Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

‘Does your father own the flat?’ I asked, lighting a cigarette with my hand cupped over the lighter flame.

She nodded.

I had never lived in a place where the right address and elegant apartments meant as much as they did in Stockholm. Somehow it was a concentrate of everything. If you lived outside, well, you weren’t really included. The question of where you lived, which came up again and again, was therefore charged in Stockholm in a way that was quite different to Bergen, for example.

I walked to the edge to see below. There were still small piles of snow and patches of ice left on the pavement after the winter, almost completely eroded by the mild weather and grey from the sand and exhaust fumes. The sky above us was also grey, laden with cold rain that lashed the town at regular intervals. Grey but with a different light in it from the grey winter sky, for it was March, and March light was so clear and strong that it penetrated the cloud cover, even on a muggy day like this, and opened all the gates of darkness, as it were. There was a gleam in the walls in front of me and in the tarmac on the road beneath. The parked cars glinted, each in its own colour. Red, blue, dark green, white.

‘Hold me,’ she said.

I stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray on the table and put my arms around her.

When, a moment later, we went back in, the sitting room was still empty and we entered the kitchen. He was by the stove pouring the contents of a tin of mushrooms into the frying pan. The liquid hissed as it met the hot pan. Then he added a diced courgette. A pan of spaghetti was boiling next to it.

‘That looks good,’ I said.

‘Yes, it is good,’ he said.

On the worktop there was a tin of shrimps in brine and a tin of double cream.

‘I usually have dinner down at Vikingen. But on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays I eat here. Then I cook for Berit.’

Berit was his girlfriend.

‘Is there anything we can help with?’ Linda asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Have a seat and I’ll bring the food when it’s ready.’

The food tasted like something I could have made when I was a student and ate alone in my bedsit in Absalon Beyers gate during my first year at Bergen University. Linda’s father talked more about the time when he played in goal for the team in Norrland. Then he talked about what his job had been, planning and designing warehouses. Then he talked about the horse he had once owned, which had been injured just as it looked as if it was going to start winning. He recounted everything in very precise, elaborate terms as if every detail was of the uttermost significance. At one point in the conversation he went to fetch a pen and paper so that he could show us how he had come to the precise number of days he had left to live. I sought Linda’s eyes, but she would not meet mine. We had determined in advance that the visit should be brief, so when dessert, a two-litre carton of ice cream served up on the table, was over we got to our feet and said we were afraid we had to go, Vanja had to be taken home and fed and changed. This appeared to please him. The visit had already lasted an infinity. I went into the hall and put on my outdoor clothes while Linda and he exchanged a few words in private. He said something about her being his girl and that she had grown so much. Come here and sit on my lap for a bit. I tied the last shoelace, got up, went to the crack in the door and looked into the room. Linda was sitting on his lap, he had his arms around her waist while saying something I was unable to catch. There was something grotesque about the sight, she was thirty-two years old, the girlish pose she struck was much too young for her, which she knew of course, her lips were pursed in disapproval, her whole being screamed with ambivalence. She didn’t want to go along with this, but she didn’t want to reject him either. He would not have understood a rejection, it would have hurt him, so she had to sit through it while he patted her until it would no longer seem like a rejection to get up and she was standing in front of him again.

I stepped back so that I would not make the situation worse for her by being a witness to it. When she came into the hall I was studying the pictures hanging on the wall. She put on her things. Her father came out to say goodbye, he gave me a hug, as before, looked at Vanja sleeping in the buggy, embraced Linda, stood in the doorway and watched us as we went into the lift, raised his hand for a last time and went inside as the lift door closed and we sank down through the building.

I never uttered a word regarding the little scene I had witnessed between them. In the way she had subordinated herself to him she had been a ten-year-old girl, I saw that; in the way she had fought against it, an adult woman. But the very fact that she’d had to fight somehow disqualified the notion of adulthood. Surely no adult would end up in a situation like this? He had no such thoughts, he was of the boundless kind, for him she was a daughter, nothing else, a creature of all ages.

And, as she had predicted, after that he began to ring us. It could be at any time of the day and in any state of mind, so Linda struck a deal with him: he would ring at a particular hour on a particular day. He seemed to like that. But it was also a commitment: if we didn’t answer the phone he might be terribly offended and regard the contract as null and void, so he would be free to ring us whenever he wanted again, or never ring again. As for myself, I spoke to him only a handful of times. Once he asked me if he could sing me a song. He had written it himself, and it had been performed on stages in Stockholm and on the radio, he said. I didn’t know what to believe. But there was no reason why he shouldn’t be allowed to sing. He launched into song, his voice was powerful, his energy immense and even though he didn’t hit all the notes to perfection the performance was still impressive. The song had four verses and was about a migrant worker building a road in Norrland. When he had finished I didn’t know what else to say except that it was a wonderful song. Presumably he had expected more because he was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said, ‘I know you write books, Karl Ove. I haven’t read them yet, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about them. And I want you to know that. I’m hugely proud of you, Karl Ove. Yes, I am…’

‘I’m happy to hear that,’ I said.

‘Are you and Linda OK?’

‘Yes, we are.’

‘Are you kind to her?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s good. You must never leave her. Never. Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘You must take care of her. You must be kind to her, Karl Ove.’ Then he burst into tears.

‘We get on well,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’

‘I’m just an old man,’ he said. ‘But I’ve experienced a lot, you see. I’ve experienced more than most. My life isn’t anything to shout about now. But I’ve counted how many days I have left. Did you know?’

‘Yes, you showed us how you had worked it out when we were at your place.’

‘Ah, yes, yes. But you haven’t met Berit, have you.’

‘No.’

‘She’s so kind to me.’

‘So I gather,’ I said.

He was suddenly on his guard.

‘Eh? How?’

‘Well, Linda has told me a bit about her. And Ingrid. You know…’

‘I see. I won’t bother you any more, Karl Ove. I’m sure you have important things to do.’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘You’re not bothering me at all.’

‘Tell Linda I called. Take care.’

He rang off before I had a chance to wish him the same. On the display I saw that the whole conversation had not taken more than eight minutes. Linda snorted when I told her.

‘You don’t have to listen to that stuff,’ she said. ‘Don’t answer the phone next time he rings.’