Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book One

Oh no.

There were no sheets on her bed, she slept directly on the hard, pisspermeated mattress. There was a kind of commode beside her bed with a bucket underneath. Clothes were strewn everywhere. A row of withered plants in the window. The stench of ammonia stung my nostrils.

What a pile of shit this was. Shit, shit, shit, fuck, cunt.

I left the door as I had found it, and trudged slowly up the stairs to the first floor. In places the banister was almost black with dirt. I put my hand on it and could feel it was sticky. On the landing I heard the sounds of the TV. When I entered the living room, Grandma was watching it from the chair in the middle. The TV2 news was on. So the time must have been somewhere between half past six and seven.

How could she sit there next to the chair in which he had died?

My stomach contracted, the tears that flowed seemed to have erupted and my grimaces, which I was unable to control, were light years from any vomiting reflex, and this sensation of disequilibrium and asymmetry overwhelmed me and created panic, it was as if I were being torn apart. If I had been able to, I would have fallen to my knees, clasped my hands and cried to God, shouted, but I couldn’t, there was no mercy in this, the worst had already happened, it was over.

When I went into the kitchen it was empty. All the cupboards were washed, and although there was a lot left to do — the walls, the floor, the drawers, the table, and the chairs — the kitchen seemed airier. On the counter there was a 1.5 liter plastic bottle of beer. Tiny droplets of condensation covered the label. Beside it was a slab of brown cheese with a slicer on top, a yellow cheese and a packet of margarine with a butter knife angled into it, the shaft resting against the edge. The chopping board had been pulled out, on it there was a whole grain loaf, half out of its red-and-white paper bag. In front, a bread knife, a crust, crumbs.

I took a plastic bag from the lowest drawer, emptied the two ashtrays on the table into it, tied it up, and dropped it into the half-full, black garbage bag in the corner, found a cloth, cleaned the tobacco and crumbs off the table, placed the tobacco pouches and her roller machine on the box of cigarette tubes at one end of the table, under the windowsill, opened the window and put it on the latch. Then I went to look for Yngve. He was sitting on the veranda, as I had thought. He had a glass of beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

“Want some?” he said as I went out. “There’s a bottle in the kitchen.”

“No, thanks,” I said. “Not after what’s happened here. I’ll never drink beer from plastic bottles again.”

He looked at me and smiled.

“You’re so sensitive,” he said. “The bottle was unopened. It was in the fridge. It isn’t as if he’d been drinking from it.”

I lit a cigarette and leaned back against the railings.

“What shall we do about the garden?” I asked.

Yngve shrugged.

“We can’t sort out everything here.”

“I want to,” I said.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Now was the moment to tell him about my idea. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I knew that Yngve would come up with counterarguments and in the disagreement that would ensue there were things I did not want to see or experience. Oh, they were trivial, but had my life ever consisted of anything else? When we were children I admired Yngve, the way that younger brothers admire their older brothers, there was no one I would rather receive acknowledgment from, and although he was a bit too old for our paths to cross when we were out, we stuck together when we were at home. Not on an equal footing, of course, it was generally his wishes that held sway, but still we were close. Also because we faced a common foe, Dad, that is.

I couldn’t remember that many specific incidents from our childhood, but the few that stood out were eloquent. I recalled laughing until our sides split at little things, such as the time we went camping in England in 1976, an unusually hot summer, and one evening we were walking up a hill near the campsite, and a car passed us, and Yngve said that the two people in it were kissing, which I heard as “pissing,” and we were doubled up with laughter for several minutes, laughter which would reignite at the slightest cause for the rest of the evening.

If there is anything I miss from my childhood it has to be that, laughing uncontrollably with my brother over some tiny stupidity. The time we played soccer for an entire evening on the field by the tent on that same trip, with two English boys, Yngve with his Leeds cap, me with my Liverpool cap, the sun going down over the countryside, the darkness growing around us, the low voices from the tents nearby, me unable to understand a word they said, Yngve proud to be able to translate. The swimming pool we went to one morning before setting off, where I, a nonswimmer, still managed to paddle to the deep end by holding onto a plastic ball, which suddenly slipped from my grasp, me sinking in a pool with no one else around, Yngve calling for help, a young man running over and dragging me to the surface, my first thought, after regurgitating a little chlorinated water, was that Mom and Dad must not find out about what had happened. The days from which these incidents are drawn were countless, the bonds they created between us indestructible. The fact that he could be more malicious to me than anyone else changed nothing, it was part and parcel of it, and in the context we lived, the hatred I felt for him was no more than a brook is to an ocean, a lamp to the night. He knew exactly what to say to make me so furious that I completely lost control. He sat there, utterly calm with that teasing smile of his, poking fun at me until anger had me in its grip and I could no longer see clearly, I literally saw red and no longer knew what I was doing. I could throw the cup I was holding at him, with all my strength, or a slice of bread, if that was in my hand, or an orange, if I didn’t attack him with fists flying, blinded by tears and red-eyed fury while he stayed in control and held my wrists and said there, there, little baby, are you angry now, poor little . . He also knew about all the things that frightened me, so when Mom was on night duty and Dad was at a council meeting and there was a repeat showing of Stowaway , a sci-fi film, which was usually on late at night so that people like me wouldn’t be watching, it was the easiest thing in the world for him to switch off all the lights in the house, lock the front door, turn to me and say I am not Yngve. I am a stowaway while I screamed with terror and begged him to say he was Yngve, say it, say it, you are Yngve, I know you are, Yngve, Yngve, you’re not a stowaway, you’re Yngve . . He also knew I was frightened of the sound the pipes made when you turned on the hot water, a shrill screech that quickly changed to knocking, impossible for me to cope with, I had to take to my heels, so we had a deal whereby he wouldn’t pull the plug after washing in the morning but leave the water in the sink for me. Accordingly, every morning for perhaps six months I washed my face and hands in Yngve’s dirty water.

When he was seventeen and left home our relationship changed, of course. Without our daily contact, my image of him, and his life, grew, especially the one he had in Bergen, where eventually he went to study. I wanted to live the way he did.

During my first autumn at gymnas I visited him at the Alrek Hall of Residence, where he had a room. Getting off the airport bus in the city center, I headed straight for a kiosk and bought a packet of Prince cigarettes and a lighter. I had never smoked before, but had long planned that I would, and alone in Bergen I had imagined an opportunity would present itself. So there I was, beneath the green spire of St. Johannes’ Church, with Bergen’s main square in front of me, Torgallmenningen, packed with people, cars, and gleaming glass. The sky was blue, my backpack was beside me on the tarmac, a cigarette in the corner of my mouth, and as I lit it with the yellow lighter cupped in my hand against the wind, I had a strong, almost overwhelming, sense of freedom. I was alone, I could do what I wanted, all of life lay open at my feet. I spluttered, of course the smoke burned my throat, but I managed tolerably well, the feeling of freedom did not diminish, and after finishing the cigarette I put the red-and-white packet in my jacket pocket, slung the backpack on my back, and went to meet Yngve. At the Cathedral School in Kristiansand nothing was mine, but Yngve was mine, what was his was mine too, so I was not only happy but also proud when, a few hours later, I was on my knees in his room, where the sunlight fell through the pollution-matt windows, flicking through the record collection in the three wine cases by the wall. We went out that night, with three girls he knew, and I borrowed his deodorant, Old Spice, and his hair gel, and before we left, standing in front of the hall mirror, he folded up the sleeves of the black-and-white checked shirt I was wearing, which was like the one The Edge in U2 wore in many pictures, and adjusted the lapels of the suit jacket. We met the girls in one of their flats, they found it very funny that I was only sixteen, and thought I should be holding hands with one of them as we walked past the doorman, which I also did the first time I had been to a place where you had to be eighteen to gain admittance. The following day we went to Café Opera and Café Galleri, where we met Mom as well. She was living with her Aunt Johanna in Søndre Skogveien, whose flat Yngve took over later, and that was where I visited him when I was next in Bergen. Once, the year after, I went with a tape recorder to interview the American band Wall of Voodoo who were playing at a club, Hulen, that night. I didn’t have an appointment, I went in during the sound check with my press card, and we stood by the stage entrance waiting for them, I was wearing a white shirt and a black boot-lace tie with a large shiny eagle, black pants, and boots. But when the band appeared, suddenly I didn’t have the nerve to speak to them, they looked intimidating, a gang of thirty-year-old dopeheads from Los Angeles, and it was Yngve who saved the day. Hey, mister! he called, and the bass player turned and came over, and Yngve said, This is my little brother, he has come all the way from Kristiansand, down south, to do an interview with Wall of Voodoo. Is that okay with you?