Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

‘We’ve been so open,’ Helena said. ‘That never happens, I was thinking.’

‘It’s a competition,’ I said, putting down the bottle and catching the drop running down the neck with my thumb. ‘Who’s worst off? Me!’

‘No, me!’ Geir said.

‘I find it difficult to visualise my parents sitting and talking about this with friends,’ Helena said. ‘But they really were up the creek without a paddle. We aren’t.’

‘How do you mean?’ Christina asked.

‘My father’s Örebro’s wig king. He makes toupees. His first wife, my mother, is an alcoholic. She’s so repugnant I can hardly visit her. And if I do, I’m in a state for several weeks afterwards. But when dad remarried he chose another alcoholic.’

She pulled a face and followed up with a few tics, which captured her father’s wife to perfection. I had met her once, at the christening of their child; she was both utterly self-controlled and utterly at the end of her tether. Helena often laughed at her.

‘When I was small they injected syringes into those small fruit-drink cartons, you know the ones, and filled them with alcohol. So that they would look quite innocent. Ha ha ha! And once when I was alone on holiday with mum she gave me a sleeping tablet, locked the door from the outside and went on the town.’

Everyone laughed.

‘But she’s much worse now. She’s a sort of monster. Devours us if we visit her. Just thinks of herself, there’s nothing else. She drinks and is foul all the time.’

She looked at me.

‘Your father drank as well, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, he did,’ I said. ‘Not when I was a boy. He started when I was sixteen. And died when I was thirty. So he stuck at it for fourteen years. He literally drank himself to death. And I think perhaps that was what he was trying to do.’

‘Haven’t you got a funny story about him?’ Anders asked.

‘I’m not sure Karl Ove has the same relish for his own misfortunes as you have for those of others,’ Helena said.

‘Don’t worry. It’s fine,’ I said. ‘I don’t have any feelings about this any longer. I don’t know if this is funny, but, well, here we go. In the end he was living in his mother’s house. Drank non-stop of course. One day he fell down the step into the living room. I think he broke his leg. It may have been only a bad sprain. But at any rate he couldn’t move — he just lay on the floor. My grandmother wanted to ring for an ambulance, but he wouldn’t have it. So he lay there, on the living-room floor, while she looked after him. Ate and drank where he was. I’ve no idea for how long. A few days perhaps. My uncle found him. He was still lying there.’

Everyone laughed. I did too.

‘What was he like when he didn’t drink?’ Anders asked. ‘The first sixteen years?’

‘He was a bastard. I was scared to death of him. Absolutely pissing in my pants. I remember once… well, I used to like swimming when I was a boy, going to the baths in the winter, it was the high point of the week. Once I lost a sock there. I couldn’t find it. I searched and searched, but it was nowhere to be seen. And then I got so frightened. It was a total nightmare.’

‘Why was that?’ Helena asked.

‘Because my life would have been a living hell if he found out.’

‘That you’d lost a sock?’

‘Yes, exactly. The chances of him finding out were minimal of course, I could just sneak into the house and take another pair of socks as soon as I was home, but I was still terrified all the way home. Opened the door. No one there. Started taking off my shoes. And who should come in but my father? And what does he do? Stand there and watch me take off my things.’

‘What happened?’ Helena asked.

‘He slapped me and told me I could never go to the swimming baths again.’ I smiled.

‘Ha ha ha!’ Geir laughed. ‘There’s a man after my own heart! Consistent to the last.’

‘Did your father hit you then?’ Helena asked.

Geir hesitated.

‘There were some features of a traditional Norwegian upbringing. You know, over my knees and down with your pants. But he never hit me in the face and he never hit me on the spur of the moment, like Karl Ove’s father did. It was a punishment, nothing more, nothing less. I considered it just. But he didn’t like doing it. I think he saw it as a duty he was obliged to fulfil. He’s very kind, my father is. A good person. I don’t harbour any ill will against him at all. Not even for the beatings. It was a very different culture from what we have today.’

‘I can’t say the same about my father,’ Anders said. ‘Well, I don’t want to go into my childhood and all that psychological crap. But when I was growing up we were rich, as I said, and when I finished school I joined his company, as a kind of companion. I lived a wonderful upper-class life. Then he suddenly went bust. It transpired he had been cooking the books and had committed fraud. And I had signed everything he gave me. I was let off prison, but I owe the tax authorities such enormous sums of money that everything I earn for the rest of my life has to go towards paying them off. That’s why I don’t have a proper job any more. There’s no point, they take the lot.’

‘What happened to your father then?’ I asked.

‘He legged it. I haven’t seen him since. I don’t know where he is. Abroad somewhere. I don’t want to see him, either.’

‘But your mother stayed here,’ Linda said.

‘You could say that, yes,’ Anders said. ‘Embittered, abandoned and broke.’

He smiled.

‘Yes, I’ve met her once,’ I said. ‘No, twice. She’s very funny. She sits on a stool in the corner and peppers her conversation with sarcasm for anyone who wants to hear. There’s lots of humour.’

‘Humour?’ Anders queried, and began to imitate her, the cracked old-lady voice calling his name and criticising him for everything under the sun.

‘My mother is frightened,’ Geir said. ‘And one fact sabotages everything else in her life or overshadows it. She wants to have everyone close to her all the time. It was hell when I was growing up, it cost me so much to break free. Her technique for holding me was to make me feel guilty. I refused to accept it. That was how I escaped. The price is that we hardly talk. It’s a high price, but it’s worth paying.’

‘What’s she frightened of?’ Anders asked.

‘You mean how it manifested itself?’

Anders nodded.

‘She’s not frightened of people. With them she can be very direct, she’s fearless. It’s space she’s afraid of. For example, she always had a cushion with her when we went out in the car. On her lap. Whenever we went into a tunnel she would lean forward and put it over her head.’

‘Is that true?’ Helena asked.

‘Certainly. Every single time. Then we had to say when we were out of the tunnel. From there it developed further: all of a sudden she couldn’t be on roads with more than one lane, she couldn’t bear to have cars passing us so close. And then she couldn’t be alongside water. Our holidays became a virtual impossibility. I remember my father standing over the map like a general before a battle while he tried to figure out a route without motorways, water and tunnels.’

‘And my mother’s diametrically the opposite,’ Linda said. ‘She’s not afraid of anything. I think she’s the most fearless person I know. I remember cycling with her through the town to the theatre. She pedals like a lunatic, onto the pavement, between people, onto the road. Once she was stopped by the police. She didn’t nod, listen and apologise, it won’t happen again, officer — not her. No, she was indignant. It was up to her where she cycled. That’s how she was all my childhood. If any of the teachers complained about me she would reciprocate in kind. There was never anything wrong with me. I was always right. When I was six she let me go on holiday to Greece alone.’