Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

We crossed the road and went down the narrow street in the residential quarter close to where Linda had grown up, past Saturnus Café and down Birger Jarlsgatan, where Zita cinema was. My face was stiff with cold. My thighs were frozen.

‘You’re lucky to be in this situation,’ she said. ‘Just think how much good it has done you. To have a place to go to. To have an outside where you’ve come from and an inside where you are going.’

‘I know what you’re getting at,’ I said.

‘Everything was here for me. I grew up in it. And I can barely separate it from myself. And there are also expectations. No one expected anything from you, did they? Except of course that you would study and get a job?’

I shrugged.

‘I’ve never thought about it in that way.’

‘No,’ she said.

There was a pause.

‘I’ve always lived in the middle of it. Perhaps mummy didn’t wish anything else of me than that I should be all right…’ She looked at me. ‘That’s why she loves you.’

‘Does she?’

‘Haven’t you noticed? You must have noticed!’

‘Yes, I suppose I have.’

I recalled the first time I had met her mother. A little house on an old smallholding in the forest. Autumn outside. We sat down to eat the moment we arrived. Hot meat broth, freshly baked bread, candles on the table. I could occasionally feel her eyes on me. They were curious and warm.

‘But there were other people than mummy where I grew up,’ Linda continued. ‘Johan Nordenfalk the Twelfth, do you think he became a schoolteacher? So much money and culture. Everyone had to be a success. I had three friends who took their own lives. I daren’t even think about how many of them have, or have had, anorexia.’

‘Yes, what a bloody mess that is,’ I said. ‘Why can’t people just take it easy?’

‘I don’t want our children to grow up here,’ Linda said.

‘Children now, is it?’

She smiled.

‘And?’

‘It’ll have to be Tromøya then,’ I said. ‘I only know of one person who committed suicide there.’

‘Don’t joke about it.’

‘OK.’

A woman in high heels and a long red dress click-clacked past. She was holding a black bag in one hand and clutching a black net shawl around her chest with the other. Behind her were two bearded young men in parkas and climbing boots, one with a cigarette in his hand. After them three women, friends by the look of them, also dressed up, with pretty little bags in their hands, but at least with windbreakers covering their dresses. Compared with the streets in Östermalm this was nothing less than a carnival. On both sides of the street, lights shone from restaurants, all packed with people. Outside Zita, which was one of two alternative cinemas in the district, a small shivering crowd was assembled.

‘Honestly though,’ Linda said. ‘Perhaps not Tromøya, but Norway by all means. People are friendlier there.’

‘That’s true.’

I pulled at the heavy door and held it open for her. Took off my gloves and hat, unbuttoned my coat, loosened my scarf.

‘But I don’t want to go to Norway,’ I said. ‘That’s the whole point.’

She didn’t say anything, she was on her way to the posters in the showcases. She turned to me.

‘ Modern Times is on!’ she said.

‘Shall we see it?’

‘Yes, let’s! But I have to get a bite to eat first. What’s the time?’

I searched for a clock. And found a small chunky one on the wall behind the box office.

‘Twenty to nine.’

‘It starts at nine. So we can make it. If you buy the tickets, I’ll go and see if I can get something in the bar.’

‘OK,’ I said. Dug out a dog-eared hundred-krone note from my pocket and went to the ticket window.

‘Have you got any tickets for Modern Times ?’ I asked in Norwegian.

A woman who could not have been any older than twenty, with plaits and glasses, looked down her nose at me.

‘ Ursäkta? ’ she said. Excuse me.

‘Have — you — got — tickets — for — Modern — Times ?’ I asked in Swedish.

‘Yes.’

‘Two please. At the back, in the middle. Två .’

To be on the safe side, I held two fingers in the air.

She printed the tickets, placed them without a word on the counter in front of me, straightened the hundred-krone note and put it in the till. I went into the bar, which was jam-packed, spotted Linda and squeezed in beside her.

‘I love you,’ I said.

I hardly ever said that, and her eyes beamed as she looked up at me.

‘Do you?’ she said.

We kissed. The bartender set down a small basket of taco chips in front of us and what looked like a guacamole dip.

‘Do you want a beer?’ she asked.

I shook my head.

‘Maybe afterwards. But by then you’ll probably be too tired.’

‘Probably. Did you get the tickets?’

‘Yes.’

I saw Modern Times for the first time at the film club in Bergen when I was twenty. There was one scene where I couldn’t stop laughing. Most people can’t remember when they last laughed, but I remember when I laughed twenty years ago, because of course it doesn’t happen that often. I remember both the shame of losing control and the pleasure of letting myself go. What started me off is still crystal clear in my memory. Chaplin has to perform in a kind of variety show. It’s an important performance, there’s a lot at stake, he is nervous and jots down the lyrics as an aide-memoire and slips them up his jacket sleeves before he goes on. As he steps onto the dance floor he welcomes the audience with a broad, sweeping flourish and the scraps of paper are sent flying. Then he is left standing there without the lyrics while the orchestra strikes up behind him. What should he do? Yes, he chases after them, improvising a dance to cover the fact that something has gone wrong, while the band plays the intro again and again. I laughed until I cried. But the scene moves into a different phase because he can’t retrieve the pieces of paper, however much he dances around, and in the end he has to start singing. He stands there in total silence, and when he does begin it is with words that do not exist, but they are similar because although the meaning has gone, the notes and the melody remain, and I was filled with joy, I remember, not only for me but for the whole of humanity, as there was such warmth there and it was one of our own who had produced it.

When I took my seat in the auditorium beside Linda this evening I was unsure what was awaiting us. Chaplin, well, yes. Something someone like Fosnes Hansen writes an essay about when the topic is humour. And would I still find what I had laughed at fifteen years ago funny?

I would. And in exactly the same place. He comes on, greets the audience, his crib sheets fly out of his sleeves, he dances round the floor, with his feet somehow behind him, in tow, he doesn’t lose contact with the audience for one second; the whole time he’s dancing and searching he nods politely to them. A tear ran down my cheek at the ensuing pantomime. Everything was so wonderful that evening, I thought. We were giggling as we left the cinema, Linda was happy that I was so happy, I imagined, but also for her own part. We walked hand in hand up the stone steps beside the Finnish Cultural Institute, laughing as we regaled each other with scenes from the film. Then it was along Regeringsgatan, past the bakery, the furniture shop and US Video, unlock the door and up the stairs to our flat. It was a few minutes after half past ten, and Linda could barely keep her eyes open, so we went straight to bed.

Ten minutes later the music blared out beneath us again. I had completely forgotten about the Russian, and sat up in bed with a start.