My Struggle, Book 6

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  It was fantastic.

  I inhaled, put my feet up on the railing and stared out. Lightning lit up the sky in different places, now to the south, now to the north.

  Fantastic.

  Next to me the door opened. Geir put his head around.

  “How about a beer?”

  “That wouldn’t be bad,” I said. “Just the one, though.”

  “If I meant two, I’d have said so,” he replied, closing the door again. I got up and went inside after him.

  “Just need to call Linda first,” I said.

  He nodded as he opened the fridge door. I went out to the mirror in the hall, picked up the phone from its charger on the table underneath, pressed her number, and stepped over to look in on the children. Vanja was lying on her side and looked up at me.

  “Who are you calling?” she asked.

  “Aren’t you asleep yet?” I said.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “Is it the thunder?” I said, and at the same time Linda’s voice came on the other end.

  “Hi!” she said.

  “Hi,” I said. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine. How’s everything at home?”

  “Fine,” I said, going into the bedroom. “The kids are, anyway. Heidi and Vanja have been playing with Njaal.”

  “That’s good,” she said.

  “It’s thundering like crazy here,” I said. “The whole sky’s lit up with lightning.”

  “How exciting,” she said. “Are you and Geir all right?”

  “Yes, I think so. We were out at the cabin. Now we’ve just been in all evening. Gave the kids a bath. Heidi and John are asleep. Vanja’s awake. They’re missing you.”

  “I’m missing them too!”

  “You’ll be home tomorrow, though,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  There was a silence. I bunched the duvet up against the wall, then lay down with it under my back for support. Thunder cracked again, closer now.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “What was it?”

  “Thunder. Åska, as the kids say. When I first came to Sweden I thought it meant ash, like from a volcano erupting. Which is a whole lot more dramatic, I suppose.”

  She laughed.

  “I miss you,” I said.

  “Honestly?”

  “Yes. But you’re coming home tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” she said. “How’s it going with Geir, anyway? What are you doing?

  Sitting around talking?”

  “Basically.”

  “What about?”

  “All sorts. My uncle, mostly.”

  “Any more e-mails?”

  “Yes. A long one. He’s threatening to take me to court. He says he can prove I’m lying. I don’t really know what to do about it. I have no idea whether he’s right or not. If I’ve exaggerated things, I mean.”

  “But it’s a novel, Karl Ove.”

  “Yes, but the whole point is it’s meant to be true.”

  “Who says you have to have seen things the same way?”

  “That’s not the issue. It’s the facts that matter. But it goes a lot deeper than that. It doesn’t make sense otherwise. It feels like I’ve gone to hell. I can’t explain it. It’s just hell. And then I start getting scared about all the other people I’ve written about. You, for instance.”

  “There’s no need to worry about me. You’ve nothing to fear there.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do. At least, I think I know pretty much what you think about me, and about us. Not everything, of course, and not in detail, but more or less.”

  “What if it’s worse?”

  “I can deal with it. As long as it’s true.”

  “I hope you’re right. But there’s your mother as well.”

  “She’ll be fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. She’ll cope. I know she will.”

  I got up and opened the balcony door, leaving it slightly ajar. Fresh, cool air tumbled into the room. The rain was beating down, pelting against the wooden decking.

  “Are you outside now?”

  “No, just at the door in the bedroom. How’s the weather where you are?”

  “Nice. Blue skies. We’ve been swimming all day. I’ve been lying in the shade reading.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “But I miss you all.”

  “It’s funny,” I said, “but when you’re not here they always seem to behave a bit better. I mean, they don’t pester in the same way, or fight like they usually do. At the same time, they’re not quite as much at ease. I’m sure of it. They stick it out with me, in a way, they know what rules apply and abide by them, but what you have is what they miss. It doesn’t matter how nice and amenable I am, or how strict and distant. It’s not the same kind of intimacy.”

  “Is it so bad?”

  “No. It’s strange, that’s all. They hold something back. Not John, of course, but the girls do. It’s my role, and I think it has to be like that, but I get something different back from them than what you do. Something less.”

  “Sometimes I wish they were like that with me. They’re all over me when we’re together. It’s like they have to be right up close all the time. Pestering and going on. You can actually sit and read the paper when you’re with them. I can’t do that. They crawl all over me if I try.”

  “You need to set a limit.”

  “When I’m on a high, it’s fine. When I’m down, it can be unbearable.”

  “I know. I live here too.”

  “Anyway, let’s not talk about it. Are they asleep now?”

  “Yes. I said before. Apart from Vanja.”

  “That’s right, you did.”

  “Do you want a word with her?”

  “No, not when she needs to go to sleep.”

  “What time will you be back tomorrow, anyway?”

  “Sometime in the afternoon. Three or four-ish, I think.”

  “Christina will be here by then. I was thinking prawns. Is that all right? And white wine?”

  “Yes, fine.”

  “See you tomorrow, then.”

  “Yes, see you tomorrow. I love you.”

  “Love you,” I said, then hung up, closed the balcony door, and sank back onto the bed with the phone still in my hand.

  All I wanted now was to be in the midst of my family, to live my life there, and so strong was that desire that it filled me with impatience, as if it would soon be too late.

  I got up again, dropped the phone back in the charger in the hall, went to the bathroom and took a leak, washed my hands, discovered there was no towel on the hook next to the sink, went back into the bedroom and found one in the knee-high pile of clean washing beside the bed, dried my hands on it, and hung it up, before going back out onto the balcony, where Geir had sat down in my chair, and for a few seconds I stood there staring at him, nonplussed.

  “Anything the matter?” he asked. “Your beer’s on the table.”

  “No, nothing’s the matter,” I said, and sat down on the other chair. I was so attached to habit that everything seemed wrong from there. Only by an effort of will was I able to remain seated. It was no big thing, and yet something inside me had to be held down in order for me to stay put.

  Lightning flashed in the sky. I counted the seconds until the thunder followed. It wasn’t far off.

  The sound that came was like a rockfall, an irregular, tumultuous crash that made me look up into the sky as if it could be seen – it was impossible for the instincts to comprehend that such a noise wasn’t from something material, but arose on its own.

  “Cheerful as ever,” said Geir.

  “Are you criticizing me too now?” I responded.

  He laughed.

  “No, that’s right, I forgot. I came all this way to comfort you and cheer you up, didn’t I?”

  “You make me sound like a seven-year-old.”

  “It would
n’t be far off. I’ve never seen you so out of yourself. You’re in shreds, man. And all because your uncle’s angry at you. It’s beyond me. I’ve never cared one way or another if anyone wanted to be angry at me. That’s up to them. You’re taking it pretty badly, I must say.”

  “It’s not just that long nose of yours that makes you look like an elephant. It’s the thick hide you’ve got as well.”

  He laughed. I lit a smoke. It helped, him being there.

  “In the nineties there was some trouble with elephants in South Africa,” I said. “Whether there were too many of them or whatever, I don’t know, but anyway the authorities set up this program. They shot all the adult elephants, captured the young ones, and moved them to a different part of the country. Those elephants are adult now. And they’re deeply traumatized. They’re aggressive, hostile to humans, and antisocial. They’ve got all the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. The point is they’re sensitive. They saw their parents killed, and elephants always react when one of the herd dies, they become beside themselves with grief, circling the place where the dead elephant lies or lay for days on end. They’re very social animals. So with seeing what happened and then being moved to a different area, the young elephants freaked out. They’re not well. They’re angry and destructive.”

  “So what are you trying to say? That I’m sensitive even though I’m thick-skinned, or that a traumatic childhood will always leave its mark, whether you’re an elephant or a Tromøy goat?”

  “Neither. It just came to mind, that’s all. It made an impression on me. And I thought it might interest you, having written about PTSD and all.”

  “It’s a bit gushy for my taste. And I’m not that sure whether elephants suffering from it too adds or subtracts.”

  “Adds. It becomes universal.”

  “It limits our scope as well though, doesn’t it? If elephants can be traumatized, then trees can too. There they are, all depressed in the forest after that nice little fellow alongside got chopped down on Christmas Eve. On the other hand, what’s to say we can’t just care less? As Nietzsche says, empathy merely increases the amount of suffering in the world. Instead of just one, there’s two.”

  “He was a hard case. But all told probably the nineteenth century’s most sensitive man.”

  I took a swig of the watery beer. The can was cold against the skin of my fingers. Its metal yielded with a snap when I tightened my grip. I put it down on the table, lit another cigarette with the stub of the first, leaned back in the chair, and let out a sigh.

  “Another one of your east-European sighs,” said Geir.

  “I got an e-mail from Jan Vidar,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “He had no issues about being in the book.”

  “I never thought he would.”

  “No. It made me feel happy.”

  “But it doesn’t help?”

  “Of course it helps. It doesn’t change anything for Gunnar, not by a long shot. But at least he didn’t say anything about being unreliable. Neither did Yngve actually, come to think of it.”

  “That’s not what it’s about, you can see that, surely? He just doesn’t want you writing about your dad, period. He must have had it in for you for years. You and your mom. The way he made out in that one e-mail that it was like a sociological demonstration of the sum conflicts between town and country, urban and agrarian, bourgeoisie and peasantry, rich and poor. The Hatløys unworthy of the Knausgaards. Ha ha ha! Who ever heard of Hatløy and Knausgaard? Who knew there was any difference? It’s Olsen and Fredriksen. Only not for Olsen, because Olsen’s Olsen, and Fredriksen’s something else altogether!”

  “That’s just it. Every family has its own story, and even if everyone else has too, it’s still theirs. What I’ve done is make ours public. Now everyone’s going to be able to read about it, and it won’t be just the family’s anymore then. I’m giving it all away. And it’s not mine to give. That’s the crux, I suppose.”

  “It is. But it’s hardly against the law, is it?”

  “Legally, you mean?”

  “What else?”

  “I don’t know. Libel is, but then they’ve got to prove that what’s written is incorrect. That’s what Gunnar says he can do. If he can, and the court upholds that, I’ll be found guilty. Otherwise it’s all down to invasion of privacy, as far as I understand it. But privacy can be invaded even if what’s written is true. Then it would have to be weighed up against freedom of speech and so-called artistic expression. Dad and Grandma are dead too. That’s probably a part of it as well. In which case he’s offended on behalf of the dead.”

  “Think of it. You’re calling witnesses. He’s calling witnesses. The whole damn book’s going to have to be read out loud. The proceedings are going to take weeks. The papers will be writing about it every day. You’ll become a millionaire out of this, Karl Ove. The book’s going to be selling like hotcakes.”

  “How come what I see as absolute hell on earth, the worst thing imaginable, can sound so appealing when you talk about it?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Maybe it’s my healthy, unsentimental outlook on life?”

  “But what if he really can demonstrate that what I’ve written isn’t true? What if I really am found guilty?”

  “All the better! Everyone wants to read a book full of lies about real people!”

  “Come on, be serious for a minute. It is actually serious.”

  “Certainly! But OK. What do you want me to say? Bad boy! Boo-hoo! Bad man! Come on. We’ve got the legal aspect. That’s a gray zone. You might be found guilty, you might not. It’s all relative. Then we’ve got the human side. That’s where you’re suffering. Your uncle’s taken your father’s place, and you’re scared of him. It’s all to do with you, your childhood, and your psychological makeup, not the novel. You’ve got to keep the two things apart. I’d say your anxiety here is verging on the pathological. In a way, you’re a wreck. No offense! But that’s how I see it. You write about all this, and it’s got to come from somewhere. You look at your mom’s family. You look at your dad’s family. You try to understand. There’s nothing wrong with that. You shouldn’t believe there is. It’s not wrong. It may feel like hell now, but that’s a different matter. That’s basically how I look at it.”

  “You can look at it like that. But as soon as doing what you have a right to do starts to affect others, it all changes.”

  “You are going to publish this book, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then there’s nothing more to be said. You’ve made up your mind. Made your decision. It’s going to affect others. So what? Did you kill someone? Did you assault someone? Did you steal from someone? Did you write anything bad about them? No. You’ve written very kindly about Gunnar. You’ve got to try to see things in their actual proportions. Gunnar’s not your dad. You’re not a child.”

  “No.”

  “End of story. Comfort and support enough for one day. How about another beer?”

  “All right.”

  He got up and went past me, his face pale in the dim light of the storm. The raindrops were smaller now, they fell in curtains outside the balcony and over the city. To incur the wrath of another person was bad enough in itself, but nothing compared to my no longer knowing what had actually occurred. What was actually true. I couldn’t rely on myself and my own recollections, they were infected by the writing. I knew that from earlier, that writing about a recollection changed it, all of a sudden you no longer knew what belonged to the recollection and what belonged to the writing. I didn’t know what was true. In order to find out what was, I had to rely on external factors. Which was to say what others had seen and could recall.

  There was a tremendous crash as the sky cracked above my head.

  What the hell was that?

  I jumped to my feet and went inside, my heart beating like a frightened animal’s. I’d never heard thunder that loud in my life. The lightning must have struck right where we were
.

  Geir was at the window looking out. Njaal lay fast asleep on the bed by the wall.

  “Did you see that?” Geir said, astonished. “The hotel took a direct hit.”

  “No, I didn’t. But I heard it.”

  “Thunder and lightning at exactly the same moment.”

  “Daddy!” cried a voice from the children’s room. I went in. Vanja and Heidi were sitting up in their beds. Heidi was crying. John was asleep on his side, his mouth pressed open against his arm. His hair was damp with sweat.

  “I’m scared,” said Vanja.

  “Me too,” said Heidi.

  “It’s all right, nothing’s going to happen, little loves.”

  “I don’t want to sleep on my own,” said Vanja.

  “But Heidi and John are here,” I said.

  “It’s not the same,” she said. “I want to sleep with you.”

  “Me too,” said Heidi.

  I looked at them for a moment.

  “All right, then,” I said. “Come on.”

  Heidi held her arms out and I lifted her down from the bunk bed. They scuttled out into the hall. By the time I came after them into the bedroom they were already tucked under the duvet.

  “We don’t want to be on our own,” said Vanja.

  “Is it going to thunder again?” said Heidi.

  “It might,” I said. “But it’s not dangerous. And I’ll be coming to bed as well soon. OK? Do you think you’ll be all right on your own for a few minutes?”

  They nodded.

  “But the door has to be open!” said Vanja.

  “Of course,” I said. “Night night.”

  I went back out into the living room. It was empty. But the door onto the balcony was open, so I stepped outside.

  “Everything all right?” he asked from my chair.

  “I think so,” I said, sitting down in the other one. “But I think I’ll be off to bed in a minute. John’s probably going to be up at five. And if I don’t get my sleep, everything’s bound to go off the rails. But stay up and have a drink, by all means.”

  “Very generous of you,” he said.

  “The Elephant Man sat on his own a lot,” I said.