Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book One

I opened my eyes.

“What time is it?” I asked.

Yngve was standing in the doorway, fully dressed. Black trousers, white shirt, black jacket. His face seemed puffy, his eyes were narrow and his hair tangled.

“Twenty to ten,” he said. “Get up.”

“Shit,” I said.

I struggled into a sitting position and could feel the alcohol still in my body.

“I’ll be downstairs,” he said. “Hurry.”

Still wearing the clothes from yesterday made me feel very uneasy, a feeling that grew as the memory struck me of what we had actually done. I pulled them off. There was a heaviness about all the movements I made, even getting up and standing on two feet took energy, not to mention what raising my arm and reaching for the shirt on the clothes hanger over the wardrobe door did to me. But there was no option, it had to be done. Right arm through, left arm through, do up the buttons on the sleeves first, then at the front. Why the hell had we done it? How could we have been so stupid? It wasn’t what I had wanted, in fact it was the very last thing I had wanted, to sit drinking with her, here of all places. Yet that was precisely what I had done. How was that possible? How the hell had that been possible?

It was shameful.

I knelt in front of the suitcase and unpeeled layers of clothes before finding the black trousers, which I put on while sitting on the bed. And how good it was to sit! But I had to get to my feet again, to hoist my trousers, to find the jacket and put it on, to go down to the kitchen.

After pouring myself a glass of water and drinking it, my forehead was damp with sweat. I leaned forward and sprinkled water over my head from the running tap. It cooled me down and made my hair, which was short but untidy, look better.

With water dripping from my chin and my body as heavy as a sack, I lurched down to the hall and onto the steps where Yngve was waiting for me with Grandma. He was rattling the car keys in one hand.

“Got any chewing gum or something?” I said. “I didn’t have time to clean my teeth.”

“You can’t skip cleaning your teeth today of all days,” Yngve said. “You’ll be fine if you hurry.”

He was right. I probably smelled of alcohol, and that was not how you should smell at the undertaker’s. But hurrying was beyond me. I had to pause on the second-floor landing and hang over the banister; my will seemed to be drained. After getting my toothbrush and toothpaste from the bedside table I cleaned my teeth as fast as I could over the kitchen sink. I should have left the toothbrush and tube there and dashed down, but something in me said that was not right, they didn’t belong in the kitchen, they had to be taken back to the bedroom, and so two further minutes were lost. It was four minutes to ten by the time I was standing on the front steps again.

“We’re off,” Yngve said, turning to Grandma. “It won’t take long. Back soon.”

“That’s fine,” she answered.

I got into the car, strapped myself in. Yngve plumped down in the seat beside me, inserted the key in the ignition, twisted it, craned his head and began to reverse down the little slope. Grandma was standing on the top step. I waved to her, she waved back. As we reversed into the alley and could no longer see her I wondered if she was still waiting, as she had always done, because when we moved forward again we could see each other for a last time and wave a final goodbye, then she would turn to go in and we would enter the road.

She was still there. I waved, she waved, and then she went in.

“Did she want to come along today as well?” I asked.

Yngve nodded.

“We’ll have to do what we said. Be quick. Although I wouldn’t mind sitting in a café for a while. Or visiting some record shops.”

He touched the indicator with his left index finger as he down-shifted and looked to the right. Nothing coming.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Absolutely fine,” Yngve said. “And you?”

“I can still feel it,” I said. “Think I’m still a bit drunk in fact.”

He glanced at me as he set off.

“Oh dear,” he said.

“Wasn’t such a great idea,” I said.

He smiled thinly, changed down again, came to a halt behind the white line. A white-haired, elderly man, stick-thin with a large nose, crossed in front of us. The corners of his mouth drawn down. His lips dark red. He first looked up at the hills to my right, then to the row of shops across the road before lowering his gaze to the ground, presumably to be sure where the coming curb was. All of this he did as though completely alone. As though he never took any account of other eyes. This was how Giotto painted people. They never seemed to be aware that they were being watched. Giotto was the only painter to depict the aura of vulnerability this gave them. It was probably something to do with the era because succeeding generations of Italian painters, the great generations, had always interwoven an awareness of watching eyes in their pictures. It made them less naïve, but they also revealed less.

On the other side of the street, a young, redhaired woman with a stroller bustled up. The pelican crossing lights changed from green at that moment, but she was watching the traffic lights, which were still on red, and she ventured across, dashing past us the very next second. Her child, about a year old, with chubby cheeks and a small mouth, sat upright in the stroller, looking around, slightly disorientated, as they rushed past.

Yngve released the clutch and carefully accelerated into the intersection.

“It’s two minutes past,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “If we can find a place to park quickly, that’s not too bad.”

As we came to the bridge, I looked up at the sky above the sea. It was overcast, so light in some places that the white had taken on a touch of blue, as though a semitransparent membrane had been stretched over it, in other places it was heavier and darker, gray patches, their outer edges drifting across the whiteness like smoke. Wherever the sun was, the cloud cover had a yellowish tinge, though not so strong that the light beneath was anything but muted and seemed to come from all directions. It was one of those days when nothing casts a shadow, when everything holds on tight.

“It’s tonight you’re going, isn’t it?” I said.

Yngve nodded.

“Ah, there’s one!” he said.

The very next moment he pulled up to the curb, switched off the engine, and yanked the hand brake. The undertaker’s was on the other side of the street. I would have preferred a slower transition, one in which I could have prepared myself for what was awaiting us, but there was nothing to be done, we just had to throw ourselves into it.

I got out, closed the door, and followed Yngve across the street. In the waiting room the woman behind the counter sent us a smile and said we could go straight in.

The door was open. The stout funeral director got up from behind his desk when he saw us, came over, and shook hands with a courteous but, in the circumstances, less than cordial a smile on his lips.

“So, here we are again,” he said, motioning to the two chairs with his hand. “Please take a seat.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I’m sure you’ve given the funeral some thought over the weekend,” he said, sitting down, reaching for a thin sheaf of papers on the desk in front of him and flicking through them.

“We have, yes,” Yngve said. “We’ve decided on a church burial.”

“I see,” said the funeral director. “Then I can give you the phone number of the priest’s office. We’ll deal with the practical side, but it would be good if you could have a word with him yourselves. As you know, he has to make a little speech about your father and it would be helpful if you could pass on some information.”