The Morning Star

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  It didn’t matter much to me, it was more that I felt guilty toward him. But I could hardly have sex with him just because I felt guilty, it would be a form of prostitution.

  He wondered, of course, and realized there was something wrong. And then when I hadn’t come home the night before, he’d put two and two together.

  I understood the logic.

  But I didn’t understand how he could think so badly of me.

  Did he really know me no better than that?

  I stood up and dropped the apple core in the waste bin. The funeral was in fifteen minutes. I went to the toilet and peed, and when I returned to the office I sat down and closed my eyes and ran through the entire liturgy in my mind in order to focus on what was about to happen and to bring with me as little as possible from my own life.

  A few minutes later I crossed over the open space to the church. The sun was so strong it felt almost as if it were scorching my face. The temperature outside had to be at least thirty degrees. And not a breath of air. The leaves on the trees above me hung quite still.

  But within the ancient thick stone walls of the church, the air was cool.

  I put on my vestments in the sacristy as the bells began to ring, and returned to the church interior. The organist, Erik, struck up the prelude. The two undertakers sat next to each other on the first row of benches, their heads bowed. The coffin was black, which was rather uncommon nowadays, and I wondered why it had been chosen when there had been no specific request for it.

  I began to sing. The two undertakers lifted their heads and accompanied me in seasoned voices, without embarrassment.

  It felt strange to sing only with them, as if it merely drew out the feeling that we were performing a theater piece, with no attachment to the situation and the deceased, yet it felt right and dignified too, as if the hymn took on particular importance by virtue of none of us present having known him as a person to whom we could say good-bye.

  “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” I enunciated to the empty rows of benches. “We are gathered here today to say a last farewell to Kristian Hadeland. Together, we will surrender him into God’s hands and follow him to his final resting place. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

  I looked down at the coffin. A wreath with the words Rest in Peace had been placed on top of it—from “Friends,” as custom dictated in those circumstances.

  The thought passed through my mind that it couldn’t possibly have been the deceased’s twin brother I’d seen. If it had, he would have been present. The idea that the deceased could have a twin brother not in attendance at his funeral was strange in itself, but even stranger was the notion that he would have contacted me at the airport, the priest who was to lay his brother to rest.

  Such coincidences did not occur.

  But who was he then, if not his twin brother?

  Could I have been mistaken?

  I raised my arms slightly, palms turned upward.

  “Jesus says: Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

  The two men were looking straight ahead. Their faces revealed no emotion; they were at work.

  “Let us pray,” I said.

  I folded my hands together and bowed my head.

  “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. You turn people back to dust, saying, ‘Return to dust, you mortals.’ A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night. Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

  I looked up again. The bright light outside made the colors of the stained-glass windows gleam red and green and blue, the otherwise dull walls of the church interior shimmering faintly. Everything accentuated the emptiness of the space. As I stepped toward the pulpit, I visualized his round face. His eyes, at first merely friendly, albeit perhaps rather imposingly so, had later seemed almost to be inciting. As if he had known something about me, I thought. As if he had known who I was.

  If it was him, it would be ironic, given that I was now laying him to rest knowing nothing about him.

  But it couldn’t be him.

  I had to stop thinking it.

  I glanced at Erik. He smiled at me and gave me a thumbs up, the idiot. Dignity was everything in that space, no matter how many times you were there in the course of a day.

  I breathed in.

  “Kristian Hadeland was born on the sixth of June 1956 at Haukeland Hospital in the city in which we stand,” I said. “And he died here, in this same city, on the twenty-third of August, sixty-seven years old. We are gathered here today to say farewell to Kristian, and to remember him. In normal circumstances, the next of kin would have spoken to me about the life of the deceased, their time in education, their work and family, the events of a life, great and small, and either they or I would have shared those recollections with the bereaved in a memorial tribute. Today, at the coffin of Kristian Hadeland, circumstances are sadly different. None of those present are able to remember him. All we know about you, Kristian, is that you lived here on this earth for sixty-seven years. You were an infant, innocent and doted upon, and then you were a child, growing into the world. You saw the sun and the moon, you saw the trees and the flowers, you saw houses and cars, you saw the sea and the sky. You were an adolescent, filled with the emotions of life, and then you grew into adulthood and became a man, following the path of your life, whether you felt it to be of your own choosing or to have been chosen for you. Now all that is behind you. Now your days on earth have been numbered. Now you are in God’s hands. You were a human being, for better or worse, and we remember you as such here today. Life is hallowed, and it is death that makes it so, and the meaning of life is God.”

  The younger of the two undertakers, who until then had let the liturgy wash over him without resistance, as if it were a kind of wind, suddenly looked up at me in what seemed to be puzzlement. But when I nodded to Erik and he struck up the first chords of “Deilig er jorden,” they both sang with gusto.

  Fair is creation

  marvelous God’s heaven,

  blest the souls in their pilgrim throng.

  Through realms of earthly

  loveliness onward

  we go to paradise with song!

  Ages lie waiting,

  ages quick in passing,

  generations that form a throng.

  Music from heaven

  never falls silent

  in this the soul’s glad pilgrim song.

  Angels first sang it

  to the wond’ring shepherds,

  sweet was from soul to soul its sound:

  Peace and rejoicing

  be to all people,

  for us a saviour now is found!

  The music faded. I didn’t even know if he had been Christian. Whether he had believed in God. Probably not, hardly anyone did anymore.

  Did I?

  But I would never entertain such a thought. And certainly never in church.

  “Let us hear what the Word of God says about life and death, the final judgment, and our hope in Jesus Christ,” I went on.

  I opened the Bible in front of me and began to read.

  “ ‘And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And
God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.’

  “This is the word of the Lord.”

  I closed the book.

  “The scripture I have just read, from the Revelation of St. John the Divine, is one of the most widely used of all in funeral services,” I said. “This is so because it gives hope, and concerns hope, a release from all that is painful in life, but especially that which is painful to us when someone close to us dies. There shall no longer be sorrow, nor crying, nor pain, and neither shall there be death—‘for the former things are passed away.’ It is easy to dismiss such words as the wishful thinking of a tormented individual, the wish for a new world in which all that is wrong with the present one will no longer exist. But if we think of what John’s revelation describes to us as being the kingdom of God, and if we think then of what God is, the words make sense. God is not sorrow and pain, God is joy. God is not death, God is life. And, not least: God is eternal. And all of this is present now, in the place in which we stand today. Joy and life and eternity are with us. We share in the joy, as we share in life and share in eternity. But we are not joy, we are not life, we are not eternity. God is those things. We share, in a way, in God, as the minute perhaps shares in eternity, even though it is finite, and we do so even when we are crushed by sorrow, absence or pain. We are always a part of God. And what Jesus showed us is that God is a part of us. ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men,’ the scripture says. It means that we are never alone. The fact that we sometimes feel ourselves to be alone is another matter. When we do, it is perhaps because we have shut God out, and shut ourselves in, with our sorrow and pain. Indeed, we can imagine such a life, locked in darkness while the light shines outside. What is the truth of that life? That it is dark in itself? Or that it has turned away from the light? If we open ourselves to God, through Jesus Christ, who is the light, we open ourselves to joy, life and eternity. All of which are present even in darkness, even in loneliness, even in pain.

  “We are never alone.

  “No, we are never alone.”

  I stepped forward to the coffin, bowed my head, and folded my hands.

  “Let us pray.

  “Eternal God, Heavenly Father, you have in your son, Jesus Christ, given us victory over death. We ask that you lead us by your Holy Spirit, so that we never lose hope in you, but live our lives by faith in your Son, and one day come into eternal life in your kingdom, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

  “Into your hands, O God, I commend my spirit.

  “You redeem me, O Lord, O faithful God.

  “Into your hands, O God, I surrender my spirit.

  “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.

  “Into your hands, O God, I surrender my spirit.”

  I nodded to Erik, who began the postlude as the two undertakers rose, gripped the catafalque and rolled it up the aisle toward the doors. I walked behind the coffin as I had done so many times before. But this time I was close to tears. It very seldom happened. Perhaps because normally my attention would be directed toward the bereaved and their grief, which always seemed to fill the church so much more than the presence of the deceased, which in this case was all there was. Everything was so empty around him and the power of the liturgy seemed to come to the fore in such circumstances, where no sorrowful faces were congregated to absorb it. For it concerned not only them, as was so easy to think when they broke down sobbing all around; it concerned every one of us.

  I narrowed my eyes as we emerged into the sunlight. How unbelievably hot it was.

  And how still.

  How could they bear their dark suits in such heat?

  Not that my cassock was much better.

  They rolled the coffin along the gravel paths, following the yellow-white perimeter of scorched grass that became greener farther inside the churchyard beneath the tall, shady deciduous trees, passing among the scattered gravestones.

  The new grave was over by the wall in the far corner. The brown sides, the brown earth, made it look like a wound in all the green. And the planks that were laid across it, the little crane that stood there waiting, brought to mind a building site. I’d never cared for this makeshift aspect, the act of committal became so prosaic and mechanical. At the same time, it was how the world was, unfinished and in constant change. It would have been quite as wrong to close one’s eyes to it.

  The two undertakers transferred the coffin onto the cradle that was attached to the crane. It was heavy, and they shoved more than lifted, laboring to bring it into position with a brief thud.

  “And now let us sing hymn number 570,” I said.

  Deep and glorious, word victorious,

  Word divine that ever lives!

  Call thou sinners to be winners

  Of the life that Jesus gives;

  Tell abroad what God hath given;

  Jesus is our way to heaven.

  Saviour tender, thanks we render

  For the grace Thou dost afford;

  Time is flying, time is dying,

  Yet eternal stands Thy word;

  With Thy word Thy grace endureth,

  And a refuge us secureth.

  By Thy spirit, through Thy merit,

  Draw all weary souls to Thee!

  End their sighing, end their dying,

  Let them Thy salvation see!

  Lead us in life’s pathway tending,

  To the life and bliss unending.

  As we stood there singing I saw us as if from afar. Three people standing among grass and trees, singing in front of an open grave in the corner of a churchyard, while cars drove by on the road outside and airplanes passed across the blue sky. Our voices, rising into the air and dissolving, so brittle and weak. And the coffin with the lifeless body inside it above the grave, the sunlight that made its black varnish gleam.

  I opened the Bible at the passage from which I was going to read. The white page was a glare.

  I was pregnant.

  That was why I’d felt sick.

  I was going to have a baby.

  Oh no.

  But that was why.

  I couldn’t have it.

  Not with Gaute.

  I lifted my gaze and looked at the two undertakers standing at the graveside waiting, their hands behind their backs.

  “Jesus says, ‘Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.’

  “Let us pray.

  “Lord Jesus Christ, let Kristian Hadeland rest in peace under the sign of the cross until the resurrection day. Help us to put our faith in you, both in life as well as death.”

  The younger of the undertakers started the motor while the other stood next to him with his head bowed and his hands at his back. Slowly the coffin was lowered into the grave, whose soil was dry at the top where the sun had shone, but moist, glistening and dark at the bottom.

  I bent forward and picked up the shovel that had been placed ready for me.

  “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” I said, putting the shovel into the small mound at my feet and casting earth into the grave.

  There was a short and rather harsh sifting noise as the earth struck the wood of the coffin.

  “From earth you have come,” I said.

  And a second time.

  “To earth you will return.”

  A third time.

  “From earth you will be resurrected.”

  I bent forward, put down the shovel, and straightened up again.

  “Our Lord Jesus Christ says: ‘I am the resurre
ction and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.’ ”

  I turned to the two undertakers.

  “Receive the blessing,” I said. “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”

  I stepped over and shook them by the hand, as if they were indeed the bereaved. With that, the formalities were concluded, and as we walked back through the churchyard this was made plain by their body language; suddenly their movements were different, looser and more relaxed, the younger even humming softly to himself, a song I recognized after a few seconds as “Wonderwall.” The other man took off his jacket as we went and slung it over his shoulder, his index finger hooked through the little loop in the collar.

  “Do you mind if I smoke?” the younger of them said.

  “No, not at all,” I said. He took a packet of Marlboros from his inside pocket, lighting the cigarette he put between his lips with a lighter he retrieved from his trouser pocket.

  “That was a nice sermon,” he said. “Very good indeed.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “But what you said about death making life hallowed, where did that come from? It’s not in the scriptures, is it?”

  “Funny you should mention it,” I said. “Because I’m not really sure. It was just something I said. Something that came to me without my having thought about it.”

  “A bit fortunate no one else was there, then?” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “It probably goes against everything the liturgy’s about, wouldn’t you say? Death is there to be conquered, isn’t it, not to make life hallowed? You’re right in what you say, absolutely as far as I’m concerned, but not theologically or liturgically. In fact, what you said probably verges on heresy, don’t you think?”