The Morning Star

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  “Not from Iselin, he hasn’t,” said Dad, and put the box down again, taking his sunglasses from the table and putting them on.

  After a moment he leaned forward and opened the box anyway, and handed me a piece of apple. I held it in front of Emil, who took it and threw it on the floor. Ulrika sighed and picked it up before Dad could reach.

  “How’s it going at school?” she said, leaning back in her chair again.

  “Good,” I said.

  Emil wanted to get down.

  “Here, I’ll take him,” Dad said. “He’s very active. He wants to be doing something all the time.”

  Dad looked up at me and smiled.

  “Just like you were at that age!”

  I smiled back. I was thirsty, but didn’t want to ask for something to drink.

  “What’s your favorite subject? Let me guess. Norwegian?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know.”

  I pulled my hair away from my face and looked across the road at the house opposite. From the corner of my eye I saw Dad and Ulrika exchange glances.

  “Is it OK if I have a shower?” I said.

  “Of course,” Dad said. “Clean towels are in the cupboard.”

  After I’d showered I made sure to leave everything wiped and clean and hung the towel nicely on the rail before going back to my room and lying down on the bed. I wondered whether to tell them I was going to stay in my room for a bit, because they always wanted to know what I was doing and where I was when I was staying at theirs, maybe because I didn’t actually live with them, but I decided I couldn’t be bothered. Anyway, there weren’t that many other places in the house I could be.

  I was lying watching an episode of Modern Family on my phone when all of a sudden Dad was standing in the doorway. I pulled my earphones out and sat up.

  “What are you watching?” he said.

  “Just a series,” I said.

  He came in and sat down on the bed.

  “Where’s Ulrika?” I said.

  “Putting Emil to bed,” he said. “Anyway, how are you? I mean really. And you don’t have to say ‘good’ now.”

  “What are you asking me that for?” I said.

  He shrugged. He didn’t look like me at all, his face was long and narrow, not round like mine, and his lips were broad and full, not thin like mine.

  “You’re my daughter,” he said. “And you don’t live here, so it feels like I know less and less about how you’re getting on.”

  He ruffled my hair.

  “I suppose I’m all right,” I said.

  “Yes? Have you made new friends at gymnasium?”

  I nodded.

  “Who?”

  “You wouldn’t know them, so it doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “Names, please,” he said, and smiled.

  “Astrid, Ada, Selma and Hanne,” I said. “They’re all in my class.”

  “What sort of things do they get up to, then?”

  “All sorts,” I said. “Normal things.”

  “Were they at the party yesterday?”

  He said it in the same casual way he always said things, and wasn’t looking at me when he said it.

  I felt the blood drain out of my face.

  “Yes, they were,” I said, then put my earphones in again and pressed play.

  “Can we talk about it?” he said, and I sensed him looking at me even though I was looking down at the screen.

  I shook my head.

  “There’s nothing wrong in having a party,” he said. “But you must ask first. Do you understand? Especially when you’re on your own there during the week.”

  “Dad, I’m not completely stupid,” I said.

  “I don’t think you are, not for a minute,” he said as he got to his feet. “Dinner in an hour, all right?”

  I nodded and he went back upstairs to her.

  * * *

  —

  At school on the Monday, everyone already knew about the party. I got looks when I entered the classroom. I pretended I wasn’t bothered. I couldn’t change the way they related to me, so I’d just have to change the way I related to them. They meant nothing to me, I decided. And it worked. If I didn’t care about them, they couldn’t get to me. The same went for school itself. I didn’t have to get the bus to school every day, I actually could stay in bed and laze every now and then, make myself something nice to eat, sit in my room, do some singing and recording. It was more important to me than maths and geography. Mostly it was hit songs that I sang, but I wrote some of my own too.

  No one knew about it.

  Sometimes I’d go into town in the lunch break, and sometimes I’d stay there, sitting around at cafes, listening to music or watching videos.

  It was after two months of this that Ommundsen had asked if I was going through a difficult time. But I wasn’t, I was actually feeling better than I’d done for ages after I stopped caring about what other people thought and believed.

  Ommundsen took us for Norwegian, Social Studies and History. I had him too for my elective in music. In one of the music lessons after he’d spoken to me he announced that the school was putting on Cats. It was going to be a collaboration between the music and drama classes. He wanted us all to sing for him individually in class to give him an idea about how to cast the various roles, but also so we could start getting used to singing on our own in front of others.

  “Iselin?” he said when it was my turn.

  “I don’t want to,” I said.

  “You’ve a lovely voice, I know you have!” he said from behind the piano, smiling as he looked out at the little group of students.

  “I don’t want to sing now, and I don’t want to be in any musical.”

  “But, Iselin,” he said, “it’s only for your classmates!”

  “I told you, I don’t want to,” I said.

  All of a sudden it was too much for me. I sat looking down at the desk with tears in my eyes while everyone stared at me. I jumped up, grabbed my bag and left the room. At first I went to the library, but that was no good either, so I went outside, left the school and went down into town. It was November, cold and cloudy, lines of dirty snow in the streets. I so much regretted having chosen music, because the two things, music and school, weren’t supposed to meet, I realized then. Maybe Ommundsen realized it too. At any rate, he sent me an e-mail in the break, apologizing. He suggested I could sing for him on our own. I wrote back from the tea rooms I was in and told him I didn’t want that either. He replied straightaway and said he respected my choice, but that it was important I came to the next lesson. Which I did, even though I’d made myself an outcast there too after marching off like that.

  “Can I have a word, Iselin?” he said after the bell went and we were packing our stuff together.

  I nodded.

  “I’m sorry I pressured you,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done.”

  “That’s OK,” I said without looking at him.

  “But I do need to allocate marks, as you know. And singing a solo is part of the curriculum. How about you record something and send it to me? Or we could do it now and be done with it?”

  “Now now?” I said.

  He nodded and smiled.

  “OK,” I said.

  And so I stood there, with Ommundsen at the piano in the empty music room.

  “What would you like to sing?” he said.

  “Do you know ‘Paradise’?” I said.

  “Coldplay? I think I can manage that,” he said, and downloaded the chords onto his phone. “It’s a lovely song. Do you like it?”

  “Mm,” I said.

  “Ready?”

  “Mm.”

  He played a little introduction and gave me a nod when he wanted me to come in.

  When I was finished and th
e final chord died away, I saw there were tears in his eyes. I turned, went back to my desk and got my bag.

  “Iselin,” he said, and stood up.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “That was absolutely marvelous. You sing so exceptionally well. You’ve a fabulous voice. You mustn’t hide yourself away!”

  Those were his exact words. They made me so happy.

  I needed them then. But now, five years on, they meant nothing. Apart from reminding me how much I’d failed in everything I’d hoped for then. And no way did I want Ommundsen to know that.

  I looked up at the fells. The sun had gone and the sky had begun to darken. I took a sip of my wine and checked my phone to see if maybe Jonas had texted without me noticing, but he hadn’t. When I looked up again, my eyes met those of a woman at the next table.

  What was she looking at me for?

  The feeling of being some kind of freak rose inside me.

  My body felt like it was starting to burn.

  Was anyone else looking at me?

  I glanced around, as if looking for someone I knew or something.

  Everyone was occupied with their own stuff.

  Maybe it was Our Lady who’d been looking at me?

  Seeing as how I’d already met Our Lord at the Burger King.

  I saw a kind of grayish-yellow mist in my mind’s eye, the way I did whenever I thought about God, ever since I was little. It was totally automatic. Only after I became a teenager did it occur to me it was because of the similarity between the two words, gul and Gud—yellow and God. But even though I knew, I still kept seeing that yellow mist.

  I never prayed to God in those days, only to Jesus. I couldn’t see the point of praying to a mist.

  The church attendant at my confirmation had spoken with a lisp, I remembered.

  Jethuth Chritht, he’d said.

  I’d felt sorry for him. Everyone made fun of him and copied him.

  Kids could be so cruel.

  I checked my phone again. Nothing.

  I didn’t have to find Jonas and hang out with him and his friends. I didn’t have to sit in a bar and wait to be checked out by some disgusting guy who wasn’t fussy.

  I could just as well stay on my own. Walk home through town, have a shower, lie in bed and watch a film, and be good to myself.

  Something moved on the ground to my left and I looked to see what it was.

  Three rats scurried away hugging the side of the planter boxes, and then three more after them.

  Terror ran through my body to my fingertips.

  But they weren’t dangerous.

  It was probably too hot for them. That’d be why they were coming out.

  No one else had seen them, so it seemed, at least no one who made a fuss.

  I drank up the rest of my wine and put the glass down in front of me.

  So that meant there were thirty-six others close by.

  Sweat ran from my armpits and I pressed my T-shirt against my skin to absorb it, then lowered my head as casually as I could and sniffed.

  The sweat smell had mingled with deodorant and perfume, rank in a scent of petals.

  I wanted a man inside me. I wanted to lie on my back and spread my legs and have him up inside me. I wanted him to fuck me the whole night.

  I love your cunt, I love your cunt so much, he would say, and would moan, no, cry out, when he came.

  And afterward he’d lie with his head against my chest and his eyes closed while he got his breath back, and he’d kiss me and draw me close, and tell me how lovely I was.

  I glanced around sheepishly.

  No one was looking.

  Only the waiter, who met my gaze.

  He came over.

  “Another glass?” he said.

  I pressed my arms to my sides so he wouldn’t be able to smell me, and shook my head.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “Can I have the bill?”

  “Certainly,” he said, and went to get it.

  No one knew my thoughts.

  Maybe some of the other people there were thinking the same.

  That little man with the curly hair and mustache, for instance. Perhaps he was fantasizing about fucking one of the women at his table at that very moment.

  Or me.

  Suddenly, there was an almighty sound of breaking glass somewhere above my head. I looked up and saw flames burst out of a window on the top floor, blazing up within seconds. The air crackled and popped.

  No one else had noticed.

  In no time, the fire took hold of the roof, escalating tongues of flame leaping toward the dark sky, and from inside came the dull thud of something collapsing. Soon the whole roof would be engulfed.

  Everyone sat as before.

  “Fire!” I shouted.

  All heads turned. I jumped to my feet and pointed.

  “Up there! Fire!”

  They looked up, but remained seated.

  What was happening? The building was on fire, couldn’t they see?

  “Fire!” I shouted again. “Someone call the fire brigade!”

  The waiter came darting toward me.

  “All right, settle down,” he said.

  “Settle down? What’s the matter with you?” I said. “The place is on fire!”

  “There’s no fire here,” he said.

  “Up there!” I shouted, pointing to the roof.

  But there was no fire.

  Everything was normal.

  The window was intact, the walls likewise.

  No fire.

  He looked at me.

  “But . . . there was a fire,” I said. “Up there, just now.”

  “No, there wasn’t,” he said.

  “But I saw it!” I said.

  He put his hand on my shoulder.

  “There was no fire, I promise you. Are you all right? Have you taken something? Do you want me to phone someone?”

  Everyone was looking at me.

  What had happened?

  What had I done?

  I pulled a hundred-krone note out of my pocket and put it down on the table, shouldered my rucksack and went out into the street with shame burning in my cheeks.

  So incredibly embarrassing.

  But I’d seen it!

  I stopped at the edge of the pond and wiped my tears away with my index finger. My makeup would have run. But that was the least of my problems.

  It was as if they’d been in another world. As if I hadn’t been in the same world as them, but a different one.

  At the same time as they’d been sitting there looking at me.

  I crossed the road in front of the bus station into Lyder Sagens gate. Even there, there were lots of people out.

  It had felt like I didn’t belong there.

  Almost as if I’d been dead and they were living. Or else they’d been dead and it was me who was living.

  Oh, the humiliation of it, the humiliation.

  I’d stood there shouting and screaming in front of all those people. And there’d been nothing there.

  So what was it?

  I’d seen it. I had.

  I turned left and went through Nygårdsgaten the way I always did. The air was so hot it was like mid-afternoon, and my T-shirt felt sticky, decidedly wet under the sleeves. Windows were open everywhere in the low houses that were divided up into rented rooms and apartments, and here and there music drifted out, occasionally the raucous noise of a party. Darkness rose all around me.

  I’d been hallucinating.

  But I hadn’t taken anything.

  And I wasn’t mad.

  I had to talk to someone about it. If I didn’t, I’d go mad, that was for sure.

  I could call Jonas in the morning.

  Maybe go out to his?


  He was always good to chill with the day after if we’d been out.

  The gas station was still open, and I went in and bought a hot dog and a Coke, and stood quite openly eating outside the door while wrestling the urge to just run away from it all. A couple my own age went inside holding hands, though only with the tips of their fingers, as if they were only loosely together. Maybe they were, I thought to myself. She had a pair of flowery leggings on, and a white top and sandals, while he had long hair and was wearing army-green shorts and a pair of worn-out Converse that looked like they used to be yellow.

  What was it that had happened?

  I wiped my mouth with the paper napkin, licked the ketchup and mustard off my fingers before wiping them too, then tossed the napkin in the bin by the pumps, took a good swig of my Coke and set off walking again with the bottle in my hand.

  But the thought of my boiling-hot little attic room didn’t appeal.

  Maybe Ommundsen would still be at Café Opera?

  It would do me good to talk to him.

  Not that I’d pour my heart out, because it was none of his business.

  We could talk about him for a change.

  I could ask him questions.

  I turned round and started walking back toward the center. Even if he wasn’t there, it was still good to just walk around for a bit.

  Soon there were people everywhere again. My thoughts tightened like a web. How could I have forgotten so quickly?

  I stank of sweat and was horrible.

  But I’d already reached Vaskerelven and to go back now would be stupid.

  I put my earphones in even though it was only a few minutes away, and put on “Blue Lights” by Jorja Smith. It changed the way everything felt around me. Suddenly, everyone was a minor character in my life.

  A girl stood leaning with her head against a wall in an alley I passed. Three other girls were with her, in high heels and short skirts, though they were looking the other way.

  I’d never been to Café Opera before, only walked past. There was no queue, I suppose people didn’t want to be inside on a night like this. I paused and removed my earphones, twining the cord around them as I tried to collect myself.

  Maybe something was seriously wrong with me. I’d seen the fire. I hadn’t imagined it, and it wasn’t something I’d dreamed either. But what did it mean? What sort of person hallucinated while fully awake, without being high or totally drunk?