The Morning Star

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  At twelve o’clock I checked out and went into the street with my case trundling behind me. The sky was overcast, though thinly so, the clouds as white as milk, the air warm and muggy. The buildings, which in rain appeared so gray and drab, now stood out sharply in their every nuance. I looked up at the sky. Two birds were circling high above, their wings stretched out and unmoving. They were birds of prey, though I couldn’t tell what kind. Hawks, perhaps. Eagles wouldn’t be flying over the city, would they?

  Emerging onto Torgallmenningen, which was busy with people, I made my way to the bookshop on the corner. I didn’t want to sit and wait for her, but would rather be a few minutes late.

  Outside the bookshop some workmen were standing smoking around a hole that had been cordoned off. Their orange overalls reflected the light in a way I found odd, it made them look like they were floating, as if the men wearing them were simply stuck inside.

  Entering the shop, I looked first at the shelf of new publications, before going over to the small philosophy section. Sometimes, though not often, they would have something interesting there.

  I pulled out a book with what I thought was a promising title. Experience and Nature, it was called, by John Dewey. I knew of it, but had never read it.

  I opened it to a random page.

  We have substituted sophistication for superstition, it said. But the sophistication is often so irrational and as much at the mercy of words as the superstition it replaces.

  I turned the book in my hand and read the blurb on the back. The work had originally been published in 1925. Before the world began, in other words.

  What did he mean by sophistication?

  I took the book with me to the till and paid for it with my card, dropped it into my bag and went out. I still had ten minutes, and the cafe was only a five-minute walk, but it no longer felt important to be late. It was a silly reflex from my teenage years.

  * * *

  —

  Mum appeared at the far end of the little square just as I sat down at one of the tables outside the cafe. I could pick her out in any crowd and at almost any distance. She was thin and straight-backed, which made her seem taller than she actually was, but most characteristic was the way she held her head, always slightly tipped back, which lent her an air of superiority or arrogance, but also gave a faintly birdlike impression. Her hair was red, her skin pale and freckled, and when I was a child I’d thought that everyone with red hair and freckles belonged to their own race, and more than anything else had wished that I’d been like that too, because it would have meant that she and I, and not just she and Eirik, belonged together.

  As she came closer, I saw she was wearing her favorite colors. Light brown cords, white blouse, dark green jacket.

  “Hello, Mum,” I said, and gave her a hug. “You’re looking good.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Are we sitting out?”

  “I thought we might. It’s certainly warm enough?”

  She nodded and sat down.

  Yellowed leaves lay on the ground under the tree next to our table, and I looked up. It was a chestnut tree and seemed to be blighted by something, its foliage sparse, the leaves small and withered. So it wasn’t that the autumn had come, it was just disease.

  Mum caught the attention of a waiter who was clearing one of the tables by the wall.

  “How are you?” I asked her.

  She looked at me.

  “I thought I was supposed to be asking you,” she said. “But I’m fine. Everyone’s back at work after the holiday. Mikael’s still away at the summer house.”

  Behind her, the waiter went inside with a tray full of cups and glasses.

  “What’s he doing there now?” I said.

  “Fishing a lot, and reading.”

  “Enjoying retirement?”

  “He hates it. That’s why he’s still there, I think, so he can pretend it’s just a holiday. But he likes to read. He’s got the time for it now.”

  She turned round.

  “Where did he get to?”

  “He went in with a tray. I’m sure he’ll be back again in a minute.”

  Mum looked out over the square that narrowed into a street with shops on both sides. She looked at the stone church, so solid and substantial in between all the white-painted wooden buildings. The gray-stone walls had a touch of green in them. As if the church stood in a forest, I thought, and imagined it among towering spruce and toppled tree trunks, overgrown boulders, a mossy rock-side, some hills in the distance.

  Christ, wandering the forests.

  Mum put down the bag she’d been holding in her lap on the chair beside her.

  “So, Kathrine,” she said, and looked at me. “You were in a bit of a state last night.”

  “Yes, I was,” I said. “But it’s all right now. I’m sorry to have bothered you about it. I shouldn’t have.”

  “You stayed the night at a hotel in your own city?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why?”

  I didn’t know what to say, and looked down. I didn’t want to give her anything to go on. At the same time, I wanted her to know.

  I looked up at her and smiled.

  “I honestly don’t know,” I said. “It was an impulse.”

  The waiter appeared, wiping both hands on his apron as he came down the steps before taking two menus from an empty table and coming over to ours.

  “What’s the soup of the day?” Mum asked.

  “French onion,” he said.

  “It was French onion the last time I was here, too,” she said.

  “Did you like it?” he inquired.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact I did,” she replied. “But that’s beside the point. If you have the same soup every day, you can hardly call it soup of the day. Soup of the day means it’s a different one every day.”

  The waiter smiled without speaking.

  “I’ll have the quiche with feta,” I said.

  “Caesar salad for me,” Mum said.

  We sat for a moment in silence after he’d gone. A bit farther away, two sparrows landed on a table that hadn’t been cleared. They hopped about on their matchstick legs, pecking and pulling at some half-eaten pieces of bread.

  “Has Gaute been unfaithful?” Mum asked.

  “God, no!” I said.

  “Have you?”

  “Mum. You know me better than that.”

  “What do I know?” she said. “You phone me up crying in the middle of the night and say you don’t know if you want to get divorced or not. The next day you’re saying it was nothing and everything’s fine. What am I supposed to think?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Things aren’t well between you and Gaute,” she said.

  “They’re not exactly bad though either,” I said. “There’s just nothing there, that’s all. No excitement, no curiosity. We’ve got nothing in common. The only thing we can talk about is the children. Yesterday was the first time I understood I don’t want to live like that. I was sitting on the plane and realized I didn’t want to go home.”

  “Not many marriages are exciting after twenty years.”

  “I know that,” I said. “And I’m sure I’ll stick it out.”

  Above us, something came sweeping through the air. I looked up in time to see it come hurtling, closer and closer, bigger and bigger. It was a large bird of prey. It swooped down on the neighboring table and snatched one of the sparrows, beat its wings a few times and then rose above the rooftops before disappearing from view.

  “Did you see that?” I said, astonished. “In the middle of the city?”

  Mum nodded.

  “What a remarkable thing,” she said.

  “What was it? A sea eagle?”

  “I wouldn’t know. A hawk, I should think. Mikael
would know.”

  “I can’t believe it,” I said. “It just came down and took that little bird.”

  Mum lit one of her cigarettes, cupping her elbow in her other hand, the way she always did when she smoked.

  “What if you found yourself a bit on the side?” she said.

  I stared at her.

  “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

  “No, not at all. It would be a practical solution to what is clearly a very palpable problem. You lack excitement and someone to share the things that interest you. And you wouldn’t have to leave your family. It stands to reason.”

  “I can’t believe you’re even suggesting this,” I said.

  “Yes, you can. But it’s your life.”

  “I’m a priest.”

  “It would have to be kept secret, priest or not,” she said.

  “No, you don’t understand. It’s not that someone could find out. It’s the fact that it’s immoral. In itself. It’s the fact that it’s wrong. In itself.”

  Mum nodded.

  “I hear you,” she said, and placed her hand on mine for a second.

  Abruptly, tears came to my eyes and I had to look away. Fortunately, the waiter appeared at that same moment, carrying a full tray, and the seconds that followed were all about the food he placed on the table in front of us.

  She’d noticed, of course. But she pretended she hadn’t, and I was thankful for it.

  * * *

  —

  The house was empty when I got home. I unpacked my case, put some washing in the machine and emptied the dishwasher while I waited for them to return. Peter and Marie attended the same school just down the road and went there and back on their own.

  I sat down on the sofa with a cup of coffee and stared at the uniform suburban landscape outside the window.

  Mum would say morals were relative rather than absolute, and socially and historically determined. Nothing was absolute to her, aside perhaps from her belief in rationalism.

  There was something cold about her. Always had been.

  How many times had I wondered what it was like to be her, what went on inside her mind?

  And how many times had I wondered what she thought of me?

  I got up and went into the study, standing in front of the window to see if the children were on their way.

  Instead it was Gaute I saw, coming up the hill in his red Polo. I stepped back into the room, put my mug down and went upstairs to the bathroom to run a bath. I didn’t feel like encountering him on my own, without the children there.

  And yet, as I pulled my top over my head, I changed my mind. Why should I have to avoid him? I had nothing to hide. I’d done nothing wrong.

  I turned the tap off, ran the brush through my hair and went downstairs to meet him.

  He came into the kitchen from the hallway with his brown leather briefcase in his hand.

  “Hi,” I said. “Do you want some coffee? I just made some.”

  “Are you home already?” he said. “I thought you were at work?”

  “I missed you all,” I said.

  He came up and gave me a peck on the cheek.

  “Coffee, then?” I said.

  “Yes, please,” he said, but remained where he was. I was about to turn when he said: “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Have you been unfaithful?”

  My face immediately felt warm. But my eyes didn’t move from his.

  “I can’t believe you’re asking me that,” I said. “Don’t you trust me anymore?”

  “Have you?” he said.

  “I won’t even answer that.”

  He sighed.

  “So you have, then,” he said.

  I didn’t reply, but went over to the side, took two mugs out of the cupboard and poured us some coffee while he sat down on the sofa, leaned back and stared up at the ceiling.

  “Why don’t you trust me?” I said, putting his mug down on the table in front of him.

  He answered without looking at me.

  “You just told me you’ve been unfaithful,” he said.

  “No, I didn’t,” I said. “I told you I wasn’t going to answer you.”

  “And why wouldn’t you want to do that? No, I’ll tell you why. Because you won’t lie.”

  “I want you to trust me,” I said. “You think badly of me. That’s up to you. But don’t come to me expecting to have your paranoid suspicions confirmed or dispelled.”

  “You blushed when I asked you.”

  “I was angry.”

  “So why can’t you just tell me you haven’t been unfaithful?”

  “This is an all-time low, Gaute.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What hotel did you stay at?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “So you won’t tell me that either?”

  “No, not when you’re asking like that.”

  The front door opened, followed by the bustle of the children coming into the hall.

  “There, I told you,” I heard Marie say. “Mummy is home.”

  I went out into the hall.

  “Mummy!” Marie exclaimed, and threw her arms around me.

  “Hello, dear,” I said, and kissed her on the head. “Hello, Peter, have you got a hug for me too?”

  “I suppose so,” he said. Marie let go and I put my arms around him.

  “Have you been all right?” I asked them.

  “Yes,” said Marie, already on her way into the living room.

  “And you, Peter?”

  “OK,” he said.

  * * *

  —

  While Gaute made dinner and Peter sat doing homework at the kitchen table, I gave Marie a bath. After the holiday in Crete she kept pestering us to take her to the pool, and when we couldn’t go the bath became her alternative to quench her unstoppable desire to be immersed in water. She pulled off her clothes and climbed in before the water had even covered the bottom. I sat on the edge and handed her various toys and other things to play with. At one point she lay facedown with a diving mask on, her breathing hollow and alien-sounding, then sat up and played with her plastic dogs, before putting on her goggles and pretending to swim lengths of the tub that was barely longer than herself.

  She was fun to be with, and I gave not a single thought to the argument with Gaute while we were together there.

  Washed and dried, and wrapped in a big towel, she marched off into her room, where with a little help she chose some clothes to put on and got dressed.

  Downstairs smelled of chops and onion being fried. On any other day, I’d have asked Gaute if we could dispense with the thick gravy he liked the chops to be served in, the way his mother had always done when he’d been growing up. But just one look at him as he stood there whisking the gravy in the pan was enough for me to see that he’d retreated into himself, and when he was in that sort of mood even the most innocent of comments would be construed as a provocation.

  I didn’t need this, he could do as he pleased.

  Peter sat reading, his head propped in his hand, elbow against the table next to his book, pen at the ready in his other hand. Gaute, who had gone over to get something from the cupboard, tousled his hair as he came back. Peter looked up and smiled at him.

  “What’s that you’re reading?” I asked, sitting down beside him.

  “Science,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “We’ve got to find information about an animal that’s extinct, and then write about the way it lived.”

  “That sounds interesting!” I said. “What animal have you chosen?”

  “I don’t know yet. That’s why I’m reading this book.”

  “Dinosaurs?”


  He sighed.

  “Mum, that’s too obvious,” he said.

  “My clever boy,” I said, glancing at Gaute as I got up.

  “When’s dinner ready?”

  “In ten minutes,” he said.

  “I’ll set the table, then,” I said.

  “Yes, do that,” he said.

  Gaute didn’t speak as we sat eating. I tried to lighten the mood, asking Peter about various things, to which, bent over his food, he replied only grudgingly. Marie, on the other hand, was talkative as ever.

  “Can I eat the white bit?” she said, poking her knife at the thick wedge of fat on the outside of her chop.

  “You can eat it, yes,” I said. “But I don’t think you’ll like it much. Do you want to taste?”

  She shook her head.

  “Can’t you cut it off?”

  I leaned across and cut away the fat.

  “I don’t want it on my plate,” she said. “It looks like an animal.”

  “That’s because it is an animal,” said Peter.

  “Leave it on the side,” I said.

  “No!” she said.

  “It’s your food,” I said. “I’ve got mine.”

  “I’ll have it,” said Gaute, and lifted it onto his own plate.

  I looked at him, but he didn’t return my gaze.

  Fine, I thought. If you can’t be bothered, I can’t either.

  We ate the rest of the meal in silence. Afterward, Peter and Marie disappeared into their rooms while I took care of the washing-up and Gaute sat down on the sofa to read the paper. Then, with the dishwasher started and the saucepans and frying pan scrubbed and put away, I made myself a coffee and went into the study.

  I skimmed the book I’d bought without being able to concentrate or muster much of an interest.

  Once during the time we’d been married, Gaute had fallen in love with someone else. He never said anything about it, but I knew him and realized what was happening. He’d had a student teacher in his class for a few weeks. He talked about her the first few days, what she was like, what she was good at, and less good at, the things she did. Then he stopped talking about her. He started switching his phone off when he came home, and something radiated in him. It was so strong he was unable to conceal it no matter how hard he tried, all of a sudden he was bubbling with excitement even when he was with the children, with me.