The Morning Star

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  Did I really want more?

  Yes.

  Why shouldn’t I, if it was what I wanted? Who, or what part of me, was it that said no?

  Reason. My guilty conscience.

  Why not show a bit of willpower, get up and leave?

  It was exactly these kinds of situations that were crucial.

  I got my phone out and googled “Orpheus.” A Wiki article came up about a Greek god. Most probably it was the name of a play or an opera too. Knowing him, it’d be an opera.

  I typed “orpheus opera” and searched again.

  Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, that had to be it.

  Without thinking about it or looking at how much it cost, I booked a ticket for Wednesday. Then I took my tray over to the recycling station, emptied out the rest of the Diet Coke, stuffed the cup down the hole, dropped the rest of the packaging into the bin and went straight to the counter and ordered a Bacon King and another Diet Coke.

  As I put my tray on the table and sat down again, the man looked at me.

  “You eat too much,” he said.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  Did he actually say that?

  I looked across at him, my cheeks warm.

  He just smiled.

  What was I supposed to do then?

  I had to say something, I couldn’t just sit there.

  The shame was burning inside me.

  I picked up my burger and lifted it toward my mouth, changed my mind and put it down again.

  “What’s it to you?” I said. But my voice was feeble and I hadn’t the courage to look him in the eye.

  He smiled.

  “I am the Lord,” he said.

  Oh, so he’s crazy, I thought to myself, and all shame disappeared.

  “Leave me alone or I’ll call the staff,” I said.

  He stood up and came toward me, passed his hand through my hair and went out.

  I sat there with my mouth open and watched him as he vanished into the crowds outside.

  What happened there?

  His touch had felt so good.

  It had felt so good.

  Something soft and warm had spread through my body. It felt like I’d been filled with warm oil.

  I ought to have been angry, I ought to have reported him, he had no right to touch me.

  Christ, what an idiot I was.

  No one had touched me for months. Of course it was going to feel good, another person running their hand through my hair like that.

  You eat too much. Yeah, right.

  I didn’t want any more now, but on the other hand it felt wrong to chuck it all out, so I ate half the burger and a few fries before going over and throwing out what was left.

  Outside in the street, I stood for a moment wondering where to go. I rented an attic room in a house just below the hospital; it had sloping walls and would once have been for the maid. When the sun shone in summer, the way it was shining today, it’d be sweltering in there, it didn’t even help to open the windows; by afternoon the place would be boiling, so the thought of going back there now didn’t really appeal. But I didn’t want to go out either.

  I started walking back in the direction of Torgallmenningen. Going about the town on your own was fine, nothing wrong with that, it was actually more unusual for me to be with someone, now I thought about it. It was sitting down somewhere that was the problem, because as soon as I sat down it made me feel like I was so conspicuous. Maybe no one else noticed. But the feeling was so strong it was almost like a light that radiated from me, and everything I did then would have to take place in that light. Whatever it was, reading a book, sipping my beer or wine, or just gazing, I became incredibly aware of it, as if I could see myself from the outside and the inside at the same time. I’m sitting here on my own, she’s sitting there on her own. And then in no time at all my thoughts would be churning and dark, I couldn’t stand it, and if I was going to stay I’d have to fight it, fight against it the whole time, that light that shone out of me, the extra person inside me who kept such a close eye on everything I did.

  Of course, it wasn’t like that when I was sitting on my bed in my room. But then it would be other things, like how I should be out instead of staying in, even if it did feel good and relaxing to be drinking tea and eating chocolate while watching some new film on Netflix.

  As soon as I stopped walking, it was like a rush of confusion and helplessness went through me. And so I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t sit down, all I could do was keep walking or else stay at home in my room.

  At uni it had made everything impossible. I’d sit there burning in the library, burning in the canteen, burning in lectures.

  Thank God for my job, was what I said. At work I could sit there completely exposed without it bothering me. No one cared who I was, as long as I did my job.

  The grass surrounding the big pond in the center of town was crawling with people. Mostly groups of young people sitting drinking by the looks of it. The sky above the fells was a dramatic red as the sun went down into the sea on the other side. The fjord was like a mirror, the air hot and still.

  What was it I’d thought in the toilet while I’d been doing my makeup?

  That I looked exotic with my gold eyeshadow. Arabian nights. Passionate and strong.

  On my way out for a date.

  Businesswoman.

  Lebanon. Beirut. Jordan.

  Self-assured. Sexy. Mysterious. A long day, and now a relaxing drink in the hotel lounge.

  All these pale Westerners around me with their superficial, commercial lives. The women were like men, and the men were like women.

  The man I was meeting was under my spell. He’d drunk from the spring and now would give anything for more.

  I could drive them mad, if I wanted.

  They forgot about everything but me and what I gave to them.

  It was a strange land to which destiny had brought me. Its mountains were so high and so green, its people so cold.

  I came past a cafe with outdoor seating. A couple got up and I went over without hurrying, asked them if they were leaving. The man nodded, and I sat down.

  The fire in the sky was going out.

  I waved the waiter over.

  He came.

  “Have you got Lebanese wine?” I asked.

  “Lebanese, no,” he said. “We’ve got Australian, Chilean and Californian. And French and Spanish and Italian, of course. And German white wines. Was it a particular grape you had in mind?”

  I made a gesture that was half resigned, half not bothered.

  “I’ll have a glass of the house red, please,” I said. “And some olives if you’ve got any.”

  “Will that be all?” he said.

  “Yes. Thank you,” I said.

  He went away. People strolled along the pond, in no hurry. My eye latched on to three young guys, students probably, one of them pushing a bike, all three with backpacks on. Tanned with summer, lanky, loose-limbed bodies that didn’t care about being seen. I saw a mother and father pushing an empty stroller, their little girl toddling along in front, hardly able to walk yet at all.

  A flood of longing rose inside me.

  If only someone would touch me.

  All I had to do was go to a hotel bar later on. There’d always be someone there who wasn’t fussy and would come up and buy you a drink and eventually ask if you fancied going up to his room. Or I could go to Galeien after the clubs had closed, and then just wait. They were younger there, but drunker too, and it’d all feel a bit shabby if I wasn’t as out of it as them.

  The waiter came with my wine and olives. I took a little sip and tried to go back to where I’d just been in my mind.

  Only then the pain came back. The metal wire cutting through my brain like an egg slicer. I closed my eyes, and the darkne
ss was flecked with light.

  Aaaargh, I said quietly between my teeth. Aaaargh.

  And then it passed.

  Nothing in all the world felt better than when the pain passed. Everything became good again.

  Once, it had lasted nearly an hour. As luck would have it, I’d been at home, because it had made me vomit. But usually it was gone in a matter of seconds.

  I sipped my wine. A homeless person came along the street, pushing a shopping trolley full of carrier bags and bundles of rags. Two slender young girls went past him, one in a short white summer dress, the other in a floral-patterned one.

  Sensual, strong and mysterious.

  Meetings all day, now a well-deserved glass of wine.

  If only someone would touch me.

  Who had he been, that guy? Why had he done it?

  I am the Lord. Yeah, right.

  But he hadn’t looked crazy.

  Who knows what goes on in people’s heads?

  Not me, anyway.

  Take Ommundsen.

  For a couple of months or so I’d actually thought he was interested in me. It was embarrassing to think about now. That he could have had feelings for a fat sixteen-year-old. Only he’d often looked at me in class with those warm eyes of his. And he’d helped me with so much.

  I could still remember the first time. He came up to my desk after a lesson while I was sitting packing my stuff away.

  “Hi, Iselin,” he said.

  “Hi,” I said without looking at him.

  “Your attendance figures are a bit worrying.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’ve been under the weather a lot. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve been wondering if perhaps you might be going through some kind of a difficult time at the moment. Would I be right?”

  “No, not at all,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”

  He smiled.

  “Why do you feel obliged to say that?”

  I shrugged.

  “Because it’s true?” I said, and got to my feet. “But I’ll make an effort with my attendance.”

  I left the room without saying good-bye and walked to the bus stop across the road. I was angry and upset. What was it to him?

  At the same time, I liked the fact that he was bothered.

  No one else was. Mum was away all week in Oslo upgrading her qualifications, Dad had moved out and had a new family of his own now, and Jonas lived with our gran that year.

  I was sixteen and old enough to look after myself. It wasn’t just something my mum said, I said so too. And it was actually good not having her around all the time.

  So the problem wasn’t me living on my own during the week. The problem was I hadn’t made any friends in my new class. Most of the girls had come from the same school and already knew each other from before. Their cliques weren’t open for me, they were already fully formed. Besides, it wasn’t cool hanging out with people from your own class. Everyone had their cliques elsewhere.

  There were two other girls who were also left out, only they didn’t seem to mind. Agnete, who sat by the windows knitting with a wry smile on her face at everything that went on around her, and Sara, who belonged to some kind of Christian sect and always wore a dress and her long hair in a plait. She was really good-looking, but way too weird for anyone to take an interest in her, and she wasn’t that interested in other people either. She stuck in at her subjects and got good marks, but she was throwing her life away, it was so obvious. If I’d been as good-looking as her, and as slim, I’d have thrown myself headlong into life without waiting a second.

  Mondays were the worst, before the first lesson when everyone was asking everyone else what they’d been up to at the weekend. It was all parties here and parties there, and movie nights with the crew. Occasionally, someone would ask me too, especially Jakob, who always had a thing about including everyone. He was on the student committee, all left-wing politics and wanting to put his idealism to good use wherever he could. A tousle of hair and a face full of pimples, not exactly good-looking, but full of energy, noise and laughter. I had nothing against him, in fact I liked him rather a lot, but not when he wanted to include me in something. He didn’t understand it had the opposite effect. That being asked about something by him was like having a mark put on your forehead.

  “What did you do at the weekend, Iselin?” he said from where he sat in the front row.

  I sat at the back, painfully aware that no one could have failed to hear his penetrating voice, shrugged my shoulders and glanced up at him, as if occupied by something else.

  “Nothing special,” I said.

  But I could only say that a few times before it became conspicuous, so then I started lying, saying I’d been to a party or at Peppe’s with my friends, and if he asked about the party, where it had been, for instance, I’d say the name of someone from my old class. No one was going to check anyway.

  My dad always said that for any problem there’s a solution. If something can’t be solved, then it was never a problem.

  What was my problem?

  That I hadn’t made friends at school.

  That I didn’t get invited to parties.

  There was an easy way to solve both problems. I could invite the girls in the class to a party at mine. It wasn’t without risk, though, because what if they didn’t want to come? It would only make the problem worse.

  I wished I could talk to Dad about it, in that half-joking, half-serious way we’d often talk to each other before. He’d said I could come and live with them, but I didn’t want to. He’d changed with his new wife and the new baby. He always used to come into my room and talk to me, it was a thing we’d had going for years, but then when he moved in with her he didn’t have “time” anymore. He was under her thumb, did exactly what he was told, which meant there was no room for me.

  He was just as nice as before, though, and I knew he cared about me, but whenever I was invited to theirs for dinner I could always see straight through him, the way he was scared all the time in case he paid me too much attention compared to her and their kid.

  Class parties were something they did in secondary, not at gymnasium school. So I couldn’t send invitations out. And I couldn’t just ask people if they wanted to come out to mine on Friday, because why would they when we didn’t know each other?

  But if I was already having a party and then casually mentioned they were welcome to drop by, it wouldn’t be that strange. And it wouldn’t matter if they didn’t come either.

  So that’s what I did.

  To begin with, Mum would leave Oslo on the Friday afternoon and be home by late evening, but after a while she started leaving on the Saturday morning instead, which was good, because then I could have the party on the Friday and have time to clear up before she got home Saturday afternoon.

  I came from the kind of village where the boys drive around in cars with their girlfriends in the passenger seat and the girlfriend’s friends in the back, and it was such a small place that everyone knew who everyone else was. I said to some of the girls from my old class that I was having a party and they could invite who they wanted as long as it wasn’t too many. Then I told the girls in my new class that I was having a party and they could come if they wanted.

  The first car came up the drive around six. It was Signe and her boyfriend, and three of his friends. The boyfriend’s name was Arild, he was short and had a little mustache and a bunch of keys hanging from his belt. He was full of himself, pretending he knew everyone and everything. But he was eighteen and had his own car, that was why she was going out with him. I didn’t know his friends, but I knew they played on the football team.

  “Hi, Iselin,” said Signe ingratiatingly and gave me a hug.

  “So great you could come!” I said, the same ingratiating tone.

  Arild opened the trunk and they
got two crates of beer out.

  I was horrified, but couldn’t exactly say anything.

  “Where can we put them?” he said.

  “In the kitchen?” I said.

  Another car came, this time it was Ada and Maja and their boyfriends. They had two bottles of Absolut with them and orange juice to go with it. And then it went on from there. By eight, the area in front of the house was packed with cars, and others were parked up on both sides of the drive all the way down to the road. There were maybe fifty or so. Nobody cared. The stereo in the living room was on full blast, and music was blaring out of some of the cars as well. There were people everywhere, in all the rooms, and still more kept arriving. I didn’t know half of them.

  At the start, I tried to look after everything, moving stuff from the living room that could get broken, putting things out of the way in cupboards, and there was plenty to keep an eye on, because Mum loved her decorations. I bundled out the two people who were sitting on the floor in Jonas’s room smoking pot and locked the door. I decided I needed to hide things from my room that were private, but it was no use, three boys I didn’t know were sitting in a row on my bed drinking when I came in, another was rocking on my chair, and someone was sitting on my desk. I gave up then and told myself that whatever happened happened.

  It was so awful, and I’d forgotten all about the girls from my new class. Four of them were suddenly standing there staring in the living room. Lea, Hanne, Selma and Astrid.

  “You came!” I said, and dashed over to them.

  “What a lot of friends you’ve got, Iselin!” Selma said.

  The other three sniggered.

  They looked like creatures from another world. Everything they were wearing was so neat and finicky and perfect, Astrid in light blue jeans and a blue top with a white floral pattern, a thin white cardigan on top, Lea in a skimpy black Led Zeppelin T-shirt, black skirt and a nice leather jacket.

  “Did you come on the bus?” I said.

  Lea nodded.

  “What are we supposed to do, exactly?” said Selma. “What do people do at parties out here?”

  “Maybe we could just get drunk and then stagger about shouting our heads off?” said Astrid.