Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

‘No, no, not at all. That wasn’t the point. It was that he saw the flames but couldn’t believe what he was seeing, flames in a shop, and so he trusted his brain more than his vision.’

‘What happened after that?’

‘The third person, who came in straight afterwards, shouted, “Fire!” as soon as he saw it. By then the whole stand was ablaze. By then it was impossible not to see it. Odd, eh?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

We had reached the bridge leading to the island where the Royal Palace was and zigzagged through the tourists and immigrants standing and fishing off it. Now and then over the following days I thought about the story she had told, gradually it detached itself from her and became a phenomenon in itself. I didn’t know her, knew as good as nothing about her and the fact that she was Swedish meant that I couldn’t interpret anything from the way she spoke or the clothes she wore. An image from her poetry collection, which I hadn’t read since that time at Biskop-Arnö and had taken out only once, when showing her photo to Yngve, was still imprinted on my brain, the one of the first-person narrator clinging to a man like a baby chimpanzee and seeing this in the mirror. Why that of all images had made an impression I didn’t know. When I arrived home I took out the collection again. Whales and land and huge animals thundering around a sharp-witted and vulnerable narrator.

Was that her?

Some days later we went to the theatre. Linda, Geir and I. The first act was terrible, truly wretched, and in the interval, sitting at a terrace table with a view of the harbour, Geir and Linda chatted away about quite how terrible it had been, and why. I was more sympathetic, for despite the small, cramped feel of the act, which coloured the play and the visions it was supposed to be depicting, there was an anticipation of something else, as if it was lying in wait. Perhaps not in the play, perhaps more in the combination of Bergman and Ibsen, which ultimately had to produce something? Or else it was the splendour of the auditorium that fooled me into believing there had to be something else. And there was. Everything was raised, higher and higher, the intensity increased, and within the tightly set framework, which in the end comprised only mother and son, a kind of boundlessness arose, something wild and reckless. Into it disappeared plot and space, what was left was emotion, and it was stark, you were looking straight into the essence of human existence, the very nucleus of life, and thus you found yourself in a place where it no longer mattered what was actually happening. Everything known as aesthetics and taste was eliminated. Wasn’t there an enormous red sun shining at the back of the stage? Wasn’t that Osvald rolling naked across the stage? I’m not sure any more what I saw, the details disappeared into the state they evoked, which was one of total presence, burning hot and ice-cold at once. However, if you hadn’t allowed yourself to be transported, everything that happened would have appeared exaggerated, perhaps even banal or kitsch. The master stroke was the first act, everything was done there, and only someone who had spent a whole lifetime creating, with an enormous list — more than fifty years’ worth — of productions behind them, could have had the skill, the coolness, the courage, the intuition and the insight to fashion something like this. Bright ideas alone could not have brought this off, it was impossible. Hardly anything I had seen or read had even been close to approaching the essence in this way. As we followed the audience streaming out into the foyer and onto the street, not one of us said a word, but from their distant expressions I could see they had also been carried away into the terrible but real and therefore beautiful place Bergman had seen in Ibsen and then succeeded in shaping. We decided we would have a beer at KB, and as we made our way there the trance-like state wore off to be replaced by an elated, euphoric mood. The shyness I would normally have felt at being so near such an attractive woman, which was further complicated by the events of three years ago, was suddenly gone. She talked about the time she had accidentally nudged a floodlight stand during one of Bergman’s tests and got to feel the sharp edge of his tongue. We discussed the difference between Ghosts and Peer Gynt , which were at opposite ends of a spectrum, one mere surface, the other mere depth, both equally true. She parodied the dialogue between Max von Sydow and Death and talked about individual Bergman films with Geir, who had gone on his own to see the Cinemathek performances, all of them, and had consequently seen the classic films that were worth seeing, while I sat and listened, happy about everything. Happy to have seen the play, happy to have moved to Stockholm, happy to be with Linda and Geir.

After we parted company and I was trudging up the hills to my bedsit in Mariaberget I realised two things.

The first was that I wanted to see her again as soon as possible.

The second was that was where I had to go, to what I had seen that evening. Nothing else was good enough, nothing else did it. That was where I had to go, to the essence, to the inner core of human existence. If it took forty years, so be it, it took forty years. But I should never lose sight of it, never forget it, that was where I was going.

There, there, there.

Two days later Linda rang and invited me to a Walpurgis night party she was going to throw with two girlfriends. It was fine if I brought along my friend Geir. Which I did. One Friday in May 2002 we walked across Söder to the flat where the party was to take place, and soon found ourselves ensconced on a sofa, each with a glass of punch in our hands, surrounded by young Stockholmers who all had some connection with cultural life: jazz musicians, theatre people, literary critics, authors, actors. Linda, Mikaela and Öllegård, who were the party organisers, had met when they were working at Stockholm City Theatre. At the time the Royal Dramatic Theatre was performing Romeo and Juliet together with Circus Cirkör, so apart from actors the room was full of jugglers, fire-eaters and trapeze artists. I couldn’t get through the evening without speaking, even if I wanted to, so I heaved my body round from one group to another, exchanging civilities and, after I’d had a few gin and tonics, the odd sentence beyond what was strictly necessary. I particularly wanted to talk to the theatre people. I would never have expected to feel that, and it made my enthusiasm for theatre soar on this evening. I stood with two actors and said how fantastic Bergman was. They just snorted and said, That old sod! He’s so bloody traditional it makes you want to puke.

How stupid could you be! Of course they loathed Bergman. Firstly, he had been the master all their lives and the whole of their parents’ lives as well. Secondly, they were for the new, the great, Shakespeare as circus, the play everyone should see, which, with its torches and trapezes, stilts and clowns, was so refreshing. They had gone as far from Bergman as it was possible to go. Then a podgy clearly depressed Norwegian stands there hailing Bergman as the new man.

Meanwhile I confirmed that Linda and Geir were still chatting on the sofa, both with excited smiles, the stab in the heart that gave me, was she going to fall for another of my friends? I mingled, bumped into some jazz fans, who asked me if I knew anything about Norwegian jazz, to which I responded with a half-nod, which of course meant they wanted some names. Norwegian jazz musicians? Was there anyone apart from Jan Garbarek? Fortunately I realised that wasn’t exactly what they meant and remembered Bugge Wesseltoft, whom Espen had talked about once, and had also invited to play at a Vagant party where I had given a reading. They nodded, he was good, I breathed out with relief and went off to sit on my own. Then a dark-haired woman with a broad face, large mouth, intense brown eyes, wearing a flowery dress, came over to me and asked if I was the writer from Norway. Yes, I was. What did I think about Jan Kjærstad, John Erik Riley and Ole Robert Sunde?