My Struggle, Book 6

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  “I want to sit on your lap too,” Vanja said. Linda put Heidi down and lifted Vanja. Usually this would have led to a spat, but not today.

  I moved to another bench and had a smoke. After I’d finished the cigarette I got up and put the ice-cream wrappers into a nearby bin.

  “We have to go now,” I said.

  “Has it been half an hour?” Linda said.

  I nodded.

  She got up, I put John in the stroller, and then we set off.

  “My room’s up there,” Linda said, pointing to the top of the long building.

  “Is it nice?” Heidi said.

  “Yes, it is,” Linda said. “It’s really nice.”

  “Can we see it?”

  “I don’t think they allow any children up there,” I said. “It has to be very quiet.”

  “That’s true,” Linda said. “Perhaps it’s better if I meet you at home.”

  “How long are you going to be here?” Vanja said.

  “I don’t know,” Linda said. “But I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Bye, Mommy,” Vanja and Heidi said.

  * * *

  The following day I arranged with the senior nurse for Linda to come home for an hour. She wasn’t allowed to walk on her own, so I dressed the kids and we went to pick her up. As on the previous occasion, she was waiting outside the ward. She was heavily made-up. And a little unsteady on her legs, so I supported her with one arm and pushed the stroller with the other. Must be the medicine, I thought. She had such energy, they had said, medicines were ineffective against her mania, and they were giving her as much as they could. The children were chatting away as usual as we walked, past the big building site which would be the new underground train station – where people cycled and walked over the gravel-covered asphalt along the wire-netting fence after a day’s work – past the end of the hotel first, then the side, across the road, through the door, and up and into the elevator.

  Linda watched children’s TV with them for a few minutes. She had John on her lap, with Vanja and Heidi snuggled up beside her. I made the simplest meal I knew, spaghetti and meatballs. After a little while Linda came out and headed for the hall. I thought she was going to the toilet, but she opened the door to the bedroom.

  When the food was almost ready I looked in on her.

  She was sitting in front of her laptop writing on Facebook.

  “You’ve only got forty minutes left,” I said. “Can’t you stay with the children?”

  “Soon,” she said. “Just doing this.”

  I returned to the kitchen. Soon afterward she walked into the hall. I heard the balcony door open and close. I set the table, filled a water jug, cut some tomatoes into boats and placed four on each plate. I tipped the meatballs into a bowl, poured water into glasses, and emptied the spaghetti into a dish.

  “Food’s up!” I shouted.

  No one moved.

  I made a beeline for the TV and switched it off. The children followed me into the kitchen and sat down. I went to the balcony, where Linda was sitting with her feet on the balustrade smoking.

  “Food’s ready,” I said.

  “Coming!” she said.

  As we ate she spoke to Vanja, Heidi, and John as she always did. I could see she had to pull herself together to do so and radiated a nervousness and desperation when the conversation flagged.

  After the meal we all went into the living room. The children snuggled up to Linda, she put her arms around Vanja and Heidi and had John on her lap. But her eyes were frantic. She put John down on the floor and got to her feet.

  “Where are you going, Mommy?” Heidi said.

  “To the bathroom,” she said.

  She didn’t come back, and I strode out to see what she was doing. She was writing on Facebook.

  “We have to go now,” I said. “It’ll take a bit to dress them and so on. And you have to be back by seven.”

  “You don’t need to accompany me,” she said. “It’s absolutely unnecessary. How far is it? A kilometer? Not even that. I can do it on my own.”

  “But they said you shouldn’t walk on your own. They expressly said I had to be with you.”

  “That’s just standard procedure,” she said. “A rule for people who really can’t look after themselves. I can. I’ll walk back on my own so that you and the children can stay here.”

  “OK,” I said. “Let’s do that then.”

  I went into the living room.

  “Come and say goodbye to Mommy,” I said.

  John slipped off the sofa and ran into the hall. Heidi followed.

  “Vanja?”

  “Bye, Mom!” she shouted.

  Linda bent down and hugged Heidi and John. With an unsteady step and a bag hanging off her shoulder, she walked into the living room, where she leaned forward and kissed Vanja on the head.

  When she opened the elevator door she looked at me and winked, kissed her fingertips and blew me a kiss.

  * * *

  At just after nine the hospital rang.

  A nurse introduced herself and asked me if I was Linda’s husband. I confirmed that I was.

  “Is she with you now?” the nurse asked.

  “Linda? No. She left for the hospital two hours ago. Hasn’t she arrived?”

  “No. But didn’t you accompany her? That was the deal we made, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it was. But she seemed so centered. And we don’t live that far away.”

  “She’ll be refused any leave if the rules aren’t adhered to.”

  “I understand.”

  “Now you know,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  I hung up and called Linda’s mobile. It wasn’t on. I tried again a little later, and since it was still off then as well, I went to bed.

  * * *

  The next morning I called her ward. Linda was there. She had arrived at around midnight, the nurse said. She called Linda, and Linda came to the phone.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi,” she said. “I’ve got a new nurse. You should meet him. Turns out he’s read Mein Kampf. Hitler’s, that is. I think he does martial arts and has a combat dog. But he’s nice. I think he might become a good friend here.”

  “Linda,” I said. “Yesterday you were supposed to go straight back to your ward.”

  “Oh that,” she said. “I’ve already discussed that with the nurse. I just wanted to go out for a little walk. Nothing dangerous. I’m here of my own accord, you know. They can’t actually stop me.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Møllevangen. Around there. Are you going to visit me afterwards?”

  “Yes, after I’ve taken them to school.”

  “Good! It’ll be good to see you again. Could you bring some money with you? I’ve run out.”

  “OK,” I said. “Will do.”

  * * *

  I rang the doorbell upstairs in the gray building. A young nurse opened up. We shook hands, I followed her in. Linda was sitting at a table in the dining room with a bearded man around thirty years old. I realized this was the man she had been speaking about. She stood up beaming with pleasure when she saw me, came over, and put her arms around me.

  “This is Mats,” she said. “I suppose you two have a lot to talk about.”

  “Hi,” I said, shaking his hand.

  “Hi,” he said, and he must have noticed my obvious lack of interest because the first thing he said was that he had to go and do something.

  We went into her room. The ornaments on the windowsill had multiplied. The photos of the children she had brought with her when she first came suggested she’d known her stay wouldn’t be for one night. No one else had thought that except for me. Me and the children.

  She talked about nurses and patients as though they were people she had known for many years. She talked about the ward as though it were a romantic sanatorium in a Thomas Mann novel. She talked about all her plans, everything she was going to do, and showed me a notebook in whic
h she had already written quite a number of pages.

  “What was it like being at home yesterday?” I said.

  “It was great to see the children,” she said. “But I can’t manage so much all at once. There’s something in me that wanders off. There are such strong forces in me and I can’t resist them.”

  “You were wonderful with the children, Linda. It makes me so happy. I can see how much it takes out of you. But you have to carry on doing it. Do you think you can?”

  She nodded.

  “Are you coming here this afternoon?”

  “Yes. Let’s do what we did last time.”

  “Do you have any money on you?”

  “Yes, but not very much. Two hundred. Is that enough?”

  “No, not really. But I’ll take it. Shall we go and have a smoke?”

  We stood outside for ten minutes smoking, Linda found it impossible to stand still, I saw that she could hardly wait for me to go.

  “See you later then,” I said.

  “Yes, see you,” she said, and turned to two other patients standing there as I set off. At home I took my bike out of the cellar, it was a DBS I’d chosen from a selection of probably better bikes, only because the name reminded me of my childhood, the spring light, the smell of the sea between the spruce trees. I cycled to Flüggers Färg on Köbenhavnervägen and bought some paint, brushes, and foam rollers. When I got home I put the first coat on Vanja’s room while crying so much I could barely see the wall. I painted three of the walls light blue, as Vanja had wanted, and the fourth white. Then I painted the long wall in what would soon be Heidi and John’s room light green. That had been Heidi’s suggestion. I cleaned the brushes and rollers, called Linda and asked how she was doing, she said very well, but she was bored. I said that was the point of being there, she was supposed to get bored and not do so much. She said she knew.

  After the brief conversation I went to the balcony, surrounded by the sounds of the city and the warm August air, I inhaled the smoke into my lungs and thought about what was happening to Linda. It was clear she had complete awareness of herself, she agreed to everything I said to give me the impression she was closer to me than she was in reality: as soon as I was out of sight she changed direction and wandered into town. She would say she loved me, but as soon as I was there she felt an obligation she couldn’t deal with, because it tied her and it was these bonds she was fleeing.

  She had been as low as it was possible for any human to be, she’d been unable to articulate this and was overcome with thoughts of death, an unbearable state that lasted for weeks. It was obvious she wouldn’t be able to control the light inside her afterwards, which made everything easy and good, but she had to follow it because beneath the light, at the end of the wave carrying her further and further upward, was the darkness. She knew that. Once she had told me that a nurse had said to her during a manic spell, Remember that really you are sad. But what was the “really” and the “not really” in this? What was Linda, what was depression, what was manic?

  * * *

  That afternoon Vanja came rushing up to me as I opened the nursery school gate.

  “Dad! Dad! I can say r!” she shouted.

  “Wow,” I said. “Is that true?”

  “Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr,” she said. “Crown prince!”

  “How did you do that?”

  “I don’t know. I just did.”

  She had tried to make a kind of gurgling Skåne r at the back of her throat without success, and she had tried a tip-of-the-tongue r, which sounded like a whistle, closer to th than r, the one I’d had to use until I was sixteen, which had deeply shamed me.

  Now she had suddenly succeeded.

  “Absolutely wonderful, Vanja,” I said. “And just as you’re starting school!”

  I didn’t say anything about the painting I had done, I wanted to surprise them. They were really pleased, especially Heidi, she lit up when she saw the room. Vanja, as usual, was a thought ahead.

  “I’d like a picture of a dog on that wall,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Tomorrow I’ll do a second coat and when it’s dry we can buy some pictures.”

  “I’d like one of a cat,” Heidi said.

  * * *

  Painting their rooms felt as if I was betraying Linda because it was an unconditional blessing, and I had no right to it, something good was happening here while she was in need, it was like going behind her back. Yet I had to do it for my own sake, it was an obvious compensation, and for the children’s sake, who had to be kept as far away as possible from Linda’s needs.

  On the way home from school we stopped by a picture-framing shop. Vanja chose three pictures of a dog, Heidi chose one of a cat and one of Babar in a red plane, and then I chose a motif from Tove Jansson’s Who Will Comfort Toffle?: Snufkin under a blue sky. We hung up the pictures, had something to eat, and set off to get Linda from the hospital. She swayed a little as she walked and seemed exhausted, spent. At home we watched kids’ TV, she saw half the program before going to her bedroom, checking her e-mails, and logging on to Facebook. Afterwards she went to the balcony for a smoke. When she came back in, we had to go. She rushed to pack her things, the children put on their shoes rather reluctantly, and then we set off for the hospital, John in the stroller, Vanja and Heidi on either side, Linda at the front. She gave them a hug each, and when she straightened up I saw her eyes were moist. We said goodnight and walked home.

  * * *

  The following morning we had another meeting with the doctor. Linda put on another show, she was charming, lively, made everyone laugh. She showed great self-awareness and joked about her manic state. She just wanted everything to move faster. Faster, faster, faster. She couldn’t sit still, she couldn’t stay on the same topic, had to interrupt, intercede with something new. If I said anything she stared at me impatiently, finished my sentences for me, knew what I was going to say long before I said it, presumably also before I knew it myself. In that sense she was brilliant, in an elevated state, special to her, magnificent. But the fact that she didn’t care about what lay beneath, the slowness and the dull-wittedness, the sluggishness and the ugliness, or didn’t want to see it, meant her brilliance was a cover-up and became a place for herself, the only place she could bear to be. Thoughts of the children belonged there and perhaps also of me. But when she was with the children these two levels conflicted and it was intolerable for her, I saw how she had to fight to keep everything together when we visited her. Everything in her personality was in turmoil, her ten-year-old self could manifest itself, her teenage self could manifest itself, her erotic self, which was usually hidden and only revealed itself to me, could manifest itself, her boundless star-spangled poet self could manifest itself, her boastful, excessive self could manifest itself, for her personality was no longer under control, there was nothing to keep the various elements in check, the center had lost its hold, her manic forces hurled everything out, she wanted to rise, everything in her wanted to rise, and she rose higher and higher while becoming more and more exhausted. In all of this, the rising higher, the light that caused her to rise, there was one thing she never rose above, and that was her commitment to her children.

  * * *

  A lot became clear to me during these days. What Linda dreamed of was to live a perfectly ordinary life with a perfectly ordinary family. To have an ordinary job, go to the cabin on the weekends and work in the garden with the children running around her. But she was no ordinary person. She was the least ordinary person I had ever met. During all the years of childbearing, breastfeeding, and having little ones she had fought. Her struggle had been very different from mine; hers had been life or death. I had written that I was living an inauthentic life, I was living the life of someone else, and I might well have been, and this tormented me, but it didn’t threaten me. It did threaten Linda. Her whole personality, the one I had settled down with, and her whole language had been erased in the life we’d lived. That wasn’t the case with me. I
had written, I’d had my language and, not least, my distance. She hadn’t had any such distance until now, rising above all the ties and obligations and wanting to be utterly free. But the freedom was false, the freedom was a deception, the freedom was a circus in daylight. She saw it perhaps as glittering lights, she saw it perhaps as magical, but when I looked at her what I saw was the exhaustion, the unsteadiness on her feet, the worthless, the false, the hospital tristesse, all the people who had no hope and therefore had nothing.

  * * *

  I informed the staff at the nursery school that Linda had been admitted to the hospital and we had told the children she was there to sleep. They said they hadn’t noticed any changes in the kids, they were as they always were. One of the staff said that our children had strong personalities. But no one adapts as quickly as children, and for them it was nothing special that their mother was in the hospital to sleep and they visited her every afternoon. They treated the subject of sleep as the most natural thing in the world, at first they had lots of questions, what did they actually do in the hospital, gradually their curiosity waned, that was how it was.

  The school staff told me just to ask if I required any assistance. Also the parents we knew and had told that Linda was ill offered their help. It wasn’t necessary, I said, and this was true, apart from one afternoon when I was going to Gothenburg to do a reading and needed a babysitter. A woman at the nursery scool was happy to lend a hand, so after I’d taken the children there, visited Linda at the hospital, and made a sausage stew for the evening meal, I caught the train north. The babysitter brought them home, fed them, put them to bed, and was sitting up for me when I returned at midnight, a bit annoyed that I’d arrived two hours later than I’d said, which I attempted to compensate for by paying especially well. If I had said how late it would be she might not have wanted the job, I had thought.

  I had read a passage from the first novel, about inauthentic life, how I could lose my temper with the children and shake them, almost completely out of control. The moment I began to read I realized it was a mistake. I could sense what people were thinking, that no child should be treated like that, and I was a bad father who thought I was better just because I admitted how bad I was, I was seeking absolution in literature. Fortunately I was able to leave the event as soon as I’d done the reading, disappear into a waiting taxi and then a train compartment.