The Morning Star

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  When I returned to the annex, the kitten moved its head slightly, though its eyes were still closed. A kind of spasm went through its little body. I crouched down beside it again and gripped the rubber handle of the hammer tightly in my hand. I was filled with disquiet at the thought of how the skull would smash beneath its point when I struck.

  Tove had stepped back and stood watching.

  The kitten was quite still now.

  Cautiously, I stroked an index finger over the fur on its head. It didn’t react.

  “Is it dead?” Tove said.

  “I think so,” I said.

  “What are we going to do with it?” she said. “What are we going to tell the boys?”

  “I’ll bury it in the garden somewhere,” I said. “We can tell them it’s disappeared.”

  I stood up and only then became aware that I was in my underpants.

  “I didn’t see it,” she said. “It just got under my feet all of a sudden.”

  “It’s OK,” I said. “It’s not your fault.”

  I went toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” she said.

  “To put some clothes on, then I’ll go and bury it.”

  “All right,” she said.

  “Can’t you go to bed?” I said.

  “I won’t be able to sleep now.”

  “Can’t you try?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s no use.”

  “Maybe if you take another tablet?”

  “It won’t help.”

  “OK,” I said, and went out into the rain, crossed the grass between the two buildings, put my trousers on in the bedroom, found my raincoat on the peg in the little extension where we kept the spade too, and went back to the annex.

  Tove was sitting at the table cutting up a sheet of red paper with a pair of scissors. Beside her was a sheet of stiffer card on which she’d already glued some red figures.

  I left her to it, put the spade down on the floor, and lifted the kitten cautiously onto its blade then carried it outside like that, on the blade of the spade, held out in front of me.

  The tree branches swayed like boat masts in the darkness. The air was filled with rain, heavy drops cast on the gusting wind. I stopped by a cluster of fruit bushes in a corner of the garden, laid the kitten on the ground and thrust the spade into the upper layer of bark chips and soil. When the hole was dug some minutes later, my hair was wet through, my hands freezing cold.

  The kitten was still warm, I could feel it as I picked it up and put it in the hole.

  How was it possible?

  I began to shovel the earth on top, only then it seemed to move.

  Was it alive?

  No, it was a muscular spasm, I reasoned, and filled in the earth until the body was completely buried, patting it down and sprinkling some bark over the grave so as not to arouse the boys’ curiosity if for some reason they happened to come near the next day.

  I hung my wet coat back on the peg, watched the soil color the water brown for a few seconds as it ran toward the drain when I washed my hands, went upstairs into the bedroom, took off my clothes and got into bed again.

  The thought that the kitten had been alive when I buried it refused to let go of me. It didn’t help in the slightest telling myself it was only a spasm, all I could see in my mind was it lying there under the soil with its eyes open, unable to move.

  Should I go out and dig it up again?

  It too was a creature of the world.

  What kind of a life had it lived here?

  A few weeks in a room with wooden floorboards before being consigned to the cold, dark earth where it couldn’t move, only to remain there until it died, all on its own.

  What was the meaning of such a life?

  Oh, for crying out loud, it was just a cat. And if it hadn’t been dead when I buried it, it certainly would be now.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning I woke up to the sounds of the television downstairs. It was just after eight, I noted, and sat up in bed. The wind had died down, everything was quiet outside. The sky I saw through the window was gray and so heavy with moisture that the clouds seemed to hang just above the trees across the bay.

  A film of perspiration covered my skin. But I wasn’t in the mood for a shower, and anyway one of the pleasures of being on holiday was not having to bother about appearances.

  I got dressed and went downstairs into the kitchen where I drank two glasses of water while standing at the sink. Out in the garden the trees stood motionless. Their thick, green foliage glistened green in all the gray.

  “Are you hungry in there?” I called out.

  There was no answer, so I went in to see what they were doing. They were lying on the big corner sofa, each under his own blanket. Asle had his feet up on the wall and had twisted his body into what looked like a very uncomfortable position in order to see the television, whereas Heming was lying on his stomach, stretched out along the backrest.

  “Are you ill?” I said.

  They removed their rugs without looking at me, knowing full well how much I disliked them wrapping themselves in blankets or duvets in the daytime. In fact, it amazed me that they hadn’t taken them off as soon as they’d heard me coming down the stairs.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Not really,” said Asle.

  “A bit,” said Heming.

  “Well, you’ll need to get some food inside you,” I said. “We’re going out to check the nets this morning.”

  “Do we have to?” Asle said.

  “Come on,” I said. “You helped put them out. It’s only right you should bring them in as well! Think what you might have caught!”

  “The water’s so cold,” said Asle.

  “Can’t we just do nothing today?” said Heming.

  “What do you mean, the water’s cold? We’re not going swimming!”

  They said nothing but fixed their eyes on the TV.

  “Listen,” I said, “I’ll fry us some eggs and bacon and then make some cocoa, OK? After that we’ll go out and bring the nets in, and then you can do what you want for the rest of the day. All right?”

  “OK, then,” said Asle.

  “Heming?”

  “OK, OK.”

  What had happened the night before seemed so oddly remote as I went back into the kitchen, as if it belonged to some other reality from the one I occupied now. The darkness, the wind, the rain. Tove’s despair, the dead kitten, the blood on the floor, the spade, the soil, the grave in which, possibly, it had been buried alive.

  Where was she now, anyway?

  A jolt of anxiety went through me. I felt an urge to run out and see, to dash from room to room in search of her, but when I did go out into the hall and put my shoes on to cross over to the annex, my movements were slow and measured, not wanting to alert the boys to something perhaps being wrong.

  Strangely, the air outside was as warm as it had been the day before, even though the sun hadn’t come out.

  The door of the annex was ajar. Usually she made a point of shutting things properly and locking up after herself, it bordered on a disorder, her compulsive need to make sure she was safe, but in the state she was in at the moment everything tipped over in the opposite direction.

  The living room was empty. I opened the bedroom door, but she wasn’t there either. Then I went up into the loft; finding her lying motionless on one of the beds under the sloping walls.

  “Tove?”

  She didn’t answer.

  My heart thumped as if I were about to plunge from a great height.

  I stepped slowly toward her.

  “Tove?”

  “Mm?” she said from the depths of sleep.

  So everything was all right!

  �
��It’s OK, go back to sleep,” I said, and drew a blanket over her before going back down the stairs. The table was covered with sheets of card with the red figures she’d been cutting out glued on. I paused and studied them for a moment.

  Some looked like the figures found in the ancient Nordic petroglyphs; there were primitive boats and men with erect penises, and some resembled Matisse’s ring of dancing figures, only with the legs of animals. One of them was a human on horseback, formed as if it were a single creature; another picture showed a number of foxes, while yet another seemed simply to be red dots, and not until I picked it up did I realize they were ladybugs.

  On the table underneath all this was a piece of paper on which she’d written the words I want to fuck Egil three times on separate lines, one below the other.

  Oh, for God’s sake, I thought to myself, but left it where it was, covering it with the sheet of card with the ladybugs on it in case the boys happened to come in, glancing up the stairs at the same time to make sure she hadn’t caught me looking.

  Was it too a part of what she was working on? A strategy, perhaps, to open up the sluices of her subconscious? Was that what she was thinking?

  But Egil, of all people.

  Jesus Christ. Do you have to be such a damn idiot, Tove?

  The blood from the kitten was still on the floor. Best clean it up before the boys get wind, I thought. Only not now. Now there were eggs and bacon to be fried, bread to be toasted, cocoa to be made.

  The lawn, a sheen of moisture, lay like a floor between the trees and flower beds.

  I got the breakfast things out of the fridge and discovered there was only one egg left in the box.

  I wanted to keep my promise to the boys and decided to cycle down to the shop. I could have asked them to go, only it would have allowed them to say it didn’t matter and I’d have looked weak then, letting them have their way, or, if I stuck to my guns, it could have led to a situation where I’d force them to go so as not to lose face, something that could dent the mood for hours to come, perhaps even the whole day. It wasn’t worth it. Especially since we were going fishing afterward.

  I went into the living room to tell them.

  “Just popping down the shop,” I said.

  “Where’s Mum?” said Asle.

  “Mum’s still asleep,” I said. “Is there anything you want from the shop? Apart from ice cream, that is?”

  “Yes, ice cream!” said Heming.

  “No, you’re not getting ice cream,” I said. “How about orange juice?”

  They didn’t answer.

  “OK, back in a bit, then,” I said, and went out into the hall, put my shoes and coat on, went to the shed and wheeled the bike out.

  Our house was at the end of an unpaved road; or actually, the road continued into the woods, though it dwindled there to more of a track, barely passable for a car at all. Farther up was the house belonging to Kristen, a funny old sort who’d always lived on his own and made solitude an art: he’d built everything down there himself, even the boat he used for fishing.

  In the other direction were several houses much like our own, most of them only used in summer or at other holiday times. I knew most of the people who owned them, though it had been a while since I’d had anything to do with them. Most had gone back home now, at least it looked that way judging by the empty parking areas outside their houses.

  The many potholes were filled with rainwater, cloudy, brimming puddles that made me think of the 1980s, when they’d seemed so common in the autumn and winter, whereas now anyone would think they’d been abolished by law. The gravel, wet and soft-looking, gleamed here and there like silver between the reddish outcrops of rock and the green conifers past which the road wound its way.

  I hoped it would be gone when she woke up, whatever it was that had affected her like that.

  Or did I?

  If it carried on, it would soon spiral out of control and eventually she’d have to be put in the hospital.

  There was something definitive about it, something concrete and unyielding. And that was a good thing. For the problem was always a matter of boundaries. Hers, mine, the children’s. It was impossible to say exactly when the illness took over, it was more of a slow slide along the scale, from good cheer and well-being to something that pulled her further and further away from us, and we went along with it, passively accepting a situation which from the outside wasn’t acceptable at all, because we weren’t on the outside, we were inside, where the boundaries became so gradually displaced that we barely noticed it was happening.

  It was like that too because I covered for her, shielding her from the kids and the world outside.

  And then, whenever she was admitted to the hospital, everyone could suddenly see how mad she was, how much I had to do on my own.

  I cycled past the two outcrops of rock that at one point flanked the road. When I was a boy they made me imagine I was sailing a boat between two islands, and when I was a young and pretentious undergraduate I’d given them names: Scylla and Charybdis. After that, there was a bend before the road fell steeply away toward the shop and the little marina. Once, I’d come off my bike on that hill and split my head open—nobody wore helmets in those days, and I hadn’t really learned to ride a bike properly either—but the recollection I had of it was probably false, based on what I’d been told rather than on my own experience. It was impossible to know one way or the other.

  I gently applied the rear brake as I went downhill, remembering the other kids gathered around me, the ambulance that had come, at the exact spot where I was now, only forty years earlier.

  The shop at that time had gone from being a small store to a small supermarket, to what it was now, a hub with a supermarket, a fast-food outlet, a cafe and a souvenir shop. At the rear was a filling station with gas and diesel pumps, and next to that a low building containing showers and toilets for the tourists who came in their sailing boats. Tjæreholmen Marina, it was called.

  I parked my bike and went inside, picking up one of the red baskets and filling it with a bag full of freshly baked rolls, some butter and milk, and then the eggs that were the reason I’d come.

  A man wearing shorts and a T-shirt, a baseball cap pushed back from his forehead, stood at the checkout putting his items onto the conveyor belt as I approached. He turned slightly as I came up behind him, then fished a credit card out of his back pocket and inserted it into the reader, before turning again.

  “Arne?” he said.

  I didn’t know who he was.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Long time, no see,” he said with a smile.

  I looked at him without saying anything.

  There was something about his eyes.

  “Don’t recognize me, eh?”

  “Well . . .” I said.

  “Trond Ole,” he said.

  “Oh!” I blurted out. “I’d never have guessed! What are you doing here?”

  “We’ve bought a place over on the other side. It’s our first summer here.”

  He turned back and entered his PIN, waited a few seconds until the transaction was approved, then went to the end of the checkout to bag his items as I placed mine on the conveyor.

  “What are you doing with yourself these days, anyway?” I said.

  “Workwise, you mean?” he said without looking up.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I’m off sick at the moment,” he said. “How about you?”

  “I’m at the uni.”

  “Professor, is it?” he said, looking at me now.

  I felt my cheeks go warm.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  He smiled.

  “I was here with you once, do you remember?”

  He stood with his bulging carrier bag in his hand as I collected my items.

  “Of course,
” I said. “We’d have been what, ten?”

  “Something like that.”

  We went outside. He pressed his key and the lights on one of the cars in the car park flashed twice.

  “Have you got much holiday left?” he said.

  “Into the last week now,” I said.

  “Then come over one night,” he said.

  “Maybe I will,” I said. “It’d be nice.”

  We shook hands and he went over to his car while I unlocked my bike, hung the carrier bag on the handlebar and began walking up the steep hill.

  “Arne?” he called after me.

  I turned and saw him come half trotting toward me.

  “I should give you my number. Or you could give me yours.”

  “Of course, how stupid,” I said. “Maybe I could have yours?”

  That would be best. I wouldn’t actually have to phone him.

  I entered the number he dictated and added him to my contacts.

  “OK,” I said. “I’ll be in touch!”

  “If you call me now, I’ll have yours too,” he said.

  “Good idea,” I said, and pressed his number.

  * * *

  —

  The boys were gawking at the TV when I got back. Tove was nowhere to be seen. I put the bike in the shed and went through the glistening garden, cracked an egg into the frying pan and then another, watched them advance across the surface until the heat took hold and they each solidified into a little mound, poured some milk into a saucepan, cut some slices of bread and put them in the toaster.

  Trond Ole had come out here with us one weekend before school had broken up for the holidays; we were friends that year and I’d been looking forward to showing him everything there was to see in the area.

  We’d stolen some of my dad’s booze and gone off into the woods with it, drunk a few sips with pounding hearts and then reeled about like we were drunk.

  Could we have been ten years old then?

  More like twelve or so, I thought to myself, slipping the spatula underneath one of the eggs, which balanced stiffly on the metal blade as I lifted it over to the plate.