Knots
Page 11
A Note About the Translator
Kari Dickson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and grew up bilingual. She has a BA in Scandinavian studies and an MA in translation. Before becoming a translator, she worked in theater in London and Oslo. She currently teaches in the Scandinavian Studies department at the University of Edinburgh. You can sign up for email updates here.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Epigraph
Nice and Mild
Taking Off, Landing
Small Knot
Gold Pattern
Overtures
A Renowned Engineer
The Girl Holding My Hand
From the Lighthouse
Grandma Is Sleeping
An Entire Family Disappears
It’s Raining in Love
Compulsion
Oh, Life
Echo
The Deer at the Edge of the Forest
It’s Snowing
Fortune Smiles on Mona Lisa
Deal
Trapeze
Blanchot Slips Under a Bridge
Air
Transcend
Meanwhile, on Another Planet
Vitalie Meets an Officer
The Object Assumes an Exalted Place in the Discourse
Two by Two
Notes
A Note About the Author and Translator
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2012 by Kolon Forlag
Translation copyright © 2017 by Kari Dickson
All rights reserved
Originally published in Norwegian in 2012 by Kolon Forlag, Norway, as Knutar +
English translation published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First American edition, 2017
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Øyehaug, Gunnhild, 1975– author. | Dickson, Kari, translator.
Title: Knots: stories / Gunnhild Øyehaug; translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson.
Description: First American edition. | New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016045040 | ISBN 9780374181673 (hardback) | ISBN 9780374714994 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Øyehaug, Gunnhild, 1975– —Translations into English | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Short Stories (single author).
Classification: LCC PT8952.25.Y44 A2 2017 | DDC 839.823/8—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016045040
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This translation has been published with the financial support of NORLA.
*Dive
Brilliant explanation: When Asle was small, he lived at the top of Syrup Hill. Every morning when he went to school, he got sticky with syrup right up to his thighs, and every afternoon when he went home from school, he got sticky right up to his thighs all over again. Walking home was hardest; he had to use every ounce of strength in his little body to get his legs to move through the thick syrup. He was often late for supper and his mother got annoyed as a result and he didn’t get anything to eat until late in the evening, after she’d sat in the living room knitting and cooled down as she watched the lights from the houses below rise up to meet the dark that was falling, glittering like melted sugar. Eventually, she got up with a sigh, peeled a couple of cold potatoes, cut them into pieces, put them in the gravy, sliced the meatballs and carrots in two, warmed everything up on the wood-burning stove that stood crackling and spitting by the wall, then went into his room, where he lay crying with hunger. “Supper” was all she said, and Asle jumped up from the bed, ran out to the kitchen, gobbled down the food. He often had a sore tummy afterward. His mother stroked his hair and took his sticky trousers. Threw them into a big bowl of steaming water. “Do you have to get so sticky every time?” she shouted from the bathroom, but he was prepared and had stuffed pieces of cold potato in his ears. He went into the living room with the pieces of potato in his ears, looked out at the lights glittering in all the houses, there was a dull humming in his ears like when he dived underwater in summer, and as he stood there looking out over the houses that lay shining like treasure on the seabed, he was suddenly struck by such a strong desire to be underwater that it brought tears to his eyes. He wanted to take a stone, a big stone, in his hands and jump so he was sure to go all the way to the bottom.
*Floating
At the same time, far away, in Andreas’s hometown, the doorbell rings at Andreas’s father’s house. From his position in the living room, he can see that it’s someone selling raffle tickets, a little boy in a pom-pom hat who has no doubt been sent out by the local Bible group or sports club, or sent out by his mother to sell the tickets that she was supposed to sell for the local Bible group or sports club. It’s snowing very lightly, and the raffle ticket seller rings the bell again. But because at some point in the 1970s, Andreas’s father’s right side started to curl in on itself, like leaves sometimes curl up when they wither—in on themselves toward the center—that is to say, his right leg and arm started to pull toward each other from the back, which in turn meant that the left side had to help, so that his arms and legs could meet, and as a result he now constantly has to lie on his stomach, as through the 1980s his hands and legs became more and more tightly entwined, and he folded in on himself like a flower that closes its petals at night and then over the years has ossified into this position; like a night-closed flower, he can’t get up and open the door. The man is just one great knot. It’s not so strange that he sometimes thinks life is a bit hard to bear, or worries what kind of attitude his situation may have instilled in his children, or that he sometimes looks forward to the day when someone will spread him as ash to the wind. Floating!
*Manual
If you want to change partners and you are a man, simply pull out your cock, push the man who is moving his cock in and out of the woman/man you have chosen aside, and then take his place. The woman/man who has been pushed aside has to roll over and push aside the woman/man who is kneeling in front of another man and take his/her place. If he or she meets with resistance, he or she must bite and pinch. This always has positive results.