My Struggle, Book 6

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  Only a few weeks previously I had read a novel by Eyvind Johnson, Molnen över Metapontion – The Clouds over Metapontion – published in 1957. It was one of the purest works of modernism I had read, certainly from that part of modernism that had been interested in the classical age, such as Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, Hermann Broch’s The Death of Virgil, and James Joyce’s Ulysses, or, for that matter, Paal Brekke’s Roerne fra Itaka – The Oarsmen of Ithaca. Like all these works, Johnson’s opened up a space between the then of the ancient classics and the now of the moderns, though it was perhaps even more concerned than they were with the time that lay in between. The novel began in southern Italy just after the war, and what went on in it there at that time, which to a large extent revolved around a Swedish writer’s journey in the footsteps of a French archaeologist he had encountered in a German concentration camp, alternated with events that had taken place in the same landscape four hundred years before Christ. A landed estate, an estate owner, his slaves, one of whom escapes and gets caught up in a military invasion cutting deep into Asia, all described in the minutest detail. Particularly lucid and exciting were the author’s portrayals of the passage of such huge numbers of men through increasingly foreign land, from the coasts of the Mediterranean to as far as Babylon. But the most foreign thing about the book for me wasn’t the history of the ancient military campaign or the slave quarters, which were so far away in time that the reader couldn’t help but sense the author’s efforts to make them come alive, but rather the Italian village of 1947. The landscape is barren and without event, such occurrences as take place being small and almost indiscernible, and while I knew that another kind of writer, a Latin, say, like García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Cela or, why not, Cervantes, would have been able to bring forth the exact same landscape with a patent and natural intensity, the people who populated it quivering with love and longing in such a way that we would not have doubted that the place in which we found ourselves was the center of the world, Johnson’s very distance to what he describes, his remoteness to his characters, their work and their emotional lives, is crucial in respect to what perhaps was the focus of his efforts, the chasm of time that separates us from ancient history and the sense of meaninglessness that arises on that account. Nothing happens here, people are mere guests in a landscape that is like the seabed in an ocean of time. Occasionally, a tension occurs, for instance the war two years previously, whose truth, however, is no different, a fact that becomes apparent in the passages depicting the ancient military campaign, devoid of any suggestion of greatness, heroism, or historical momentousness, continually deconstructed into its individual parts, a creaking wheel of oak, dust kicked up by horses’ hooves, the individual’s dreams of riches, the individual’s denigration of defeat and flight. But this is a novel, a program. What isn’t a program is the depiction of postwar Italy, since it is affected to such a great extent by a mood that is already alien to us but to which the novel is proximate and conversant with, unlike Antiquity. When I read the book, the Italy of 1947 in fact felt more foreign to me than the Italy of the centuries before Christ, presumably because the latter was based on literature I knew, whereas the former was based on nothing other than life as it occurred at that time and which is barely to be found anywhere else than here. We are so endlessly far away from it, and yet our parents and grandparents were alive then. No era can surely have undergone such radical transformation as our own, the second half of the twentieth century has so little in common with the first, it seems as if they occurred in different worlds entirely.

  My eyes found the steps leading down to the Internet café. A new rush of anxiety surged inside me. For a month now I had been receiving the most abhorrent e-mails because of the novel I had written, and I knew there would be more, though not where they would be coming from. It was the same with the phone; every time it rang I froze. True, it had been that way ever since the night I had been called by a person demanding to speak to the rapist Karl Ove Knausgaard, but that was seven years ago and the alarm I had felt at the time had paled together with the recollection; with the book it all came back with renewed force, what I had written had to do with other people, their reactions were beyond my control, and what I had done to them, they could do to me, I knew that; everything I had ever done could be used against me. As long as it was private, as long as it stayed between them and me, I could handle it. But it was terrible, I was crippled with fear every time I checked my e-mail, every time the phone rang, so much so that I could hardly move, would sit paralyzed in a chair or lie paralyzed in bed for hours at a time, and yet I knew it would pass, sooner or later I would have battled my way through it and would be able to see things in their true proportions. But if it got out … If someone went to the papers … I knew I wouldn’t be able to cope.

  The light changed from red to green, I crossed over, and the wind blew my hair into my eyes; I swept it back, folding it behind my ear, a motion of the hand that I knew looked feminine but nevertheless had to be done, hurried over the road, descended the three steps that led down to the Internet café, pushed the door open, and went in. The place was almost completely dark inside apart from the glow of computer screens in a row along the walls, most of them taken up by youths absorbed in games. They shouted out to each other as they played, presumably it was the same game, nearly always soldiers on a mission into some hostile world, whether it was a city, a deserted factory area, a desert landscape, or a forest.

  The guy at the first station turned his head.

  “Tjena!” he said. “Where have you been all day, writer? We’ve been waiting for you!”

  “Hello,” I said. “Have you got a computer for me?”

  “Nineteen’s for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, then went and found number nineteen, pulled out the chair, and sat down.

  I opened the browser and typed in my WebMail address. During the few seconds it took for the page to open, I held my breath. Then the column of names appeared before my eyes, the unopened messages in bolder script, and I took them in at a single glance.

  Nothing bad.

  An inquiry from a TV program, one from a bookshop in a shopping center in Sørland, one from a bookshop in Oslo, and one from a folk high school in mid-Norway. I wrote to Silje at the publishers, who had passed the messages on to me, asking her to decline the invitations politely. She had also sent me a change in my itinery for the following day, Aftenposten had pulled out, and Bergens Tidende was sending a different journalist than originally announced, so my schedule now looked like this:

  9:00–9:45: NTB

  Gitte Johannesen

  At the publishing house

  9:45–10:20: Bergens Tidende

  Finn Bjørn Tønder, phone interview

  At the publishing house

  10:30–11:15: Fædrelandsvennen

  Tone Sandberg

  Etoile

  11:15–12:15: Morgenbladet

  Håkon Gundersen

  Etoile

  12:15–12:45: lunch

  12:45–13:30: Dagsavisen

  Gerd Elin Stava Sandve

  Etoile

  14:30–15:15: Sondagsavisen

  Gry Veiby

  Recording at NRK

  15:15–15:45: NRK Radiofront

  Siss Vik

  Recording at NRK

  The schedule was much the same as when my previous novel A Time for Everything had come out five years before. Lumping everything together meant I didn’t have to spend more than a single day on the media. Dagbladet and Dagens Næringsliv had interviewed me in Malmö a few days previously, Aftenposten had pulled out, VG wasn’t interested, so everything was covered.

  Originally, Bergens Tidende had been sending Siri Økland, and it was a shame she wouldn’t be coming, we had been literature students together in Bergen twenty years ago, and although we hadn’t known each other then we always said hello, and that, together with the fact that we were of the same generation, made me feel secure. If I felt insecure in a
n interview situation I hardly ever said anything at all, they had to drag the words out of me, it was never any good. Prior to my previous book coming out, Dagbladet interviewed me in Stockholm. I hadn’t talked to anyone about the book and felt uncertain as to what it was actually about and how good or bad it was, and added to that the photographer had been present during the entire interview, it had taken place at Saturnus, he said he knew Tore Renberg well and sat there staring at me with a half smile on his face that had me on edge the whole time, making me hear everything I said the way I thought it sounded to him, pure lunacy, Noah’s Ark and Cain and Abel, angels and the divine, so after a few minutes I shut up, muttering a simple yes or no in reply to her questions, my cheeks blushing madly if I did make some attempt at a reasoned response. All I could think about was whether I could ask her to send the photographer away so I could talk more freely, but I didn’t have the nerve, and there was not much else I could do.

  Before the interview got under way I’d leafed through Gombrowicz’s diaries; it was the fifth time I’d tried to get into them, the fifth time I’d read the first ten pages without getting any further, and that same afternoon I put the book away. But the woman interviewing me had noticed I had it with me and made a little aside of it. “Knausgaard reads Gombrowicz,” a caption said. It haunted me for years after. I was contacted several times by newspapers and journals wanting me to write something about the Polish author for their pages. I, who had read only the first ten pages of his diary, and none of his novels or plays, was now thought to be a Gombrowicz expert. The horror of this was compounded whenever I happened to run into Dag Solstad, since Solstad held Gombrowicz very much in esteem, he was one of his favorite writers, and because I hadn’t confessed to not having read him the first time he mentioned him to me I had to keep pretending to him that I was a Gombrowicz aficionado. Once, he came over and told me he had just attended a Gombrowicz seminar in Stockholm and had been expecting to see me there. Oh, but I’d had so much going on at the time, though obviously I would have loved to have gone. Had it been interesting? And so on.

  I closed the browser, got to my feet, and left a ten-kronor coin on the counter as I passed, pulled open the door, and went up the steps, out into the swell of twilight, which was pierced only by the headlights of dark, sleek cars and the gentle hum of their engines.

  * * *

  The children were all still awake when I got back. Pappa, Pappa, they shouted out as soon as they heard the door open. I took off my shoes, hung up my jacket, went to their room, and stood in the doorway.

  “Go to sleep,” I said.

  “But we can’t,” said Vanja, their spokesman in such cases.

  “It’s boring! Can’t we stay up just a little bit longer? Just a teeny-weeny bit?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s way past your bedtime.”

  Heidi, who had the top bunk, drew herself up onto her knees.

  “Kram,” she said. Cuddle.

  I went up to her and she wrapped her arms around me and pressed her cheek as hard as she could against mine.

  “Också kram!” said John. Me cuddle too.

  He was lying on his back in his crib, clutching his pillow in his hands. He dragged it around with him wherever he went and it was the first thing he asked for when he came home from the nursery. Pillow, want pillow!

  “You’ll have to stand up if you want a cuddle,” I said.

  He did as he was told. I kissed him on the ear and he giggled. He was the only one of them who was ticklish.

  “Vanja?” I said.

  “Only if we can stay up!” she said.

  “But it’s not for my sake!” I said. “It’s for yours!”

  “OK then,” she said, and leaned forward. I cuddled her, rubbing my hand up and down her delicate spine.

  “Little treasure,” I said. “Sleep time now, OK?”

  “OK. But don’t close the door!”

  “I won’t,” I said.

  She was slightly afraid of the dark, not much but enough for her to want some light when she went to sleep. Once, when we had been at Linda’s mother’s in the country, Vanja must have been about eighteen months old at the time, she had a nightmare. She cried, and when Linda asked what the matter was she said she had dreamed about the swimming pond. We were puzzled, but the explanation came a few months later. On a visit to a zoo we paused at a glass-fronted enclosure and looked in at a splendid monitor lizard. When Vanja laid eyes on it she recoiled and cried out in fright, Swimming pond! Swimming pond!

  Now she lay in bed gazing up at me.

  “Night night,” I said.

  “Night night,” she replied. “Daddy?”

  “What?”

  “Who’s tucking me in tomorrow?”

  “Don’t think about that now. Go to sleep.”

  Vanja preferred Linda to do everything, and for me to do as little as possible. For her, the height of joy was Linda tucking her in two nights in a row. That was just the way it was, I ranked second and always would, unless someone else came and took my place. But I didn’t mind, Linda was closer to them and it was as simple as that.

  I went into the living room where Linda, who was watching television, turned her head and looked up at me.

  “I forgot to pick up milk and bread,” I said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Aren’t they asleep yet?”

  “No.”

  “What are you going to do tonight?”

  “Pack a few things. Decide what to wear tomorrow. How about you?”

  “I don’t know really. I’m a bit tired. I think I might have an early night. In fact, that might not be such a bad idea, with you not being here tomorrow.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s only two days though. And your mother’s coming.”

  “I know, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s no bother.”

  I went into the bedroom and picked out two shirts, a couple of sweaters, some T-shirts, two pairs of pants and two suits, took the whole pile with me to the mirror in the hall and began trying things on. The children were giggling in their room, I started to get annoyed, went in, and turned the ceiling light on. They were all piled up together in Vanja’s bed. I took hold of John by a foot and an arm, snatched him up, and lifted him back into his bed, turned around and repeated the procedure with Heidi, all without a word and so firmly it verged on the unreasonable.

  “That’s it,” I said. “Now go to sleep. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Daddy,” said Vanja. “But they all crept up to me. I couldn’t stop them.”

  “All right,” I said, and turned off the light.

  “Mean Daddy!” said John.

  I said nothing, closed the door, and went back to trying on clothes. A pair of black Lindeberg jeans, a blue Ted Baker shirt, and the gray Ted Baker jacket. Then there were the shoes, a pair of Fiorentini+Baker, bought in Edinburgh a few weeks before like the rest of the gear. I’d been taking part in a literary festival there, Yngve and Asbjørn and a couple of their friends had traveled over to see me, but when it came down to it, just before I left the hotel to walk up to the venue, I asked if they’d mind not coming after all. They must have thought it a bit off, the festival was the whole excuse for their trip, but they didn’t seem to mind that much and traipsed off to get something to eat instead. Most likely they were just as afraid as me that I was going to make a fool of myself. At least, I’m sure Yngve was, he identified with me. Onstage I was interviewed together with a Dutch author about fifty years old, who dressed eccentrically, spoke perfect-sounding English, and had written a novel based on Dante’s The Divine Comedy. His name was Marcel Möring. He looked after me the whole time we were onstage, noticing how nervous and uneasy I was about the situation, and afterward as we sat down ready to sign books, each with a glass of wine in front of us, and he had a queue of people lined up at his table, all praising him for his perfect English and telling him how fascinating his book sounded, whereas my own table was completely ignored, he whispered politely that he had
started out in exactly the same way and that as a rule nothing ever took off abroad, but it didn’t matter, the important thing was this, the chance to gallivant around the world and meet new people. He gave me his card and vanished into the night with his young wife, while I sloped off to a pub to meet up with the other Norwegians. The next day Yngve did me the favor of going shopping with me, unlike me he always had a good eye when it came to clothes. If he gave the nod, I bought it; if he shook his head, I put it back.

  I turned and twisted uncomfortably this way and that in front of the mirror, the trousers didn’t quite go with the jacket, and wasn’t it a God-awful cliché anyway, authors in suits? How boring was that?

  I went back to the closet and stared at my other jackets.

  There was an anorak-like thing, which I thought was nice, but it probably wasn’t right for a book-launch interview.

  Suddenly there was a commotion going on in the children’s bedroom, one of them was crying, another screamed. I stormed in and turned the light on.

  “That’s enough! Back to bed, all of you!”

  It was John doing the crying, Heidi the screaming. Vanja was in the middle with her hands covering her ears. I snatched John from the huddle, this time more firmly than before, and plonked him down in his crib, where he sat clutching the bars like a prisoner in jail, howling and sobbing. John hit me! Heidi yelled. I picked her up and put her back in her own bed.

  “John’s still little. Besides, I’m sure there was a reason. Now go to sleep. You too, John,” I said, turning toward him.

  “Mean!” he replied between sobs. I went up and crouched down at his crib.

  “I’m not mean at all,” I said. “But you’re going to sleep. I won’t have you wandering around anymore. You can see what it leads to, you end up hurting yourself. Now lie down.”