Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

But Linda was right: he had only himself to blame.

I buttered another slice of bread. Vanja stretched her hands into the air. Linda lifted her out of the chair and carried her into the bathroom, from where soon there came the sounds of running water and Vanja’s little squeals of protest.

The phone rang in the living room. I froze. Even though I knew at once it had to be Ingrid, Linda’s mother — no one else would ring us at this time — my heart beat faster and faster.

I sat motionless until the ringing stopped, as suddenly as it had started.

‘Who was that?’ Linda asked when she emerged from the bathroom with Vanja hanging from her arms.

‘No idea,’ I said. ‘I didn’t answer it. But it was probably your mother.’

‘I’ll call her,’ she said. ‘I had planned to anyway. Will you take Vanja?’

She held her out as if my lap was the only other place she could be in the flat.

‘Just put her on the floor,’ I said.

‘Then she’ll scream.’

‘Let her scream. It’s no problem.’

‘O-K,’ she said, the way that meant the opposite. This is not OK, but I’m doing it because you say so. Then you’ll see what happens.

Of course, she started to cry as soon as Linda put her down on the floor. I stretched my arms out for her, then fell hands first onto the floor. Linda didn’t turn round. I pulled open a drawer, which I could reach now from a sitting position, and took out a whisk. Vanja wasn’t interested, even if I could make it vibrate. I held up a banana in front of her. She shook her head as the tears ran down her cheeks. In the end I lifted her up and carried her to the bedroom window, where I stood her on the sill. That did the trick. I named all the things we saw, she stared with interest and pointed at every car that passed.

Linda poked her head through the doorway with the phone held to her chest.

‘Mummy asks if we would like to eat there tomorrow. Would we?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s fine.’

‘Then shall I say yes?’

‘Go for it.’

I lifted Vanja carefully down to the floor. She could stand but not walk yet, so she squatted and crawled towards Linda. This child could not show a second of dissatisfaction before her needs were fulfilled. For close on the whole of her first year she had woken up in the night every two hours and been fed. Linda had been almost out of her mind with tiredness, yet she wouldn’t make Vanja sleep in her own bed because then she would scream. I was in favour of a brutal course of action, putting her in her own bed and letting her scream as much as she wanted the whole night through, so that the next time she would understand that no one was going to come whatever she did, and resigned and perhaps angry, she would settle down to sleep on her own. I might just as well have told Linda that I would beat Vanja over the head until she was quiet. The compromise was that I rang my mother’s sister, Ingunn, who was a child psychologist and had experience of such things. She suggested a gradual weaning, emphasising that Vanja had to be patted and stroked a lot if she wanted to be fed or to get up but was not allowed, and that bit by bit we should defer the time when she was given the day’s final feed. So there I was, by her bed at night with a notepad, jotting down the exact times and patting and stroking her while she screamed her head off and glowered at me furiously. It took ten nights for her to sleep through. It could have been done in one. Because surely it didn’t hurt her to cry a little? The same happened in the play area. I tried to make her stay there alone so I could sit on a bench and read, but that was out of the question: a few seconds on her own and she was searching for me with her eyes and holding out imploring arms.

Linda rang off and came out with Vanja in her arms.

‘Shall we go for a walk?’ she suggested.

‘I don’t suppose there’s much else we can do,’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked warily.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Where shall we go?’

‘Skeppsholmen maybe?’

‘OK, let’s do that.’

Since I’d had Vanja in the week, Linda took care of her now. She sat Vanja on her lap, dressed her in a small red knitted jumper we had inherited from Yngve’s children, brown corduroy trousers, the red romper suit Linda’s mother had bought for us, the red cap with the strap under the chin and the white brim and a pair of white woollen mittens. Until a month ago she had always sat still when we changed her, but of late she had begun to wriggle and squirm in our hands. It was particularly difficult when you had to change her nappy, the crap could end up anywhere as she kept wriggling, and more than once I had raised my voice. LIE STILL! Or LIE STILL FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! And my grip on her tightened more than was necessary. For her part, she thought it was funny to try and wriggle away, she always smiled or laughed whenever she succeeded and at first she simply did not understand the loud irritated voice. Sometimes she ignored it totally, or she stared at me in surprise, now what was that meant to be? Or she cried. First the lower lip puckered and started to quiver, then the tears flowed. What on earth was I doing? I thought. Had I gone completely mad? She was one year old, as innocent as only the innocent can be, and there I was, yelling at her!

Luckily she was easy to comfort, easy to make laugh, and luckily she had a short memory. From that perspective, it was worse for me.

Linda had more patience, and after five minutes Vanja was fully dressed in her arms with an expectant smile on her lips. In the lift she tried to press the buttons, Linda pointed to the right one and guided her hand. The button lit up, the lift set off. While Linda went into the bicycle room with her, where the buggy was, I lit a cigarette outside. The wind was still strong and the sky heavy and grey. The temperature was around zero or minus one.

We walked down Regeringsgatan, into Kungsträdgården, past the National Museum, and turned left onto the island of Skeppsholmen, along the quays where all the houseboats were. A couple of them were from the turn of the last century and in their heyday had plied between the many islands outside Stockholm. There was also a kind of small boatyard here, or so it seemed, with a keel and timbers arranged like a skeleton inside a wooden warehouse. Now and then a bearded face poked out as we walked past, otherwise the area was deserted. Up on a small hill was the Moderna Museet, where Vanja had spent, considering the length of her short life, a disproportionately large number of days. But admission was free, the restaurant was good and child-friendly, there were play areas and some of the art was worth seeing.

The water in the harbour was black. The clouds were dense and low in the sky. The thin layer of snow on the ground seemed to make everything harder and more naked, perhaps because it removed the little colour that was left in the townscape. All the museum buildings here had once been military and they still bore the hallmarks — low and closed, they ran alongside the short untrafficked roads or stood at the end of what must have been parade grounds.

‘That was great yesterday,’ Linda said, wrapping an arm around me.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was. But do you really want another child now?’

‘Yes, I do. But the odds are against it.’

‘I’m sure you’re pregnant,’ I said.

‘As sure as you were that Vanja was a boy?’

‘Ha ha.’

‘I’d be so happy,’ she said. ‘Imagine I was! Imagine we were going to have another child!’

‘Yes…’ I said. ‘What do you say to that, Vanja? Would you like a little brother or sister?’

She looked up at us. Then she turned her head to the side and pointed to three seagulls bobbing up and down on the waves, their wings tucked into their sides.