Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book One

“Yes, there’s one in Lund. It’s a suburb.”

“I’ll care of it. Thanks a lot.”

I cradled the phone and went back to the veranda, looked across to the mouth of the fjord where the sky was still overcast but the clouds had a quite different, lighter hue. Tonje’s father was a good person and a lovely man. He would never do anything offensive or go too far in any direction, he was respectable and decent, though not stiff or formal, on the contrary, he was often fired up with enthusiasm, a kind of boyishness, and if he didn’t go too far it was not because he didn’t want to or couldn’t, it was because it wasn’t in his repertoire, it was simply impossible for him, I had reflected, and I liked him for that, there was something in it, in decent behavior, that I had always sought, and whenever I found it I always liked being close to it, although at the same time I also realized that I liked it and him so much because he reminded me of my father. When I got married at the age of twenty-five it was because I wanted a middle-class, stable, settled existence. That side of me, of course, was counteracted by the fact that we didn’t live that kind of life, the middle-class, stable, routine-anchored lifestyle, quite the opposite, and the fact that no one married so young anymore, and therefore it was, if not radical, then at least original.

This being my thinking, and also because I loved her, I had fallen on bended knee one evening, alone on the terrace outside Maputo in Mozambique, beneath a coal-black sky, with the air full of the sound of chirruping grasshoppers and distant drums from one of the villages a few kilometers away, and asked her if she would marry me. She said something I didn’t understand. It certainly wasn’t yes. What did you say? I queried. Are you asking me to marry you? she said. Are you really? Is that what you’re asking? Yes, I said. Yes, she said. I want to marry you. We embraced, both of us with tears in our eyes, and right at that moment the sky rumbled, a deep, powerful clap of thunder, it rippled and Tonje shivered, and then the torrents fell. We laughed, Tonje ran inside for her camera, and when she came out she put one arm around me and took a photo with the other hand outstretched.

We were two children.

Through the window I saw Yngve going into the living room. He walked towards the two chairs, stared at them, moved on and was lost from view.

Even outside there were bottles lying around, some had been blown against the picket fence, others had got stuck under the two faded, rusty garden seats that must have been there since the spring, at the very least.

Yngve reappeared, I couldn’t see his facial expression, just his shadow as it passed through the living room and disappeared into the kitchen.

I went down the steps into the garden. There were no houses below, the hillside was too steep, but at the bottom lay the marina, and outside it the relatively small harbor basin. On the eastern side, however, the garden bordered another property. It was as well-tended as this one had once been, and the neatness and control that manifested itself in the trimmed hedges, the manicured grass, and the gaily colored flower beds, made the garden here seem sickly. I stood there for some minutes in tears, then walked around to the front of the house and continued my work in the cellar. When the last item of clothing had been carried out, I sprinkled the Klorin over the floor, using half of the bottle, and then I scrubbed it with the broom before hosing it all down the drain. Then I emptied the rest of the green soap all over it, and scrubbed it again, this time with a cloth. After hosing it down again I supposed that would have to do and went back up to the kitchen. Yngve was washing the inside of a cupboard. The dishwasher was running. The counter was cleared and scrubbed.

“I’m having a break,” I said. “Want to join me?”

“Yes, I’ll finish this first,” Yngve said. “Perhaps you could put some coffee on?”

I did so. Then I suddenly remembered Grandma’s prescription. That could not wait.

“I’ll just run down to the pharmacy,” I said. “Is there anything you want, maybe from the newsstand?”

“No,” he said. “Actually, yes, a Coke.”

I buttoned up my jacket as I emerged onto the steps. The pile of garbage bags in front of the beautiful wooden 1950s garage door glistened black in the gray summer light. The dark-brown trailer stood with the bar resting on the ground, as if humbled, I thought, a servant who bowed as I appeared. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and walked down the drive, along the pavement to the main road, where the rain had now completely dried up. On the overhanging cliff opposite, however, its many surfaces were still wet and the tufts of grass growing there shone with an intense green against all the dark colors, so very different from when it was dry and dusty, when there were fewer contrasts between colors and everything under the sky seemed indifferent, resistant, open, vast and empty. How many such open, empty days had there been when I used to walk around here? Seeing the black windows in houses, seeing the wind whistling through the countryside, the sun that lit it up, all the blindness and deadness in it? Oh, and this was the time you adored in the town, this was the time you regarded as the best, when the town really came alive. Blue sky, boiling hot sun, dusty streets. A car with a blaring stereo and an open roof, two young men at the front dressed only in trunks, with sunglasses, they are heading for the beach. . An old woman with a dog, clothed from head to toe, her sunglasses are large, the dog strains at the leash, wanting to sniff a fence. A plane with a long banner behind, there is a match at the stadium the following day. Everything is open, everything is empty, the world is dead, and in the evening restaurants are filled with suntanned, happy men and women wearing brightly colored clothes.

I hated this town.

After a hundred meters down Kuholmsveien I reached the intersection, the pharmacy was a hundred meters away, in the middle of the small suburban center. Behind it was a grass slope, on top of which stood some fifties or sixties blocks of flats. On the other side of the road, quite a way up the slope, were the Elevine Assembly Rooms. Perhaps we should use them for the gathering after the funeral?

The thought that he was not only dead for me, but also for his mother and his brothers, his uncles and aunts, made me weep again. I wasn’t concerned about this happening on a sidewalk with people walking past all the time, I hardly saw them; however, I wiped away the tears anyway, mostly for practical reasons, to be able to see where I was going, as a thought suddenly struck me: we shouldn’t hold the wake in the Elevine Rooms but in my grandparents’ house, which he had ruined.

The thought excited me.

We should clean every damned centimeter of every damned room, throw out everything he had ruined, recover everything that had been left and use it, restore the entire house, and then gather everyone there. He might have ruined everything, but we would restore it. We were decent people. Yngve would say it wasn’t possible, and there was no point, but I could insist. I had as much right as he to decide what the funeral would be like. Of course it was possible. All we had to was clean. Clean, clean, clean.

There wasn’t a line at the pharmacy, and after I had shown my ID, the white-clad assistant went between the shelves and found the tablets, printed out a label and stuck it on, slipped them in a bag, and referred me to the cash register on the other side to pay.

A vague feeling of some good here, maybe only caused by the slightly cooler air against my skin, made me pause on the steps outside.

Gray, gray sky; gray, gray town.

Glistening car bodies. Bright windows. Wires running from lamp post to lamp post.