed . Nor of parents. Characters emerge from nothing in his books. Without a vestige of a past. Was it because they actually had no meaning or because their meaning had been repressed? And so these characters somehow become the first mass-produced humans, that is without their own predetermining origins. They are determined by the present.’

I took a slice of pizza, cut the long threads of cheese holding it back and bit off a mouthful.

‘Try the dip,’ he said. ‘It’s good!’

‘You can keep the dip,’ I said.

‘When do you have to be there, by the way?’

‘Seven. It starts at half past.’

‘We’ve got an hour or two on our hands then. Shall we drive around for a bit? So that you can see some of your old haunts? I’ve got a couple of Kristiansand haunts as well. Mum’s uncle and his family lived in Lund. I’d like to pop by.’

‘Let’s have coffee somewhere else first. And then we’ll go. OK?’

‘There’s a café close by where we used to walk when I was a boy. We can see if it still exists?’

We paid and left. Strolled down to Hotel Caledonien. I told him about the fire there, how I had stood behind the barriers, gaping up at the black façade, where it was all burned out. We ambled past the containers in the harbour to the bus station, up by the stock exchange, across Markensgate and into some arty-type café. Despite the cold, we sat outside so that I could smoke. Then we walked to the car, drove first to the house in Elvegaten, where I had lived during the winter mum and dad got divorced. The house had been sold and renovated. Then we went to grandma and grandad’s house, where dad had died. Turned in the square in front of the marina, parked in the tiny street and looked up at the house. It had been painted white. The tables had been replaced. The garden was neat and tidy.

‘Is that it?’ Geir asked. ‘What a wonderful house! Attractive, middle class, expensive. I would never have believed it. I had imagined something quite different.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s it all right. But I have no feelings for it. It’s just a house. It doesn’t mean anything any more. I can see that now.’

Two hours later we parked in front of the folk high school where I was going to do the reading. It was situated in the middle of a forest outside Søgne. The sky was all black, everywhere stars twinkled and shone, somewhere nearby a river rushed and trees rustled. The sound of a car door slamming resounded between walls. Then the silence closed around us.

‘Are you sure it’s here?’ Geir asked. ‘In the middle of a forest? Who on earth would come here to listen to you read on a Friday evening?’

‘Who knows,’ I said. ‘But it is here. Nice, isn’t it?’

‘Oh yes. Full of atmosphere.’

Our footsteps crunched on the frozen gravel as we walked in. One building, a large white timber house that looked to be from the turn of the last century, was unlit. In the other, which was twenty metres away and at right angles to it, three windows were lit. Two figures were visible in one of them. They were playing the piano and violin. Then there was a large barn to the right, also unlit, where the reading was due to take place.

We wandered round for a few minutes, peered in through the darkened windows and saw a library and what seemed to be a living room. We followed the path, ended up by a stone bridge over a little river or stream. Black water and the forest like a black wall on the other side.

‘We’ve got to have a coffee or something,’ Geir said. ‘Shall we ask those two in there if they have a key?’

‘No, we’re not asking anyone anything,’ I said. ‘The event organisers will come when they come.’

‘We need to warm ourselves up a bit at the very least,’ Geir said. ‘You don’t mind us doing that, do you?’

‘Not at all.’

We entered the narrow house ringing with notes from the two young musicians. They must have been sixteen or seventeen. She had a soft beautiful face. He, the same age as her but pimply, ungainly and also flushed, did not seem happy to see us.

‘Have you got a key or something for these buildings? He’s doing a reading, and we’re a trifle on the early side.’

She shook her head. But we could sit down in the adjacent room, where there was also a coffee machine. So we did.

‘This place reminds me of school trips,’ Geir said. ‘The light in here. The cold and the darkness outside. And the forest. And the fact that no one knows where I am. No one knows what I’m doing. Yes, a kind of feeling of liberation. But there’s a lot of darkness. The atmosphere inside it.’

‘I know what you mean,’ I said. ‘For myself, I’m simply nervous. My whole body aches.’

‘Because of this? Because of your talk here? Relax, man! It’ll be fine.’

I held up a hand.

‘See?’ I said.

I was trembling like an old man.

Half an hour later I was shown into the hall where I was to give the talk. Another bearded lecturer-type, late fifties with glasses, received me.

‘Isn’t this wonderful?’ he said as we entered.