The Morning Star

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  The fire dwindled. The flames subsided, the light they gave diminished.

  Out of the trees on the other side came Kenneth.

  He walked slowly, as if in sleep.

  In front of him, the fire died out.

  The clicking started again, from several directions at the same time, though softer now than before.

  kalikalikalikalik

  He stopped, his naked body shimmering faintly in the light from the firmament.

  And then he knelt.

  kalikalikalikalik

  There was a rustling in the undergrowth close to me. A shadow flitted away. A few seconds later it emerged into the clearing. It was a man. He moved quickly, fitfully almost, his motions fluid and yet at the same time oddly stiff. His head was large and heavy, like that of an ox. Three plaits of hair hung down his naked back. The fingers of his enormous hand splayed out into the air. His other hand held a vessel.

  kalikalikalikalik

  He halted in front of Kenneth.

  Kenneth lifted his head and looked up into the sky.

  Leaning forward, the man dipped his hand into the vessel and placed it on Kenneth’s brow. A shudder went through Kenneth’s body and he fell backward onto the ground.

  The man turned and looked at me.

  His eyes were yellow, only it wasn’t a man. It wasn’t a man.

  SECOND DAY

  EGIL

  The morning did not begin well. I hadn’t gone to bed until nearly four and having forgotten to draw the blind I woke up as soon as the first sunlight flooded the room somewhere around half past six. There was no way I could fall asleep again, I knew that, but I tried nonetheless, for few things are worse than those pointless hours in the morning when you haven’t had enough sleep to be able to concentrate—and can no longer, as I could no longer, have a drink or two to help get you going.

  Or rather, I could, I thought to myself, tossing and turning under the covers in the first warmth of day. The restriction was self-imposed, which meant I could lift it myself at any time.

  Why were there two of me? One who said no, and one who egged me on. One who wanted to, and one who did not. How much easier human life would be if inner agreement had been our default setting.

  And then everything that had happened the evening and night before came crashing down on me.

  The new star.

  Was it still there?

  I got up and went out onto the veranda.

  The star was still shining in the north. Even then, in the morning, with the sun in the sky.

  Clearly, it was strong. Or close.

  A morning star.

  I am the bright Morning Star, Jesus said.

  But in Isaiah the Morning Star was the Devil.

  Wasn’t that right?

  I’d have to check.

  I stood with my hands on the rail, angled forward as I looked out over the sea. It was dark blue and so still that its surface didn’t appear to be fluid at all, but comprised of something firm. A kind of blue glass in which the sun glittered and gleamed.

  Some gulls soared in the air above me. They seemed almost to be enjoying the warmth and stillness.

  A stillness so seldom here.

  I ran a hand through my hair and realized how greasy it was.

  It was too hot for a shower, but maybe a swim instead?

  I went inside and took a towel from the cupboard in the bedroom, put a pair of trunks on and a shirt, slipped my feet into my sandals and went back out again, pausing at the desk in the living room where the typewriter was, pulling out the sheet of paper I’d been typing on when Arne rang, putting it on top of the pile next to the typewriter without reading what I’d written.

  The star was obviously a sign.

  But of what?

  It would become apparent soon enough.

  But where, and to whom?

  I followed the path below the house to the smooth, flat rock at the shore. I’d swum from the same place ever since I was a child, dark, gently sloping rock sheltered by a sheer outcrop with a deep pool at its foot. It felt like the spot belonged to the property, and it always annoyed me if other people used it, though of course I never said anything, we didn’t own the rocks.

  But I was alone.

  The water looked inviting with its unruffled, deep blue surface, but I wasn’t twelve years old anymore, I knew that the first seconds of immersion would be an icy shock regardless of how warm the water actually was, so I took off my shirt and sandals and sat down first to gather courage and soak up some sun.

  There had been something rather nightmarish about the evening before, I thought, as I stared at the hazy horizon. Arne’s bloodied face on the beach, the car crashed among the trees, the enormous star in the sky. The heat in the dark of night, the badger inside the house, the cat with its head torn off. And Tove, her manic demeanor.

  It all seemed such a far cry from the peacefulness that surrounded me as I sat there on the rock.

  It was all their own doing, and yet they acted like it was something that just happened to them, like it was the same for everyone.

  I wondered for a second whether I should look in on them later, but dismissed the idea almost immediately. I liked talking to Arne, so it wasn’t that, it just seemed to come with a price I wasn’t ready to pay for the moment. It was impossible to be in that house without it leaving a mark in some way, as if when I left bits of their chaos would be stuck to me and I always had to struggle to get rid of them again. They were a family in need, only they didn’t realize it.

  How stupid to accept those beers.

  I needed to stay well away.

  Even if it had only been a couple of beers and I’d been nowhere near drunk, it was the contact with it that mattered. It being so near to me the whole time.

  Why was it so damn hard to stick to a decision?

  I got to my feet and clambered up the rock, stood on the edge, raised my arms above my head and dived in. Cold, briny water engulfed my warm skin. I opened my eyes to a swirling effervescence of tiny bubbles, the bottom shimmering green a couple of meters beneath me. I took a few short strokes, pulling myself downwards before turning, launching myself upward and breaking the surface with a splutter.

  It was good.

  I climbed up onto the low rock, rubbed myself dry with the towel, put on my shirt without buttoning it, slipped my feet into my sandals and went back up to the house again.

  The summer house is all I want, nothing else, I’d told my father when the issue of inheritance had been raised. If I can’t have it, then so be it, but I won’t have anything else.

  And so he gave it to me. As well as a generous sum of money transferred to my account every month. I hadn’t asked for that, but I hadn’t turned it down either.

  It wasn’t good, taking the money. I assumed he despised me for my lack of pride, the way one hand refused to take what he was offering, while the other accepted it. But he’d never said so, not with a single word.

  And I needed the money.

  I walked round the side of the house to the end that faced west, to see if the spider had caught anything in its web. I referred to it as the King, an enormous beast of a thing that seemed to have been around for several years. It moved about a bit, spun its webs, hid itself away, first in one place, then another, according to its own unfathomable logic. It had been settled at this side of the house for a couple of months now.

  A bumblebee hung suspended in the web. It looked like it was dead, but it was hard to tell. I leaned forward and peered up under the beam, where the King at present resided.

  There he was, yes.

  Quite unmoving, his legs tucked into his body in the darkness, the intricate structure he’d woven stretched out beneath him.

  No way could evolution be blind. No way could something so sophisticated and yet so simpl
e have arisen by chance, no matter how many millions of years chance had at its disposal.

  I prodded the bumblebee cautiously with the tip of my finger and watched it sway a couple of times back and forth.

  How on earth could a spider manage to eat such a thing?

  I went back up onto the veranda, slid the big glass door open, fetched a can of Pepsi Max from the fridge, picked up the novel I was reading, my cigarettes and an ashtray, and sat down in my chair outside.

  There still wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and if it hadn’t been for the rocks at the shore and the islets that seemed almost radiantly white in the sunshine, the world would have been completely blue from where I was sitting.

  I opened the can and took a slurp, lit a cigarette and tried to read for a bit. I was halfway through Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream, but the Caribbean world in which it was set was impossible to conjure up in the sun-drenched Nordic coastal landscape that surrounded me. I saw pine forest, Scandinavian summer homes and pebbled beaches, not palm trees and colonial mansions. Besides, I was rather too tired to concentrate properly. And the heat was already exasperating, to put it mildly.

  A smeigedag, I thought, putting the book down on the table next to me. Wasn’t that what they were called, days like this? Or maybe that wasn’t quite right. The word was unconditionally positive in its associations, used to refer to those long and lazy summer days that miraculously opened up to us after the interminable winter season, but this heat had something sick about it that could only be endured, not enjoyed.

  And yet, going by the number of plastic tubs, with and without sails, that had now begun plowing the waters out there (I refused to call such vessels boats), people were somehow doing just that.

  The phone rang in the bedroom. I stubbed out my smoke and went inside, bending down to try and see the number on the little display in the bright sunlight that fell into the room.

  It was Camilla.

  What did she want now?

  I waited until it stopped ringing, muted it and dropped it into my shirt pocket, put on a pair of shorts, a straw hat and sunglasses, went out the other side, got on my bike and pedaled off down the narrow gravel track, past the pontoons in the bay and onto the road, which although paved was barely wider than the track.

  The hot air rose up in columns between the trees, and the smell of the woods, of bare, dry leaves and sun-baked soil, wafted toward me as I cycled.

  Willowherb in the roadside ditches, on the sloping ground that swept toward the water, raspberry bushes clinging to the crash barriers.

  She’d called the evening before. I’d answered then. Fool that I was. She told me she was going to Rome and that I’d have to look after Viktor for a week. She was leaving today!

  I’d told her I couldn’t, that it was impossible at such short notice.

  I’d kept a civil tongue and been quite rational. She was angry. Furious, more accurately.

  But it was unreasonable, to say the least.

  Why couldn’t you have told me before? I said. It wouldn’t have been a problem then.

  But I only got to know today, that’s what I’m saying! she shouted. You never spend time with him. And this is a big chance for me, I can’t possibly say no!

  No need to shout, I told her. What about your parents?

  My parents are in fucking Thailand!

  Your brother, then?

  But you’re his dad. For fuck’s sake, Egil!

  Can’t you take him with you? I suggested.

  But then she hung up.

  I missed the boy, of course I did, so it wasn’t that. But he couldn’t just come at the drop of a hat. I had to prepare, get in the right frame of mind. Because when he was here, he took up my whole time. Took up all my space.

  I’d reached the foot of the hill leading up toward the woods, and stood up on the pedals.

  Bilberry, heather, liverworts and mosses carpeted the ground between the trees. White shimmering trunks of birch could be glimpsed farther within, where the bogland began.

  Why wasn’t this good enough? Why wasn’t it sufficient in itself?

  Passing through the woods, the air was if anything even hotter, and I felt the sweat trickle down my neck and the length of my spine as I sat down again and pedaled on.

  I am here, at this moment in time.

  It’s enough.

  No smartphone, just a small Nokia, no GPS, no engine, only pedals, wheels, the hot air against my body, the woods.

  The last few kilometers were easy, the road either flat or sloping gently away, and after fifteen minutes or so I was at the place where Arne had crashed his car the night before. I wheeled the bike down the path toward the stony beach, lugged it over the rocks and through the trees in the direction of the inlet where I’d moored the boat. It was hard going, boggy areas of blackthorn and thorny rose hip over which the bike had to be lifted before I could carry on were a hindrance, and the low, wind-pressed pines that were more like bushes would have been difficult to negotiate even without a bike. And all because of that idiot Arne, I thought, leaning on the handlebars as I paused for a moment.

  In some strange way he seemed to bask in Tove’s madness. It made him important, or so he seemed to believe.

  But anxiety is hell. Depression is hell. Psychosis is hell.

  The path on which I now stood was dry earth, carpeted with twigs and yellow pine needles, edged with rocks and scrubby vegetation. The sun beat down on it, its golden light shimmering in every detail, as if everything had been accorded its own little halo. I lit a cigarette, noticing a large anthill a bit farther on, in a small glade between low, crooked pines.

  I pulled the branches aside and went up to it, crouching down with my cigarette in my hand. The mound was crawling with ants, its whole surface seemed to be in motion, as if it were alive, a creature in its own right. A moment later, the first ant crawled onto my foot. Brown and black in color, its tiny body perfectly articulated, it proceeded fearlessly across the strap of my sandal. More followed, and I wondered what they would do. Bite me to chase me away? Or did they think I was a kind of tree they should climb?

  I brushed them away carefully, straightened up and turned to go back.

  But there was something strange, glistening in the sunlight by one of the tree trunks beside me. At first I thought it was a coat, half rotted and shapeless, but when I stepped toward it and bent forward to investigate I saw that it was a skin of some kind that had been sloughed off. Dry and translucent, like the snakeskins you could sometimes find in the woods in spring, only this wasn’t from a snake, it was far too big.

  I gripped it tentatively between my thumb and index finger and pulled it toward me.

  Christ almighty.

  It was as long as a child was tall.

  What kind of animal could it have belonged to?

  Thin, dry and scaly.

  I drew myself upright and looked around me.

  Everything was still, not even the sea made a sound.

  And then: the drone of an outboard at the top of its register, passing toward the mouth of the sea in the west.

  A smartphone would have been handy, I thought as I went back to the bike. I could have taken a photo of the skin, if that’s what it was, and maybe googled it too. The same thing with the Morning Star, that strange double reference in the Bible to the Devil and Jesus. I’d have to sit and pore through books now.

  Not that it was any particular sacrifice. In fact, it was better that way. It meant there was a time lapse between question and answer, a space that opened up: a span that had to be bridged, an effort to be made.

  The knowledge gained would be the same, but the effort increased its value.

  Wasn’t that right?

  Or was it just harking back to the eighties? A time when friction was a marker of quality? Noise in music, unreadability in literature?
>
  I picked up the bike, rested the frame on my shoulder and walked the last bit of the way through the wood and down to the boat, which was still there, the outboard and everything else exactly as I’d left it. I untied the mooring and drew the boat in, hauling it up slightly onto the narrow shore, put the bike down in the bottom, pushed out while wading alongside, then climbed in, took up the small anchor, started the engine and drew slowly away.

  The weather was as boiling hot as before, but the heat wasn’t nearly as oppressive on the water.

  I turned round and saw the waves spread in my wake, the landscape that seemed almost to come down to greet the sea, sloping toward its surface, its vegetation thinning and diminishing, until at last it faded into it and was gone.

  I got my phone out to see if Camilla had sent me an abusive text, as I was expecting. The light was so strong I had to hunch up and shield the display with my hand so as to create enough shadow to be able to see.

  Yes, there was a message from her.

  I opened it.

  Viktor’s on the bus on his way to you. Collect him at the bus station 11:40. Camilla

  What the hell?

  Had she gone mad?

  She couldn’t do this to me.

  There was no agreement!

  What if I was ill?

  I’d told her I couldn’t!

  I couldn’t!

  And who was supposed to look after him then?

  Didn’t she think of what might be best for him?

  I felt like hurling the phone into the sea, but then thought better of it, put it down next to me on the thwart and opened the throttle until I regained some equilibrium.

  Damn bitch.

  11:40?

  It was nearly that now!

  I picked up the phone again and texted her while glancing up now and again to make sure there were no other boats coming toward me.

  I can’t collect him. So he’ll be on his own at the bus station. Egil

  She wasn’t the only one who could play games, I told myself, the phone in my hand so that I could see as soon as she replied.

  I was clear of Vågsøya and described now a wide arc as I turned toward the east. With the speed I was doing, I’d be back in a matter of minutes.