The Morning Star

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  He sat down in the other chair.

  “Can you leave me on my own for a bit?” I said.

  “What?” he said. “I just helped you out!”

  “Please? Just for a bit. There’s something I need to think through.”

  He got up without speaking, and went in. I leaned my head back and looked up at the sky. The pills wouldn’t kick in for another half-hour, I knew that, but it felt like they were already helping.

  Yuh ahh duu md

  It was sounds, that was all.

  Yuh ahh duu md

  After what had happened in the woods, anyone’s imagination would run riot. It had been running riot then too, for that matter.

  Birds with scales on them, and primitive monsters.

  I’d been hysterical.

  Kenneth running off naked into the woods was mad enough on its own, and me having to run after him.

  That was a story I could tell one day.

  Not that Ole was likely to give me a grandchild.

  Poor little love.

  I went in and got my phone to call him. Sølve had started washing the floor in the corridor by the sound of it. The deal between us was he did the kitchen and the toilets, and I did the floors. But now he was miffed and was trying to make me feel guilty by doing my work too.

  No answer.

  This time I wasn’t worried. Either his battery had run down, or else he’d gone to sleep with his phone muted.

  It was no use calling Jostein. He’d be well away, if he’d been out on the booze.

  A whispery sensation from the pills spiraled gently through my body, drawing a veil through the passages of my brain, settling softly on my nerves, calming and soothing. I felt so peaceful that even my most angry thoughts dissolved.

  What was it I’d thought to myself up there on the hill?

  A thought that had shone so brightly.

  Now I remembered.

  That I could pack the job in altogether.

  That was it.

  I was getting on, but I wasn’t exactly old. I’d got experience, I was bound to be able to get another job.

  Maybe even something completely different?

  Something with flowers, perhaps. A nursery again? Or even better, a florist’s. Tying bouquets, arranging sprays.

  Colors and shapes, life and joy.

  If I could live my life again, that would be what I’d do. Become a florist, with my own shop.

  I’d have chosen art at gymnasium school, and kept it up, painting and drawing.

  And not gone to work that spring day in 1986.

  But then I wouldn’t have had Ole.

  Forget that.

  Marrying Jostein needn’t have stopped me having a florist’s shop.

  And he hadn’t exactly pulled the wool over my eyes that day he appeared at the nursery. He was the same then as he’d been since. So what I’d got was what I’d wanted.

  The sky was blue that day, and the sun was shining, but there was a cold wind too, and planting bulbs that afternoon meant my fingers were numb and red with cold.

  I’d never have remembered if it hadn’t been the first time I saw him.

  A car had come up the track, whirling up the dust, and through the grubby panes of the greenhouse I’d watched as it pulled in and a young man got out with a camera in his hand. He stood talking to Erlend in the office at first, but then came back out to take some pictures and exchange a few words.

  He wasn’t that tall, but well built, and his clothes were all on the small side. His trousers were slightly too tight around the thighs, his suit jacket a tad too short. His mouth was wide and his chin rather angular, and his hair was blond. But what I noticed about him, what everyone noticed about him, were his eyes. They had this bright blue color I’d never seen in anyone else.

  He worked for the local paper and was doing a series about different careers for the weekend supplement, he said. He got us to show him around and asked a lot of questions as we went. He laughed a lot, in a very confident way, as if he didn’t care what anyone in the world thought of him.

  We talked about him when he got back in the car and drove off, but I didn’t think of him again after that.

  Then, the week the article appeared—Erlend posted a copy of it on the office wall and another on the noticeboard in the greenhouse—Anne came to get me, there was someone on the phone for me. And it was him, Jostein Lindland. He’d been thinking about me, he said, and was wondering if I’d care to have dinner with him.

  “I don’t know about that,” I said. “I don’t know you.”

  He laughed.

  “That’s the whole point!” he said. “So we can get to know each other!”

  “It can’t do any harm, I suppose,” I said eventually, and he’d been reminding me about it ever since. If ever we were doing something special, he’d say, “It can’t do any harm, I suppose!”

  You couldn’t keep him down in those days, always laughing at the slightest opportunity. That was all gone now.

  I didn’t bring him any joy anymore, and he kept Ole at arm’s length.

  Such a little family, and I hadn’t even managed to keep it together.

  I took another of Sølve’s cigarettes. Surely I could have a smoke without coughing my lungs up, as long as I inhaled gently?

  Of course I could.

  I heard him come into the duty room and sit himself down with a sigh.

  “I’m just having a little rest,” I said. “I’ll do the rounds in a minute. And my share of the cleaning.”

  “I’ve done it,” he said. “Thought I might as well, you wanting to be on your own and everything.”

  How could he still be miffed? I wondered, stubbing the cigarette out in the ashtray as good as unsmoked.

  “Thanks,” I said. “You didn’t need to, though. Everything quiet in there?”

  “Quiet as the grave,” he said.

  He sat checking his phone and didn’t look up as I went past him into the corridor. Parts of the floor were still glistening wet, others were already dry. There was a smell of detergent, but not enough to mask the pungent smell from the toilets, which always seemed to be so latent, though I suppose it was no wonder after fifty years.

  I opened the door of Kenneth’s room and looked in. He lay snoring on his back. That only an hour or so earlier he’d been lying in the forest as if he’d been dead hardly seemed believable.

  With that giant tramping around him.

  What had happened, actually?

  I closed the door again and looked in on the others in turn. All were fast asleep.

  As light slowly returned to the sky and the first cheeping birds made themselves heard on the other side of the windowpanes, I got the breakfast ready for the morning shift. Boiled the eggs, hard and soft, toasted some rounds of bread, put cheese and ham and salami out on a dish, got the jams and spreads out, and set the table.

  The last thing I did before they came in was fold the clean and dry clothes and get another wash on the go.

  Sølve was still sulking and left without saying good-bye, and when I opened the report book to see what he’d written, I saw that he hadn’t bothered.

  I sat down with the book on my lap and scribbled a few lines about Kenneth and Torgeir having been a bit unsettled before bed, though the night had been uneventful.

  If I’d put down what had actually happened, Kenneth on the loose, running about starkers in the woods, no one would have believed me. Certainly not if I’d reported everything I’d experienced out there.

  But that was all down to anxiety and imagination, nothing else.

  Not until Berit came into the corridor did I realize I’d forgotten to make the coffee. It was a major sin, about being considerate toward your colleagues. It wasn’t unusual for things to overlap a few minutes, but to be on my
own with her now was the last thing I needed.

  “Have a good shift,” I said, going out just as she entered.

  I half expected her to call me back, but she didn’t. Most likely she was as glad to avoid me as I was to avoid her.

  On my way downstairs I ran into Unni, all in white in a cloud of perfume.

  “Quiet night?” she asked without stopping.

  “Oh, you know,” I said. “Same as ever.”

  “Sleep well, then,” she said, going in through the door, while I carried on down into the entrance and out into the car park. The sun was still low, but the air was warm and still. It always felt strange to emerge into the morning from a night shift, especially on such a fine day in summer, when the sun had been up for a few hours and the day had long since begun. I never quite managed to make it join up, because in my head I was already facing the night.

  I rolled the window down and drove slowly through the hospital grounds, which at this early hour were still all but deserted. Reaching the main road, I picked up speed and had to roll the window up a bit as the air inside the car became increasingly agitated.

  Ole hadn’t phoned me back, he must have gone to bed early. Which was good, because maybe then we could have breakfast together. Jostein had probably gone off to work already. He was always an early starter, it didn’t matter how much he’d had the night before.

  Breakfast with all three of us was seldom good anyway.

  Maybe I could set the table in the garden?

  I coughed a few times. I mustn’t smoke anymore, I told myself. In any case, it was never as good as I thought it was going to be. I’d have to remind myself.

  I turned down the road that led through the estate where we lived. The lawns lay yellow and parched between green hedges and trees. A front door opened and a man came out. A car reversed out of a driveway. Apart from that, everything was quiet.

  The trees stood motionless, as if asleep.

  Mornings such as these seemed to contain an invisible darkness behind the bright sunlight. I saw it, of course, because day was my night, but it was no less real on that account.

  I pulled up on the gravel outside, engaged the handbrake, picked up my bag and got out.

  It must have been about twenty-five degrees already.

  Wasn’t it watering day today?

  Yes, I was sure of it. I hadn’t watered yesterday, so it had to be.

  I went round the back of the house and uncoiled the hosepipe that hung from the wall, clicked the sprinkler onto the nozzle and placed it on the slope of the lawn before turning on the tap.

  A watery hand rose up and unfolded into the air, showering the dry grass as if with a sigh.

  I stood and watched it for a minute. It felt so good. There was something life-giving about the wet water falling on the dry ground.

  Inside, I put my bag down on the table in the passage and went upstairs to the kitchen. Everything was still as I’d left it. Neither Ole nor Jostein seemed to have eaten anything.

  The lasagne was untouched in the oven.

  I wasn’t hungry, but I hadn’t eaten since the evening before on the ward, so I opened the fridge and looked inside to see if there was anything I fancied.

  Not really.

  There were some eggs and milk, though. I could make him some pancakes, like when he was little? How he used to love them!

  Nowadays he could just as easily come in and say he didn’t want any. In which case it wasn’t worth the effort. A boiled egg, then. He never said no to a boiled egg. And that was simple enough.

  I took three eggs out and a packet of sliced ham. Pierced a little hole in the wide end of each egg, filled the kettle with water and switched it on, sliced a tomato and arranged it on a plate, and some cucumber too, then got the bread out of the bread bin and the knife from the drawer.

  The trees threw long shadows outside. The sky was so blue and clear.

  I stood at the window in the living room to watch the sprinkler. The water glittered in the air, falling soundlessly to the ground.

  I’d have to ask Ole to move it while I slept. Three times it needed, at least.

  I went into the kitchen again, poured the boiling water into a saucepan, put the eggs in, cut some bread and put it in the toaster, then set the table for two. Got the juice out of the fridge, and the liver paste in case he wanted any. If he did, he’d be wanting some pickled cucumber on it, so I got that out too.

  When the eggs had boiled for exactly four and a half minutes, I took the saucepan off the burner, drained the water off, put it down in the sink and filled it up with cold water from the tap before taking the eggs and putting two on his plate, one on mine.

  Then I went and knocked on his door.

  “Ole?” I said. “Are you awake?”

  When he didn’t reply, I opened the door.

  His bed was empty.

  He wasn’t at his computer either.

  “Ole?” I said, stepping inside. Sometimes he’d be sitting on the floor up against the wall with his mobile. Only he wasn’t.

  The room was empty.

  Fear struck me like a blow.

  “OLE!” I shouted, going back out onto the landing. “OLE! OLE!”

  Maybe, just maybe, he’d gone out and met up with a friend. Stayed the night at his.

  I hurried downstairs again, got my mobile out of my bag and called his number.

  Faintly, I heard his phone ring somewhere in the house.

  He’d never have gone out without his phone.

  I called Jostein. He didn’t answer. I called him again, pressing his number over and over as I went through the rooms, shouting Ole’s name. My heart thudded harder and harder, my throat tightened, I couldn’t breathe, I had to bend forward and support myself against the wall. There was no air coming in, my chest felt like it was going to explode, everything went dark, and then a tiny passage opened, a tiny stream of air whistled into my great big lungs, the passage expanded, and at last I could gulp in oxygen, deeply, several times in quick succession.

  He’d killed himself.

  I knew it.

  I screamed.

  The scream filled my entire being, and when it stopped it was as if I’d been abandoned by it.

  It wasn’t certain, I told myself frantically in this new silence. It wasn’t certain, it could be something else, he could have been awake all night and have gone for a walk.

  Why shouldn’t he have gone for a walk?

  Ole had gone for a walk. His bed was made, because he hadn’t slept in it.

  I called Jostein again.

  Ole had gone for a walk, I told myself, and put my phone back in my pocket. All I had to do was wait and then he’d be home.

  But I couldn’t wait.

  He’d killed himself.

  He’d gone for a walk.

  He’d shot himself with Jostein’s shotgun.

  I crept down the stairs and stopped in the passage.

  If the shotgun was in the storage room, he hadn’t killed himself.

  I looked at the door.

  All I had to do was go in and look.

  But I couldn’t. As long as I didn’t know if the shotgun was there, he was still alive.

  He’d gone for a walk. Up to the woods, to the foot of the steep rock face where he’d built a den when he was little. It was his place. That would be where he was.

  I put my sandals on and went out to find him.

  My little love.

  My baby Ollie.

  You haven’t done anything stupid, have you?

  I went through the garden, over the fence and up the path, where humming insects dithered in the air. Past the overgrown football pitch, up the slope behind it, to where the rock face rose.

  “OLE!” I shouted.

  His place was a little patch of grass
in front of the rock, tucked away behind some oak trees. One of them he called the Giant Tree.

  His jacket was there.

  So he’d been here.

  It was a good sign, surely?

  Unless he’d been saying good-bye to the place.

  I called Jostein again. Only he could help me now.

  I called and called his number all the way home.

  Ole wasn’t in the house. He wasn’t in his place.

  He’d gone for a walk without his phone.

  But why had he seemed so happy and untroubled all of a sudden the night before?

  He’d found a way out.

  “NO!” I cried, halting at the fence. “NO! NO!”

  I buried my face in my hands.

  All strength, every emotion drained away from me. Only a canvas of fear remained, white and cold. I crossed the lawn slowly, continuing round the house to the garage. I opened the door and went inside. It was dark and cool in there. I switched the light on. Ole was slumped against the wall in a pool of blood. The shotgun lay across his legs. He’d shot himself in the chest. His head drooped against his shoulder. His eyes were open. They were empty and lifeless.

  I reached forward and felt for a pulse. His heart wasn’t beating.

  I was standing in his blood.

  I crouched down, put my cheek to his and held him.

  “So cold you are, my dear little boy,” I whispered. “I’ll get you a blanket.”

  I pulled the phone out of my pocket and called the emergency services while going in to get the blanket, the phone to my ear. There was blood on it, on my hand, my chest, my cheek.

  “My son is dead,” I said. “He’s shot himself in the garage at home. The address is Rogneveien 11. My name is Turid Lindland.”

  I tucked the blanket around him snugly and sat at his side, stroking his hair, until the ambulance arrived. I got to my feet and went toward it as it pulled up behind my car. Two men jumped out.

  “He’s in here,” I said.

  They followed me inside. One of them crouched down to check his pulse.

  He looked up at us.

  “His heart’s beating,” he said. “It’s faint, but it’s beating.”

  I gasped. The two men darted out. I fell back against the wall.