The Morning Star

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  The yolk in the middle and the white all around looked like a planet with a milky atmosphere.

  The whole episode had been fraught with anxiety. We’d been nervous as hell pouring the alcohol into the little plastic bananas from our bags of sweets after we’d emptied the sherbet out of them, filled with trepidation as we stood among the trees and drank it, and scared witless the rest of the evening in case we gave ourselves away.

  But neither Mum nor Dad had said anything, and afterward we could boast about it at school on Monday.

  The toast popped up with a snap, and the milk started to froth in the saucepan, swelling with little indentations. I pulled it away from the heat, mixed some cocoa and sugar with water in a glass, then poured the concentrated substance into the opaque white liquid, where for a moment it diffused, the dark brown color thinning into the milk until the two were one.

  Someone was in the room.

  I wheeled round.

  It was Heming. He stood there with his bare legs, arms hanging down at his sides like an ape, staring at me.

  “Oh, it’s you,” I said.

  “Will breakfast be ready soon?” he said.

  “Yes. Are you hungry?”

  He nodded.

  “Can you set the table, then?”

  “Where’s Mum?”

  “Mum’s asleep.”

  “No, she isn’t,” he said. “I saw her. She went past the window.”

  “Perhaps she just went for a walk before breakfast,” I said. “Come on, set the table, chop-chop!”

  “If I have to, then Asle has to as well.”

  “Of course,” I said, snatching the toast from the toaster, then the bread basket from on top of the cupboard, dropping the hot toast into it as I peered out of the window to see if I could see her. “You go and tell him.”

  While the boys set the places, I fried the bacon, poured the cocoa into some mugs, got the butter out, the cheese and the ham, and put everything on the table.

  “Aren’t we going to wait for Mum?” Heming said when we sat down, then abruptly jerked his head back and opened his mouth wide three times in quick succession.

  I forced myself to take a deep breath and halt the impulse to correct him.

  “We should eat while the food’s still hot,” I said.

  “Where’s she gone?” said Asle, half rising from his chair as he reached for the bread basket.

  “For a walk, that’s all,” I said.

  “Is she coming with us to bring in the nets?” said Heming.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  I visualized the room as it had been that summer forty years ago: dismal, with dark walls, and dark rugs on the floor. The drinks cabinet in the corner with the bottles inside. We’d been careful and made sure to close it after us, but we’d transferred the alcohol into our little plastic receptacles without removing the bottle from the cabinet and it has been impossible to avoid spilling.

  When you’re a child you think you have secrets and no one knows what you’re up to.

  I smiled.

  “What are you smiling at, Daddy?” said Asle.

  “Just something I thought about,” I said.

  “What was it?” said Heming, spreading butter on his toast, which broke apart as he drew the knife across.

  “I was thinking about your grandfather,” I said.

  And then I saw Tove come through the garden and disappear into the annex. She was wearing the same clothes as the night before. Fortunately, both the boys were sitting with their backs turned.

  I needed to clean up the blood before they went in there.

  “What was it about Grandad that was so funny?” said Heming.

  “Nothing in particular,” I said. “I just thought about him, that’s all. He did do a lot of stupid things in his time, though!”

  “Like what?” said Asle, lifting his toast from his plate.

  “Lots of things I’ve already told you about,” I said. “For instance, the time he mistook the salt and the sugar and sugared the cod. Or the time he chopped the big tree down in front of the house and it fell onto the roof and smashed it to smithereens.”

  “Was there anyone inside?” said Asle, his lips yellow with egg yolk.

  I shook my head.

  “Luckily, no!”

  “Did you see it?”

  “I saw it when I came home. The tree was gone by then. It looked like a giant had come and sat down on top of the house.”

  “You’ve done lots of stupid things as well,” said Heming, looking at me with those dark eyes of his.

  “Yes, I’m sure I have,” I said. “Was there anything in particular you were thinking about?”

  “That time you forgot to moor the pontoon we had and it drifted out with all the boats attached.”

  “I didn’t forget,” I said. “I just didn’t moor it properly, that’s all.”

  “And when there was no oil in the car engine, so it broke down and we had to buy a new car.”

  “That wasn’t me, it was the gauge that was faulty!” I said. “As well you both know! A car’s supposed to tell you when it’s run out of oil.”

  “That’s just an excuse,” said Heming.

  They looked at each other and laughed.

  It made me glad.

  * * *

  —

  Tove wasn’t in the annex when I opened the door and went inside after we’d eaten, the boys safely absorbed in their devices. There were more sheets of card on the table now, red with black cut-out silhouettes glued on. She wouldn’t be able to concentrate much longer. Unless she leveled off and came down on her own.

  The blood had congealed and hardened. I scraped it away with a palette knife before soaking what remained and scrubbing it with a stiff brush.

  The other kitten lay on the floor in the corner, staring at me.

  I rinsed the cloth and washed away the scrapings in the sink in her studio. The space was a clutter of paint-spattered glass jars, paintbrushes, cotton pads and empty tubes, and the air inside smelled strongly of turpentine. I went back out into the garden to see if the grave I’d dug the night before could be seen, half preparing myself for the eventuality that the kitten had scrabbled its way to the surface and left behind an empty hole, but of course everything looked the same as it had when I’d left it, and it was impossible to tell that the soil underneath the layer of bark chips had recently been dug up.

  A light drizzle filled the air. Not refreshing, the way you’d expect from a Nordic summer day, but clammy and warm. Tropical, almost. And everything around me was damp, from the gray-black trunks of the trees to the green leaves of the redcurrant and blackcurrant bushes, where the moisture had collected in tiny, unmoving droplets.

  The sound of a heavy vehicle accelerating in the distance passed through the landscape.

  I went back into the kitchen and cleared away the breakfast things. A wave of noise rose outside as the bus approached. On such a narrow road it was a monstrosity, I thought as it went past the window, its yellow side momentarily blotting out the view.

  I dropped a tab of detergent into the little compartment in the dishwasher, closed the door and switched it on. The bus swung round in the turning space at the end of the road and came back the other way. I noticed the little spider again, now at work on some construction in the corner between the ceiling and the wall. Dad always said spiders were a good sign, it meant the house was dry, and I thought of it nearly every time I saw one.

  Ingvild came along the path outside. She was looking down at the ground ahead of her and was carrying a bag slung over one shoulder.

  I went out into the hall when she came in.

  “Did you have a nice time?” I said.

  “Yes, very,” she said, and smiled before bending down to take off her shoes.

  “Do y
ou want some breakfast?” I said.

  “I had something at Gran’s,” she said, and went off to her room.

  “All right, then,” I said.

  I stood quite still for a moment in the middle of the kitchen and looked around me before getting some plastic bags out of the drawer, putting the empty bottles in them and carrying them out to the car. I opened the trunk and dumped them inside for the next time I happened to be near the recycling station, as dumps were called now. Then I went back into the house, to the boys in the living room.

  “Are you all ready, then?” I said.

  “Do we have to?” said Heming.

  He threw his head back and opened and closed his mouth in rapid succession.

  “Why do you keep doing that?” I said, irritated.

  “What?” he said.

  I mimicked his tic, only more exaggeratedly.

  “You keep going like this all the time,” I said. “It’s bad manners.”

  He nodded earnestly.

  “I’ll try not to,” he said.

  “Good!” I said.

  And then he did it again.

  “Come on, let’s get going,” I said.

  * * *

  —

  With the red fuel can in my hand, I followed the boys down the steep grassy bank to the jetty. The water that stretched out before us lay quite still beneath the low canopy of heavy cloud. The planks of the jetty, slippery with moisture, were a yellowy sheen against the water’s glittering silver and the dark, near-black rock they traversed.

  I got in the boat and coupled the hose to the fuel can while Heming let go of the moorings and Asle raised the oar ready to push off and propel us a few meters into deeper water.

  The inside of the bay, which petered out into a little pebbled shore, was teeming with crabs. Not just little stone crabs, but big sea crabs. There seemed to be hundreds of them, creeping and crawling on top of each other.

  I’d never seen anything like it.

  It was like a snake pit.

  I looked away so the boys wouldn’t notice, and once Asle had pushed us out I started the outboard and set off without them having seen anything.

  The two red floats weren’t far from the shore on the other side of the bay, just off the headland. The spruce stood like a wall of green almost at the water’s edge. Asle hooked the first float with the gaff and pulled it in. I killed the engine. The boys began to draw in the net, pulling and heaving on the rope, but without getting anywhere. They both looked at me.

  “It’s too heavy,” said Asle.

  “Let me,” I said. “Maybe we’ve got ourselves a shoal of mackerel or something.”

  It felt like pulling up a great, sopping carpet. A few moments later, the net itself came into view below the surface, the bodies of the fish inside it like green-white lanterns in the gloom.

  “Pollock,” I said as the net came over the side with the first of the fish.

  “Whoa, look how many!” said Heming.

  “You two take the fish out of the net as they come in, all right?” I said. “Just throw them in the tub.”

  There was no end to it, the net was thick with pollock, and when at last we headed back not only was the tub full of smooth, shimmering fish that occasionally flapped violently, the bottom of the boat too was covered with them.

  It made me feel queasy. Not the fish themselves, because individually they were just creatures like any other, but the sheer number of them. All their identical eyes, all their identical gaping mouths, all their identical fins and gills.

  “Are you going to gut them all?” said Asle.

  “I suppose so,” I said. “But I don’t know what we’re going to do with so many fish.”

  “Can’t we freeze them?”

  “Yes, we’ll have to. But we’re going home in two days. I’m not sure we’ll want to be eating year-old fish next summer.”

  “Fish-flavored ice cream!” said Asle.

  “Mm, delicious,” said Heming.

  “Did you count them?” I said.

  “A hundred and eighteen,” said Asle.

  We were approaching the bay when a figure came out of the garden at the top of the bank and started down the path toward the jetty.

  It was Egil.

  He was wearing a yellow waterproof, unbuttoned, and holding a white carrier bag in one hand.

  I switched the outboard off and we slid in next to the jetty. Happily, the crabs seemed to be gone. The boys clambered up onto the decking, I handed them the fuel can and lifted the tub up to them, moored the boat and then climbed ashore myself.

  “Quite a catch, I see,” said Egil, who had now reached the jetty too.

  “You’re telling me,” I said. “Do you fancy some?”

  He shook his head and gave a faint smile.

  “Have you just got home now, or what?” I said.

  “Last night. Brought you this. A token for your help.”

  He handed me the carrier bag a bit sheepishly. I didn’t need to open it to know what was inside; both its weight and size told me it was a bottle, and since he liked a good whisky himself, and presumably reckoned on me offering him a glass after he’d made the effort to come and give it to me, the only question was which brand.

  “Excellent!” I said. “Thanks, indeed!”

  “Dad, can we go now?” Asle said.

  I nodded and off they went, scampering up the slope.

  “Time for a coffee?” I said.

  “Love one, thanks,” Egil said. “Do you want that brought up?”

  He indicated the tub.

  “Afraid so,” I said. “And the ones in the boat as well.”

  “I’ll give you a hand,” he said.

  Between us, we lugged the tub up the hill. There was something unpleasantly intimate about it, working together like that, it was as if we were joined up, and I couldn’t find the words that would make it any more tolerable. And Egil wouldn’t say anything.

  Did he feel the same way?

  It was impossible to say, Egil was a person I’d never been able to fathom.

  As we put the tub down in the cellar, I insisted on fetching the rest of the fish myself and said he could put his feet up in my study until I got back.

  * * *

  —

  Had she had her eye on him, been thinking about him, fantasizing about him when he’d come round? Or was it just an impulse from the depths of her tormented soul?

  I went and got a fish crate from the boathouse, one of the old ones made of polystyrene, and started putting the fish in it.

  In a funny kind of way it had made sense to see what she’d written about Egil. He was a person who’d ground to a halt in life, no longer going anywhere, but with a firm footing where he stood. He was a capable man in many ways, but quite unable to apply himself, and now his aptitude simply lay there with no earthly use, like a field left fallow. Her father had been exactly the same. Just as lackadaisical and as unpurposed. Knew everything, did nothing. When Tove and I first got together, I’d been the antidote to all that, so I reasoned, someone with a healthy, innocent outlook, and highly ambitious. She wanted away from what she came from, wanted something new and normal and quite ordinary. And that’s what she got: first came Ingvild, then the twins, and our early years together with them had been as ordinary and as normal as it gets.

  Why else would she have fallen for me, an otherwise unexceptional student of literature? She could have had whoever she wanted.

  Had she actually wanted something different all along?

  Had she only been pretending, to herself and to me?

  I put the crate down on the cement floor of the dim cellar. The fish ought to be gutted straightaway. Still, a couple of hours wouldn’t make much difference.

  First Egil, then dinner. Gut the fish, and after tha
t a quiet evening with a glass of wine and a book.

  Anyway, there was nothing to be done about it now.

  The best thing was not to give it another thought.

  I washed my cold, gooey hands in hot water, fetched two glasses and went into the study, finding Egil standing in front of the bookshelves with a book in his hand.

  “What’s that you’ve found?” I said.

  He held up the volume so I could see. O, Death! Where is thy Sting? it was called, from the thirties sometime, the once white dust jacket now yellowed.

  “Oh, that,” I said. “Join me?”

  He nodded, I poured for us both, and we sat down. A small sound of contentment escaped him as he took the first sip.

  “It’s not one I bought myself,” I said. “The book, that is. I seem to remember my dad laying his hands on it at an auction years ago, somewhere inland, a box full of books from someone’s estate. Do you know the story? The Køber case?”

  “Yes. Never read his books though.”

  “They’re fascinating. Full of progressive optimism, and they transform the idea of life after death, or contact with the dead, into something rational and scientific.”

  “He lost his sons, didn’t he?”

  “That’s right. And then he was reunited with them through his daughter, a medium.”

  “Hm,” said Egil, turning the glass in his hand.

  “There’re some very lovely descriptions of the afterlife in there,” I said. “The kingdom of the dead is like Fredrikstad in the 1920s.”

  “Perhaps he was right,” he said, and smiled.

  There was a lull. The bushes outside had grown greedily up the wall and now blocked out the window almost completely; the road and the rocky, sparsely vegetated upland beyond it were visible only through little peepholes in the foliage.

  “I was in India once,” he said without looking at me. “In one of the cities I visited they’d been burning bodies on the same pyre for three thousand years. That’s what they said, anyway. A temple city, it was. I can’t think of anywhere in the world that could be so different from here.”

  He made a sweep of his arm to indicate that he was referring to these houses, this landscape. His gestures were sometimes grand like that, which always seemed so odd in view of his normally hesitant manner.