Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book One

However, I didn’t dare ask her if she wanted anymore. There was a limit, it had something to do with decency, and it had been crossed ages ago. I reached for the bottle and poured a drop into Yngve’s glass, then my own. But after I had done that, her eyes met mine.

“One more?” I heard myself ask.

“A little one perhaps,” she replied.

“It’s late.”

“Yes, it’s late on earth,” I said.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“He said it was late on earth,” Yngve explained. “It’s a quote from a famous Swedish poem.”

Why did he say that? Did he want to put me in my place? Oh, what the hell, I suppose it was a stupid thing to say. “Late on earth” …

“Karl Ove’s going to have a book published soon,” Yngve said.

“Are you?” Grandma asked.

I nodded.

“Yes, now that you mention it, someone must have told me. Was it Gunnar, I wonder? Goodness. A book.”

She raised the glass to her mouth and drank. I did the same. Was it my imagination, or had her eyes darkened again?

“So you didn’t live here during the war then?” I said, before taking another sip.

“No, after the war, it was a few years after when we moved here. During the war we lived over there,” she said, pointing behind her.

“What was it like actually?” I asked. “During the war, I mean?”

“Well, it was almost the same as before, you know. A bit harder to get hold of food, but otherwise there wasn’t such an enormous difference. The Germans were normal people, like us. We got to know a few of them, you see. We went down to visit them after the war as well.”

“In Germany?”

“Yes. And when they were leaving, in May 1945, they gave us a call and said we could go and help ourselves to some things they had left behind, if we wanted. They gave us the finest drinks. And a radio. And a lot of other things.”

I hadn’t heard that they had been given presents by the Germans before they capitulated. But then the Germans had been to their homes.

“Things they’d left behind?” I echoed. “Where?”

“By some cliff,” Grandma said. “They called to tell us exactly where we could find them. So we went out that evening, and there they were, precisely as they had said. They were kind, no doubt about that.”

Had Grandma and Grandad clambered around a cliff one May evening in 1945 hunting for the bottles left by the Germans?

The light from a pair of car headlights flitted across the garden and shone on the wall under the window for a few seconds, then the car was around the bend and slowly glided past along the alley below. Grandma leaned toward the window.

“Who could that be at this time of night?” she wondered.

She sighed and sat back down, with her hands in her lap. Looked at us.

“It’s good you’re here, boys,” she said.

There was a silence. Grandma took another sip.

“Do you remember when you lived here?” she said suddenly, looking at Yngve with warmth in her eyes. “Your father came to pick you up and he had a beard. And you ran upstairs shouting ‘He’s not my dad!’ Ha ha ha! ‘He’s not my dad!’ We had so much fun with you, my goodness.”

“I remember that very well,” Yngve said.

“And then there was the time we were listening to the radio, and they were talking to the owner of Norway’s oldest horse. Do you remember that? ‘Dad, you’re the same age as Norway’s oldest horse!’ you said.”

She leaned forward as she laughed and rubbed her eyes with the knuckles of her index fingers.

“And you,” she said, focusing on me. “Can you remember the time you came with us to the cabin on your own?”

I nodded.

“One morning we found you sitting on the steps crying, and when we asked why you were crying you said ‘I’m so lonely.’ You were eight years old.” It had been the summer Mom and Dad had gone on vacation to Germany. Yngve had been in Sørbøvåg with Mom’s parents, and I had been here, in Kristiansand. What did I remember of that? That the distance between me and Grandma and Grandad had been too great. Suddenly I was just one part of their everyday lives. They were strangers to me more than ever, as there was no one or nothing to bridge the gap between us. One morning there had been a bug in the milk, I didn’t want to drink it, and Grandma told me not to be so fussy, I just had to take it out, that’s how it was in nature. Her voice had been sharp. And I drank the milk, queasy with disgust. Why had that memory of all memories stuck? And no others? There must have been others. Yes: Mom and Dad sent me a postcard with a picture of the Bayern Munich soccer team. How I had longed for that, and how happy I had been when it finally arrived! And the presents when they finally came home: a redand-yellow soccer ball for Yngve, a red-and-green one for me. The colors … oh, the feeling of happiness they brought …

“Another time you were standing on the stairs here shouting for me,” Grandma said, looking at Yngve. “ Grandma, are you upstairs or downstairs? I answered downstairs and you shouted Why aren’t you upstairs? ”

She laughed.

“Yes, we had lots of fun … When you moved to Tybakken you just knocked on the neighbors’ doors and asked if there were any children living there. Are there any children living here? you asked them.” She broke into laughter again.

After the laughter had died down, she sat chuckling while forming another cigarette in the roller machine. The tip of the roll-up was empty and flared up when she lit it with the lighter. A tiny fragment of ash floated down to the floor. Then the flame reached the tobacco and shrank to a glow, which shone brighter every time she puffed on the filter.

“But now you’ve grown up,” she said. “And that’s so strange. It seems like only yesterday you were boys here …”

Half an hour later we went to bed. Yngve and I cleared the table, tucked the vodka bottle away in the cupboard under the sink, emptied the ashtray, and put the glasses in the dishwasher while Grandma watched. When we had finished she got up too. Some pee was dripping from the seat of the chair, but she paid it no attention. She leaned against the door frame on her way out, first in the kitchen, then on the landing.

“Good night!” I said.

“Good night, boys.” She smiled. I watched her and saw the smile fade the moment she turned her head and began to go downstairs.

“Oh well,” I said when, a minute later, we were upstairs. “That was that.”

“Yup,” Yngve said. He pulled off his sweater, laid it across the back of the chair, and took off his pants. Warmed by the alcohol, I felt like saying something kind to him. All the differences of opinion had been straightened out, there were no problems and everything was simple.

“What a day,” he said.

“Mm, you can say that again.”

He lay back in bed and pulled up the duvet.

“Good night,” he said, closing his eyes.

“Good night,” I said. “Sleep tight.”

I went to the door and turned off the main light. Sat down on the bed. Didn’t feel like sleeping. For one insane second it occurred to me that I could go out. There were still a couple of hours before the bars closed. And it was summer, the town was full of people, some of whom I probably knew.

But then the tiredness hit me. Suddenly all I wanted to do was sleep. Suddenly I could barely lift my arms. The thought of having to undress was unbearable, so I lay back in bed with all my clothes on and descended into the soft, inner light. Every tiny movement I made, even the stirring of my little finger, tickled my stomach, and when I fell asleep the very next second it was with a smile on my face.

Even in deepest sleep, I knew something terrible awaited me beyond. As I approached a quasiconscious state, I tried to go back and would certainly have succeeded, had it not been for Yngve’s insistent voice and the knowledge that we had an important meeting that morning.