Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

No, Geir didn’t radiate any aura of physical presence. The aura he gave off, which had been obvious from the moment he no longer had eye contact with me, from when he let go of my hand and his eyes began to roam, was more one of restlessness. He seemed to want constant motion.

He came across the floor with a cup in each hand. I couldn’t help but smile.

‘So,’ he said, putting the cups down on the table, pulling out a chair, ‘you’re moving to Stockholm?’

‘Looks like it,’ I said.

‘In which case my prayers have been answered,’ he said without looking at me. He was studying the table, his hand round the handle of the cup. ‘I don’t know how many times I’ve told Christina I wished a Norwegian with literary interests would move here. And then you appear.’

He lifted the cup to his mouth and blew over the surface before drinking.

‘I wrote you a letter the summer you went to Uppsala,’ I said. ‘A long letter. But I never sent it. It’s still at my mother’s unopened. I haven’t a clue what’s in it.’

‘You’re joking!’ he said, staring at me.

‘Do you want it?’

‘Of course I want it! And don’t even think about opening it. It has to stay at your mother’s. That’s a piece of sealed time!’

‘Perhaps it is,’ I said. ‘I don’t remember a thing from then. And I’ve burned all the diaries and manuscripts I wrote in those days.’

‘Burned?’ Geir asked. ‘Not thrown away but burned?’

I nodded.

‘Dramatic,’ he said. ‘But then you were like that when you were in Bergen too.’

‘Was I?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘But you weren’t?’

‘Me? No. No, I wasn’t.’

He laughed. Twisted his head and watched the crowd going past. Twisted it back and surveyed the café’s other customers. I tapped the tip of the cigarette against the ashtray. The smoke rising from it billowed gently in the draught from the doors, which kept opening and closing. When I looked at him it was in brief, almost imperceptible, glances. In a way the impression he gave was independent of his face. His eyes were dark and sorrowful, but there was nothing dark or sorrowful about his aura. He seemed happy and diffident.

‘Do you know Stockholm?’ he asked.

I shook my head.

‘Not very well. I’ve only been here for a few hours.’

‘It’s a fine town. But as cold as ice. You can live your whole life here without coming into close contact with anyone. Everything is set up in such a way that you don’t get close to others. Look at the escalators,’ he said, nodding towards the concourse where I presumed the escalators were. ‘Those who stand, stand on the right-hand side, those who walk, walk on the left. When I’m in Oslo I’m amazed at all the times I bump into people. There’s constant nudging and elbowing. All that business of going left first, then right, then left again when you’re in someone’s way in the street, you know, that just doesn’t happen here. Everyone knows where they’re going, everyone does what they are supposed to do. At the airport there’s a yellow line by the baggage carousel and you mustn’t cross it. And no one does. Baggage distribution is a nice orderly process. And that’s the way conversations are organised in this country as well. There’s a yellow line you mustn’t cross. Everyone’s polite, everyone’s well mannered, everyone says what they are supposed to say. It’s all about avoiding offence. If you’re used to this, it comes as a shock to read newspaper debates in Norway. What heated discussions they have! They shout at each other! That’s inconceivable here. And if you see a Norwegian professor on TV here — it hardly ever happens, no one cares about Norway, Norway doesn’t exist in Sweden — on the rare occasions they do appear, they look like wild men with unkempt hair and untidy or unorthodox clothes, and they say things they shouldn’t. It’s part of the Norwegian academic tradition, as you know, where education doesn’t have or shouldn’t have any outward manifestation… or where the outer manifestation of academia should reflect idiosyncrasies and individualism. Not the universal and the collective, as is the case here. But of course no one understands that. Here they see only wild men. In Sweden they all think the Swedish way is the only one. Any deviations from the Swedish way they regard as flaws and deficiencies. The thought of it is enough to drive you insane.’

Yes, that’s right, it was Jon Bing, that’s who I had seen just before I met Geir. He looked all wrong. Long hair and beard, and I think he was wearing a knitted cardigan.

‘A Swedish academic looks neat and tidy, behaves tidily, says what everyone expects, in a manner everyone expects. Everyone behaves tidily here by the way. That is, everyone in the public eye. Things look a little different at street level. They released all the psychiatric patients in this country a few years ago. So you see them walking around and mumbling and shouting everywhere. They’ve arranged it so that the poor live in particular areas, the affluent in particular areas, those active in cultural circles in particular areas and immigrants in particular areas. You’ll get to see what I mean.’

He raised his coffee cup to his lips and took a sip. I didn’t know what to say. What he had said was not prompted by the situation, except that I had just arrived from Norway, and it was formulated in such a way, came in such a coherent flow, that it seemed prepared. This was something he said , I inferred, this was one of his favourite topics. My experience of the type of person who enjoys such topics was that it was important to wait until the worst pent-up emotion had passed because more often than not a different kind of attention and presence was waiting on the other side. Whether his assertions were right or not I didn’t know, my intuition was they were driven by frustration, and he was actually expressing what was causing the frustration. It might have been Sweden. It might have been something in him. It didn’t matter to me, he could talk about what he wanted, that wasn’t why I was sitting here.

‘Sport and academia go together in Norway, and beer drinking and academia,’ he said. ‘I remember that from Bergen. Sport was big among students. But here they are irreconcilable entities. I’m not talking about scientists but intellectuals. In academic circles here intellectuality is paramount, it’s all that exists, everything is subservient to the intellect. The body, for example, is conspicuous by its absence. Whereas in Norway intellectuality is played down. Hence, in Norway the common touch is no problem for an academic. I suppose the idea is that the backdrop should allow the intellect to gleam like a diamond. In Sweden the intellect’s surroundings also have to gleam. It’s the same for culture with a capital C. In Norway it is downplayed. In fact, it is not allowed to exist. Elitist culture is not allowed to exist unless it’s populist at the same time. In Sweden it is emphasised. Popular and elitist cultures are irreconcilable. One should be here , the other should be there , and there is supposed to be no interchange between the two. There are exceptions, there always are, but this is the rule. Another great difference between Norway and Sweden is to do with roles. The last time I went to Norway I caught the bus from Arendal to Kristiansand, and the bus driver was going on about how he wasn’t a bus driver really, really he was something else, he was just doing this to help tide him over to Christmas. And then he said we should look after one another during the festive period. He said that over the loudspeakers! Unthinkable in Sweden. Here you identify with your work. You simply don’t step out of your role. There are no gaps in this role, there is nowhere you can stick your head out and say, This is the real me.’