The Morning Star

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  “I hope you’re right. Bye.”

  So that was her in a sulk, I thought to myself as I dropped my phone back into my pocket. It’d be worse yet, though!

  There was hardly anyone in the pub when I got there. The weather was too good, I suppose. But it suited me fine. I got a vodka and Red Bull in, and a pint and a Jägermeister, sat down in one of the booths and knocked back the hard stuff before settling in with the pint.

  The room was dark, all nooks and crannies, the way it had to be with so many ugly buggers sitting there drinking. The dim light erased their features and made them seem, if not pleasant-looking, then at least ordinary. After a few more drinks they’d be checking each other out like they were models.

  The darkness was good for business, pure and simple.

  Not that the punters gave it a thought, but it was surely there in the subconscious, drawing them to the place without them knowing why exactly.

  It couldn’t be the price of the beer that brought them out.

  The New Star.

  How would the first poem begin?

  An August day?

  An August day by the fjord?

  The fjord, August?

  Nah.

  An evening in August, that was more like it.

  It was good.

  An evening in August

  as the sun sank

  and spirits rose

  I beheld the new star

  Bang on! First go!

  I wrote it down in a text to myself before going up and getting another round in. Vodka and Red Bull, two Jägermeisters and a pint. Again, I knocked the hard stuff back first, one after the other, then went outside for a smoke.

  As I crossed the floor, everything went black for a second or two.

  I couldn’t see anything all of a sudden.

  Christ, am I going blind now? I thought, and stopped, standing still there for a minute with my heart thumping like mad in my chest.

  Then it passed. Five seconds, maybe ten, it lasted.

  Blood pressure, I reckoned. Low blood pressure.

  And the alcohol.

  I carried on toward the door, glancing around discreetly to see if anyone was staring at me.

  Jesus, that was unpleasant, I thought as I lit a cig and gazed in the direction of the pond, Lille Lungegårdsvannet.

  But I felt fine again now.

  People who drank meths went blind.

  Surely they weren’t putting meths in the vodka?

  Not at the Hotel Norge.

  The star wasn’t visible from where I was standing, but the faint gleam in the water of the pond told me it was still there.

  My mother used to faint now and again, and that had been low blood pressure. She’d get up and fall down. It could happen if she had to stand up for a long time as well.

  The old bat.

  Low blood pressure, that’d be it.

  And alcohol.

  When I stood up.

  Only now it was all right again. No reason to panic.

  I stubbed out my cig in the ashtray stand outside the door and went back inside. Took a couple of slurps of beer and got my phone out to see what they were doing up there.

  The weather, of course.

  Full-on summer! the halfwits had come up with.

  The next story was about a policeman who’d been sending a young girl so-called “sex messages.”

  He shouldn’t have, of course.

  I wondered who it might be.

  And what he’d written.

  I’d have to remember to ask Geir next time I ran into him.

  I scrolled down to the bottom.

  My piece wasn’t up yet.

  But hadn’t Erlend said it was?

  They must have put it straight into arts and culture. No link on the main page.

  Couldn’t blame them. She wasn’t exactly a name.

  On the other hand, the name on the byline was mine.

  Didn’t that count for those ass-kissers anymore?

  I’d lost interest in reading it and went back to zooming in on her photo to make sure I hadn’t been seeing things before.

  Nope.

  Definitely all right.

  And she was still in town.

  What time was it, anyway?

  I swiped the news page away. Just gone nine.

  Could that be right?

  Nine, was that all?

  In which case the opening would still be on!

  OK, I could go over there. I’d covered the exhibition, it wasn’t like I was going to get stopped at the door.

  A couple more shots, and then: bang! Lindland’s on his way. It’d be like Gulliver in Lilliput.

  Ignore the arty-farty stuff, grin and bear all that, then get her into bed.

  Fuck the art out of her.

  I stood up, a bit gingerly this time so as not to go blind again, got three more Jägermeisters in, and a pint to go with them, and drank them with a feeling of excitement. There was a lot to be positive about all of a sudden. The title, the first poem, nailed, and then the thought of what she was hiding underneath that big sweater of hers. It warmed me inside. I felt my throat tighten.

  Twenty minutes later I was on my way to Engen again. I hadn’t felt so good in ages. It was like everything I saw just glanced off me and was gone.

  Supreme, that was what I was.

  The gallery was on a pier, brick-built, big and gray. Outside, torches were burning and two or three little clusters of arts people stood smoking with wine glasses in their hands, all dressed the same way.

  Inside, the place was heaving. No one was looking at the paintings anymore, this was a party. Or rather, it was a reception, everyone on their best behavior. Polite chatter and laughter everywhere.

  Where was the artist?

  I looked around.

  There she was.

  In one of those trouser suits, or whatever they were called, that looked like a dress but were actually a pair of trousers, that women seemed to like so much.

  I went over to an unmanned counter in the corner that was decked out with wine by the glass and took a glass of white, not drinking it, but holding it sophisticatedly by the stem, and began to walk, slow as you like, from picture to picture while pretending to be giving them my most careful consideration.

  I didn’t look at her, of course. Not so much as a glance in her direction.

  As I got to the final wall she came over.

  “What are you doing here?” she said.

  It wasn’t exactly pleasant surprise, more like disgust. But she’d come over, that was the main thing.

  “I thought I’d have a closer look at your paintings,” I said. “There was so little time earlier on.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re interested in art,” she said. “That interview is the worst I’ve ever done. Which is saying quite a lot.”

  I didn’t respond, just carried on looking at the paintings on the wall in front of us.

  “You know what they call you here?”

  “No,” I said. “What do they call me here?”

  “The idiot from the local rag. When I said you were going to be interviewing me, that’s what they said. What, that idiot from the local rag is going to interview you?”

  “I’ve been called a lot worse than that,” I said. “I suppose you know that idiot is from the Greek and means ‘ordinary citizen’? I’m quite happy with that.”

  She looked at me for a few seconds, then turned and went away.

  I finished studying the paintings, drank what was in my glass, went and got another and then went outside for a smoke.

  The idiot thing was something I remembered from school. The history teacher had been a dithering old fellow who used to give us that same lecture every time he heard the
word. Which wasn’t seldom, because of course that was what we called him, Idiot.

  Among those smoking outside I recognized a radio guy from NRK, the national broadcasting network. I kept bumping into him, we saw each other at all the same press conferences, but I’d never exchanged more than a couple of words with him.

  Normally, I’d stay well away, but it wouldn’t be a bad thing if she saw me with people she respected, and I assumed he’d interviewed her too earlier in the day, in that smarmy arts journo way of his, so I went over to him.

  “What do you reckon, then?” I said.

  “About what?” he said. He had a beard and glasses, and the brown corduroy jacket he was wearing made him look like he was stuck in the seventies, athough he could hardly have been born then.

  “The paintings,” I said.

  “Exquisite,” he said, then looked up at the bright star high above the city. “Even if they do pale a little compared to this. My God.”

  “True,” I said. “But then everything does compared to the stars.”

  “It’s different tonight though, isn’t it?” he said. “I mean, this is absolutely fucking astounding.”

  “It is, yes,” I said, holding out my packet of cigarettes and offering him one. He shook his head.

  “What’s your verdict, anyway?” he said after a pause.

  “The paintings?”

  “Yes.”

  “I like them,” I said.

  There was another pause. He looked around. I thought I might as well get in a bit of practice, and went on before he could say he had to go.

  “I like the way they consider time. I mean, clouds share the concept of time with us, don’t they? Constantly changing, in flux above our heads. Rather as if they were measuring the moment for us. Then, when they’re painted, time stops, do you understand me? Bang, stop. But the pictures are in there,” I said, indicating the door behind us. “Sharing time with us, though no longer changing. So if she’s lucky, the artist who painted them, they’ll still be here when we’re dead and gone. The time they inhabit is therefore conceptually different altogether. If you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Of course,” he said. “But listen, I’m dying for a piss.”

  He went away, and I looked at the others who were standing around. A politician with a professional interest in the arts and culture, in a red dress and a black jacket. What was her name again? Jensen. Same as the speed skater. Eva Jensen.

  Was it gold or bronze she won at Lake Placid?

  Bronze, wasn’t it?

  Bjørg Eva Jensen, that was her.

  But this one was plain Eva Jensen.

  Her laughter was excruciating, both the laugh that came out when she wasn’t actually laughing, which was a kind of gurgling, and what came out when she found something funny, long, birdlike noises that began way up the scale before gradually descending.

  I reckoned it had to be hell being a politician. Never being able to get drunk, at least not in public, and always having to mind what they said and think about how they came across.

  How did she get to where she was?

  Was it because she understood more than others? Was she more capable than others?

  Of course not.

  She knew people, that was what it was about. Workers’ Youth League to begin with, courses and training, camps, loads of contacts. Then straight onto the city council while still in her early twenties.

  You saw her all over, at every event going.

  I’d have no problem drinking and being a politician at the same time. No one could ever tell how drunk I actually was.

  It had to be one of my most useful talents.

  I followed her with my eyes as she walked past me toward the entrance. She stopped in the doorway to allow someone out.

  Who else but the artist herself?

  She was with two others, a man in a suit and a woman in a suit. They went round the corner and sat down on the edge of the pier.

  So, she was a smoker. Good. That meant we had something in common.

  No sense in being coy, I reasoned, and went over to them.

  She looked up at me with annoyance.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  “I just wanted to say that I think your pictures are really good,” I said.

  “Who cares what you think?” she said.

  “I know that interview was a bit rough,” I said. “My background’s in news. I’ve probably carried a bit too much of that over with me. But what does it matter, for God’s sake, we’re consenting adults. And your pictures have been growing on me. I wanted to tell you that.”

  I turned round and walked off.

  There was no point in hanging around, not with the animosity and bitterness she obviously felt toward me, but then there was no point in letting all that free wine go to waste either, so I went back inside, took a glass and drank it while standing back against the wall, and then another one after that.

  That would have to be it now.

  Tomorrow looms.

  I put the glass down on the counter and was heading for the door when everything blacked out. It was like a wave of darkness came crashing down into my brain, and the last thing I sensed was my legs suddenly being too soft to keep me upright.

  The next thing I knew, I was in a darkness beyond the world. Desperately, I tried to remember who I was and what I was doing there.

  Then, in that darkness, I saw a room. I wasn’t in the room, I was outside it, and yet I could see it from underneath.

  Faces were staring at me, mouths opened and spoke.

  Who was I?

  Where was I?

  Who were all these people?

  When were they from?

  It was as if all time and all space were wide open.

  And yet it was to that same place that I returned.

  “He’s coming round,” someone said.

  I was Jostein.

  I was lying on a floor.

  I tried to get up, but fell back.

  The opening.

  The artist.

  Was that her bending over me? On her knees?

  “Here,” she said. “Drink this.”

  A glass was put to my lips. I drank.

  “What’s happening?” I said.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I am now,” I said. “I went blind. I can see now.”

  “You passed out. You’ve had too much to drink.”

  I sat up. Someone came and gripped my arm, helped me to my feet.

  “Are you OK?” the guy said.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “You’ve had rather too much to drink,” he said. “Time you went home.”

  “I’ll call a taxi,” the artist said.

  “There’s one at the door,” the guy said. “He can have that one, can’t he?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m OK. Nothing to be concerned about. I can walk on my own.”

  And I could.

  Christ, what a scene. People were staring at me as I went through the room and out the door.

  I got into the taxi.

  “Have you booked?” the driver said without turning round.

  “Someone has,” I said.

  “Going to Sandviken?”

  “No, Breistein,” I said.

  “This one’s for Sandviken,” he said.

  “Oh, to hell with it, then,” I said, and opened the door to get out.

  The guy who’d booked the cab must have come just after me, because he was standing outside already reaching forward as I opened the door.

  “It was me who ordered a taxi to Sandviken,” he said. “Only there’s been a change of plan.”

  “OK,” said the driver, and I closed the door again and leaned back in the seat. “Breist
ein it is, then.”

  The clock on the dashboard said ten thirty.

  It couldn’t be right.

  It felt like I’d been out for years.

  Half ten?

  The buses were still running. I wouldn’t even have to wait for the night bus.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “You can put me down at Torgallmenningen.”

  “Seriously?” said the driver.

  “Yes,” I said.

  He can be pissed off all he wants, I told myself after we pulled into a bus stop and he handed me the card reader. But no way was he getting a tip for such a short ride.

  What actually happened back there?

  I ought to sit down somewhere and get myself together, I thought. Not Bull’s Eye, though, I was well past that stage.

  It was strange, but my head was clear and I felt fine, as if the darkness had cleansed me.

  The darkness.

  It hadn’t been a normal case of passing out.

  Even if I’d never passed out before, I knew it couldn’t have been.

  I stopped between the Narvesen and Dickens.

  Café Opera?

  Henrik?

  No, the place would be jumping. I wasn’t in the mood for people now.

  Maybe the bar at the Norge?

  A man could sit in peace there.

  No sooner said than done. After a brief visit to the toilet, where I splashed my face with cold water and dried myself with some paper towels, I ordered a beer at the bar and sat down at one of the low tables beside the wall. The place was half full, but quiet nonetheless; a lot of people were sitting on their own, a few with laptops in front of them.

  The beer tasted sensational.

  Just what I needed.

  What had happened wasn’t good. Too many people there who knew me. Lindland passed out drunk, have you heard? But it hadn’t been the drink. It was in the family. My mother used to pass out.

  She never talked about what it was. Maybe there wasn’t much to talk about.

  Still, I was pretty sure she never woke up beyond the world in darkness, the way I’d done, peering into that bright room of faces and voices in some other place.

  What had happened?

  It had all been in my mind.

  It just didn’t feel like it had.

  I drank the pint and got another. As I put it down on the table and was about to sit down again, I noticed a familiar figure come into reception. The artist herself.