Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

‘Hi, Karl Ove,’ Christina said, giving me a hug. ‘Everything all right with you?’

‘Yes,’ I said, stepping back to give them more room as Linda came through to welcome them. More hugs, more coats and shoes removed, everyone went into the living room, where Anders and Helena’s daughter, who had begun to crawl around, was a welcome focus of attention for the first few minutes until the situation settled.

‘You keep up the Christmas traditions, I see,’ Anders said, nodding towards the enormous tree in the corner.

‘It cost eight hundred kroner,’ I said. ‘It’s going to stand there for as long as there is any life in it. We don’t chuck money around in this house.’

Anders laughed.

‘The boss has started to crack jokes!’

‘I crack jokes all the time,’ I said. ‘It’s just you Swedes who don’t understand what I say.’

‘Well,’ he said. ‘At the beginning at any rate I understood nothing of what you said.’

‘So you bought yourselves a nouveau riche Christmas tree, did you?’ Geir said while Anders started speaking pidgin Norwegian in the way that is so common in Sweden and which consists of a high-pitched kjempe , meaning huge, an occasional gutt , boy, which to Swedish ears sounds so comical, all pronounced in an enthusiastic tone that rises at the end of every sentence. It had nothing to do with my dialect, which they therefore assumed was nynorsk .

‘It wasn’t planned,’ I said with a smile. ‘It’s a bit embarrassing to have such a big Christmas tree, I have to confess. But it seemed small when we bought it. It was only when we got it here that it became clear how enormous it was. But then I’ve always had problems with my sense of proportion.’

‘Do you know what kjempe means, Anders?’ Linda asked.

He shook his head.

‘I know avis , newspaper. And gutt . And vindu , window.’

‘It’s the same as jätte in Swedish, big, huge.’

Did Linda think I was offended, or what?

‘It took me six months to understand that,’ she continued. ‘It’s used in exactly the same way. There must be loads of words I think I understand, but I don’t. It hardly bears thinking about that I translated Sæterbakken’s book two years ago. At that time I couldn’t understand Norwegian at all.’

‘Could Gilda?’ Helena asked.

‘Her? No. She knew even less than me. But I had a look at it not so long ago, the first pages, and it seemed fine. Apart from one word that is. I blush whenever I think about it. I translated stue , living room, with stuga … so he was sitting in a stuga when the text said he was in a living room.’

‘What’s stuga in Norwegian then?’ Anders asked.

‘ Hytte ,’ I said.

‘Oh, it’s a hytte , a cabin! Yes, there’s certainly a difference then…’ he said.

‘But no one has remarked on it,’ Linda said. She laughed.

‘Anyone fancy some champagne?’ I asked.

‘I’ll fetch it,’ Linda said.

On her return she gathered the five glasses together and started to loosen the wire holding the cork in place. Her face was slightly averted and her eyes were narrowed, as though anticipating a huge explosion. In the end the cork came off into her hand with a wet plop, and then she held the bottle, with the champagne pouring out, over the glasses.

‘You managed that well,’ Anders said.

‘I worked in a restaurant a long time ago,’ Linda said. ‘But this was the one thing I could never do. I have no sense of depth anyway, so when I had to fill customers’ glasses, it was hit and miss.’

She straightened up and passed the sparkling, bubbly champagne to us one by one. For herself she poured a non-alcoholic variant.

‘ Skål , then, and nice to see you!’

We toasted. When the champagne was finished I went into the kitchen to get the lobsters ready. Geir followed me and sat down at the table.

‘Lobster,’ he said. ‘It’s unbelievable how quickly you’ve adapted to Swedish society. I come to your place on New Year’s Eve two years after you moved here and you serve traditional Swedish New Year fare.’

‘I’m not exactly on my own,’ I said.

‘No, I know,’ he said with a smile. ‘We had a Mexican Christmas at home once, Christina and I did. Have I told you about it?’

‘Yes,’ I said and split the first lobster into two, placed it on a dish and started on the next. Geir began to talk about his manuscript. I listened with half an ear. Oh yes? I said now and then to signal that I was following even though my attention was elsewhere. He was unable to talk about his manuscript with everyone so it was only here he had the chance, and when I went out for a smoke, he saw his opportunity. He had written a rough draft, spent eighteen months on it, which I had read and commented on. The comments were comprehensive and detailed, they extended over ninety pages, and sadly the tone of the criticism was often sarcastic. I had imagined that Geir could take anything, but I should have known better, no one can take anything, and few things are as difficult to swallow as sarcasm when your own work is the target. But I couldn’t stop myself, it was the same when I wrote reader reports, irony was never far away. The problem with Geir’s manuscript, as he knew and admitted, was that the narrative was often too far removed from events, and a lot was often left unsaid. Only a fresh pair of eyes could remedy it. And that was what he got. But I was always ironic, much too ironic… was it perhaps caused by a subconscious desire on my part to get one over on him, the man who otherwise always reigned supreme.

No.

No?

‘I’m terribly sorry about that,’ I said now, placing the third lobster on its back and cutting through the shell on the stomach. It was softer than crab shell, and something about the consistency made me think it was artificial, like plastic. The red colour, wasn’t there something unnatural about that too? And all the attractive, intricate details, like the grooves in the claws or the armour-like tail shell: didn’t they look as if they had been forged in the workshop of a Renaissance craftsman?

‘And so you should be,’ Geir said. ‘Ten Hail Marys for your evil, sinful soul. Can you imagine what it is like to pore over your comments and voluntarily allow yourself to be mocked by them every single day? “Are you an absolute idiot or what?” Ye-es, I suppose I am…’

‘It’s just a technical point,’ I said, glancing at him while I sawed through the shell with the knife

‘Technical? Technical? Easy for you to say, that is. You can spend twenty pages describing a trip to the loo and hold your readers spellbound. How many people do you think can do that? How many writers would not have done that if only they could? Why do you think people spend their time touching up their modernist poems, with three words on each page? It’s because they have no other option. After all these years surely you must understand that, for Christ’s sake. If they could have done, they would have done. You can, and you don’t appreciate it. It means nothing to you, and you would rather be clever and write in essayistic style. But everyone can write essays! It’s the easiest thing in the world.’

I looked at the white flesh with the red fibres which appeared as soon as the shell was pierced. Recognised the faint tang of seawater.

‘You say you don’t see the letters when you write, don’t you?’ he continued. ‘I don’t see anything but bloody letters. They intertwine like damn spiders’ webs in front of my eyes. Nothing can force its way out through that, you understand, everything is turned inwards like some ingrowing toenail.’