Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book One

Was it coming from our house?

I hurried down the last part of the hill and looked up the slope where the house stood, all lights ablaze. Yes, that was where the music was coming from. Presumably through the open living room door, I thought, and realized there was a party going on up there because a number of dark, mysterious figures were gliding around the lawn in the grayish light of the summer night. Usually I would have followed the stream to the west of the house, but with the party up there, and the place full of strangers, I didn’t want to crash in from the forest, and accordingly followed the road all the way around.

There were cars all the way along the drive, parked half on the grass, and beside the barn and in the yard as well. I stopped at the top of the hill to collect my thoughts. A man in a white shirt walked across the yard without seeing me. There was a buzz of voices in the garden behind the house. At the kitchen table, which I could see through the window, were two women and a man, each with a glass of wine in front of them, they were laughing and drinking.

I took a deep breath and walked toward the front door. A long table had been set up in the garden close to the forest. It was covered with a white cloth that shimmered in the heavy darkness beneath the treetops. Six or seven people were sitting at the table, among them Dad. He looked straight at me. When I met his gaze he got up and waved. I unhitched the bag, put it beside the doorstep and went over to him. I had never seen him like this before. He was wearing a baggy white shirt with embroidery around the V-neck, blue jeans, and light-brown leather shoes. His face, tanned dark from the sun, had a radiant aura. His eyes shone.

“So, there you are, Karl Ove,” he said, resting his hand on my shoulder.

“We thought you would have been here earlier. We’re having a party, as you can see. But you can join us for a while, can’t you? Sit yourself down!”

I did as he said and sat down at the table, with my back to the house. The only person I had seen before was Unni. She too was wearing a white shirt or blouse or whatever it was.

“Hi, Unni,” I said.

She sent me a warm smile.

“So this is Karl Ove, my youngest son,” Dad said, sitting down on the opposite side of the table, next to Unni. I nodded to the other five.

“And this, Karl Ove, is Bodil,” he said, “my cousin.”

I had never heard of any cousin called Bodil and studied her, probably in a rather quizzical way because she smiled at me and said:

“Your father and I were together a lot when we were children.”

“And teenagers,” Dad said. He lit a cigarette, inhaled, blew the smoke out with a contented expression on his face. “And then we have Reidar, Ellen, Martha, Erling, and Åge. Colleagues of mine, all of them.”

“Hi,” I said.

The table was covered with glasses, bottles, dishes, and plates. Two large bowls piled with shrimp shells left no doubt as to what they had been eating. The colleague my father had mentioned last, Åge, a man of around forty, with large, thinly framed glasses was observing me while sipping a glass of beer. Putting it down, he said:

“I gather you’ve been at a training camp?”

I nodded.

“In Denmark,” I said.

“Where in Denmark?” he asked.

“Nykøbing,” I said.

“Nykøbing, on Mors?” he queried.

“Yes,” I said. “I think so. It was an island in the Limfjord.”

He laughed and looked around.

“That’s where Aksel Sandemose came from!” he declared. And then he looked straight at me again. “Do you know the name of the law he devised, inspired by the town you visited?”

What was this? Were we at school or what?

“Yes,” I said, looking down. I didn’t want to articulate the word; I didn’t want to tell him.

“Which is?” he insisted.

As I raised my eyes to meet his, they were as defiant as they were embarrassed.

“Jante,” I said.

“You got it!” he said.

“Did you have a good time there?” Dad asked.

“Yes, I did,” I said. “Great fields. Great town.”

Nykøbing: I had walked back to the school where we were lodged, after spending the whole evening and night out with a girl I had met, she had been crazy about me. The four others from the team who had been with me had gone back earlier, it was just me and her, and as I walked home, drunker than usual, I had stopped outside one of the houses in the town. All the detail was gone, I couldn’t remember leaving her, couldn’t remember going to the house, but once there, standing by this door, it was as if I came to myself again. I took the lit cigarette out of my mouth, opened the letter box, and dropped it on the hall floor inside. Then everything went fuzzy again, but somehow I must have found my way to the school, got in, and gone to bed, to be woken for breakfast and training three hours later. When we were sitting under one of the enormous trees around the training area chatting, I suddenly remembered the cigarette I had thrown in through the door. I got up, chilled deep into my soul, booted a ball up the field and began to give chase. What if it had started to burn? What if people had died in the fire? What did that make me?

I had succeeded in repressing it for several days, but now, sitting at the long table in the garden on my first evening home, fear reared up again.

“Which team do you play for, Karl Ove?” one of the others asked.

“Tveit,” I said.

“Which division are you in?”

“I play for the juniors,” I said. “But the seniors are in the fifth division.”

“Not exactly IK Start then,” he said. From his dialect I deduced that he came from Vennesla, so it was easy to come back with a retort.

“No, more like Vindbjart,” I said. Vindbjart from Vennesla. Second Division, group three.

They laughed at that. I looked down. It felt as if I had already attracted too much attention. But when, immediately afterward, I let my gaze wander to Dad, he was smiling at me.

Yes, his eyes were shining.

“Wouldn’t you like a beer, Karl Ove?” he said.

I nodded.

“Certainly would,” I replied.

He scanned the table.

“Looks as if we’ve run out here,” he said. “But there’s a crate in the kitchen. You can take one from there.”

I got up. As I made for the door two people came out. A man and a woman, entwined. She was wearing a white summer dress. Her bare arms and legs were tanned. Her breasts heavy, stomach and hips ample. Her eyes, in the somehow sated face, were gentle. He, wearing a light blue shirt and white trousers, had a slight paunch, but was otherwise slim. Even though he was smiling and his inebriated eyes seemed to be floating, it was the stiffness of his expression that I noticed. All the movement had gone, just the vestiges remained, like a dried-up riverbed.

“Hi!” she said. “Are you the son?”

“Yes,” I said. “Hello.”

“I work with your father,” she said.

“Nice,” I said, and luckily did not have to say anything more, for they were already on their way. As I went into the hall the bathroom door opened. A small, chubby, dark-haired woman with glasses stepped out. She barely glanced at me, cast her eyes down, and walked past me into the house. Discreetly I sniffed her perfume before following her. Fresh, floral. In the kitchen were the three people I had seen through the window when I arrived. The man, also around forty, was whispering something in the ear of the woman to his right. She smiled, but it was a polite smile. The other woman was rummaging through a bag she had on her lap. She looked up at me as she placed an unopened packet of cigarettes on the table.

“Hello,” I said. “Just come for a beer.”

There were two full crates stacked against the wall by the door. I grabbed a bottle from the top one.