Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

Geir

That was the correspondence. I didn’t doubt the sincerity of his offer to let me stay with them, but still I found it hard to accept. Meeting somewhere for a cup of coffee would have been more appropriate for the circumstances. On the other hand, I didn’t have anything to lose. And he did come from the island of Hisøya.

I closed the email and cast a glance at the table where the three girls were, before grabbing my rucksack and getting to my feet. The one doing the talking spoke with a kind of aggrieved passion, immensely self-assertive, and was applauded with the same passion. If they hadn’t been speaking I would have thought they were around nineteen. Now I knew they were closer to fifteen.

The nearest of them turned her head and met my stare again. Not to offer me anything — it was not an open look — but to confirm that I was looking at her. Nevertheless it opened up something. A flash of something like happiness. Then, as I went to the cash desk to pay, the thunder of consciousness followed. I was thirty-three years old. A grown man. Why was I thinking as if I was still twenty? When would these youthful fancies leave me? When my father was thirty-three he had a son of thirteen and one of nine, he had a house and a car and a job, and in photos of him from that time he looked like a man, and from what I could remember he also behaved like a man, I thought as I stepped up to the counter. Placed a warm hand on the cool marble surface. The assistant rose from a chair and came over to take payment.

‘How much is it?’ I asked in Norwegian.

‘ Ursäkta? ’

I sighed.

‘What does it cost?’

She glanced at the screen in front of her.

‘Ten,’ she said.

I handed her a creased twenty-krone note.

‘That’s fine,’ I said, walking away before she had a chance to answer with another Ursäkta? , which this country seemed to be awash with. The clock on the wall in the main concourse said six minutes to five. I took up my old position and watched the people hanging around the rail. As none of them fitted the little I had to go on I allowed my gaze to wander among those walking through the station. From the kiosk on the other side came a short man with a large head and an appearance so unusual I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was in his fifties, his hair was a yellowish colour, his face broad, nose large, mouth slightly askew and his eyes were small. He looked like a gnome. But he was dressed in a suit and coat, in one hand he held an elegant leather briefcase, tucked under his arm he had a newspaper, and perhaps another personality was thrusting forth beneath the metropolitan exterior, which meant that my eyes were glued to him until he disappeared down the stairs to the platforms where the commuter trains departed. Suddenly, again, I saw how old everything was. Backs, hands, feet, heads, ears, hair, nails: every single part of the bodies streaming through the concourse was old. The buzz of voices rising from them was old. Even their pleasure was old, even the wishes and expectations of what the future would bring were old. Yet new, for us the future was new, for us it belonged to our time, belonged to the queue of waiting taxis outside, belonged to the coffee machines on the tables in the cafés, belonged to the shelves of magazines in the kiosks, belonged to the mobiles and iPods, the Goretex coats and laptops carried in their bags through the station and into trains, belonged to the trains and automatic doors, to the ticket machines and illuminated boards with changing destinations. Old age had no place here. Yet it completely dominated everything.

What a terrible thought that was.

I stuck a hand in my pocket to check the locker keys were there. They were. Then I patted my chest to feel for my credit card. It was there.

In the thronging masses before me a familiar face appeared. My heart beat faster. But it wasn’t Geir, it was someone else. An even more remote acquaintance. A friend of a friend? Someone I had gone to school with?

I grinned as it clicked. It was the man from Burger King. He stopped and looked at the departures board. Between the thumb and first finger of the hand carrying the briefcase he was holding a ticket. As he checked the time on the board with the time on his ticket he raised the whole briefcase towards his face.

I glanced at the clock at the end of the concourse. Two minutes to. If Geir was as punctual as I assumed, he should be somewhere in the station by now, and I systematically scanned all the figures in the approaching crowd. First left, then right.

There.

Surely that had to be Geir?

Yes. It was. I remembered the face when I saw it. And he was not only walking towards me, he also had his eyes fixed on me.

I smiled, wiped my palm over my thigh as discreetly as I could, and reached out as he stopped in front of me.

‘Hi, Geir,’ I said. ‘Long time.’

He smiled too. Let go of my hand almost before he held it.

‘You can say that again,’ he said. ‘And you haven’t changed in the slightest.’

‘Haven’t I?’ I said.

‘No. It’s just like meeting you in Bergen. Tall, serious, wearing a coat.’

He laughed.

‘Shall we go?’ he suggested. Where are your bags, by the way?’

‘In a locker downstairs,’ I answered. ‘Perhaps we could have a coffee first?’

‘Certainly can,’ he said. ‘Where?’

‘Makes no odds,’ I said. ‘There’s a café by the entrance.’

‘OK. Let’s go there.’

He led the way, stopped at a table, asked without looking at me if I wanted milk or sugar, and went to the counter while I removed my rucksack, sat down and took out my tobacco. Watched him exchange a few words with the waitress, saw him hand her a note. Even though I had recognised him, and the buried image I must have had of him therefore fitted, his aura was different from what I expected. It was much less physical, almost completely lacking the bodily weight I had ascribed to him. Presumably I had done that because I knew he had been a boxer.

I felt a strong desire to sleep, to lie down in an empty room, switch off the light and disappear from the world. That was what I was longing for, while what awaited me, hours of social obligations and small talk, seemed unbearable.

I sighed. The electric light in the ceiling, which spread its lustre over everything in the station concourse, and here and there was reflected in a glass pane, on a piece of metal, a marble tile or a coffee cup, should have been sufficient to make me happy that I was here and able to see it. All the hundreds of people drifting to and fro across the floor of the station hall in such a shadowy fashion should have been sufficient to make me happy. Tonje, who I had been with for eight years, sharing my life with her, as wonderful as she was, should have made me happy. Meeting my brother Yngve with his children should have made me happy. All the music around me, all the literature around me, all the art around me, it should have made me happy, happy, happy. All the beauty in the world, which should have been unbearable to behold, left me cold. My friends left me cold. My life left me cold. That was how it was, and that was how it had been for so long that I could no longer stand it and had decided to do something about it. I wanted to be happy again. It sounded stupid, I couldn’t say it to anyone, but that was how it was.

I lifted the half-rolled cigarette to my lips and licked the glue, pressed it down with my thumbs so that it stuck against the paper, pinched off the loose tobacco at each end and dropped it into the gleaming white insides of the pouch, straightened the flap so that it slipped down into the light brown tangled mass of tobacco, closed the pouch, stuffed it in the pocket of the coat hanging over the chair, poked the cigarette in my mouth and lit it with the tall quivering yellow flame from the lighter. Geir had taken two cups and stood pouring coffee while the waitress placed his change on the counter and turned to the next customer, a long-haired man in his fifties wearing a hat and boots and a cape-like poncho-style garment.