Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

‘But I would never have said so.’

For the first time in my life I was completely happy. For the first time there was nothing in my life that could overshadow the happiness I felt. We were together constantly, suddenly reaching for each other at traffic lights, across a restaurant table, on buses, in parks, there were no demands or desires except for each other. I felt utterly free, but only with her, the moment we were apart I began to have yearnings. It was strange, the forces were so strange, and they were good. Geir and Christina said we were impossible to be with, we had eyes only for each other, and it was true, there was no world beyond the one we had built. On Midsummer’s night we went to the island of Runmarö, where Mikaela had rented a cabin, I found myself laughing and singing through a Swedish night, a happy chuntering idiot, for everything gave meaning, everything was laden with meaning, it was as if a new light had been cast over the world. In Stockholm we went swimming, we lay in parks reading, we ate in restaurants, it didn’t matter what we did, it was the fact that we did it that was important. I read Hölderlin, and his poems flowed into me like water, there was nothing I didn’t understand, the ecstasy in the poems and the ecstasy in me were the same, and above all this, every single day throughout June, July and August, the sun shone. We told each other everything about ourselves, the way lovers do, and even though we knew it couldn’t last, and the thought that in fact it might was frightening because there was also something unbearable about it, all this happiness, so we lived in it as if we didn’t know. The fall had to come, but we didn’t bother ourselves about it — how could we when everything was so great?

One morning when I was in the shower, she called me, I went into the bedroom, she was lying naked on the bed, it was by the window now, so that we could see the sky.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘Can you see the cloud?’

I lay down beside her. The sky was perfectly blue, there were no clouds apart from the one which was drifting slowly closer. It was shaped like a heart.

‘Yes,’ I said, squeezing her hand.

She laughed.

‘Everything’s perfect,’ she said. ‘I’ve never ever been like this. I’m so happy with you. I’m so happy!’

‘Me too,’ I said.

We took a boat to the skerries. Rented a cabin in the forest outside a youth hostel. We walked round the island for hours, delved deep into the forest, everything smelt of pine and heather, suddenly we encountered a steep rock face: beneath us was the sea. We went on, came to a meadow, stopped and watched the cows, they watched us, we laughed, took pictures of each other, climbed up a tree, sat in it chattering like two children.

‘Once,’ I said, ‘I had to buy cigarettes for my father at a petrol station. It was a couple of kilometres from home. I must have been about seven or eight years old. The path there went through a forest. I knew it like the palm of my hand. I still know it like the palm of my hand. Suddenly I heard a rustling in the bushes. I stopped and looked over. There I saw an absolutely fantastic bird, you know, big and multicoloured. I had never seen anything like it before, it was more like a visitor from some distant exotic continent. Africa or Asia. It scampered off and then flew away and disappeared. I’ve never seen that kind of bird since and I’ve never found out what it might have been.’

‘Is that true?’ Linda asked. ‘I had exactly the same experience once. At a girlfriend’s summer house. I was sitting in a tree, yes, like now, waiting for my friends to return. I got impatient and jumped down. Strolled around aimlessly and suddenly saw a fantastic multicoloured bird. I’ve never seen it since either.’

‘Is that true?’

‘Yes.’

That was how it was, everything gave meaning and our lives were interwoven. On the way home from the island we discussed the name of our first child.

‘If it’s a boy,’ I said, ‘I would prefer a simple name. Ola, I’ve always liked that. What do you think?’

‘It’s good,’ she said. ‘Very Norwegian. I like that.’

‘Yes,’ I said, looking out of the window.

A little boat bobbed up and down on its way across. The registration plate on the side said OLA.

‘Look there,’ I said.

Linda leaned forward.

‘Then it’s decided,’ she said. ‘Ola it is!’

Late one evening we had been walking up the hill towards my flat, still in the first, feverish phase of the relationship and, after quite a silence, she had said, ‘Karl Ove, there’s something I have to tell you.’

‘Oh yes?’ I said.

‘I tried to take my life once.’

‘What did you say?’ I said.

She didn’t answer and looked down at the ground in front of her.

‘Was that a long time ago?’ I asked.

‘Two years ago maybe. It was when I was in the clinic.’

I looked at her, she didn’t want to meet my eyes, I went up to her and hugged her. We stood like that for a long time. Then we went up the stairs and into the lift, I unlocked the flat, she sat down on the bed, I opened the window and the sounds of a late summer night rose to meet us.

‘Would you like some tea?’ I asked.

‘Please,’ she said.

I went to the kitchenette, switched on the kettle, took out two cups and put a teabag in each. After I had passed her one and stationed myself by the open window, sipping at the other cup, she began to tell me what had happened. Her mother had collected her from the hospital, they were on their way to her flat to pick something up. As they got closer Linda set off at a run. Her mother ran after her. Linda ran as fast as she could, through the door, up the stairs, into the flat, to the window. By the time her mother arrived, a few seconds later, Linda had opened the window and clambered up onto the ledge. Her mother sprinted to the window as Linda was about to jump, grabbed her and pulled her back in.

‘I went ballistic,’ she said. ‘I think I wanted to kill her. I pummelled away at her. We fought for maybe ten minutes. I tipped the fridge over her. But she was stronger. Of course she was stronger. In the end she sat astride my chest and I gave up. She rang the police and they came to take me back to hospital.’

There was a pause. I looked at her, she met my gaze, quickly, like a bird.

‘I’m ashamed about this,’ she said. ‘But I thought you should know at some point.’

I didn’t know what to say. There was an abyss between the place she had been then and where we were now. At least that was how it felt. Perhaps not for her though?

‘Why did you do it?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. I don’t think it was clear in my mind then, either. But I remember the process. I had been manic for several weeks at the end of the summer. One evening Mikaela came to my place, I was crouching on the worktop reciting numbers. She and Öllegård took me to the acute psychiatry clinic. They gave me some sleeping tablets and asked me if Mikaela would have me at home for a few days. Afterwards, over the autumn, one phase alternated with another. And then I hit the buffers in a depression that was so vast I didn’t know if there was a way out. I avoided everyone I knew because I didn’t want anyone to be the last person to see me alive. The therapist who attended me asked if I had suicidal thoughts, I just burst into tears and she said she couldn’t be responsible for me between therapy sessions and so I was admitted to the clinic. I’ve seen the papers of the admission meeting. Several minutes pass between my being asked a question and my answering, it says, and I can remember that. It was almost impossible for me to speak, impossible to say anything, the words were so far away. Everything was so far away. My face was a stiff mask. There was no expression in it.’