My Struggle, Book 6

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  She said nothing when I sat down. She gazed across the rooftops, one arm tucked into her body as though embracing herself or trying to hold herself in position, the other pointing straight ahead with a cigarette between her fingers curling smoke.

  “How are you?” I said.

  “Are you still going to the cabin tomorrow?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “This is no good,” she said. “Don’t you understand? I can’t manage.”

  “Listen,” I said. “I have three weeks to finish the novel. That’s very little time. I can’t, by which I mean, I cannot, waste two more days.”

  “But I’m scared, Karl Ove,” she said, looking at me. “I can’t be with them on my own. I don’t know what might happen. I can’t do this. It’s dangerous.”

  “It’s just something inside you,” I said. “Everything’s fine. Everything’s as it was before. The darkness is inside you. But we can’t run our lives according to that. And I have to write.”

  “Don’t go,” she said. “Please. Don’t go.”

  I didn’t say anything. I could feel myself getting angry.

  After a while, when I looked at her again, I saw tears running down her cheeks.

  “Why are you crying?” I said.

  “I’m so frightened,” she said.

  “There’s nothing to be frightened of,” I said.

  “Sometimes when I’ve been on a high I’ve been completely out of control. I haven’t known where the children were. Vanja was at a friend’s house. Heidi at another friend’s. John was asleep in bed. They could’ve been anywhere for all I knew. Do you understand?”

  “That was a real high, yes. But everything was OK. Nothing happened. You dealt with it magnificently.”

  “And all the things I buy.”

  She sobbed.

  “Come on, Linda,” I said. “Pull yourself together now. We’re adults. We can’t stop working because we’re sad. I’m going tomorrow, you’re here with the children over the weekend, and then Ingrid and Sissel are here next week. You can let them take over. Two days. You can manage that. I have to finish. You’ll manage fine with the children. I know you will.”

  “Not now though,” Linda cried. “Not now.”

  “Yes, you will,” I said. “You’re strong, it’ll be fine. I can deal with everything, so you can too. It’s just that you’ve got it into your head that you can’t. You give up. And that’s no good.”

  She looked at me, despair in her eyes.

  “You have to,” I said. “Because I’m going anyway. And both your mother and mine are coming to help.”

  “Not tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll be on my own with them.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “And you’ll manage fine. You just have to want to. And when I’ve finished we’ll go to Corsica. It’ll be great. But first of all I need to finish the novel.”

  I stubbed out my cigarette and went in. She stayed outside. I pulled out the big suitcase, packed my laptop, the keyboard, the headset, a pile of CDs, a handful of books, and some clothes. While I was doing that I heard the balcony door open and close. Linda stood in front of me.

  “Don’t leave me alone,” she said.

  I peered up at her and looked down again, at the zipper I was pulling on the side of the case, holding down the top with one knee.

  “I have to,” I said. “I have no choice.”

  She walked past me into the bedroom. I put the case in the hall and sat down on the sofa and zapped through the TV channels for an hour or so. When I went to bed she was still awake, lying perfectly still in bed and staring at the ceiling. I undressed and lay down beside her.

  “You’ll be fine,” I said. “But I can’t stay here. I’ve done it too often. And now I have the deadline hanging over me.”

  “OK,” she said.

  “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  “Sleep well.”

  “Sleep well.”

  * * *

  I woke up once in the night, she was awake, staring at the ceiling, as she had been when I came to bed. I turned over and fell asleep again. The next time I woke it was morning. Linda was looking at me. When our gazes met her mouth opened and closed as if gasping for air. Her eyes were shiny with tears.

  “You can’t go,” she said.

  “No, I suppose I can’t,” I said, and sat up, put my feet into my jeans and pulled them on. “But the moment Ingrid enters the apartment I’m off. Just so that you know.”

  I closed the door hard behind me and went into the kitchen. Strangely enough, the children were still asleep. I got the newspapers from the front door, put the coffee machine on, and ate two slices of bread as I read the culture pages first, then the sports section. Outside it was raining, cold spring rain, it was pouring down. The children got up in the usual sequence, first John, then Heidi, last of all Vanja.

  “Where’s Mommy?” she said.

  “She’s having a rest today,” I said. “She’s not feeling herself.”

  “Me too,” Vanja said. “I want to rest today too.”

  “Nonsense,” I said. “She needs some peace and quiet. Why don’t we watch some TV? OK?”

  “OK,” she said, and joined the other two. They sat on the sofa watching TV all morning, they did that every Saturday. I closed the door to the hall, where the bedroom was, and told them not to go in. They were used to that, but if I didn’t keep my ears pricked they would sneak in. Sometimes I felt like the pastor in Fanny and Alexander, the evil man who keeps the children away from their mother.

  At ten we heard the voice of the preacher who stood in the square below every Saturday morning with a microphone in his hand. I opened the balcony door and looked out. The bare Christmas tree lay beside the door, with yellow needles scattered beneath it. All the flowers hanging in boxes under the balustrade were withered, as were those in the pots by the wall. The table and chairs, which had been left outside for three successive winters, were now gray and rotting. Some empty plastic bags, two big and two small deck chairs leaning against the wall, faded. A plant pole had blown down during a winter storm and other bits of debris had collected there.

  I decided to clean it up, throw everything away and then buy some new flowers and perhaps a table and a couple of chairs. Partly because it was needed and partly because I wanted to show Linda how easy it was to occupy the children and do something constructive at the same time. The flaw was in her, not the world.

  “All right, on with your boots and rain jackets!” I said.

  “Why?” Heidi asked.

  “Where are we going?” Vanja asked.

  Only little John was up for some adventure, and he ran into the hall to wait for me to come and help him.

  “We’re going to buy some flowers,” I said.

  “Boring,” said Vanja.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But we’re going anyway.”

  “Is Mommy coming?” Vanja asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Don’t want to go,” Heidi said.

  “I want to see Mommy,” Vanja said.

  “Oh, come on, poppets. I’m in charge. And I say, Get your gear on.”

  “No one is in charge of anyone,” Vanja said.

  Where did they get that from?

  I took the remote and switched off the TV. Their furious little faces glared at me.

  “We’ll get some Saturday sweets too,” I said.

  “OK,” Vanja said.

  “OK,” Heidi said.

  A quarter of an hour later we were walking down the pedestrian street in the rain, Vanja in her blue rain gear, Heidi in her purple outfit, John sitting in the stroller like a frog in his green coveralls.

  Outside the flower shop there was a metal table with two chairs, I was reminded of “wrought iron,” a term I was acquainted with only on a literary plane, a bit like “pockmarked,” which I didn’t fully understand either. They were meant to have a nineteenth-century feel about them, and were probably a bit kitschy, but I liked the
m anyway and bought them. I also bought six green plants. I balanced the table on the handle of John’s stroller, carried one chair and some bags in each hand, and nudged the stroller forward with first one hand, then the other, while the two girls trudged beside me in their rubber boots. When they realized we were heading for the front entrance of our block, they protested.

  “What about the sweets?” Vanja shouted.

  “But we can’t go into a shop with all this!” I said.

  “You should’ve thought about that before,” she said.

  “We’ll drop it off and then go out again. OK?”

  She nodded. I carried the table and the chairs onto the balcony while they waited in the hall, but when I returned they weren’t there. Wet footprints led into the bedroom. I followed, they were standing around Linda as she lay looking up at them. She said something, but her voice didn’t carry. She seemed barely able to talk.

  Her face was expressionless.

  “Now you come with me,” I said. “Right now.”

  Vanja and Heidi did as I said, but John fell onto the bed. I grabbed his jacket by the collar, carried him into the hall dangling from my fist and put him down hard in front of the elevator. He laughed and looked up at me.

  “Again, Daddy.”

  I smiled at him.

  * * *

  In the cheap furniture shop down from the florist’s I found a white globe ceiling light that would fit the bill, and then we went to the mall in Triangeln, where there was a kiosk with a good selection of candy. After they had picked and mixed I bought them a chocolate bun in the café there while I ordered a coffee for me.

  I had never seen Linda like that before. It was as if she were in a deep well and had to use all her strength to come to the surface, where the children were. There had been barely any life in her eyes.

  Hmm.

  I glanced across at Paparazzi, a little clothes shop which occasionally had nice stuff, Tiger and Boss suits, a Danish label whose name I never remembered, but I had bought some of their scarves and they had a good line of shirts.

  “Could you sit here quietly for a moment?”

  They nodded.

  “I’m just going to that shop.”

  I got up and walked over. From the window I could see them, legs dangling from their chairs. I looked at the belts, chose a light brown one and flipped through a pile of black jeans, found my size, placed the belt and the jeans on the counter.

  “You can try them on if you like,” said the assistant, a woman in her fifties.

  “I don’t have time,” I said. “My kids are over there.”

  When I nodded toward the café I saw John steaming toward me. I hurried out, caught him, and carried him into the shop in my arms.

  “Stand here,” I said. “I just have to pay.”

  I put my card in the reader, tapped in the code, she put the receipt in my bag with the trousers and the belt, and passed it to me.

  “We have to do some shopping too,” I told the girls when we came out.

  “But I don’t want to,” Vanja said.

  “I want to go home to Mommy,” Heidi said.

  “But we’ve got to, you know that. Come on. You can choose a movie each on the way.”

  There was a video and music shop at the other end of the mall. They ran over to the children’s section as I flipped through some rows of CDs. I bought a Thåström collection, the first Järvinen record, and on a whim a Swedish band called the Radio Dept. and a Swede called Christian Kjellvander. The children came back with their movies, I paid, we crossed the street and went into Hemköp, I bought some pizzas for lunch, and bread, milk, and sandwich fillings for the following day. On our way home we walked – to great protests – via Thomas Tobak, where I bought some newspapers, the Danish Politiken, Weekendavisen, the Swedish Expressen, and Aftonbladet. Back home, they started arguing about which movie they would watch first. I promised them they could watch all three, and said it was fairest to start with Vanja’s since she was the eldest. They accepted that. After inserting the DVD I went in to see Linda, who was lying on her side, her head almost completely covered by the duvet.

  “How’s it going?” I said.

  She turned around slowly and looked up at me. Her gaze seemed to come from a great distance.

  “Good,” she whispered.

  “Have you had anything to eat?”

  “I…,” she said, and then came something I didn’t catch.

  “What was that?”

  “I had a bite while you were out,” she said.

  “So you don’t want anything now?”

  She gently shook her head.

  “The kids…,” she said.

  “What about them?” I said. “They’re fine. I bought some films. They’re watching them now. And I bought a table and chairs and flowers for the balcony. And a ceiling lamp for the dining room.”

  She said nothing, just looked at me.

  “I’m thinking of cleaning it up. Throwing out lots of the junk. Is that OK? I’ll tell the children not to come in here, but they might anyway.”

  “That’s fine,” she said.

  “OK,” I said. “It’s pizza for lunch. You’ll get up, won’t you?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “Good,” I said, closed the door, took my shoes to the balcony door, put them on, and went out. I studied the Christmas tree for a while, wondering whether to carry it down as it was, but I doubted there would be any room in the trash container downstairs, and leaving it beside it wasn’t an option either, that was bound to lead to a full investigation. I went back inside, picked up the saw and a black trash bag, cut it up into four parts, and put them in the bag, which I carried down to the cellar. Back on the balcony, I threw all the withered flowers into another trash bag, which I then carried down. When I returned, the sofa was unoccupied. I went straight to Linda’s room. She was sitting up in bed, Vanja and Heidi were pulling at her, John was jumping up and down on the mattress, she looked dazed, as though she didn’t know what to do, and utterly exhausted.

  “What did I say?” I said.

  “It’s OK,” Linda whispered.

  “Come on now,” I said. “Mommy needs some peace and quiet.”

  “Are you sick?” Heidi asked. “Do you have a temperature?”

  “No, she isn’t sick. Just a bit tired,” I said. “Aren’t you?”

  “I can get up for a little now,” she said.

  “Yeees!” John said.

  Linda sat on the edge of the bed fumbling around her.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “My sweater.”

  I leaned forward and flipped back the duvet.

  “There it is,” I said. “Come on, all of you, let’s go to the living room. Mommy will be out in a minute.”

  They did as I said. I stopped in the doorway, looked at her. Her movements were so slow that it didn’t seem as if she would be able to put on her sweater.

  “You don’t have to get up, you know,” I said. “It’d be better if you rested.”

  She looked at me.

  “But now you’ve told them you would,” I said.

  I went back to the balcony, stood in the gently falling rain surrounded by the sounds of the town seven floors down, picked up everything that was strewn around, dropped it in a garbage bag, and put the new plants in the old pots. When I walked in carrying the bag on my back, Linda was sitting on the sofa with John on her lap. She wasn’t looking at the TV screen, I noticed, but staring straight ahead.

  “I’ll run down with this,” I said. “Now it’s looking all right out there anyway.”

  When I came back and sat down in the chair in the other living room to read the papers, I heard her get up, the sound of her footsteps, and the bathroom door opening. So that was where she was going.

  A few minutes later it opened again.

  I got up and stepped into the hall. She was standing still, looking at me. She was crying.

  “I can’t do it,” she said. />
  “Go back to bed,” I said.

  “I’ll have to,” she said.

  “Go on,” I said.

  * * *

  I fitted the lamp, not without a fight because the screws were small and my fingers so big and clumsy, I heated the pizzas and made a salad, which we ate in front of the television, all together. Afterwards they were allowed to have some candy and Linda went to bed. I brushed their teeth, they put on their pajamas but didn’t want to go to bed without saying goodnight to their mother, so they charged in and Linda sat up to give them a hug. Her eyes, which were focused on the wall, were vacant as she stroked their backs and squeezed them tight.

  I sat up for a few hours after the children had gone to sleep, browsing through the papers, watching a bit of TV, smoking on the balcony. Linda was asleep when I entered the bedroom, or at least her eyes were closed, and I lay down gently beside her and fell asleep at once.

  * * *

  The next day was Mother’s Day. It was still raining, a steady drizzle over the town’s buildings and streets. I took the kids to the playground. The verdant grass shimmered in the gray spring light. The colors of their rain jackets were almost obscenely bright as they walked around the playground equipment. After half an hour I dragged them with me to a furniture shop, where I examined sofas, the one we had was so dirty and worn after five years of children that it could only be used if we covered it with rugs. Then we made our way to Åhléns. I said it was Mother’s Day and they could each buy a present for Mommy.

  “Could you gift wrap these?” I asked the assistant in Norwegian.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Could you wrap them up?” I said, using a Swedish expression.

  “Of course,” she said.

  The children had chosen a big towel, a pair of socks on which was written “The Best Mommy in the World,” and I’d found two CDs for her. John wanted her to have a plane. They watched the girl wrap up the presents, then they headed for the toy department. I paid and was about to take the bag when my phone rang. It was the real estate agent. She had been trying to get in touch with Linda for two days now, she said.

  I told her Linda was ill, and that she would have to talk to me from now on. My face felt hot, I was sure she would ask about the stench and why on earth the ground by the wall was springy. But she didn’t say anything, just that there had been quite a few people at the viewing, one of them had started criticizing everything he saw and ridiculed the price, no one had made an offer afterwards. There would be another viewing this afternoon and then next weekend. We hung up, I went to find the children. They were happy we were going to give presents to Linda. We had also bought some cinnamon buns and juice.