My Struggle, Book 6

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  “You like that wording, don’t you?” said Geir. He put on his awkward-looking aviator sunglasses and pulled slowly away across the dusty parking area toward the shady asphalt of the road at the top end.

  “What, the utopia part, you mean?”

  “That part, yes.”

  “But it’s what I think.”

  “I know you do. It’s that yearning of yours for the seventeenth century, only in another bottle.”

  “Maybe. But anyway, a dystopian novel with a main character who grew up here and who longs for Africa, and probably goes there at some point. When the narrative takes place he’s an old man living on an island in the Baltic.”

  “Let me guess. You went there on holiday? Slite, on Gotland, was that it?”

  “Thereabouts. It’s not much of a plot, but it’s a start.”

  “What are you going to call it?”

  “The Third Realm.”

  “Another Nazi title.”

  “I suppose, but it’s a good title.”

  “I’m sure it is. Didn’t I think of it?”

  “I don’t know. Did you?”

  “I’m pretty sure. But you can’t remember, can you?”

  We left the cabins, Geir halted at the roundabout until there was a gap, then drew slowly away, accelerating out of the curve. There was a bus pulled in at the bus stop, apart from that the road ahead was empty. It was half past three, still a while before the rush hour got going.

  “You’ve got a funny kind of memory. Someone will say something to you, or else you’ll read something, then you forget all about it until all of a sudden it pops up again while you’re writing, completely removed from its orginal context, as if you’d thought of it yourself.”

  “Isn’t that what they call plagiarism?” I said, feeling a warmth rise to my cheeks.

  He looked at me for a second.

  “No, it’s what’s called freedom. It’s because you’re made in such a way that you’re writing a novel, whereas I’m writing nonfiction. I’ve been destroyed by academia. It makes me check and double-check everything I do. I can’t write a sentence without adding a footnote with a reference. I’m tied down. You’re without bonds entirely.”

  “You’re reliable, I’m not.”

  “All right, no need to be harsh on yourself. What you’re doing works!”

  “I suppose you’re going to tell me it was you who came up with the My Struggle title as well?”

  “Well, now that you mention it.”

  “Seriously?”

  “It was in a sentence you said, my struggle, and I said there you go, there’s your title. That’s how it was.”

  “Shit.”

  “It’s how you work. Your head’s this simmering pot, everything goes into the soup.”

  We drove along Bellevuevägen, lined with low detached homes in light-colored brick. It looked like Denmark, the way a lot of things did in Malmö and Skåne. Geir stopped at a light by the Statoil station, Njaal kept shuffling back and forth in his seat like he was trying to take in as much as possible of what was going on outside. The light changed and Geir accelerated quickly, soon we were stuck behind a bus. There was a big advertising banner running under the rear window. It was for a local firm of real estate agents and showed four smiling women in dark suits that made them look a bit like airline hostesses. I’d seen the image lots of times before, it was all over the buses in the city, and the bus shelters too, so I’d already had time to consider it before it turned up again in front of us now.

  “See that photo there?” I said.

  “Yes, what about it?” said Geir.

  “I bet I know which one of those women you’d fancy,” I said. “And don’t deny it just to spite me if I’m right, OK?”

  “OK,” he said.

  “You’d go for the one on the right.”

  He laughed.

  “Correct,” he said. “But the only reason you got it right is because you like her too.”

  “No, mine’s second from the left. I’ve stared at that picture so many times.”

  “Straight up?”

  He laughed again.

  “It’s not often you surprise me. How did you know which one was mine?”

  “I know you. It was a no-brainer.”

  “Can’t say the same for you. I’d never have thought you’d pick her. For me there’s only one in it, the one on the right. It’s inconceivable anyone could think differently!”

  “Make a right here,” I said. Geir indicated and changed lanes, the bus heading straight on.

  “It’s like with those clogs,” he said. “Before you told me I was mad, the thought never even occurred to me it was anything but normal. To me it’s a completely logical, reasonable thing to do.”

  “You mean jumping up and down on the floor wearing clogs to get back at a downstairs neighbor?”

  “Not to get back at him. To resolve the conflict. To break his will. But apart from that, yes, to me that’s perfectly natural. I had no idea anyone could think otherwise.”

  “I thought you were a sociologist.”

  “I am. But I’m a human being too.”

  We passed the Kronprinsen, a high-rise housing project built in the sixties, which until the Hilton went up had been Malmö’s tallest building. The road was edged by the trees of the Slottsparken on our right, and we followed the increasing flow of cars, which glittered in the sunlight.

  Geir laughed.

  “You got me there. You mean you actually knew?”

  “Nothing odd about that, surely?”

  “Yes, there is. I didn’t know myself.”

  * * *

  After we’d parked the car, I rode up in the elevator with them and let them in, then went out again to get the children. John got off his trike as soon as he saw me and came running. The girls were in the sandpit next to the little playhouse, they had seen me but weren’t letting on. With John on my arm I went over to Karin and asked her how things had gone. Fine, she said, the older ones had been in the park before lunch, John had stayed behind. They were all in good cheer and it had been a lovely day.

  “John still hasn’t got any diapers, Karl Ove,” said Nadje, who was sitting on the bench just behind us.

  Oh fuck, I knew there was something I’d forgotten!

  “Sorry,” I said. “It slipped my mind completely. I can run over and get some now, if you want.”

  “No need. As long as he’s got some tomorrow, that’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll make sure of it. Sorry. Were you able to work around it?”

  “We borrowed a couple.”

  “OK, thanks, much appreciated. I completely forgot.”

  She smiled wearily, I smiled back and carried John over to the stroller so Vanja and Heidi could see it was time to go instead of just hearing me say so.

  “Time to go, girls!” I called out.

  There weren’t that many children there, a lot of them were still on holiday. Of all the parents, we used the nursery the most, at least so it seemed to me, but perhaps it was just because I felt so guilty about all the times ours were on their own here while I was writing. I pulled the stroller over to a chair in the sun and sat down.

  “Five minutes!” I called. “That’s all, OK?”

  Vanja looked across at me and nodded. I leaned back and gazed up at the sky, it was bright blue, the wispy elongated clouds that were so typical of summer floating like vaporous sheets in the distance. I felt the air on my face, a cool breeze sweeping over the rooftops, whirling through the yard, brushing all things, my body too, my sticky skin which shivered with pleasure at the unexpected, delicate chill. I felt the urge for a cigarette, sat up straight in the chair, and looked at John in his blue sun hat, the grime around his mouth, his unworried radiance as he sat there staring at two children who came biking past. Either he wanted something and would be tormented if he couldn’t get it, or else he wanted nothing and was simply himself, at ease with the world as it was.

  “Vanja and Heidi!” I
called out. “Come on, time to go!”

  “A bit longer!” Vanja shouted back.

  “We have visitors,” I said. “Njaal and Geir have come. We can’t keep them waiting much longer. Njaal’s looking forward to seeing you.”

  “Are they here now?” she asked, and looked at me inquisitively.

  I nodded.

  “They came a bit early. Come on, let’s go. You can get a banana on the way, if you want.”

  “An ice cream,” she said.

  “You and your ice cream,” I said, and gave her a stern look.

  “Can we?” she asked again with a cheeky smile.

  “Well, OK,” I said.

  “Heidi, we can have an ice cream!” she shouted out.

  I looked down at the ground, embarrassed that the other children should hear that mine were having ice cream. Or rather, embarrassed that the staff should hear me say so out loud for anyone to hear.

  “We’re getting an ice cream, Karin!” said Heidi, her hand already gripping the stroller.

  “How nice,” said Karin with a smile.

  “While the summer’s still here,” I said.

  “Enjoy it!” she replied.

  “Will do,” I said, pressing the door opener. “Vanja, do you want to run on and open the gate?”

  Like a wind she swept past me, pulled the handle down and heaved open the gate, three big steps back, her little body bent almost double as she pulled.

  “Well done!” I said. “Say goodbye to all your friends.”

  Vanja and Heidi ignored me completely, while John, who no one could see in his stroller, waved and shouted, “Hej då!”

  “We have visitors at home, Heidi and John,” I said as we strolled along the shady sidewalk. A gust of wind pressed Heidi’s skirt against her legs and held it there for a moment.

  “Do we?” she said. “Who?”

  “Njaal and Geir. Can you remember Njaal?”

  “A little.”

  “He’s one day younger than you.”

  “What?”

  “His birthday’s the day after yours.”

  We stopped at the crossing, then went over. John protested, he wanted to go on the other side. He twisted around in the stroller and glared at me full of rage and despair.

  “Do you want an ice cream too, John?”

  “Yes,” he said, and turned round again.

  When we got to the two yellow mailboxes outside Hemköp, I said: “Right, I want you to listen now. You can have your ice creams when we’ve paid for the shopping and not before. OK?”

  All three nodded and we went inside into the supermarket’s icy environment. Vanja and Heidi ran off, presumably to the ice creams, while John wriggled to get out of his stroller as fast as he could. I stopped and lifted him out, his feet hardly touched the ground before he was off after the girls. I snatched two packets of red sausages, the ones with the highest meat content, something I had suddenly and rather neurotically become obsessed with after someone at the nursery made me realize there were big differences from brand to brand, then dropped a bag of hot-dog buns into the basket along with a regular loaf, a bag of coffee, the dark-roast French blend I’d settled for after six months of experimentation and had since stuck to, a liter of milk, a liter of yogurt, a six-pack of beer, toilet paper, and a packet of four bars of soap, seeing as how we had visitors and they probably washed their hands more than we did, and finally three ice creams.

  John wanted to walk the rest of the way home, which meant I could put the shopping in the stroller.

  Had it got colder now?

  Yes, the temperature had dropped in the short time since I left the apartment.

  “I can see Malmö!” John shouted. Somehow he’d got it into his head it was our apartment that was called Malmö.

  Vanja looked at me and giggled.

  I smiled back at her.

  “Is there anyone on the balcony, John?” I asked him.

  “No-o-o,” he said.

  “There’s a young gutt waiting for us at home, did you know?”

  He looked up at me, perplexed.

  “Daddy means a pojke!” said Heidi. A boy!

  “Just det,” I said. “Jag måste tala svenska nu.” That’s right. I’ll have to speak Swedish now.

  “Pappa, inte,” said Vanja. Don’t, Daddy!

  “Are you ashamed of me?”

  “No, you’re just stupid.”

  “That’s true.”

  The light changed from red to green just as we got to the crossing. I reached my hand out, John took it, while the girls held on to either side of the stroller. On the opposite sidewalk I gave the keys to Vanja, who ran ahead and opened the door, holding it open for us so I could maneuver the stroller inside and pull it up the three steps after me, while Heidi and John stood heaving at the elevator door without it budging in the slightest.

  The laundry. I’d forgotten the laundry.

  I opened the elevator and pushed the stroller inside, tipping it onto two wheels to make room for us all. Vanja pressed the button for the sixth floor. Heidi, who had also wanted to press the button, started crying. Vanja mimicked her, Heidi lashed out. Vanja hit her back, so by the time I opened the door of the apartment I had two screaming kids on my hands, both howling for their mother. But as soon as Geir and Njaal came out of the living room they fell silent. The children stood and took stock of each other for a few seconds, the same way dogs do – what kind of children are you, they seemed to be thinking – before accepting the new situation and sliding off into their room, apart from John, who had plonked himself down on the floor in his blue hat and was trying to take his shoes off.

  “Sausages for dinner,” I said.

  “Great!” said Geir.

  I went past him into the kitchen, where I put the shopping down on the table and started putting it away.

  “I forgot the laundry downstairs,” I said. “Can you get the sausages going while I go down and get it?”

  “I’m good at sausages,” he said. “We ran a sausage business once in Uppsala, did I ever tell you? The Svea Sausage Company. Two bikes with a frying pan and a grill mounted on the front. We went all over town. They were painted the colors of ketchup and mustard, red and yellow. And there was a big metal sausage on the back. It’s the only decent job I’ve ever had, now that I think about it.”

  “Here are the sausages, then,” I said. “There’s a pan in the cupboard over there.”

  “Ossie-Pete,” did I ever mention him? He gave free sausages to any girl who showed him her tits. Lots did.”

  He laughed.

  “I think that was probably the first thing you told me when I arrived in Stockholm,” I said.

  “Good times. We used to sit there drinking until the bars closed and all the students came out, about one in the morning, then we’d light the paraffin lamp and start selling. Huge lines there’d be. It was all about grabbing the best spots before anyone else got there on Saturday nights. Like the square outside the Celsius House, you know, the guy with all the degrees. It’s at an angle to the street, because Uppsala burned down and nearly the whole town had to be rebuilt, but Celsius’s house wasn’t touched. I studied aesthetics there. It’s where I met Christina. She was taking photos of our sausage bikes. I’ll have to show you some time. Delicious sausages, they were.”

  “You never told me how much money you made out of that,” I said on my way into the hall.

  “Oh, you know, up and down, it depended,” he said from behind. “I can’t remember exactly. No, hang on a minute, there was a first of May when we made twenty thousand kronor. We’re talking back in the early nineties here. Twenty-four hours nonstop grilling sausages. We were so exhausted we couldn’t be bothered dividing all the takings up properly, it was like here’s a pile for you and here’s a pile for me.”

  “That’s a lot of money,” I said, stopping in front of John, who was still in a struggle with his shoes on the floor.

  “The most I earned at one go was at a Danish longbal
l tournament for political economists. They wanted a sausage stand. None of them actually bought any sausages, but they’d guaranteed me a minimum, two thousand an hour. And, of course, I still had all the sausages left to sell afterward. I tell you, though, we were the bottom of the barrel. I mean, this was Uppsala, with all its academic traditions, all the stiff-necked snobbery. A sausage vendor wasn’t exactly well respected.”

  “Do you want to come down into the basement with me, John?”

  He nodded.

  I put the shoe back on him that he’d managed to take off, then stepped into my own, while Geir stood leaning against the wall reminiscing about his sausage days.

  “We put the boiled sausages in the freezer, then heated them up again. Sometimes we could only sell them after it got dark, they were almost green. The students never knew whether they were puking from the alcohol or the sausages. Do you remember Cuba Cola?”

  “I do, yes,” I said, my hand on the door handle.

  “We used to have that. Everyone used to comment on it, I haven’t seen it since the seventies, but we hardly sold a bottle. Then we tried Pommac for a while. But who drinks Pommac with hot dogs? It was a disaster, of course. French mustard, we had that. No one wanted it. Too sophisticated, I suppose. Do you know the Swedish slang for a hot dog?”

  “No, tell me,” I said, pressing down on the handle and opening the door.

  “Raggarballe med svängdörr. Dick in a swingdoor. Ha ha ha. You wouldn’t believe it, would you? Arf, arf.”

  “If we’re not back in half an hour it’ll mean someone’s done us in for breaking the laundry-room rules,” I said.

  “We had our own little sausage logo on the front of the bikes as well,” he said. “Made of metal too.”