The Morning Star

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  They laughed. I did a bit too.

  Selma put her hand on my shoulder.

  “Lovely to see you, Iselin,” she said.

  “Same here,” I said.

  “Nice house you’ve got,” said Lea.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Have you got any wine glasses?” said Astrid.

  “Of course,” I said. “Hang on a minute, I’ll go and get some.”

  “And a corkscrew, if you’ve got one,” Selma added as I went.

  “If you’ve got one,” what was that supposed to mean? What sort of home wouldn’t have a corkscrew? The kitchen was packed with people, the air thick with smoke. A boy I’d never seen before stood unsteadily at the work surface spreading liver paste onto a slice of bread, a cigarette between his lips. Another sat drumming along to the beat of the music with a knife on the edge of the work surface. Not a butter knife, but one of the sharp carving knives. There’d be a mark for every hit. I put my hand cautiously on his upper arm.

  “Don’t do that, please, you’re leaving marks in the wood,” I said.

  He stared at me for a moment with listless eyes, without so much as pausing.

  Two boys were sitting alongside him, each with a girl in his lap. I’d never seen any of them before either.

  “Tarjei, she says you’re leaving marks in the wood!” one of them said.

  They laughed, but thankfully he got down and walked off, and left the knife on the side. I put it away in the drawer before getting four wine glasses out of the cupboard and going back to the girls. It was as if they were standing in their own little bubble, detached from everyone around them.

  “What time’s the bus back?” said Astrid.

  “You’ve only just got here,” I said, and straightaway wished I hadn’t. It sounded like I was begging them to stay.

  “I know, I just thought they probably don’t run that often,” she said.

  Selma twisted the corkscrew into the cork of the bottle she’d brought with her in her little rucksack, and squeaked it out until it released with a pop. The others held out their glasses and she poured.

  “Do you want some, Iselin?” said Selma.

  “No, thanks,” I said, even though I did.

  They stood for a while, sipping their wine without saying anything, huddled together so as not to get jostled all the time. The party was all because of them, but now I wished they hadn’t come. They were so uncomfortable, and there was nothing I could do about it. What was I supposed to do, show them my room?

  Signe came reeling up.

  “Absolutely brilliant party!” she shouted.

  The fab four exchanged glances and managed to smile.

  “Who are this lot, then?” Signe wanted to know, draping her arm over my shoulder.

  “They’re from my class at gymnasium,” I said.

  “Iselin’s so brainy!” she squawked at them, then laughed theatrically and lurched off.

  “She’s from my old secondary class,” I said. “They’re all from round here.”

  “Thought as much,” said Astrid. “Is it a yokel theme party?”

  I looked around for somewhere for them to sit, but everywhere was taken.

  “I like your leather jacket,” I said to Lea. “It’s really nice.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and looked down at it.

  “Where’s it from?” I said.

  “I bought it in London.”

  “Really?” I said. “What label is it?”

  “APC,” she said. “It’s French.”

  “I know that,” I said.

  “Do you want to try it on?”

  “I think probably I’m a bit big,” I said.

  Lea went bright red.

  “Of course, I wasn’t thinking,” she said. “Sorry.”

  There was a lull between us. They looked round restlessly. Guys drunk out of their minds, screaming girls, shouting and laughter. No one dancing, no one just sitting talking.

  “The bus goes at ten past until twelve,” I said.

  “We can just about make ten past ten, then,” said Astrid. “We’ll have to go now though.”

  “It takes nearly an hour into town,” Selma said. “Which means we’ll be back by eleven. I’m really tired, actually.”

  “Me too,” said Hanne.

  “It was so good to see you,” I said. “Thanks for coming all this way.”

  “Thanks for the invite,” said Selma.

  “Yes, thanks,” said Hanne.

  “It was nice of you to ask us,” said Astrid.

  Selma twisted the cork back in and put the bottle in her rucksack.

  “Do you want us to put the glasses in the kitchen?” she said.

  “Just leave them on the windowsill,” I said. “Have a safe journey back!”

  “See you on Monday then, Iselin,” said Hanne.

  They hugged me one by one and then left. I went to the bathroom for a pee and tried to get myself together. Someone had emptied the drawers and the cupboard under the sink and thrown everything on the floor. Sanitary towels and tampons, old bottles of head lice treatment, Mum’s contraceptive pills, packets of paracetamol, disposable razors, deodorants. That was bad enough, but the worst thing was Mum’s antidepressants. She didn’t take them anymore, but the box had been emptied.

  I pulled my jeans down and sat on the toilet, remaining there awhile after I’d finished, my head in my hands.

  I’d ruined everything. There was no longer a future for me at school.

  And Mum was going to be so angry. So incredibly angry.

  Someone started hammering and kicking at the door.

  “Get a damn move on in there!”

  I wiped myself, pulled my jeans up and flushed the toilet.

  “About time!” Arvid said when I came out, his voice a slur. “I’m fucking dying for a piss!”

  On the landing, Ada was sitting crying. Maja, who was comforting her, looked up at me and rolled her eyes as I went past. Dad had converted part of the stable into a little apartment while he’d still been living with us, with a lounge, bedroom and bathroom, and I decided to go over there and sit on my own for a bit. People had spilled out from the house and were all over the place. One guy was jumping up and down on top of a car, roaring his head off. Another stood pissing up against the outside wall. Some had paired off and were well away, snogging and groping. No one noticed me. I took the key from under the stone and let myself in.

  There was no way I could get them to leave, I knew that. The only thing I could do was wait until they left of their own accord.

  I locked the door from the inside so no one could come in, and went over to Dad’s records, flicking through them until I found something I fancied listening to. Happy Mondays, Black Grape and the Stone Roses had been his favorite bands when he was young, and I picked out Pills ’n’ Thrills and Bellyaches and put it on.

  I imagined I was sitting in my own apartment, that the neighbors were having a party and it had woken me up. I was twenty-four and my boyfriend was lying in bed next to me in our bedroom. He slept like a log every night. I drew my legs up underneath me on the sofa and smoothed my hand over the armrest. But nothing could blot out the terrible thing I’d started.

  What an idiot I’d been.

  Should I text Mum and warn her in advance?

  Mum? I threw a home-alone party and I’m afraid it’s got a bit out of hand. Please don’t be angry!

  She’d have a brain hemorrhage.

  And I couldn’t phone my dad either. He’d have gone to bed ages ago, the baby always woke them up at five.

  I changed the record and put some Aretha Franklin on, only to take it off again after a few minutes and go back outside. I crossed toward the house and went into the hall. Someone who looked like Martin was fast asleep on the flo
or up against the wall. He’d covered himself up with Mum’s pale blue coat.

  I bent down and shook him.

  “You can’t sleep here!” I shouted.

  He opened his eyes in a daze.

  “Get up!” I shouted.

  I marched into the kitchen and turned the big light on.

  “Everybody out!” I yelled. “Go on, get out!”

  I went into the living room and turned the stereo off.

  “Hey, cut it out!” someone protested loudly.

  “Everybody out, party’s over!” I screamed. “Out, now! Out! Out! Out!”

  I put the big light on in there too.

  And then I did the same thing in all the rooms upstairs. Turned the lights on, screamed at them to get the fuck off home.

  And it worked. Maybe it was the lights that did it, I thought to myself later, before I fell sleep. The alcohol turned them into nocturnal creatures that shrank back from the light, and all they could do then was leave.

  Half an hour after I’d started, the house was empty. Some of the girls from my old class had helped me get rid of the last few boys who’d been reluctant to go.

  But Christ, what a mess the place was in. Bottles and glasses everywhere, in Mum’s room too, things thrown about, as if a wild animal had been let loose inside, chunks hacked out of the work surface in the kitchen, I knew that of course, but the worst thing was that someone had kicked a hole in the bathroom door upstairs, and someone had pissed on the sofa. At first, I thought it was beer, but it smelled of piss, so what else would it be? The driveway looked like a bombsite too, bottles strewn all over the place there as well, and parts of the lawn had been churned up by cars.

  Even if I spent until Christmas trying to clean it all up, she’d have still noticed.

  She was so proud of the place too. She devoted more time to keeping it nice than she did to me.

  I couldn’t sleep in the mess they’d made of my room, so I cleared up there first and even washed the floor before going to bed. That was all I had to do, one room at a time, I told myself, to get things perfect again, then everything might be all right. The only real worries were the hole in the door, the pissed-on sofa, and the chunks that had been hacked out of the work surface in the kitchen. And the churned-up lawn, of course.

  The last thing I thought before I fell asleep was that I could say I’d come home and found the place like this, and that I didn’t actually know what had happened. Some sort of break-in, maybe?

  * * *

  —

  I got up early so I could get it all done before Mum showed up. The place looked even worse in daylight, not just because the mess was that much more obvious, but because all connection with the night had been severed. What had been logical then, a load of people coming to my party and doing what they did, now seemed totally mad. Why had the bathroom drawers been emptied onto the floor? Why were there empty bottles in the bath? The cig ends in the plant pots, on the windowsills and floors, the glasses that were everywhere, the mud on the rugs, the used condom in Mum’s bed, it was all so over the top. My stomach ached all morning as I cleared up and cleaned. I couldn’t even say it had been a success, I’d never be friends with them now. And besides, it had been so obvious what I’d been trying to do. Iselin will do anything to make friends, they’d say. Poor girl.

  I went down to the bins at the bottom of the drive with a bulging black bin liner over my shoulder and saw myself and what I’d done as if from the outside, and I burned with shame. Around me already were the colors of autumn, the grass in the meadow was pale yellow and the river brimmed with water that spilled over onto the lower fields. An intense longing for childhood came up inside me. A time when Dad was still living with us and I was just a normal girl who went to ballet classes and liked horses and drawing and painting, and looked forward to school every day.

  The bottles in the bin bag made a racket as I slung it into the container. Two more bags were waiting for me at the front door. Once they were out of the way, there was no more I could do.

  I sat down at the table in the living room and started some homework. A presentation in English about the Brontë sisters that I was to give on Wednesday, and an essay about the Cold War to be handed in on Friday. From the living room I could keep an eye on the cars that went past on the road below, so that Mum coming back wouldn’t catch me by surprise.

  She appeared around one o’clock. I gathered my things together as quick as I could and went upstairs to my room, hearing her park the car and then come in through the front door.

  “Iselin?” she called out. “Why is the lawn in such a state?”

  Here we go, I said to myself with a sigh.

  “Some people came who I hadn’t invited,” I called back.

  “What do you mean?” she said, looking up at me as I came down the stairs.

  “I only invited some friends from school,” I said. “Then a whole load of people I didn’t know turned up in cars.”

  She’d had her hair cut in a bob. Her bag was over her shoulder, the car key in her hand, her blue eyes looking straight at me.

  “Have you had a party?”

  I nodded.

  “Iselin, how could you be so stupid? I trusted you.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Is it bad?” she said.

  “It was,” I said. “But I’ve cleaned it all up and put things back the way they were.”

  Without putting down her bag or the car key, she started going round the house inspecting, giving the occasional deep sigh and little, despairing groans. “Oh my God,” I heard her say. “Oh no . . .”

  She was always going to see everything, there was no way I ever could have hidden anything from her. If something had been broken, or if only a mark had been left somewhere, it was the first thing she saw when she came into the room.

  She went up the stairs without looking at me.

  “Iselin!” she shouted a moment later. “Come here this minute!”

  She’d seen the bathroom door, I realized.

  And of course she had.

  At first she said nothing, just pointed at the door.

  “I don’t want to see your face again today,” she said then. “You can stay in your room.”

  “What?” I said.

  “You heard me. I don’t want to see you, and I won’t hear your excuses.”

  “Mum, I’m sixteen years old.”

  “Then why can’t you act like it? Go to your room.”

  I hate her, I told myself, closing the door behind me. She was already on the phone to someone about what had happened.

  I sat down on my bed.

  If that’s the way she wants it, I thought after a bit, jumped up and threw some clothes in a bag, packed my school things and went out, down the drive to the road.

  She must have heard the front door, because she came out and shouted after me.

  “Iselin! Where do you think you’re going? Get back here!”

  She could have run and caught up with me if she really wanted me back, or she could have come after me in the car.

  I phoned Dad from the bus stop.

  “Hi, Iselin!” he said. “What a nice surprise!”

  “Can I stay over at yours tonight?” I said.

  He was quiet for a second.

  “We’ve talked about this, Iselin,” he said. “You can come here whenever you want. But you need to give us fair warning. It’s not always convenient, you know that. You can’t just turn up at such short notice.”

  “I’m already on my way,” I said. “I’m on the bus.”

  He sighed.

  “I suppose it’ll be all right this once. I’ll have to clear it with Ulrika, though.”

  “If you don’t want me to come, I won’t,” I said.

  “Of course I want y
ou to come!” he said. “Let me call you back.”

  They lived on a new estate on the other side of town, so I had to change buses at the bus station in the city center. I hadn’t had any lunch, so I bought a bag of crisps and a Coke at the Narvesen. I didn’t like the idea of eating on the bus where people could see me, they wouldn’t know I hadn’t had lunch and would think I just stuffed myself with crisps and soft drinks all day. But apart from an old woman and a mum with two kids, the bus was empty, so it wasn’t a problem.

  Dad didn’t ring, but texted me instead.

  OK! was all it said.

  I took it to mean Ulrika was in a good mood.

  They were sitting on the veranda when I got there. Dad got up and leaned over the railing.

  “It’s open,” he said. “Just dump your things in your room. Then come up here if you want and say hello to Emil.”

  I did as he said, put my bag and my school things down in the spare room that was full of stuff they didn’t much use, went up the wide staircase and out onto the veranda through the door at the far end of the living room.

  “Hi, Iselin, how lovely to see you!” Ulrika said in her Swedish as she took off her sunglasses. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, thanks,” I said. “How are you?”

  “Good, as a matter of fact,” she said.

  “And here’s your little brother,” Dad said, lifting Emil into the air. He kicked his legs a bit and tried to push Dad’s arm away.

  “Hello, cuddle bunny,” I said.

  He looked at me and smiled.

  “He likes you!” said Ulrika, now with her sunglasses on again.

  “Of course he does, she’s his big sister!” Dad said. “Do you want to hold him?”

  I shrugged.

  “Can do,” I said.

  “You can sit in the chair over there and hold him on your knee,” Ulrika said.

  I felt sweaty and horrible and didn’t really want to, but Dad handed me the baby and I sat with him on my knee, my arm around him so he wouldn’t topple over. He leaned back and looked up at me.

  “Ngnnn,” he said, and waved an arm.

  “Maybe you could give him a piece of apple?” Dad said, and picked up a plastic box from the table.

  “He’s just had one,” said Ulrika.