Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

‘Alone?’ Christine repeated. ‘Just you?’

‘No, I was with a girlfriend and her family. But I was six years old, and two weeks alone with a family of strangers in a foreign country was probably a bit much, don’t you think?’

‘It was the 70s,’ Geir said again. ‘Everything was allowed then.’

‘I was so embarrassed by my mother on so many occasions. She is the kind of person who has no sense of shame, she can do the most incredible things, and if it was to protect me, I used to wish the floor would swallow me up.’

‘And your father?’ Geir asked.

‘That’s a completely different kettle of fish. He was totally unpredictable. Anything could happen when he fell ill. We were just waiting for him to do something awful so that the police could come and take him away. Often we had to run away, my mother and my brother and I. Flee from him, no less.’

‘What did he do then?’ I asked, looking at her. She had told me about her father before, but only in broad strokes, with very little detail.

‘Oh, anything was possible. He could climb up the drainpipe or throw himself through a window. He could be violent. Blood and smashed glass and violence. But then the police came. And everything was fine again. When he was at home I was constantly expecting a catastrophe. But as soon as it came I was always calm. It’s almost a relief for me when the worst happens. I know I can handle it. It’s the way there that’s difficult.’

There was a pause.

‘Now I can remember a story!’ Linda exclaimed. ‘It was when we had to flee from dad and go up to my grandmother’s in Norrland. I think I was five and my brother seven. On our return to Stockholm the flat was full of gas. Dad had opened the tap and left it on for several days. It felt like the door was forced open by the pressure when mummy unlocked it. She turned to us and told Mathias to take me down to the street and stay there. She waited until we had gone before going into the flat and turning off the gas. On the street, Mathias said, and I remember it so well, you realise that mummy can die now, don’t you? Yes, I answered, I knew. Later that day I overheard mummy talking to him on the phone. “Were you trying to kill us?” she asked. Not as an exaggeration, but as a sober fact. “Do you actually want to kill us?”’

Linda smiled.

‘Hard to top that one,’ Anders said. And he turned to Christina. ‘That leaves you. What are your parents like? They’re alive, aren’t they?’

‘Yes,’ Christina said. ‘But they’re old. They live in Uppsala. They’re Pentecostalists. I grew up there and was riddled with guilt about everything, the tiniest little thing. But they’re good people. It’s their life’s work. When the snow melts and sand is left on the tarmac after the winter do you know what they do?’

‘No,’ I said, since it was me she was looking at.

‘They sweep it up and give it back to the Highways Department.’

‘Is that true?’ Anders asked. ‘Ha ha ha!’

‘They don’t drink alcohol, that goes without saying. And my father doesn’t drink tea or coffee either. If he wants a treat in the morning he drinks hot water.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ Anders said.

‘But it’s true,’ Geir said. ‘He drinks hot water and they leave the sand by the gate for the Highways Department. They’re so good it’s almost impossible to be there. I’m sure having me as a son-in-law must be like the devil testing them.’

‘What was it like growing up with them?’ Helena asked.

‘I thought for ages that their world was the world, that was what it was like. All my friends and all my parents’ friends belonged to the movement. There was no life outside it. When I broke with it I also broke with all my friends.’

‘How old were you then?’

‘Twelve,’ Christina said.

‘Twelve?’ Helena repeated. ‘How did you find the strength to do that? Or the maturity?’

‘I don’t know. I just did. And it was tough. It was. I did lose all my friends.’

‘Twelve years old?’ Linda said.

Christina nodded and smiled.

‘So now you drink coffee in the morning?’ Anders asked.

‘Yes,’ Christina answered. ‘But not when I’m there.’

We laughed. I got up and started collecting the plates. Geir got up as well, took his own plate and followed me into the kitchen.

‘Have you changed sides, Geir?’ Anders shouted after him.

I slid the empty mussel shells into the bin, rinsed the plates and put them in the dishwasher. Geir passed me his, retreated a few steps and leaned against the fridge.

‘Fascinating,’ he said.

‘What is?’ I asked.

‘What we’ve been talking about. Or talking about it at all. Peter Handke has a word for it. Erzählnächte I believe he calls them. Nights when people open up and everyone contributes a story.’

‘Yes,’ I said, turning round. ‘Coming for a walk? I need a smoke.’

‘All right,’ Geir said.

When we were ready with our coats on, Anders came out.

‘Are you going for a smoke? I’ll join you.’

Two minutes later we were in the middle of the yard, me with a glowing cigarette between my fingers, the other two with their hands in their pockets. It was cold and the wind was blowing. Everywhere fireworks were going off.

‘I had another story on the tip of my tongue upstairs,’ Anders said, running one hand through his hair. ‘About losing everything you have. But I thought it best to tell it here. It was in Spain. I had a restaurant with a pal. It was a fantastic life. Up all night, high on coke and booze, lying in the sun during the day, starting again at seven or eight in the evening. I think it was the best time in my life. I was absolutely free. Did exactly what I wanted.’

‘And?’ Geir said.

‘Then perhaps I did too much of what I wanted. We had an office on the floor above the bar, I screwed my companion’s wife there, I couldn’t keep my hands off her. Of course he caught us red-handed and that was that. No more working together. But one day I want to go back. It’s just a question of getting Helena on board.’

‘It might not be the life she’s dreaming of?’ I suggested.

Anders shrugged.

‘But we can hire a summer house down there at some point. For a month every six months. Granada or something. What do you reckon?’

‘Sounds good,’ I said.

‘I don’t have any holidays,’ Geir said.

‘What do you mean?’ Anders asked. ‘This year?’

‘No, ever. I work every day all week, Saturdays and Sundays included, and all the weeks in the year, apart from Christmas Eve perhaps.’

‘Why?’ Anders asked.

Geir laughed.

I threw down my cigarette end and stamped on the ground a few times.

‘Shall we go up?’ I said.

The first time I met Anders he picked Linda and me up from the railway station by Saltsjöbaden, where they were renting a little flat, and on the way he expressed his contempt for the rat race there, life was about more than money and status, but even though I had an inkling he was humouring us and just saying what he thought we, as ‘arty people’, wanted to hear, a lot of months were to pass before I understood that he actually meant the opposite: his only real interest was money and the life money bought. He was obsessed by the notion of becoming rich again, everything he did was to that end, and as he could not do this with the knowledge of the tax authorities, he moved into the world of illegal earnings. When Helena met him all his affairs were murky, but she, while fighting her love for him for as long as she could, although finally she did crumble on a grand scale, set some demands, because not long afterwards they had a baby together, and apparently he complied: the money he earned was still illegal but in a certain light nonetheless ‘clean’. What exactly his work was I didn’t know, except that he used his many contacts from the days when he was in clover to finance a quick succession of projects and these somehow lasted only a few months at a time. Ringing him was a waste of energy because he was forever changing mobile phones, the same applied to his cars, so-called company cars which he exchanged at regular intervals. When we visited them, one evening there might be an enormous flat-screen TV along one wall in the living room, or a new laptop on the desk in the hall, the next they could be gone. The line between what he owned and what he could lay his hands on was evidently fluid, and nor was there any clear link between what he did and the money he had at his disposal. All the money he made, and frequently it was not trivial amounts, he used to gamble. He would gamble on anything that moved. Since his powers of persuasion were impressive he had no problem getting hold of money, so he was stuck in a real quagmire. As a rule he kept all this to himself, but now and then his dealings surfaced, like the time someone rang Helena and said that Anders had emptied the till of the company where he had gone to renegotiate contracts, a little matter of 700,000 kroner, and it would be reported to the police. Anders didn’t bat an eyelid when she confronted him with it; the company’s finances were in a mess and dubious, now they were bent on a cover-up by blaming him. Even though he was supposed to have run off with the money and gambled it away, the money was illegal and therefore the police would be the last people they would contact, so in that respect he was safe. Presumably he kept a watchful eye on the people he swindled, but the situation was no less dangerous for that. Once they had been burgled while they were out, Helena told Linda; the burglars probably did it just to show that they could. Then he became the co-owner of a grandiose restaurant scheme, but that became history for him after some months, then there were some building sites he was suddenly running, then he was renting exclusive rooms to a hairdressing salon, then there was a bacon factory he had to save from bankruptcy. The problem, if you can call it a problem, was that it was impossible to dislike him. He could talk to anyone, which is a rare gift, and he was generous, which you noticed as soon as you met him. And he was always happy. He was the person who stood up at parties and thanked the hosts for the spread or congratulated them on whatever occasion it was or did whatever was required, and he had a kind word for everyone, however much or little they had in common with him. More often than not, he knew how to make them feel good. Yet there was nothing of the schemer about him, no subtlety, and perhaps that was the reason — despite his general duplicity, which is one of the few qualities I find hard to accept — I still liked him so much. Naturally enough, he couldn’t give a flying fart about me, but whenever we met he didn’t pretend to be interested, the way people sometimes do when duty compels and the fracture between thoughts and actions becomes visible in one of those tiny revealing gestures that very few can control, such as the quick glance to another side of the room, meaningless in itself, but when it is followed by a kind of ‘jolt’ as their attention refocuses on you, the ritual as ritual becomes obvious. The feeling that you have been subjected to a charade will of course be disastrous for someone whose life depends on winning people’s trust. Anders did not ‘play games’; that was his secret. However, he was not ‘genuine’ either, in the sense that everything he said necessarily fell in line with what he thought, what he did and what he wanted. But then who is? There is a type of person who consistently says what he means without adapting it to the situation in which he finds himself, but such individuals are few and far between, I have met only two, and what happens to them is that all these social situations become incredibly charged. Not because people disagree and start quarrelling, but because their conversational aim excludes all other aims and their totalitarian attitude automatically rebounds on them and they appear mean and pig-headed, irrespective of their real nature, which in both cases was, as far as I could judge, basically generous and friendly. The social unease I myself could provoke came from the opposite cause. I always let the situation determine events, either by saying nothing at all or playing up to others. Saying what you believe others want to hear is of a course a form of lying. Hence the difference between Anders’ and my social behaviour was only one of degree. Even though his corroded trust and mine corroded integrity, the result was basically the same: a slow erosion of the soul.