Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

Oh, what a strange afternoon and evening it was. The darkness outside was dense and heavy with falling snowflakes. The room was filled with Linda’s wheezing as she breathed in the gas, the great roars when the contractions were at their peak, the electronic beeping of the monitors. I wasn’t thinking about the baby, I was hardly thinking about Linda, everything inside me was concentrated on massaging, lightly when Linda was lying down, harder and harder when the electronic waves began to rise, which was the signal for Linda to get up, and then I massaged as hard as I could until the wave sank again, while keeping a constant eye on the pulse. Numbers and graphs, massage oil and lumbar region, wheezing and howling, this was everything. Second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour, this was everything. The moment swallowed me up, it was as though time was not passing, but it was, whenever something outside the routine happened, I was dragged out of it. A nurse entered, asked if everything was going all right, and suddenly it was twenty past five. Another nurse came in, asked if I wanted any food and suddenly it was twenty-five to seven.

‘Food?’ I queried, as though I had never heard the word before.

‘Yes, you can choose between vegetarian lasagne and normal lasagne,’ she said.

‘Oh, that’s nice,’ I said. ‘Normal lasagne,’ I said.

Linda didn’t seem to notice that someone was there at all. A new wave came, the nurse closed the door behind her, I pressed my hands against Linda’s back as hard as I could, watched the curve subside and when Linda did not release the mask I carefully took it from her. She didn’t react, just stood there staring inside herself, her brow dripping with sweat. When the next contractions started, the cry she emitted continued dully inside the mask she held tight to her face. Then the door opened, the nurse put a plate on the table and it was seven o’clock. I asked Linda if it was OK with her if I ate, she nodded, but the second I took my hand away she shouted, no, don’t do that, and I continued, I pressed the button, the same nurse came in, could she take over the massaging? Of course, she said and carried on where I had left off. Linda shouted. No, it has to be Karl Ove! It has to be Karl Ove! That’s too light! Meanwhile I gorged down the food as fast as possible, so that, two minutes later, I could resume the massaging, and Linda settled back into her rhythm.

Contractions, gas, massage, pause, contractions, massage, gas, pause. There was nothing else. Then the midwife came in, rolled Linda authoritatively onto her side, examined her to see how far she had dilated, Linda screamed and it was a different kind of scream, one she let out, she didn’t meet halfway.

She got up again, fell into the rhythm, was gone from this world and the hours passed.

A sudden shout: ‘Are we alone?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I LOVE YOU, KARL OVE!’

It seemed to come from deep inside her, from a place she never went, or for that matter had ever been. I had tears in my eyes.

‘I love you ,’ I said, but she didn’t hear, another wave was on its way.

Time ticked by: eight o’clock, nine o’clock, ten o’clock. I didn’t have a thought in my head, I massaged her and kept my eye on the monitors until I had a sudden flash of insight: a child is being born. Our child is being born. Just a few hours more. Then we’ll have a child.

The insight was gone, now it was all graphs and numbers, hands and back, rhythm and howls.

The door opened. Another midwife came in, an elderly woman. Behind her a young girl. The woman stood close to Linda, her face only a couple of centimetres away, and introduced herself. Said that Linda was doing well. Said she had a trainee with her, was that OK? Linda nodded and looked around for the trainee. Nodded when she saw her. The midwife said it would soon be over. And that she would have to examine her.

Linda nodded again, and looked at her like a child at her mother.

‘That’s great,’ the midwife said. ‘Good girl.’

This time she didn’t scream. Lay there with big dark eyes looking into the air. I stroked her forehead, she wasn’t aware of me. When the midwife took away her hand, Linda shouted, ‘ARE WE THERE?’

‘Bit more yet,’ the midwife said. Linda patiently got up and resumed her position.

‘An hour, perhaps less,’ the midwife said to me.

I looked at my watch. Eleven.

Linda had been standing there for eight hours.

‘We can take this off you,’ the midwife said, removing all the straps and wires. Suddenly freed, she lay there, a body in a bed, and the pain she had resisted was no longer green waves and rising numbers on a screen I was watching, but something taking place inside her.

I hadn’t understood that before. It was inside her, and she was completely on her own with it.

That was how it was.

She was free. Everything that happened, happened inside her.

‘It’s coming now,’ she said, and it was from inside her it came. I pressed my hands as hard as I could against her back. There was just her and inside her. Not the hospital, not the monitors, not the books, not the medical courses, not the cassettes, not all these corridors that our thoughts had followed, nothing of that, just her and what was inside her.

Her body was slippery with sweat, her hair straggly, the white smock hanging loosely round her. The midwife said she would be back in a minute. The trainee stayed. Wiped Linda’s forehead, passed her water, fetched her a Marathon bar. Linda snatched it greedily. She was on the verge, she must have sensed it, she was almost impatient in the pauses, which lasted only brief instants now.

The midwife returned. She dimmed the light.

‘Lie down and rest,’ she said. Linda lay down. The midwife stroked her cheek. I went to the window. Not a car on the road below. The air around the lamps thick with snow. The room completely quiet. I turned. Linda appeared to be sleeping.

The midwife smiled at me.

Linda groaned. The midwife caught hold of her arm, and Linda sat up. Her eyes were as dark as a forest at night.

‘Now push,’ the midwife said.

Something new happened, something was different, I didn’t understand what it was, but moved behind her and began to massage her back again. The contractions lasted and lasted, Linda groped for the gas mask, inhaled greedily, but it didn’t seem to help, a protracted cry seemed to be torn from her, it went on and on.

Then it subsided. Linda slumped back. The midwife wiped the sweat from her forehead and praised her, good girl.

‘Would you like to feel the baby?’ she asked.

Linda looked up at her and nodded slowly. Got to her knees. The midwife took her hand and guided it between her legs.

‘That’s the head,’ she said. ‘Can you feel it?’

‘YES!’ Linda said.

‘Hold your hand there while you’re pushing. Can you do that?’

‘Come here,’ she said and led Linda onto the floor. ‘Stand here.’

The trainee took the stool that had been beside the wall.

Linda went onto her knees. I walked behind her even though I had a sense that the massage no longer made any difference.

She screamed at the top of her lungs, her whole body moved as she held the baby’s head with her hand.

‘The head’s out,’ the midwife said. ‘One more time. Push.’

‘Is the head out?!’ Linda asked. ‘Was that what you said?’

‘Yes, push now.’

Another cry, as though beyond everything, issued from her.

‘Would you like to hold her?’ the midwife asked, looking at me.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Come here, stand here,’ she said.

I walked around the stool, stood in front of Linda, who watched me without seeing me.