Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

‘Of course we can be friends,’ I said.

And it was true, I didn’t bear any grudges, why should I?

I met him in Oslo a month later, I was back to square one, couldn’t bring myself to say a word to him. Barely a word passed my lips, not even if I drank. He said Linda talked a lot about me, and she often said I was so good-looking. With regard to that, I thought ‘good-looking’ was not a parameter that was relevant to us, it was more like a curious fact, approximately the same as if she had said I was lame or a hunchback. Besides, it was Arve who told me, why would he pass on this comment? Once I met him at Kunsternes Hus and he was so drunk it was hardly possible to talk to him, he took my hand and led me to a table and said, look, everyone, isn’t he good-looking? I fled, bumped into him an hour later, we sat down, I said I had told him so much about myself while he had never told me anything about himself, I mean, intimate details, and he said, now you disappoint me, you sound like a psychologist in Dagbladet ’s Saturday supplement or something, I said, OK. He was right, of course, he was always right, or always situated somewhere above arguments about right and wrong. He had given me a lot, but I had to put this behind me as well, I couldn’t live with it and at the same time live the life I had in Bergen. That didn’t work.

In the winter I met him again, when Linda was there, she wanted to meet me, and Arve led her to where I was sitting, left us in peace for half an hour, then came to collect her.

She sat huddled in a large leather jacket, weak and trembling, there was almost nothing left of her, and I thought, it’s gone, it no longer exists.

While I told the story to Geir he looked down at the table in front of him. After I had finished he met my gaze.

‘Interesting!’ he said. ‘You turn everything inwards. All the pain, all the aggression, all the emotions, all the shame, everything. Inwards. You hurt yourself, not anyone else out there.’

‘That’s what any teenage girl would do,’ I said.

‘No, they don’t!’ he said. ‘You cut your face to ribbons. No girl would ever cut her face. I’ve never heard of anyone doing it in fact.’

‘They weren’t deep cuts,’ I said. ‘They looked bad. But it wasn’t so bad.’

‘Who would do that kind of thing to themselves?’

I shrugged.

‘It was everything together building up into one climax. Dad’s death, all the media attention around the book, life with Tonje. And of course Linda.’

‘But you didn’t feel anything for her today?’

‘Nothing strong at any rate.’

‘Are you going to see her again?’

‘Maybe. Probably. Just to have a friend here, if so.’

‘ Another friend.’

‘Yes, exactly,’ I said, raising my finger in the air to attract the waiter’s attention.

The next day the woman I was renting from rang. She had a girlfriend who needed to sublet her flat to reduce the rent.

‘What do you mean sublet ?’

‘You get your room and then you share the rest of the flat with her.’

‘Doesn’t sound like anything for me,’ I said.

‘But it’s a fantastic flat, you know,’ she said. ‘It’s in Bastugatan. It’s one of the best addresses in the whole of Stockholm.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I can go and talk to her anyway.’

‘She’s very interested in Norwegian literature.’

I took her name and telephone number, rang, she picked up at once, just pop round, she said.

The flat really was fantastic. She was young, younger than me, and the walls were plastered with photographs of one man. It was her husband, she said, he was dead.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said.

She turned and walked through the flat.

‘This is your room,’ she said. ‘If you want it, that is. You’ve got your own bathroom, own kitchen, and then there’s a room with a bed, as you can see.’

‘Looks great,’ I said.

‘You’ve got your own entrance as well. And if you want to write, you just have to close the door here.’

‘I’ll take it,’ I said. ‘When can I move in?’

‘Now, if you like.’

‘So quickly? Right, I’ll bring my things over this afternoon then.’

Geir just laughed when I told him.

‘It’s impossible to come here without knowing a soul and get a flat in Bastugatan,’ he said. ‘It’s impossible! Do you understand? The gods like you, Karl Ove, that’s for sure.’

‘But Caesar doesn’t,’ I said.

‘Oh yes, Caesar does too. He’s just a little envious, that’s all.’

Three days later I rang Linda, told her I had moved, did she fancy a coffee? Yes, she did, and within an hour we were sitting in a café on the ‘hump’ overlooking Hornsgatan. She seemed happier, that was my first thought as she sat down. She asked if I had been swimming today, I smiled and said no, but she had, at the crack of dawn, it had been fantastic.

So we sat there stirring our cappuccinos. I lit a cigarette, couldn’t think of anything to say, thinking this would have to be the last time.

‘Do you like the theatre?’ she asked.

I shook my head and told her the only plays I had seen were traditional performances at the National in Bergen, which had been about as captivating as watching fish in the aquarium, and a couple at Bergen International Theatre Festival, among them a production of Faust in which actors wandered across the stage mumbling and sporting big black noses. When I said that, she said we would have to go and see Bergman’s production of Ghosts , and I said OK, I’ll give it a go.

‘Have we got a date then?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Sounds amusing.’

‘Do bring your Norwegian friend along,’ she said. ‘And I can meet him as well.’

‘Right, I’m sure he’d love to come,’ I said.

We stayed for another quarter of an hour, but the silences were long, and she was probably dying to leave as much as I was. In the end, I put my cigarettes in my pocket and got up.

‘Shall we buy the tickets together?’ she asked.

‘Can do,’ I answered.

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Yes.’

‘Half past eleven here?’

‘Yes, that’s fine.’

For the twenty minutes it took to go from the hump to the Royal Dramatic Theatre we barely exchanged a word. It felt as though I could say everything to her or nothing. Now it was nothing, and presumably that was the way it would stay.

I let her order the tickets, and once it was done we started on the way back. The sun flooded the town in light, the first buds had appeared on the trees, there were people everywhere, most of them happy, as you are on the first decent days of spring.

As we crossed Kungsträdgården she squinted into the bright low rays of the sun at me.

‘I saw something odd on TV a few weeks ago,’ she said. ‘They were showing CCTV footage from inside a large newspaper kiosk. Suddenly one of the shelves started smoking. At first there were a few small flames. The assistant was unsighted where he stood. But the customer by the counter could see. He must have known something was going on because while he was waiting for his purchases to be rung up he turned to the shelf. He couldn’t help but see the flames. Then he turned back, took his change and left. While there was a fire burning behind him!’

She looked at me again and smiled.

‘Another customer came in and stood by the counter. By now the fire was well alight. He turned and looked straight at the flames. Then he turned back, finished what he had to do and went out. But he looked straight at the flames! Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Do you think he didn’t want to be involved?’