The Morning Star

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  “You don’t say,” I said out loud to myself. “What a surprise.”

  OK, I texted back.

  He was probably well oiled already, and it was only eight o’clock.

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

  I regretted it straightaway. I wasn’t his mother.

  Sure enough.

  Yes, boss, he wrote back.

  I looked up at the windows on the first floor. All were wide open. The veranda door of the duty room was too. It must have been sweltering in there all day.

  No faces to be seen.

  I felt like talking to him. He’d been in a good mood earlier in the day, and I wanted to tell him about Ole. But those two minutes would soon be ten. And if he was with people from work he wouldn’t want to talk anyway, especially not if he was getting drunk. He wouldn’t be serious then. Or else he would opine, rather than talk.

  When I had him to myself, he was different.

  Occasionally, at least.

  When did the two of us last go out? I texted.

  You work nights, came his prompt reply.

  Not every night, I typed.

  Dinner at Klosteret Saturday then? he wrote then.

  I sent him a smiley in reply, put the phone back in my bag and made my way slowly to the entrance. But still there was a tightness in my chest. It was like there was a barrier in the way, blocking the passage of air. And if the heart started pumping hard then, the body would cry out for oxygen and everything tightened. But I couldn’t breathe deeply enough to let the air come streaming into my lungs and give them what they craved. I was forced to take short, quick breaths that didn’t help, and my whole body would hurt and cry out until my pulse’s violent and unreasonable demands for more air died away.

  So I had to walk slowly, take things easy.

  I took my sunglasses off and stood without moving for a moment before keying in my code and pushing the buzzing door open.

  The corridor was empty and still. They must have gone out somewhere, I said to myself as I reached the duty room. The door was locked, and I unlocked it. Two flies rose up from the sofa as I put my bag down. They buzzed about in the air. I poured a coffee from the big dispenser. I could see it wasn’t steaming and taking a sip discovered it was tepid and bitter. It would have to do. I sat down on the sofa, my eyes following the flies for a moment as they flew this way and that, then I looked out through the open door at the building across the sports field, the woods behind it.

  Footsteps sounded in the corridor.

  Berit came in without noticing me, went over to the desk in the corner and picked up the green report book.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Oh, hi,” she said. “Are you here now?”

  She went out again.

  The cow.

  The absolute cow.

  I swallowed a mouthful of coffee and put the cup down. Got to my feet, only to think better of it. I didn’t have to prove anything to her, so I sat down again.

  If she could look straight through me, I could look straight through her.

  She was only in her thirties. But she was more like an old woman. Small and gray and bony, with pointy little teeth that made her look like a mouse.

  Gnawing away at everyone and everything.

  So efficient. And so officious.

  But she worked here. Meaning she couldn’t be that brilliant. No one who had a choice would work here.

  One of the flies landed on my knee. I sat quite still and watched it crawl about for a bit. When it paused and raised its forelegs to its head, a bit like a cat washing itself, I lifted a hand cautiously toward it. My dad had taught me the method when I was little. If the movement was slow enough, the fly wouldn’t see it. Once my hand was just above it, I held still for a few seconds and then struck as hard as I could.

  The fly was squashed and some yellow matter came out. I picked it up by one of its thin legs and dropped it in the bin.

  Dad used to say too that flies were the dead. That was why there were so many of them, and why they stayed close to us in our homes. They were dead souls. I’d never known whether he meant it or not. But ever since the first time he said so I hadn’t been able to look at a fly without thinking about it.

  No.

  Best get started.

  I went out onto the ward. The corridors and rooms were completely quiet. Behind the glass wall of her office, Berit stood dishing out their medication into their dispensers.

  Thank goodness she’d soon be going home.

  As long as she didn’t lock the door after her.

  But why would she do that? I asked myself as I went into the kitchen. She’d never done so before.

  There were some flies buzzing about the kitchen too. I counted at least five, likely there were more. They had a habit of settling on dark surfaces where they couldn’t be seen as easily.

  It was because the building was so close to the woods that there were so many of them.

  I turned round. Berit was looking at me from her office across the dining area.

  Not wanting to give the bitch a chance to criticize me, I bent down and began to unload the dishwasher that was full after their hot meal.

  “Perhaps you could give the residents your attention first, before the dishes?” Berit said behind me. She’d left her office and stood staring at me from the dining area.

  I sighed and closed the door of the machine.

  “The dinner things are meant to be put away before the night shift turns in,” I said.

  “There’s no rule,” she said, and went back to her office again.

  I was going to say I thought they were all out, only I remembered the cries I’d heard before. Georg was here, of course.

  I knocked on his door and went in.

  He was lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling while making little noises. Spit dribbled from the corner of his mouth. He turned his head to look at me and smiled.

  There was a dreadful smell. Man-muck, as they called it up north, in a room hot with sun.

  “Gaaaaa!” he said.

  “Hi, Georg,” I said, stepping toward him and ruffling his hair. “Shall we give you a change?”

  “Gaaa, gaaa, gaaa.”

  I opened the window first. The air outside was just as hot. I took a diaper and a packet of wet wipes from the cupboard, and then a towel.

  Leaving him alone in his room on a day like this, what were they thinking? He was only parked with us for a few weeks until his local authority had an apartment ready for him, but still. Surely they could have found a place for him where there were others like him, so he wouldn’t have to be left behind just because the bouncers, as we called them, couldn’t be bothered taking him out with them.

  I pulled the cover aside and tried not to breathe through my nose. He was wearing a pair of green shorts and a white tank top. His legs were round and soft, and almost as white as the sheet. They were completely dead, they just lay there as I pulled his shorts off him, heavy as logs.

  There was a big scar down one of his thighs. Someone had once left him too near a wood burner, so I’d heard. Left him there to get burned. And he hadn’t moved, or even made a sound.

  I undid the sticky fasteners of his diaper and opened it. His mushy excrement was smeared over his hairy buttocks. I swallowed and began to wipe. His scrotum was covered in it too, and the inside of his thighs.

  I dropped the wet wipes one by one into the soiled diaper as I used them up.

  “You should really have a shower,” I said. “But it’ll have to wait until the morning. Is that all right?”

  I put my lower arm under his thighs and lifted them up slightly in order to put the clean diaper on him.

  His penis lay like a small dead animal between his legs.

  “Nice and clean now, Geo
rg,” I said. “How’s that for you?”

  He’d just lain there during the whole process, staring at the ceiling.

  I pulled his shorts up again, folded the soiled diaper and took it with me to the toilet where I put it in the bin before washing my hands thoroughly.

  As I stood there, a white minibus came up the drive. It swung round the corner and stopped. I heard shouts and excited voices, the short swish of the sliding door in its rail, the thud as it slammed shut again.

  All was quiet for a moment, and then came the bedlam as they spilled into the ward.

  I closed the gate into the kitchen area before getting on with my work. The residents were seen to their rooms and the noise died down.

  I stood with a spiky handful of cutlery, putting it away piece by piece in the drawer where it belonged, when I heard Torgeir dragging himself along the corridor. His legs were useless, thin and withered below the knees, and his feet pointed the wrong way, so when he was indoors he moved about by swinging himself along on his arms.

  Whish, whish, whish.

  He stopped outside the gate and looked up at me.

  “Hi, Torgeir,” I said.

  His face could have belonged to almost any male in his forties. His forehead and nose were red from the sun, and a shadow of stubble had already darkened his cheeks even though he’d been shaved that morning.

  But appearances deceived. He couldn’t talk, and his mind was stalled.

  I disliked him intensely.

  He didn’t like me either.

  “Have you had a nice day?” I said.

  He hissed as he breathed, and glared at me.

  Perhaps because he sensed that my interest wasn’t heartfelt.

  Did he hate me?

  It certainly seemed like it.

  His eyes were fixed on me.

  “Do you want some coffee?” I said.

  His breathing stopped.

  I took a mug from the cupboard and filled it halfway with coffee from the pot I’d just made.

  He began to breathe again.

  Then I got a carton of milk out and poured until the mug was full.

  “There we go,” I said as I handed it to him over the gate. He reached up and gripped it. His eyes closed blissfully.

  He never seemed to have more than a single thought at any one time.

  If he even had thoughts, and not just urges.

  He gulped the coffee down in one.

  Beggingly, he held the mug out toward me.

  On the other side of the corridor, Berit stood up and locked the medicine cabinet.

  I took the mug from his hand and only then said no, so that he couldn’t hurl it against the wall.

  “You can’t have any more,” I said. “You know that. You won’t be able to sleep.”

  Berit closed the office door behind her. I looked up at the clock on the wall. Another half-hour and she’d be on her way home.

  Torgeir didn’t move, but watched me as I put away the last of the things from the dishwasher. A fly settled on his head. It wandered about a bit without bothering him. Down his temple and onto his cheek, underneath his eye it crawled. Then someone turned the TV on in the TV room and Torgeir spun round and headed toward it.

  I poured myself a coffee. I liked being in the kitchen best, behind the gate, at least when they were awake. So I always took my time there.

  I got the big serving tray out and the sandwich things. The cheese I’d already sliced, sausage, liver paste, salami, cheese spread with bacon. I always sliced some cucumber and tomato as well, to make it a bit nicer for them, but they never touched either. On Saturday nights they had pizza, and on Sunday mornings I boiled them some eggs.

  Three of them couldn’t butter their bread themselves, so I did it for them. They were Torgeir, Olav and Kenneth. All three could be violent.

  Olav had bitten me one of the first days I’d been on the ward. I was shaving him as he sat in the bath, and there was something I didn’t do right, which made him howl. He gripped my arm and sank his teeth in until he drew blood. One of the male carers had come running and dealt with him.

  They weren’t really carers at all, but worked on the ward because they were big and strong and could handle violent behavior. Most of them were bouncers on the side.

  I’d had to have a tetanus injection. After that, I asked to go on nights. I didn’t tell them I was afraid, but I think they understood.

  The bouncers weren’t afraid. They messed about and played games with them, gave them big hugs, were severe when necessary, but laughed a lot. The residents liked them, they felt secure when they were around, and taken care of.

  Even Kenneth. His head was empty. He wandered about the ward eating whatever he came across. Even the fluff on the floor he’d put in his mouth, and when he’d still had hair he would pull out great tufts and eat them. Now his scalp was kept shaven. I’d seen him eat an onion raw, as if it were an apple. I’d forgotten to close the gate and there he was at the fridge, munching away as the tears ran down his cheeks. He was slim and athletic, and looked like a sportsman. Once, he’d been left behind at a gas station and had been found several kilometers away, wading across a field in deep snow, heading toward the forest. They told me when I started in the job that he would walk until he dropped. Not because he wanted to get away, but because once he got going he couldn’t stop.

  When he was sad, he banged his head against the wall. One time, he managed to crack his head open before they got to him. And if he worked himself into a rage, it took three grown men to deal with him.

  The strangest part was he was so handsome.

  He wasn’t bothered about me, but I was afraid of him anyway.

  But it was Olav I was most scared of. He weighed people up. Sometimes when he saw me he’d bare his teeth.

  The nights were no problem, they were medicated then and wouldn’t wake until morning when the day shift came in. So in that way the job was all right.

  I put the kettle on before carrying the plates, mugs and cutlery over to the dining table. They were all made of plastic and had been in use for so long their colors were dulled, their surfaces rough.

  As I opened the fridge for the milk and juice, Karl Frode appeared from his room. He looked bedraggled, his curly hair was in disarray, there were stains on his sweater and the socks on his feet were coming off.

  “Good evening, Turid,” he said mechanically, as if repeating a formula he’d learned. He never looked at anyone he spoke to, including me.

  “Good evening, Karl Frode,” I said. “Are you hungry?”

  “Yes, I’m hungry,” he said, pulling out his chair and sitting down at the table.

  I put the cartons out in the middle.

  “Have you had fun today?” I said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “What have you been up to?” I said, going back into the kitchen area to get the tray with the sandwich things.

  “Don’t pester me,” he said.

  “I won’t,” I said, bringing the tray to the table. “I promise not to pester.”

  “Nice weather today,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said, “it’s been lovely. Have you been outside?”

  He slammed his hand down hard on the table.

  “You weren’t to pester!” he said, his voice rising several octaves.

  “I won’t pester,” I said. “Do you want us to be quiet?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “All right,” I said, unlocking the drawer where the sharp knives were kept, before cutting the bread and arranging the slices in the big bread basket.

  “Butter,” he said when I put the basket on the table.

  “You’re right, I forgot the butter,” I said. “Thank you, Karl Frode.”

  He smiled and stared at the table.

  “Butter!” he
said. “Butter! Butter!”

  “Butter coming up,” I said.

  Karl Frode could be dangerous too. If he flew into a rage, he could throw the furniture about and smash up everything in his path. But he did so only rarely, and it hadn’t happened at all while I’d been there. The fact that he could talk made him seem less threatening too, in a way.

  A student who’d worked with us a few weeks earlier that summer had said that Karl Frode looked like a philosopher. Vidgenstein, I think his name was. Something like that. He’d shown me a photo on his phone, and he really was the spitting image. The same curly hair, the same round, staring eyes, the same long face and downturned mouth. Karl Frode was slightly fuller in the cheek, but apart from that they were as alike as twins.

  He’d lived at the hospital nearly all his life. After the days when they used to strap them down at night, he’d developed a habit of wearing his trouser belt as tight as possible. Another twisted thing was his masturbation. He could only do it standing in the bushes outside the building while staring up at the windows. And what he saw in the windows could only be the reflections of clouds. They’d take him out at various times when there wasn’t much risk of him causing offense and would wait round the corner, smoking with their backs turned while he stood with his trousers down jerking off. It was harmless, but still, no one ever mentioned it.

  I put the margarine down in front of him.

  “Ha ha. Ha ha,” he said.

  “What is it, Karl Frode?”

  “That’s not butter, it’s margarine,” he said.

  “Yes, you’re right,” I said. “But we still call it butter, don’t we?”

  He sat without moving, staring at the table. A fly settled on the edge of the margarine. Another was crawling on the cheese, conspicuous against its yellow color.

  I waved them away. Karl Frode didn’t seem to even register the movement, but kept staring. When he was in a good mood, he would lean back and cross his feet, prattling away and laughing, occasionally getting so excited he would lose control of himself and start to stutter, spit spraying from his mouth.

  I went into the TV room and told them their tea was ready. Kenneth was sitting on the lap of one of the carers, rubbing his head against his chest like a baby. Olav was almost lying down in his chair, his hands dangling over the armrests. The other carer, Gunnar, sat in a chair next to him looking at his phone.