My Struggle, Book 6

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  “I doubt that,” she said, and laughed.

  “Can I send you the manuscript today, then, and let you get back to me once you’ve read it, so I know if it’s OK or not?”

  “Yes, of course. I can’t wait. I’m a bit nervous now, though!”

  A silence ensued.

  “It was so nice hearing your voice again,” she said.

  “Same here,” I said. “Your laugh’s exactly the same, do you realize that?”

  “No,” she said, and laughed again.

  “I’ll send you the manuscript, then maybe we can talk again?”

  “Fine.”

  “Speak to you soon, then.”

  “Yes. Take care.”

  “You too.”

  * * *

  I hung up and lit a cigarette. The conversation had gone much better than I had feared. And yet I was thrown off balance. I had gone into something I couldn’t control. She had said she remembered that time very well. I didn’t. Or rather, I remembered a few episodes very well. Others I recalled only faintly, shaping them in my writing, inventing dialogues, for example, which, no matter how likely they might have been, certainly weren’t accurate. How was she going to feel when she read them? After all, she had been there herself.

  I stubbed the cigarette out and went inside, into the children’s room, and paused for a moment. John lay curled up on his belly, and had kicked off his duvet as usual. Vanja was lying on her back, spread-eagled, her arms above her head in a V, like a snow angel. Heidi was on her side, her head resting on her upper arm. There was something dark on her cheek and under her nose. I put the light on.

  Her face was covered in blood, smeared across her lower cheeks and chin, the pillow was dark red. My heart began to pound, as if suddenly I had found myself on the edge of a precipice. I went to the bathroom and quickly wet a facecloth with hot water, then went back and began to wipe her face. She opened her eyes and looked at me.

  “You’ve had a nosebleed,” I said softly. “It’s all right. Just lie still and let me wash it clean.”

  When I had finished, I took the soiled pillow and gave her one from our room instead. She laid her head on it and closed her eyes, and I smoothed my hand up and down her back a couple of times before turning the light off and leaving the room, first to rinse the facecloth in the bathroom, wringing it out and draping it over the radiator, then going back out onto the balcony, where I pressed Linda’s number on my phone. It rang for a while at the other end, and when eventually she answered, she sounded like she had been asleep.

  “Hi, it’s Karl Ove,” I said. “Did I wake you up?”

  “Yes, I must have dropped off.”

  “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

  “That’s all right. How are things at home?”

  “Fine. They’re all fast asleep. Nothing much happening here otherwise. We were at the park after nursery, then they watched the children’s programs before bedtime. The place is a mess, that’s the only thing. I can deal with that tomorrow, though.”

  “You’re so good.”

  “I don’t think good is the word,” I said. “Anyway, how are things at your end?”

  “Fine,” she said, and yawned.

  “Have you been at the beach?”

  “Yes, it was gorgeous.”

  “Geir’s coming tomorrow,” I said.

  “Already? I thought that wasn’t until Friday?”

  “He’s on his own with Njaal. I suppose he thought he might as well come here.”

  “You and Geir on your own with four kids. Who’d have thought?”

  “I know. It must be a sign. The end is nigh.”

  “It’ll be good for you, though.”

  “Yes, I’m sure it will. I was thinking we could get some prawns in when Christina comes on Friday. What do you think?”

  “Sounds good,” she said, and yawned again.

  “I’ll let you get back to sleep, then,” I said. “I think I’ll be off myself. I better, if John’s going to wake up at half past four again.”

  “Kiss them from me. I miss you all.”

  “I miss you. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  I went back in, dropped the phone into the charger, looked in on Heidi to make sure her nose wasn’t bleeding again, checked my e-mails, no new messages, surfed the Net for a bit, then sent a copy of the manuscript off to Hanne, made myself a glass of squash in the kitchen and took it with me out onto the balcony, smoked one last cigarette, brushed my teeth, and went to bed.

  * * *

  It was just after five when I woke up and saw John standing beside my bed with his pillow in his hand. I sat up. His nose had bled too. What was going on? A dribble of coagulated blood streaked his lip under each nostril, and there was some on his cheek as well. Worried, I went to the bathroom and wet another facecloth. Nosebleeds weren’t dangerous, they happened all the time, but two kids during the same night, could that be a coincidence? Wouldn’t it have to be the same cause? It was scary enough as it was, them bleeding, but to think it might be a symptom of something else was worse. A dryness in the air, perhaps, I thought to myself, giving his face a couple of wipes with the cloth while he tried to squirm free.

  “There we are,” I said. “Should we have some breakfast?”

  “Yes,” he said, and went off toward the kitchen in that totally placid way of his. His diaper drooped between his legs, I took it off, got a clean one, and put it on him while he stood waiting, like a racing car during a pit stop, it occurred to me. Then I lifted him into his chair, got the muesli out of the cupboard, and went to the fridge to get the blueberry yogurt, only to realize we’d run out.

  “There’s no more yogurt,” I said. “Do you want milk instead?”

  “No.”

  “What, then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  A door opened in the hall, it was Heidi. She came in and sat down on her chair.

  “Hi, Heidi,” I said.

  She didn’t answer, but from the little smile she tried to conceal by lowering her chin I could tell she was in a good mood just the same. We had breakfast, the sun streamed in, I woke Vanja up, brushed their hair and teeth, got them dressed, grabbed the trash bag from the kitchen, and then we all got in the elevator and went down together.

  When I came home again I threw a load of laundry into one of the machines in the basement, then phoned Geir Angell to see if they were on their way. They were, he reckoned they would be arriving around one or so.

  I checked my e-mails again. There was a new message from Gunnar. It was addressed to the publisher, with me copied in. The heading was “Libelous author and publisher.” He began by stating that he had already established that the events and descriptions he wanted removed from the book consisted of lies and half-truths, gross distortions and outrageous assertions, and were moreover of such nature as to unquestionably be in breach of Chapter 23 of the criminal code, concerning defamation. He had witnesses, he wrote. His wife had kept a diary that could be presented as evidence in court. Their children could take the stand. Furthermore, there were any number of people who, in a professional capacity, had been in regular contact with his mother during the time laid out in the novel. There were health visitors, there were home helpers, and neighbors and friends as well. All would be able to testify that what I had written in my book was false. He gave an example. The novel said that Dad had moved back home to Grandma’s two years before he died, and I had described in detail the wretched conditions in which they had lived. None of what I had written was true. It was pure fabrication. Dad had not been living in Kristiansand. He had been living in Moss at the time. According to Gunnar’s version, his life there had been nothing but normal. He had an apartment, he had a car, he had his job teaching at the gymnas, he had even been in a relationship. He had only stayed with his mother in Kristiansand the last three months, that spring and summer. And there he had died of a heart attack, Gunnar wrote, making it sound like it had happened under quite ordinary, un
exceptional circumstances. My account was therefore incorrect, and twisted to meet my own ends. I was making myself out to be a hero who came and cleared up the miserable mess my father had made. Only there was no mess, Gunnar claimed. He had gone to the house shortly after the ambulance had been there and his brother’s body had been removed from the chair in which he had died. All that day, and the one after that, he had stayed there in order to help and be with his mother. During that time he had quite naturally cleaned the place up where it was most urgent. What I had written, that the house had been littered with bottles from the front door all the way up the staircase, was utter nonsense. It simply was not true. By the time Yngve and I turned up a couple of days later, he had already taken care of most of what needed doing, all that remained for us to do was to help with a few items that were too heavy for him to lift on his own. The only room he hadn’t touched was our father’s bedroom, where his clothes and personal items were, having naturally considered it right not to interfere with them, since he was our father.

  After that Yngve and I had been over to their house for dinner with Grandma, he wrote, and it was strange because I couldn’t remember that at all. The work I had put in at Grandma’s he reduced to nothing. It was his wife who had done the bulk of the cleaning up, changed the curtains, helped Grandma in the bath. I, the writer with his head in the clouds, had merely swanned about, bucket in hand, incapable of making a difference, such were the abilities I lacked, something that was attributed to my mother, who had never had a clue about even the basics of keeping a house clean. Yngve had hardly been there at all, having made himself scarce after a single day. And then I had the audacity not only to present things as if I had straightened the place up on my own, but also to portray his and my own father’s mother as a geriatric alcoholic. But Gunnar knew why: once, when I was still at the gymnas in Kristiansand, she had caught me stealing red-handed. I had stolen money from her, he wrote, had been caught, and had resented her ever since for that reason. Grandma had also expressed concern to my mother over my wayward behavior, I spent too much money, and took drugs, so her worries were hardly without foundation, but how had my mother reacted? Rightly, she had been angry. But with whom? My father, for having left us.

  Then he turned to other faults in the manuscript. I had never had a great-grandmother on my father’s side who lived to be over a hundred and died falling down a staircase, it was pure invention. My father had never had a cousin who won a beauty competition. I wrote that we used to hire a certain function hall for family occasions, the Elevine Rooms, but that was nonsense, and had never been the case. As for my grandfather and his brothers, they had been the best of friends all their lives, and had never, as I had written, fallen out and stopped speaking to each other. Grandma had never stolen money from her employer, the true story was different altogether, and in fact rather funny. Gunnar himself was another victim of my mendacity; he had never said we could take the money in the envelope under the bed and not declare it to the tax authorities, as I was claiming.

  At the end of his lengthy exposition he turned to the love and care he and his wife had given his parents in the autumn of their years, making it possible for them to stay on in their own home and enjoy a relatively large degree of comfort. This was a fact completely subverted in my novel, inasmuch as anyone reading my account on its own would think he had not been fond of his mother at all and had neglected her entirely. Nothing could be further from the truth. To anyone who knew how much they had put into that home, how cozy and pleasant their times together there had been, my description of the situation was immediately fallacious. But then that was me through and through, so I understood, because in the next sentence he was warning the publisher against me and my deceitful nature, manifested in the way I sat, hunched forward, and the way I held my head, always with my face turned away from whomever I was talking to, with a cheerless, scowling expression, eyes full of guilt and brooding speculation. They should not allow themselves to be fooled. What I stood for was not goodness and truth, despite the impression I tried to give, what I stood for was in fact the opposite. I was a notorious liar, I was a quisling, I was selling my grandparents and my father for blood money in a quest for fame, to which end I would shun no means, however shabby. If the publisher did not halt this project he would take legal action. In order to avoid such a step, he wished to put forward a proposal. I had written so lavishly about angels in my previous novel, as my uncle Kjartan had about crows. The publisher ought therefore to suggest to me that I write a book about devils. They were on a level with which I was familiar. And in that I could make use of the literary talent I had inherited from my father.

  * * *

  In Gunnar’s eyes everything was different. Together with his wife and children he had infused the final years of my grandparents’ lives with meaning. They had helped them out in practical matters, but also been on hand socially, visiting them one or more times a week, taking them out to the cabin, taking them to visit Grandad’s brother, spending Christmas with them, Gunnar and Grandma laughing and joking as always. A totally normal, well-functioning family, no big secrets, no skeletons in the closet, no dark clouds on the horizon. Apart from one, the fact that his brother was an alcoholic. Yet it didn’t affect his life too adversely, he still taught at the gymnas, had his girlfriend in Moss, and was an altogether excellent and well-liked teacher. He’d had his problems in life, notably with his first marriage, which had been cold and without love, as Gunnar saw it, and that coldness had left its mark on his children, who, once they grew up, gradually distanced themselves from their father, but also from their father’s family. The youngest, Karl Ove, was the worst, though Yngve too had drifted away. They lived in Bergen, in Vestland, where their mother’s family were from and still lived. But in Kristiansand things had been fine until Gunnar’s brother moved in with their mother. However, that was only for a very short time, eight weeks, and then he died in the living room, of a heart attack. Grandma had her home help and her nurse, Gunnar and his wife had been there for her too, always on hand, and although Dad drank a bit, it hadn’t stopped him being able to drive Grandma over to his other brother at Hvaler the summer before he died, and at the same time he had even been busy selling his place in Moss. He was fine, and she was fine too, they both were, but of course it had been a shock to her when her son had died. The place had been a bit untidy, there were a few bottles lying around, but that was only to be expected when a person had a drinking problem, it was nothing alarming, not in the slightest, nothing that couldn’t be cleared away in a morning or two.

  Gunnar was the only son who had stayed behind in Kristiansand, he was the one who had looked after the family, made sure Grandma got her home help, and her nurse, no one else had been around. Gunnar had never hurt anyone, there wasn’t a blot on him or his behavior; on the contrary, he was cheerful, helpful, stable, a pillar of the community as well as his own family. A good son, a good brother, a good father, a good citizen.

  His brother’s sons come down for the funeral. He leaves things to them. They clean up a bit, take care of the service, then clear off again. Ten years pass. Then he gets sent a novel the youngest has written. He can’t believe his eyes. Everything that was so fine and decent has been turned into an inferno. He writes that the father had been living there for two years, that he sent the home help and the caregiver away and turned the respectable home into something more like a squat, making his mother out to be a drunken, senile old woman. Nothing of what Gunnar has spent so much of his adult life upholding is represented, everything is made out to be misery and squalor. How will it look to his friends and neighbors? How could Gunnar allow all this to happen to his mother and brother? The truth is it never happened. But how can he get that across? It says so in the novel. Is the author a liar? Apparently, yes. So then he’s faced with two issues: why is the author lying, and how can Gunnar stop his lies from getting out? The author is lying because his mother, that ice-cold, egotistical woman, has brainwashed him,
made him look negatively on everything to do with his father’s family, and because when he was young and took drugs his grandmother had rejected him, something he had never forgotten. When his father and grandmother died he decided to seek revenge, with all the means at his disposal. He hated his grandmother, he hated his father, and at the same time he was intelligent enough to express his hatred in the form of a book and make money from it. Moreover, he had the audacity to play the hero, making out that he had cleaned up after his father, whereas the true story was that there had been hardly any cleaning up to do, and what little there was had been taken care of by Gunnar himself. He had then tricked the publisher into taking on this series of lies, this hateful project, which they had done only because they had no way of knowing the truth. They had trusted the author and bought his story without reservation. In order to stop the book, the publisher therefore had to be made aware of the truth. So he wrote to them, and to the author’s mother and brother, but not to the author himself, his deceit being of such proportions he no longer wished to have anything to do with him, he never wanted to see him again for having deliberately twisted the truth in order to destroy his family. But there was another reason too: along with the manuscript the author had sent a letter explaining why he had written what he had written, and from that letter it was obvious he had no idea what he was doing. And since this was the case, Gunnar was compelled to target the person who knew better, the person who throughout all those years had distorted the author’s outlook on reality to such an extent that he no longer knew what was real and what was a figment of his imagination. He was a Judas, a quisling, but he was steered by his own mother. Gunnar had seen the origins of her coldness himself, her mother, the author’s maternal grandmother, had appeared almost autistic that summer he had visited them when he was twelve years old, she had clearly been ridden with inferiority complexes there in that peasant plot beneath the fells. The woman’s son, the brother of the author’s mother, had lost his senses and been committed to the madhouse on more than one occasion. He wrote poetry, his last collection had been about crows. This environment, of raving lunacy and insensitivity, with all its failing mental health, autism, crows, and emotional dispassion, was what the author had inherited and made his own, it was from this premise that he had written about his father, a good man at heart who perhaps in frustration at the life into which he had been tricked, with the cold woman from Vestland, had not always treated his sons the way a father ought, as Gunnar had treated his own sons, but never improperly and certainly not in any way that could warrant the picture the author had drawn of his father. He saw things through his mother’s eyes, but didn’t realize it.