The Morning Star

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  Was she staying here?

  It looked like it.

  But how could she afford it?

  Hustling funds out of the arts foundation, I shouldn’t wonder, though most of them got a pittance, I knew that much.

  She said something to the receptionist, who nodded and typed something into her computer.

  Then she turned round and came toward the bar.

  What was I supposed to do then?

  She was too full of animosity and bitterness for me to give it another go.

  But I wasn’t going to hide from her either.

  When she saw me, she nearly stopped dead, but composed herself at the last minute and carried on as if nothing had happened. She ordered a drink at the bar without turning round, then took the drink, a gin and tonic by the looks of it, with her to one of the tables across the room where she sat down with her back to me.

  As if I was going to be bothered.

  Cold and scrawny, she was, and pretentious as they come.

  I got my phone out and googled clouds in paintings.

  Forty-two million hits. So we weren’t talking about originality here.

  I opened a couple of pages. John Constable seemed to be an important name.

  An hour, that’s what it took him to paint a picture of some clouds.

  A damn sight better than hers.

  There was life in them. It was like seeing clouds in the sky. Gray and dirty.

  In the corner of my eye, I saw her get to her feet. I looked up as I slipped the phone back into my inside pocket. She came toward me, stopping three paces from where I sat.

  “I just want to say that I think you should go home now,” she said. “Everyone who saw what happened was concerned for you. Strictly speaking, you should go to the ER.”

  I smiled my widest, most supreme smile.

  I still couldn’t make out her boobs, the outfit she had on was too loose for that.

  Or maybe she hadn’t got any?

  “Thanks for the thought,” I said. “But you’re not my mother. You’re not my wife either. So what you think basically doesn’t count.”

  “And thank goodness for that,” she said. “Anyway, I’ve said it now.”

  She went back to where she was sitting.

  Decent enough ass, though. Nice and full under the soft black fabric.

  Gave me a stiffy.

  I crossed my legs, leaned back and slurped my pint.

  What was she doing drinking on her own, anyway?

  Was she an alcoholic?

  Didn’t look the type.

  Still, you never could tell.

  I thought about going to the toilet to jerk off.

  Or maybe give it one last go?

  It wouldn’t do any harm.

  I went to the bar and ordered two gin and tonics. Drank one while standing there, then took the other one over to the table where she was sitting.

  She looked up at me without speaking. The look she gave me was more exasperation than annoyance.

  “I’d like to apologize for what I said just then. And to thank you for your help earlier on. I’m actually not proud of myself for what happened, so it was easier to be dismissive, I suppose.”

  “All right,” she said. “Apology accepted.”

  She turned away from me and stared straight ahead, as if I’d already gone.

  “One more thing,” I said. “Your pictures really did move me. It’s important to me that you understand that, after the interview.”

  She glanced up at me again.

  “Why didn’t you say so in the article, then?”

  “I didn’t really see the pictures properly until this evening,” I said. “I was more interested in you while we were doing the interview.”

  “Interested in criticizing me, you mean.”

  “It’s my job to be critical,” I said. “It’s not normally the way in arts journalism, most reporters there are servile, but I believe that’s a mistake. There’s no reason to be soft on artists or writers.”

  “I don’t like you,” she said.

  “So I gathered,” I said. “Which is fair enough. But why is it so important to tell me?”

  “Because you keep turning up. And because it’s intriguing to me that my pictures should move you. What could an idiot like you possibly see in them?”

  “I might not have words for that sort of thing,” I said. “Idiots often don’t.”

  “Are you hurt now?” she said with a laugh. “Don’t tell me you’re hurt!”

  “But I can try,” I said, and sat down on the chair next to hers.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “I just want to tell you what I saw in your pictures,” I said. “Then I’ll leave you alone. It’s time I was getting off home, anyway.”

  She said nothing, but turned the glass in her hand.

  “You probably won’t agree, but the way I saw them they were empty.”

  “I see,” she said.

  “If you look at John Constable’s clouds, they’re full of life, aren’t they? Do you know what I mean? His clouds are often dirty. But your clouds are pristine and empty. And that emptiness is existential.”

  “What do you mean exactly?” she said, looking at me.

  “Nothingness,” I said.

  “You mean the nothingness of existence?” she said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And why would that move you?”

  “Because I’m going to die.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “No, no, not like that,” I said. “But one day I’m going to die. And you are too. I wonder if that’s why you painted them.”

  She nodded a few times without speaking.

  I drained my glass and stood up.

  “Have a nice journey home, then,” she said.

  “I thought I’d have a smoke first,” I said.

  She said nothing, and made no move to follow me either, withdrawing into her own thoughts again, so I went out on my own, stood in front of the big window and lit up.

  When I came back in, she looked up at me.

  “Weren’t you on your way?” she said.

  “Yes, I am,” I said. “Just need to pay the bill first.”

  At the bar, I turned and looked at her again. She was sitting with her back toward me. I went over.

  “Do you fancy another?” I said. “Before I close the bill?”

  “Are you making a play for me now?” she said.

  “What if I was?” I said.

  “Then you could go to hell.”

  “In that case, I’m not. I’m buying you a platonic drink. OK?”

  She nodded.

  What was it with her? I wondered as I went up to the bar and ordered. What happened to the introverted artist staring at the floor and not knowing what to say?

  “You’re on the G&Ts, right?” I said, putting the glass down in front of her.

  “That’s right, yes,” she said. “Thanks.”

  She took a big slurp.

  “I was wrong about you,” she said. “You’re not an idiot at all. You’re just an unlikable man.”

  She laughed, as if to herself.

  Could she be mentally unstable?

  Of course she was. She was an artist.

  “I realize you only want to fuck me,” she said. “We needn’t pretend.”

  I said nothing.

  “Only you’re a bit too fat for my liking.”

  “OK,” I said.

  She laughed.

  “You should see your face now,” she said. “No, I think you’re all right. Shall we go?”

  “Go where?” I said, and instantly felt my throat tighten.

  She lifted an eyebrow ironically and stood up.
r />   I stood up too.

  I didn’t like this. She was way too unstable.

  I went with her to the open elevator. The door closed and she pressed the button for the second floor.

  “I’ve got a rule,” she said on our way up. “No kissing on the mouth.”

  “That’s what whores say,” I said.

  “Exactly,” she said, and laughed.

  I stepped up close to her and put my hand between her legs. She shoved me away.

  “What would your wife say?” she said.

  “She wouldn’t know,” I said, pressing against her again.

  “Patience,” she said.

  The elevator came to a halt, the door opened and she stepped out. I followed her along the corridor.

  No, I didn’t like it one bit.

  Only she’d given me such a hard-on.

  She stopped outside the room, found her key card, tapped it against the reader, opened the door and went in. Before I could do anything, the door slammed shut in my face.

  Fucking whore.

  She’d been having me on.

  Or was it a game she was playing?

  I knocked as hard as I could.

  No answer.

  She’d been out to humiliate me all along.

  But I wasn’t having it.

  Fucking cock-tease.

  She was nothing, a zero of an artist.

  I knocked again.

  No answer.

  Right, then.

  If that was the way she wanted it, then fine by me.

  I turned and began walking away along the corridor, only then something happened. Suddenly, I felt the blood streaming through my body, a light pressure in every vein, and my head seemed to tingle from these new sensations. Then all at once the wave of darkness from before returned, rising quickly inside me, flooding my consciousness.

  I’ve no idea how long I was gone, but when I came to I was adrift in darkness. Beneath me, the corridor area shone brightly, no bigger than a postcard. The body I thought I could discern on the floor seemed unconnected to me, though I knew I belonged to it. I couldn’t get my thoughts together, they were all over the place. Nothing I could see made any sense.

  And then, without warning, I was back inside that shining space, the corridor stretching away with all its doors.

  Again, the artist woman was crouching beside me.

  I was on my stomach, my cheek against the wall-to-wall carpet.

  “Can you hear me?” she said.

  “Get away from me,” I said, slowly pulling myself into a sitting position.

  “You need the hospital,” she said. “I’ll go with you.”

  “I’m fine. Leave me alone.”

  I got to my feet and started walking down the corridor.

  I sensed her come after me.

  Like the last time, my brain felt cleansed. I saw everything around me more clearly, more distinctly. But my legs were still wobbly and shaking increasingly with every step. Halfway to the elevator it felt like they were about to give way, and I stopped and held on to the wall for support.

  “Do you need help?” she said, standing a couple of paces behind me.

  “No, I fucking don’t,” I said.

  “But you are going to the hospital?”

  “No.”

  “But you must. It’s serious. You may have had a stroke.”

  “You mean a mini stroke.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Listen,” I said, and started walking again. “I passed out, that’s all. It runs in the family. And now I’m going home to get some sleep. And you can stay out of my way.”

  She said nothing.

  I made it to the elevator and pressed the down button. When I turned round, she was standing in the middle of the corridor with her arms by her sides.

  “Seriously, I’m concerned about you,” she said. “You can’t go off on your own in that condition.”

  I stared at the metal door and heard the whirr of machinery in the shaft. I was so tired I didn’t know what to do.

  What was I using for brains?

  I had to exploit the situation.

  “OK,” I said.

  The elevator door slid open. An elderly man was standing inside. His face was singularly soft and round, like someone much younger, at the same time wrinkled and furrowed like a seventy-year-old’s.

  He smiled politely and was about to step out, when suddenly he paused.

  “This isn’t reception, is it?” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Are you going down?” he said.

  “No, changed my mind,” I said.

  The door closed. The artist woman looked at me and burst out laughing.

  There really was something way too fucking unstable about this.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I only wanted to get my own back.”

  She laughed again.

  “There was no only about it,” I said.

  “No,” she said, and walked slowly beside me as we went back down the corridor.

  Why were my legs so weak?

  Maybe it was a mini stroke?

  I sensed the smell of her perfume and got a stiffy again.

  She unlocked the door while I stood and waited. My hand was in my pocket, discreetly stroking. She smiled and looked down at the floor.

  So, demure again now, was it?

  “This time you can come in,” she said.

  “Because I passed out?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “What other reason would there be?”

  “None,” I said, and stepped inside. “It’s the only one I can think of.”

  “There could be plenty of reasons,” she said. “Do you think I’d have let you get this far, if I didn’t want you to fuck me?”

  What?

  I looked at her. She turned and went into what I supposed was the bathroom.

  To get herself ready.

  If she wasn’t having me on again.

  The room was small, only an armchair, a tiny desk, a wardrobe and a minibar.

  Her suitcase lay open on the floor, her clothes seemingly tossed about the room in anger, they were everywhere.

  But it was a big bed.

  I didn’t care for women calling it fucking. They ought to say making love, or at a push screwing.

  Maybe I should just go?

  She was trouble.

  But I couldn’t do a runner from this. A willing woman in a hotel room? What would that make me?

  It wasn’t like she was dangerous or anything.

  I opened the minibar and took out a whisky and a vodka. How small are those bottles? It was ridiculous.

  “Do you want a drink?” I called out as I sat in the chair.

  “In a minute!” she called back.

  I downed the whisky in one.

  Pictured the fabric of her outfit gliding down over her gorgeous ass. Her bending over. Me kneeling behind her, licking her asshole.

  The door opened and she stepped out. Still with her clothes on.

  What had she been doing in there?

  “You’ve passed out twice tonight,” she said. “That can’t be good for you.”

  “Feels all right to me,” I said. “What are you having?”

  “Is there still some red wine?” she said, sitting down on the bed. Now she was all quiet and timid again.

  Was she putting it on?

  I couldn’t get my head round her, but made like I wasn’t fazed by the situation, twisted round and grabbed the bottle of red that was on the shelf behind the chair, and tossed it onto the bed beside her.

  She picked it up and unscrewed the top while looking around at nothing in particular.

  I took one of the glasses that had been
next to the bottle and tossed it to her as I’d done with the bottle.

  “Thanks,” she said, and smiled.

  I watched her pour the wine into the glass.

  She sat with her back half toward me and sipped. Neither of us spoke for a while.

  “What do we do now?” I said eventually.

  She turned her head and looked at me over her shoulder.

  “Perhaps we should just go to sleep,” she said.

  “Is that all?”

  “Or do you want me to be your whore?”

  “I wasn’t thinking of paying for it,” I said.

  She laughed.

  I stood up.

  She looked at me, and then she stood up too.

  I stepped up close to her, pressed my body against hers and grabbed her bum cheeks with both hands.

  “Well, there’s a thing,” she said. “Have you been sitting there thinking about me?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I tried to kiss her, only she turned away.

  I unzipped the back of her outfit and pulled it down over her shoulders, down over her body, while she unbelted my trousers.

  Lying back on the bed in her panties and bra, she looked up at me as I stood in the middle of the room and got my trousers off in a hurry.

  I was too heavy to get on top of her. Instead, I lay down beside her and tried to get her panties down.

  “Take your shirt off,” she said.

  “No need for that,” I said, using force to get them down over her knees, which for some reason she was pressing together. “I’m fine as I am.”

  “I want to see you,” she said.

  “No need for that,” I grunted, pressing against her.

  “Relax. I’ve got nothing against fat men,” she said.

  Couldn’t we just do it? Couldn’t I just get my cock inside her?

  “OK,” I said, undid the shirt and pulled it off.

  She smoothed a hand over my belly, gripping my cock with the other.

  “How do you want me?” she said.

  What a fantastic question.

  “On all fours,” I said.

  “OK,” she said, turning round. As I got into position behind her, I saw us reflected in the mirror on the wall above the bed. Christ, is that me? I thought for a second, wriggling forward on my knees a bit so I could get close enough to stick the steel inside her. I tried not to look in the mirror, only my eyes kept going back to it as I pumped. I looked like some kind of animal with my big belly and flabby cheeks, and she looked like an animal too, getting fucked on all fours with her head lowered and her hair hanging down, but at the same time it felt so good, oh, it felt so good inside, that the man and the woman in the mirror could have been another couple entirely.