The Morning Star

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  I bent down and pulled up a handful of moss, pressed it to my mouth and tried to suck some water out of it without getting a mouthful of soil and plant matter at the same time. Enough seeped in to moisten the inside of my mouth, though not without a taste of earth and bits of moss stuck to my tongue.

  I spat and carried on.

  In front of me stood a large oak.

  The same damn one.

  I’d been going in a circle.

  I stopped and put my hand against its enormous trunk as I looked about.

  I’d gone that way. So maybe I should go this way now?

  As I started walking again, it occurred to me there was something familiar about the place. The rock face and the big oak. I’d seen it before.

  But where?

  I turned round.

  It was like a dream. The harder I thought about it, the farther away it drifted.

  I carried on down a bank, emerging a few minutes later into a small clearing. From there I could see the ridge of a hill, and I recognized it.

  I saw it every day from my kitchen window.

  I looked around me, and every feature of the landscape suddenly fell into place.

  Our house was there. The neighbors’ there. The road ran there.

  But there was just forest everywhere, nothing but trees.

  Where were the houses?

  Had I come to another time? Before it was all built?

  Don’t be stupid.

  But what could it be?

  I was standing pretty much exactly where the car had been. There was no doubt about it.

  Or was there?

  My throat was parched like I’d never known before. The need for something to drink tore at me and I hurried on through the housing estate that wasn’t a housing estate but a forest. I was freezing now. A night outdoors in this temperature, in these clothes, wasn’t a prospect, that was for sure. There had to be people here somewhere. And where there were people, there was warmth. I could break into a cabin if I could find one, or knock on the door of a remote farmhouse, or just keep walking until I came to some village or town.

  The sound of running water came back. Here and there just a babble, elsewhere a deeper, thundering roar, where I imagined it crashing through great subterranean channels.

  I looked up at the gray-white sky. It was the same sky I’d always seen. The light suggested it was the middle of the day, and probably late autumn, considering how cold it was.

  What kind of shit was this?

  If only the darkness would come back. So I could wake up away from it all, return to my senses in the car.

  All I could do was go on and hope it was going to happen.

  The forest grew thicker again. It seemed older here, many of the trunks and lower boughs moldy-looking and covered in moss. Next to them grew straight and slender young trees that reached perhaps twenty meters into the air, and then pine, so close together their branches intertwined, giving the impression there was only one, a great damn giant of a thing.

  I paused by a birch, stuck my neck out and licked the smooth bark. It only gave me a taste for more. My throat was like sandpaper, but that wasn’t the worst thing, the worst thing was the sucking sensation inside me, as if my whole body was contracting around this fierce craving for something I was unable to give it.

  But it wasn’t a desert I was wandering in, under a scorching sun. That was the irony, because there was moisture all around me, in the air, in the trees, in the twigs and leaves at my feet.

  I went in a wide arc around the pine, no longer hearing the river underground. But on the other side of that dense cluster, the forest opened itself around a treeless furrow, and there, brown and still, ran a stream.

  It was perhaps a meter in depth, the sandy bed shimmering faintly through the cloudy water. I knelt at its bank, my knees sinking into the soil, but what did I care when, from my cupped hands a moment later, cold water ran down the funnel of my throat?

  I lapped and slurped like a hound.

  Afterward, I sat on the ground and leaned back against a solitary birch growing up at the very edge of the stream. The lower trunk was quite black, the bark only transitioning into white some five meters above.

  The water had been so cold. Its coldness seemed to spread not only from my throat and into my thorax, but also from the cavity of my mouth and into my head. But it was a different coldness than was in the air. This one was pleasant, as if smoothing and enfolding. And what was inside me became clearer to me, too. My heart beating with such simple beauty. The blood streaming to every part of my body. Yes, the blood streaming, the heart beating, and the emotions too, likewise of such simple beauty, diffusing in a different way from the blood, moving more like shadows on the ground when the sun passed behind a cloud, suddenly to re-emerge, flooding everything, first in one way, which was joy, then in another, which was sadness. And all as the heart beat and beat. And the trees grew, the water ran, the moon shone, the sun burned. The heart and the blood. Joy and sadness. Trees and water. Simple and beautiful. Beautiful and simple.

  “So well you beat,” I said.

  The sound of my own voice there in the stillness of the forest surprised me, and I got to my feet.

  Where on earth was I?

  My knees were wet, and soil stuck to them.

  And in the mud on the bank were prints. Footprints at first, then the indentations made by a pair of knees.

  Were they mine?

  They had to be. There was no one else here.

  Did I live here?

  In the forest?

  Or was I just out?

  Who was I, anyway?

  Didn’t I know?

  “Hello, my name’s . . .” I said in the hope a name would come. But it didn’t.

  Was I anyone at all, if I didn’t know who I was?

  A nobody? A somebody?

  All I needed was just that little fragment of something familiar, I sensed, then everything would fall into place.

  I started walking again, in search of whatever it might be that could unravel the mystery for me. Past a thick array of pine, into an older wood of fallen trees, moldy and rotten, bracken brushing my legs.

  From somewhere came the sound of a river once more. Not gentle as the stream I’d just left, but fierce and roaring. It was on the other side of the ridge, surely?

  But when I climbed up and stood on the top, there was no river to be seen.

  The sound of it was all there was.

  Could it be some kind of ghost river?

  What a load of bilge, I told myself, and descended to where it ought to have been, pressing my ear again to the ground, and discovering the sound became louder, and I realized then that it was subterranean.

  I pictured some kind of cave system down there, with walls that were faintly phosphorescent. Fish with eyes that had grown over, blind toads, stoats that could see in the dark and had found a way in to gorge themselves.

  So I knew what fish were, and toads and stoats.

  What more did I know?

  I knew what cold was, and what rain was. I knew trees and moss, hills and sky.

  But nothing beyond all this?

  There was something there, but it felt like somehow it was concealed behind a smooth-faced wall. I knew it was there, but I couldn’t scale the wall to get to it.

  A vault of precious thoughts.

  So I knew what a vault was, and thoughts.

  Something told me I should go on, and so I continued through the forest as it sloped gently upward. The trees here were so tall they took all the light, the forest floor was bare beneath them. I looked up at the gray-white sky between the crowns as I went. Like milk in the dusk, I thought for some reason, and pictured a glass of milk on a kitchen table, the only light falling in from outside. It was a laminated table, Respatex, wit
h a marbled pattern and metal legs, four stools tucked up to it, with light blue upholstery, they too with metal legs. On the table, besides the milk, were two brown plates, empty apart from the crumbs that remained of two sandwiches, and another glass too, empty, though its rim was edged with milk.

  This was a fragment of something, but it fell short of what I needed, stopping there.

  Who had drunk the milk and eaten from the plates?

  When?

  And where?

  Strange how still it was here, I thought. No birdsong, not even the throaty caw of a crow. And no wind.

  A short distance in front of me, in between the trees, a rock face rose up, glistening faintly in the mist.

  Someone was sitting there!

  Back against the rock, hands at their sides.

  “Hey, there!” I called out, and went toward him as fast as I could.

  For a he it was. A young man, I saw as I came closer.

  I’d seen him before.

  He was connected to me in some way.

  Hair cut short above a round, as yet immature face, skin pale. Strikingly bright eyes.

  He looked up at me as I came toward him and halted.

  “Dad? What are you doing here?” he said.

  He was my son.

  I had a son.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Are you dead?” he said.

  “Dead?” I said. “Of course not. I just . . .”

  He looked down at the ground as if abruptly he’d lost interest in me.

  “I just can’t remember anything,” I said. “Nothing. Can you help me?”

  He was holding something in his hand, I noticed now. It looked like a cuddly rabbit.

  It was a cuddly rabbit.

  He clutched it to his chest and looked up at me again. His features were indistinct in a way. No, inconstant. His features kept changing in front of my eyes. But it was him all the time.

  “No,” he said. “I can’t help you.”

  “Can I help you?” I said.

  He shook his head.

  “Not anymore,” he said, then got to his feet and began to walk away.

  “Where are you going?” I said.

  “Don’t follow me,” he said.

  He moved unsettlingly quickly through the trees, seeming almost to glide over the ground.

  “Wait!” I called out, and hurried after him. But although I ran, the distance between us increased, and soon he was out of sight. I carried on in the same direction without knowing if he had actually gone that way, but it was all I had to cling to.

  The terrain became easier and easier to negotiate, the trees more scattered, and after a while I found myself emerging from the forest to stand before a wide heathland that was clad in heather, purple tinged with tawny yellow. It seemed to stretch out for some kilometers. The lighter areas looked like bogland. Here and there were patches of shrubs and bushes.

  I could see a figure in the distance. It had to be him. I set after him at a run.

  Beyond the Heath, fells rose up, dark and gray beneath the sky that was now growing dark.

  Was that where he was going?

  He stopped and turned, and saw me coming, and for a moment it looked as if he might wait for me.

  “Son!” I called out. “Wait!”

  But he went on, at a wander.

  Then stopped again.

  In front of me, a patch of thorny vegetation. I halted, though against my will.

  I couldn’t spill blood here.

  I knew this, while at the same time I knew that I had to reach him.

  My son.

  I had a son.

  I remembered a kitchen.

  I was here.

  That was all.

  I didn’t even know his name.

  But he looked at me.

  “Come!” I shouted.

  Reluctantly, he began to move toward me.

  His eyes shone like two lights.

  “I can’t remember anything,” I said, as he came to a halt no more than a few paces away, the thorny bushes between us. “I can’t even remember your name!”

  His face was older now than when I’d seen him before. But as I stared, it altered imperceptibly, and he came to resemble a sixteen-year-old, though the features remained distinctly his own.

  I was filled with the warmest feelings for him and wanted only to reach out my hand and smooth his cheek, embrace him, feel his body against mine.

  “I just want to help you,” I said.

  “I don’t need help,” he said.

  “But then I need to know what we’re doing here,” I said. “And who I am. Do you know? Or have you forgotten too?”

  “I don’t know what you’re doing here,” he said. “But I’ve got to go on.”

  “I think I’m here to bring you back,” I said.

  “Maybe you are,” he said. “But I don’t want to go back.”

  He turned and began to walk away again.

  “Then I’m coming with you,” I shouted after him.

  He didn’t reply, and his figure grew smaller and smaller. Soon he was gone completely.

  What was I to do now?

  Where was I to go?

  There was something familiar about the fells he’d gone toward. The shape of them.

  Maybe I lived here and saw them every day.

  Did I live with Son?

  And his mother, perhaps? Did I have a wife?

  I closed my eyes and tried to think of Wife. No face appeared, not even when I tried to picture Son, to conjure up an image of Wife.

  I was exhausted to the core of my soul. Cold and hungry too. Darkness came swiftly, more swiftly than I was used to. I needed to find shelter for the night. The only place I could think of was the place where I’d found him. Maybe he’d go back there. It was certainly more likely than me finding him somewhere by chance, I reckoned, and I began to head back.

  * * *

  —

  In the shelter of Son’s rock face was a rather deep cleft, sloping steeply downwards to rise up again on the other side, and across the cleft someone had laid logs to form a roof covered with branches of spruce. Just outside this refuge was a campfire, a circle of stones in whose middle lay the charred remains of firewood in ash. On closer inspection, I discovered a number of small bones, as from chicken or rabbit, white and smooth, quite without flesh or sinew. Against the rock wall, small logs were stacked for burning, and dry twigs had been collected for tinder. Someone was clearly using this place on a regular basis.

  I sat down with my back against the rock.

  Something told me it wasn’t Son, but someone else.

  I took three of the logs and stood them up against each other, broke some bark from one of them, snapped the twigs into smaller lengths and laid it all out around the base. Intuitively, I patted the six pockets of my shorts, and then my breast pocket, where I found my lighter and cigarettes.

  So I smoked.

  Prince Mild.

  I saw a dry field on which the sun was shining, and I saw myself lower my head and shield the lighter’s flame with my cupped hand, for it was windy, and then I saw two girls standing beside each other, in rain boots and overalls, thick sweaters underneath, one with her hair gathered in two pigtails, hands covered in soil.

  That was all.

  Again, it was a thread I couldn’t unravel.

  It stopped there.

  But the girl with soil on her hands, could she be Wife?

  I lit the bark and twigs and immediately they caught. Only when the fire began to grow, devouring the darkness around it, did it occur to me that being seen might be dangerous.

  There were others here. Someone had made the shelter and arranged the stones around a fire site.

&
nbsp; But I needed warmth.

  I could go without food until morning, but not warmth.

  Tomorrow I had to find Son. He was in need, I knew that, and I was meant to help him, I knew that too. I didn’t know what I was meant to help him with, or how. But I felt certain that he did. Besides, he knew who I was.

  I was here because of Son.

  I reasoned it was all I needed to know, and stared into the fire, the flames rising and falling, the play of color, shifting from orange to yellow tinged with blue, ghostly, yet unchanging in its core.

  The wood crackled and popped, occasionally surprising with a louder, more explosive report.

  I began to drop off. Perhaps more pictures would come back to me then, I managed to think in the moments before sleep. Didn’t they usually?

  But somewhere close by something rustled. My eyes snapped open. Probably just an animal on its way through the undergrowth, I told myself, and reached for a new log, placing it carefully on the fire.

  I got the feeling I was being watched.

  Maybe it was because I was so visible in the light of the flames and could see nothing myself in the surrounding darkness.

  I tried to dismiss it.

  A few minutes later, my eyes gazing absently into the fire, I’d already forgotten about it, when a voice suddenly spoke.

  “Who are you?”

  I jumped to my feet and peered out.

  “It’s all right,” the voice said, with a chuckle. “I can’t harm you!”

  It was a woman. She must have been studying me for some time.

  “Who are you?” I said. “Come here so I can see you.”

  Soundlessly, she emerged into the light. She was rather small and looked to be in her seventies, slightly stooping, her face lined and leathery, the way elderly women often looked in old photographs. She smiled, but only with her mouth, her eyes impassive, bright blue and cold.

  “I’ve not seen you here before,” she said. “When did you come?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Who are you, then?”

  I shook my head and held my hands up in a shrug.

  “Have you drunk of Lethe?” she said.