The Morning Star

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  And he was still there.

  I was angry just thinking about it.

  So I paid it as little attention as I could. And there was definitely no point now, I thought, sitting at my table on the decking at Verftet that last day of summer, gazing across the water to Askøy, savoring not only the warmth of the sun that had begun to sink in the sky to the west, but also the buzz that was kicking in from the two pints I’d already drunk.

  The tables around me were nearly all full now. People were in high spirits, the voices loud and animated, the laughter buoyant and loose.

  Students, people from the arts and culture sectors, university lecturers, journalists, the occasional actor. The care workers and truck drivers were certainly few and far between.

  I got to my feet to go for a dump and draped my jacket over my chair, the whole issue of sweat stains now somehow seeming utterly pointless.

  As I passed through the cafe interior, I noticed a crowd from the paper go past outside the window. Lucky I hadn’t still been sitting there, I thought. They’d have seen me drinking on my own then, it would have put them in a dilemma: join me or ignore me. Either way, it would have been uncomfortable. Now I’d be able to go over to their table, as if from nowhere, strike up some conversation, pull up a chair, and that’d be me sorted for the duration.

  The Man from Nowhere. A novel, Jostein Lindland.

  Sitting down on the toilet, I first checked my e-mail, then texted Turid.

  Dragging out a bit, sitting with a bunch from work, I typed.

  OK, she replied a second later, as if she’d been ready waiting.

  Then came another.

  Just remember you’ve got to get up tomorrow as well.

  Yes, boss, I wrote back, squeezing out a hard little lump that turned out to be as black as coal when I stood up to wipe myself and peered into the bowl.

  The phone lit up next to the sink. I dropped the paper, pressed to flush and watched it all whirl away into the underworld before checking what she’d written.

  When did the two of us last go out?

  Christ, was I supposed to feel guilty now?

  You work nights, I typed back.

  Not every night.

  Dinner at Klosteret Saturday then? I wrote.

  :) she replied.

  It wasn’t exactly what I needed, but at least I’d have some peace for a bit.

  I slipped the phone into my pocket and went back outside. The crowd from the paper were sat around two tables nearest the water. They’d already got them in, there were pints everywhere.

  “Lindland,” said Gunnar as I came up after retrieving my jacket.

  “Here he is,” said Erlend.

  “Room for one more?” I said.

  “If you can find a chair,” said Gunnar.

  “I’ll need a pint or two first,” I said, and went and joined the queue at the bar. I lit a cig while I waited, got my phone out, checked my e-mail. Nothing. Opened the one from Erlend so I could say something about his photos if needs be.

  The artist was standing in the middle of the concrete gallery space, her pictures a blur in the background, all you could see was some white and some blue. Her hands were in her pockets and she was staring at the camera with her head lowered slightly so it looked like she was gazing into her innermost being.

  They knew how to pose, many of our so-called artists and writers.

  I zoomed in on her face.

  She didn’t look half bad, now that I didn’t have to listen to her.

  Nice eyes.

  Lips a bit narrow, maybe.

  But a nice shape to her face.

  Her eyes were so blue it almost looked unnatural. As if they were made of glass with the color painted on.

  I hadn’t noticed when I’d been interviewing her, but then she’d been looking at the floor most of the time.

  I pinched apart again to look at her chest.

  Her sweater was too big to be able to see what was underneath.

  Maybe she wasn’t as skinny as I’d thought. Maybe she was soft and gorgeous under all those baggy clothes.

  I took a drag of my cigarette and flicked away the ash, caught the bartender’s eye and held two fingers in the air. He nodded and started to pull the pints.

  Returning to the table, I put them down, picked up a chair from the adjoining table and sat down between Gunnar and Sverre. There wasn’t quite enough room, so I had to sit slightly drawn back. It didn’t feel right, I was by far the most experienced among them, a nestor of investigative crime reporting I’d once been called, but there was nothing to be done about it, and it was only because I’d come last anyway.

  “Anything new?” I said, leaning back and crossing my legs so as not to sit demurely like a woman with my knees together, the way a couple of them were.

  “Like what?” said Olav.

  “No idea,” I said. “But those lads are going to be found sooner or later, I hope. Should make a good story.”

  “They’ve probably just gone off on a cabin trip,” said Sverre. “Either that or they’ve gone to Oslo to stab someone to death.”

  He looked at me and smiled. The others laughed.

  “If you ask me, they’re lying dead in the forest somewhere,” I said, regardless. “Suicide pact. They’re just the sort who would.”

  My phone rang. Stupidly, I’d forgotten to mute it.

  It was Ole.

  I declined the call and turned the sound off. Couldn’t talk to him there. Didn’t want to get up either and thread my way between the tables with the phone pressed to my ear, it signaled something intimate that I didn’t want to display to them.

  When I slipped it back into my inside pocket, the conversation had moved on from the missing kids to some moving men Sverre had hired at some point during the summer; they’d been sober when they turned up at the old house in the morning, he said, only their behavior had become more and more erratic as the day wore on, until eventually he’d realized they were drinking, and by the time evening came round they were drunk out of their minds.

  “Unpacking the boxes the next day, I couldn’t find the cognac. They must have drunk it.”

  “What did you do about it?” said Olav.

  “What could I do? I couldn’t prove anything.”

  “I had some builders in once who kept leaving the bathroom in a hell of a mess,” said Gunnar. “There was shit all over the toilet, up the sides of the bowl and on the rim. And this was happening every day. Couldn’t do a thing about it though.”

  “Where were they from?” I said.

  “What does it matter?” Gunnar said.

  I shrugged and gave him a smile.

  “Poland?” I said.

  “It’s not relevant,” said Gunnar. “The point was I couldn’t do anything about it, not where they came from.”

  “So they were from Poland,” I said.

  He didn’t reply, and I had to laugh before taking a slurp of my pint and lighting another cig.

  There was something miserable about Gunnar, I’d always thought so. It wasn’t that he never said anything, because he did, or because he didn’t smile or laugh, because he did that as well. But with him it was forced, his natural state was misery. In misery he went through the corridors, in misery he sat at his desk in front of his computer.

  He was from Kinsarvik, though no one would ever have guessed, he looked like a Spaniard, his cheeks and throat a shadow of stubble before he got to lunchtime.

  He worked in the opinions and editorial section and his own editorials were always the ones that got read the most, so he was incisive enough.

  I couldn’t stand them though. They were like a barometer of all the right opinions.

  He was the type who put his finger in the air to see which way the wind was blowing before he went to work.

&n
bsp; “It’s all going to pot in Poland now,” said Olav. “It’s as bad there as it is in Hungary in many ways. It’s the strangest thing. After the Nazis were there, and the Communists were there, they choose of all things to go in for nationalism.”

  “Hardly surprising, though, is it?” I said. “They’ve always been squeezed between the superpowers, so when the chance finally comes around it’s no wonder they want what’s theirs. Which is Poland. The Polish nation-state.”

  “They’ve passed a law making it a punishable offense to mention Poland in connection with the Nazi extermination camps,” said Sverre.

  “Controlling history’s part and parcel of building any nation,” I said. “And the camps were actually German, weren’t they? Even if they were in Poland.”

  “Are you defending it?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “I’m just explaining it, that’s all.”

  Everyone went quiet for a few seconds, looking at the floor or looking away, absorbed in the graying fjord all of a sudden. I drained the rest of my pint, put the empty glass down on the table, picked up the other one and took a slurp.

  “I was in Warsaw last winter,” said Sverre. Some would say he was the diplomatic type, others that he shied away from conflict, but whatever he was he knew everyone and was liked by the majority. “I was in the Old Town, it was just before Christmas, so there was a Yuletide market with lots of little stalls. It looked like you would have imagined it in the Middle Ages. But there was something not quite right about it, there was no atmosphere. I looked it up when I got back to the hotel and realized that the old part of town had been totally destroyed during the war and then rebuilt exactly as before. I hadn’t known, but I’d sensed it.”

  “Same as Dresden,” said Gunnar. “Have you been there?”

  Sverre shook his head.

  What a bunch of halfwits, I thought to myself, and gazed across the water to Askøy, where the sun had now almost disappeared behind the hills.

  Darkness rose imperceptibly, filling the space between the fells on both sides of the fjord.

  And I was wasted. No doubt about it.

  I looked at Erlend.

  “Nice photos you took today, Erlend,” I said when his eyes caught mine.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Nice piece, too.”

  “Is it up yet?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Does Bergen really need more clouds?”

  He laughed.

  I wanted to look it up and see for myself, but couldn’t bring myself to do it in their company.

  “Did you like the pictures?” he said.

  “The paintings?”

  “Yes.”

  I grinned and leaned back in my chair.

  “Understood,” he said.

  At the same moment, I noticed one of the city’s writers coming along with a trail of youngsters after him. Students from the writing academy, no doubt.

  As they passed our table, he lifted an index finger to his forehead in a kind of salute.

  “Lindland,” he said.

  He managed to make my name sound almost like an insult, and I straight-faced him.

  They sat down at some tables a bit farther away.

  “Anyway,” said Sverre, drinking up and getting to his feet. “Tomorrow looms.”

  All of a sudden they all got to their feet.

  A sense of terror gripped me.

  What was I supposed to do now?

  “Just need to head to the toilet first,” said Gunnar. “Anyone fancy waiting so we can share a taxi?”

  “I need to join you,” said Olav. “But you’ll be going to Fyllingsdalen, won’t you?”

  “That’s right, sorry,” said Gunnar.

  “Sorry because you live there, or because I can’t share your taxi?”

  “Both,” said Gunnar.

  Olav looked at me.

  “You live out in Åsane, don’t you?”

  “Breistein, yes,” I said. “Only I’m not going home yet. Meeting someone at Bull’s Eye later on.”

  Olav winked at me.

  “I’ll have to get the bus, then,” he said, and began squeezing his way between the tables with Gunnar and Sverre following on behind.

  “What’s your plan?” I said to Erlend, who’d stayed put.

  “I’m just going to finish this and then get off home,” he said. “I only live round the corner.”

  “Where’s that?” I said.

  “Below Dragefjellet.”

  “Nøstet?”

  “Kind of. Heggesmauet.”

  “Never heard of it,” I said, and picked up the pint Olav hadn’t finished, downed what was left, then looked out across the water, where the sun had gone down and darkness poured out over the hills.

  “What’s that?” said Erlend.

  “What’s what?” I said.

  He pointed in the direction of Laksevåg. A light shone from the top of the ridges, pale and shimmering as if from a full moon.

  But the moon hung dull in the sky farther to the east.

  Fucking hell.

  The light intensified, growing and growing in strength until moments later an enormous star burst into the sky above the trees.

  “What the hell’s that?” Erlend said.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Everything had gone quiet around us. Everyone was staring up at the light. Some had got to their feet. Then, as if they’d been waiting for the signal, their voices returned again. A babble of theories and conjecture, trepidation and excitement broke out around us.

  “It’s only Armageddon,” I said with a laugh. “It had to come sooner or later.”

  “No, seriously,” said Erlend. “That’s the strangest damn thing I’ve ever seen. It’s got to be a comet of some sort. Don’t you think?”

  His face was completely unmoving as he looked at me. But his eyes were scared.

  “Maybe. Whatever it is, there’ll be a perfectly natural explanation.”

  “It’s right overhead, for Christ’s sake!” said Erlend.

  I felt sorry for him.

  “It just looks like it is, that’s all,” I said. “Enjoy it while it’s there.”

  It wasn’t often the word beautiful came into my mind, but now it did. Beautiful and unsettling.

  Why was it unsettling?

  Because it was completely silent. It just hung there, completely silent in the sky.

  But then so did the sun and the moon, for fuck’s sake.

  “Shall we get going?” Erlend suggested, all casual.

  I smiled.

  “Afraid to go on your own?”

  “Ha ha,” he said.

  “How old are you again?” I said.

  “I thought it might be pleasant,” he said. “Forget it.”

  I laughed.

  “Going to have a mope now too, are we? Come on, only kidding. Let’s go.”

  All around us people sat gazing up at the star, but no one was standing anymore. Erlend slung his bag over his shoulder and I lit a cig, reminding myself to buy a new packet at the 7-Eleven before following him away from the serving area and onto the road outside the sardine factory.

  “They used to hang people up there in the old days,” I said, pointing to the left.

  “I imagine that’s why it’s called Galgebakken, don’t you?” he said.

  He walked quickly and I was soon short of breath, but I could hardly ask him to slow down.

  He kept glancing up at the star that was now high in the sky, owning the heavens. I could tell it bothered him; at one point he shook his head.

  The column of light that had first come into view over Puddefjorden had now disappeared. Instead, a faint, ghostly illumination reflected in its waters.

  If he didn’t want to talk, then fine by me. But did
he have to walk so damn fast? Maybe he thought his apartment would protect him from Armageddon?

  We parted company when we got to Nøstegaten and I carried on toward the center of town on my own. Of course, I could have gone home, that would have been the smartest thing. The day after would have been easier then, less resentment in the air.

  But Bull’s Eye would give me some alone time for a bit of serious drinking before they closed. After that I could just glide home nice and drunk through the empty streets in a taxi—few feelings were better.

  Taxi Home. Poems, Jostein Lindland.

  But that could be in the daytime too. Whereas the whole experience lay in driving through darkness.

  Taxi Home at Night. Poems, Jostein Lindland.

  Nah, too fussy.

  How about Taxi Nights?

  Not bad.

  Taxi Nights. Poems, Jostein Lindland.

  Wait a minute.

  The New Star. Poems, Jostein Lindland.

  Fucking brilliant.

  I went past the National Theater, along Markeveien to Torgallmenningen, where I remembered to buy cigarettes, and then on to the Hotel Norge. There were people everywhere, a lot of them looking up at the sky every now and again, I noticed, as if to make sure the enormous star was actually there and not just something they’d imagined.

  I paused and lit a cig, looking up myself.

  Weird stuff.

  At the same time, my phone vibrated against my chest.

  It was Turid.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “Where are you?” she said.

  “Why do you want to know?” I said.

  “Ole’s not answering his phone.”

  I sighed.

  “I tried earlier on,” I said. “He didn’t answer, of course. He just doesn’t want to talk to us.”

  “So you’re not at home.”

  “On my way to the bus now, as it happens. Have you seen the new star?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A great big new star, just appeared in the sky.”

  “No, I’ve not seen it.”

  “Well, you should.”

  “Give me a ring when you get in,” she said. “I’m a bit worried.”

  “Don’t be, there’s nothing to be worried about. He’s either gaming or gone to sleep.”