Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

I paid and went into the street again, with the tarmac vaguely reflecting the light from the mild winter sky, and the cars queueing on all sides of the crossing resembling a huge pile-up of logs in a river. To avoid the traffic I went along Tegnérgatan. In the window of the second-hand bookshop, which was one of the ones I kept an eye on, I saw a book by Malaparte that Geir had spoken about with warmth and one by Galileo Galilei in the Atlantis series. I turned the buggy, nudged the door open with my heel and entered backwards with the buggy following.

‘I’d like two of the books in the window,’ I said. ‘The Galileo Galilei and the Malaparte.’

‘Pardon me?’ said the shirt-clad man in his fifties who ran the place, as he peered at me over the square-rimmed glasses perched on the tip of his nose.

‘In the window,’ I said in Swedish. ‘Two books. Galilei, Malaparte.’

‘The sky and the war, eh?’ he said, and turned to pick them out for me.

Vanja had gone to sleep.

Had it been so exhausting at Rhythm Time?

I pulled the little lever under the headrest towards me and lowered her gently into the buggy. She waved a hand in her sleep, and clenched it exactly as she had done just after she had been born. One of the movements that nature had supplied her with but which she had slowly replaced with something of her own. But when she slept it reawakened.

I pushed the buggy to the side so that people could pass, and turned to the shelf of art books as the bookshop owner rang up the prices of the two books on his antiquated cash till. Now that Vanja was asleep I had a few more minutes to myself, and the first book I caught sight of was a photographic book by Per Maning. What luck! I had always liked his photos, especially these ones, the animal series. Cows, pigs, dogs, seals. Somehow he had succeeded in capturing their souls. There was no other way to understand the looks of these animals in the pictures. Complete presence, at times anguished, at others vacant, and sometimes penetrating. But also enigmatic, like portraits by painters in the seventeenth century.

I put it on the counter.

‘That one’s just come in,’ the owner said. ‘Fine book. Are you Norwegian?’

‘Yes, I am,’ I said. ‘I’d like to browse a bit more if that’s OK.’

There was an edition of Delacroix’s diary, I took it, and then a book about Turner, even though no paintings lost as much by being photographed as his, and Poul Vad’s book about Hammershøi, and a magnificent work about orientalism in art.

As I placed them on the counter my mobile rang. Almost no one had my number, so the ringtone, which found its way out of the depths of the side pocket in my parka a touch muffled, aroused no disquiet in me. Quite the contrary. Apart from the brief exchange with the Rhythm Time woman I hadn’t spoken to anyone since Linda cycled to school that morning.

‘Hello?’ Geir said. ‘What are you up to?’

‘Working on my self-esteem,’ I said, turning to the wall. ‘And you?’

‘Not that, at any rate. I’m just sitting here in the office watching everyone scurry past. So what’s been happening?’

‘I’ve just met an attractive woman.’

‘And?’

‘Chatted to her.’

‘Mm?’

‘She invited me to hers.’

‘Did you say yes?’

‘Of course. She even asked what my name was.’

‘But?’

‘She was the teacher in charge of a Rhythm Time class for babies. So I had to sit there clapping my hands and singing children’s songs in front of her, with Vanja on my lap. On a little cushion. With a load of mothers and children.’

Geir burst into laughter.

‘I was also given a rattle to shake.’

‘Ha ha ha!’

‘I was so furious when I left I didn’t know what to do with myself,’ I said. ‘I also had a chance to try out my new waistline. And no one was bothered about the rolls of fat on my stomach.’

‘No, they’re nice and soft, they are,’ Geir said, laughing again. ‘Karl Ove, aren’t we going out tonight?’

‘Are you winding me up?’

‘No, I’m serious. I was planning to work here till seven, more or less. So we could meet in town any time after.’

‘Impossible.’

‘What the hell’s the point of you living in Stockholm if we can never meet?’

‘You realise you just used a Swedish word, don’t you,’ I said.

‘Can you remember when you first came to Stockholm?’ Geir said. ‘When you were in the taxi lecturing me about the expression “hen-pecked” when I didn’t want to go to the nightclub with you?’

‘There you go. And another. Your Norwegian’s gone to pot,’ I said.

‘For Christ’s sake, man. What we’re talking about is the expression you used. Hen-pecked. Do you remember?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid I do.’

‘And?’ he said. ‘What do you deduce from that?’

‘That there are differences,’ I said. ‘I’m not hen-pecked. I’m a hen-pecker. And you’re a woodpecker.’

‘Ha ha ha. Tomorrow then?’

‘We’re eating out with Fredrik and Karin tomorrow night.’

‘Fredrik? Is he that idiot of a film producer?’

‘I wouldn’t express it in that way, but, yes, he is.’

‘Oh my God. All right. Sunday? No, that’s your day of rest. Monday?’

‘OK.’

‘There are lots of people in town then, too.’

‘Monday at Pelikanen then,’ I said. ‘By the way, I’m holding a Malaparte book in my hand here.’

‘Oh yes? Are you in a second-hand bookshop then? It’s good, that one.’

‘And Delacroix’s diary.’

‘That’s supposed to be good as well. Thomas has talked about it, I know. Anything else?’

‘ Aftenposten rang yesterday. They wanted to do an interview.’

‘You didn’t say yes, did you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You idiot. You said you were going to stop doing them.’

‘I know. But the publishers said the journalist was particularly good. And so I thought I would give it one last chance. It could turn out all right after all.’

‘No, it can’t,’ Geir said.

‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘But never mind. Now I’ve said yes anyway. Anything new with you?’

‘Nothing. Had some bread rolls with the social anthropologists. Then the old institute head popped by with crumbs in his beard and his flies open, wanting to talk. I’m the only one who doesn’t give him the heave-ho. So he comes here.’

‘The one who was so tough?’

‘Yes. And who’s now terrified of losing his office. That’s all he’s got left of course. And so now he’s as nice as pie. It’s a question of adapting. Tough when he can be, nice when he has to be.’

‘I might pop round tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Have you got any time?’

‘Dead right I have. So long as you don’t bring Vanja along, that is.’

‘Ha ha. Right, but I’ve got to pay now. See you tomorrow.’

‘OK. All the best to Linda and Vanja.’

‘And to Christina.’

‘See you.’

‘Yes, see you.’

I rang off and stuffed the mobile back in my pocket. Vanja was still asleep. The bookshop owner was studying a catalogue. He looked up as I approached the counter.

‘That’ll be 1,530 kroner,’ he said.

I passed him my card. I put the receipt in my back pocket — the only way I could justify these purchases of mine was that they could be written off against tax — I put the two bags of books underneath the buggy, and then I pushed it out of the shop to the sound of the doorbell ringing in my ears.

It was already twenty minutes to four. I had been up since half past four in the morning going through a problematic translation for Damm until half past six, and even though it was tedious work in which all I did was weigh one sentence against the other in the original, it was still a hundred times more interesting and rewarding than what I did during the morning in terms of nappy changing and children’s activities, which for me were no longer any more than a means of occupying my time. I wasn’t exhausted by this lifestyle, it had nothing to do with expending energy, but as there wasn’t even the slightest spark of inspiration in it, it deflated me nonetheless, rather as if I’d had a puncture.