The Morning Star

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

“What’s Lethe?” I said.

  “A river,” she said.

  “I drank from a stream earlier today,” I said, and sat down. “But I don’t know its name.”

  “That was Lethe,” she said. “It’s why you can’t remember.”

  “Who are you, anyway?” I said.

  “Why do you want to know?” she said, sweeping her hair to one side, a gesture that looked like it went back to when she was young.

  “Or maybe you don’t know yourself?” I said.

  She snorted and sat down where the rock was flat.

  “I do,” she said. “But it’s not relevant here.”

  “And yet you asked me?”

  “I’ve not seen you before, that’s why.”

  “I’ve not seen you before either,” I said.

  “True enough,” she said, and smiled. “But it wasn’t so much your name I was wondering about as what you’re doing here. And why you lit a fire.”

  “I was cold, obviously,” I said.

  “The cold will not harm you,” she said. “You must remember that you are dead. No one dies twice.”

  I looked at her. Her face was solemn. No trace of irony.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “Are you a Denier?” she said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Are you denying that you’re dead?”

  “This is absurd,” I said. “I’m freezing, I’m hungry, I’m tired. I have a body, and what’s more I’ve got a packet of cigarettes on me. Not many dead people would be able to say that, I don’t think.”

  “It’s all the same to me,” she said. “No one has ever had a reasonable conversation with a Denier. It can’t be done.”

  She stood up to go.

  “OK,” I said. “Let’s say I’m dead. Doesn’t that make you dead, too?”

  “Indeed,” she said, and melted away into the darkness.

  “Wait!” I called out.

  No reply.

  I jumped up and went after her. The darkness was so thick I could hardly see a hand in front of me.

  “Wait!” I called again, pausing a moment to listen for her footsteps.

  But there wasn’t a sound.

  If I couldn’t see anything, then neither presumably could she. Which meant she had to be lingering somewhere very close. Still, I reckoned I’d be better off looking for her when the light returned, so I went back to the fire.

  Was I dead?

  It didn’t make sense.

  But if I was alive, where was I? And how did I get here?

  Could I have been in some sort of accident and lost my memory? Wandered away into the woods?

  Had Son been in the same accident?

  I’d have to find the old woman again in the morning, I told myself, and lay down on my side, as near to the fire as I dared, before closing my eyes.

  * * *

  —

  I woke at dawn. It was raining, and while the roof I was sheltered under appeared to be watertight, I was freezing cold and trembling. I sat up, rubbed my arms briskly, and looked out at the miserable wet and misty forest as I tried to hang on to the dream I’d been having. I’d been out on my bike with a friend, he was about twelve, like me. Ahead of us, in the sunlight that came down through the trees, a huge ship appeared. It was an oil tanker, and it was moored up. Two men were playing tennis on the deck, apart from that it was deserted. The ropes that were keeping the ship moored were almost as thick as our bodies.

  That was it. But it gave me hope, because now there were three sequences I remembered—the kitchen scene, the girls by the field, the bike ride with my friend—and if they kept coming to me like that, in a few days I’d be able to piece together some kind of a past and perhaps find out who I was.

  Also, Son was here. And I recognized the fells on the other side of the plain.

  But Son was the key.

  I needed to find him and help him.

  I started off toward the fringe of the forest. The plan was to follow it all the way along the Heath and hope that from where it ended the way forward would be obvious. It wasn’t inconceivable either that things would come back to me as I walked, then maybe I’d have more of an idea as to which way to go.

  The rain poured and dripped everywhere. The mist lay so low and was so dense that in some places I couldn’t see the tops of the trees.

  At the foot of the shallow slope I followed, maybe thirty meters below me, there was a channel I hadn’t noticed the day before. Along its bank stood ample spruce trees with gray trunks and a tangle of bare, wispy branches at the bottom, heavier green boughs farther up.

  I stopped in my tracks.

  Was that someone sitting there, in the undergrowth?

  I was sure of it.

  My eyes glimpsed a pale, flat face, the dark outline of a body.

  My heart quickened, and without being aware of what I was doing I realized I’d got my cigarettes out and had lit up a smoke.

  The figure wasn’t moving.

  Maybe they were dead?

  The smoke I blew lingered a moment in the air in front of me before dispersing.

  I took a drag, so forcefully it made the filter hot.

  No one dead ever smoked.

  The old woman had been having me on.

  I dropped the cig end on the ground and trod on it, then made toward the spruce, slowly and tentatively so as not to frighten whoever was there. But not even when I stopped in front of them, and saw the face as plain as day, did the figure move.

  Its eyes were open though, and there was life in them, they shone strangely, as Son’s had shone. As if a little flame were burning inside them.

  “Hello?” I said softly, and crouched down.

  The figure turned its head toward me. It looked at me like it was blind. The mouth hung open. Its gaze seemed not to fix on me. Sparse tufts of hair hung from its scalp, as if someone had pulled its hair out. It was a man, or what was left of a man.

  “Hello,” he said, his voice cracked with age.

  An icy chill ran through me, and I stood up abruptly and stepped back, glancing around, but there was no one else.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  “I . . . don’t . . . know . . .” he said, reaching his hand out slowly toward me, as if he wanted to touch me, not knowing I was out of arm’s reach.

  “What is this place?” I said.

  He withdrew his hand just as slowly as he’d extended it, and turned his head away from me. I couldn’t get a hold on what he actually looked like, his facial features were nigh on impossible to pin down. Only his eyes were clear, shining brightly in their blindness, in the dim light beneath the tree.

  “I . . . don’t . . . know . . .” he said again.

  “Talking to the Undead?” a voice called behind me. “Then you’re stupider than you look.”

  It was the old woman, bustling down the slope.

  My heart sank at the sight of her.

  So I didn’t care for her, I reasoned.

  I should have gone straight down to the Heath, not stopped here.

  She halted a short distance from me.

  “They remember nothing. They know nothing. All they do is go about here.”

  “I can’t remember anything either,” I said.

  “But you think. You’re a Denier, not an Undead.”

  “Didn’t you say I was dead yesterday?”

  “Indeed, and dead you are. But not an Undead. What did you say to him?”

  “I asked him who he was. And what place this is.”

  The Undead had turned his face toward us, or to where he heard our voices were coming from. With his mouth hanging open, he looked like he was listening.

  “He can hear us, can’t he?” I said.

  “Indeed. But
he understands little, the poor creature.”

  She stepped forward, reached into the undergrowth to grip a tuft of his hair, and then pulled.

  “Up we get,” she said. “Come on, up we get!”

  The Undead twisted in her grasp, yet rose slowly to his feet. Once he was standing, she shoved him on his way. He stumbled forward before finding his balance and walking away from us into the trees, where he vanished from sight.

  She smiled.

  “They’re harmless,” she said.

  “Who are they? Who was he?” I said.

  “No idea,” she said, sweeping her hair to one side in the same coquettish manner as before.

  At that moment, as she lowered her head and appeared to me in profile, I recognized her.

  I’d seen her before. Many times.

  But who was she?

  Behind her, at the top of the slope, three men came into view. They weren’t Undead, but like her. They came to a halt and looked down on us.

  She became aware that I was staring at something, and turned.

  They came toward us.

  I understood from her reaction that they weren’t dangerous, but started nevertheless in the direction of the Heath.

  “Where are you going?” she said.

  “To find Son,” I said.

  “Have you a son here?” she said.

  I didn’t answer. She came up alongside me.

  “How can you remember?” she said.

  “I saw him yesterday,” I said. “And now I’m going to find him again. Good-bye.”

  She stayed put. I carried on. Not until I came out into the open a few minutes later did I look back.

  No one had come after me.

  I followed the line of the forest, watching the whole time for any sign of movement out on the Heath that stretched away, vast and empty, into the distance. Only the odd bird could be seen above it, small and dark, soaring high in the gray sky.

  It was a relief to be on my own, and a relief to be on my way. I was still cold, and hunger gnawed at my stomach, but something must have happened, because in a strange way it didn’t bother me. It didn’t seem to have weakened me either, I felt a strength in me as I strode on.

  After a while, I stopped and looked back every so often, as if something was forcing me, something I couldn’t control. I was catching myself doing it with increasing frequency. I kept telling myself I had to press on, but the next minute I was turning my head again and looking back.

  The feeling that something was wrong grew in me, almost with every step. It was like I wasn’t supposed to leave the place, it was where I was meant to be, and the certainty of this tore at me. At the same time, the certainty that Son had gone this same way and the urge to find him were quite as strong.

  It felt as if two magnets were pulling on me from different directions. Or no, it was as if one magnet was pulling me back, while I myself tried to strive ahead. If that’s how it was, I thought, then things could only get easier, because the pull would get weaker and weaker the farther from Home I got, until eventually it would release completely.

  After a while, the Heath transformed, no longer heather and thorny bushes, but boggy and yellow, and here and there were glinting pools and ponds. When small knolls and more sweeping ridges began to appear, and the ground became grassy, I left the forest fringe and set out across the plain itself. Before long, what seemed to be a cluster of towers appeared in the distance. There were three, and I made for them.

  As I came closer, I saw the air was ribboned with smoke, a belt extending from one end of the Heath to the other. It unsettled me, and the urge to return to Home grew so strong it forced me to stop.

  In front of me, in the knee-high grass, lay something red.

  I went toward it. It was a small pile of clothing, a red shirt on top. T-shirts, underwear, jumpers and trousers. Next to it, almost hidden, lay several pairs of shoes and sandals.

  I crouched down and saw a brown leather wallet lying open and facedown on the ground. Turning it over to examine it, I found it contained a strip of photo-booth images showing two girls, perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old, and tucked behind it a single snapshot of a boy the same age, seemingly cut from a larger photograph. There were two fifty-krone notes too, some coins and a bus pass.

  I stood up again and surveyed the landscape ahead.

  The rest of the way to the Towers appeared to be strewn with items of clothing left in the grass, increasingly so the closer I came, along with shoes and glasses, wallets, bags.

  It wasn’t smoke, I realized, but steam. And it looked to be coming from a river that seemed to dissect the plain.

  Approaching the embankment, I realized that the Towers were on the other side of the river. Perhaps thirty meters apart, they formed a triangle. At the foot of each, two broad ramps led up, apparently constructed from timber, and from these ramps the towers themselves reached maybe twenty meters into the air, slender and delicate-looking, made, as far as I could see, out of some kind of wire meshing.

  The grass surrounding them had been trampled down over a large area some hundred meters in length and breadth. Heaps of clothing, as tall as a man, lay everywhere.

  What place was this?

  It seemed to be some kind of assembly point, perhaps for thousands of people.

  The towers—could they be churches of some kind? Did they symbolize something?

  I lifted my gaze. The sun was visible as a paler, faintly yellow area of light in the gray.

  Far above, a great bird circled slowly on a current of air.

  I didn’t like it, there was something ominous about it, and I felt exposed, the only figure visible as far as the eye could see.

  I went up the embankment and down the other side to the river, bent down and cautiously dipped my hand in the water. It was red-hot.

  No one could get over here without being scalded.

  I looked toward the towers.

  Who could have built them?

  And what were they for?

  My eyes searched the sky for the bird. But the sky was white and empty.

  A new image dislodged from the vault of my memory: I was climbing a mast, it was gray and made of metal, the air was cold, the sky was blue, the sun was shining. Patches of snow lay beneath me. I was thirteen, it was spring and I was thirteen. Easter! Long, lazy days. Below stood Gaute with the curly hair and impish smile.

  It must have been a radio mast, I thought, looking up toward the top of the tower, which culminated in a long metal pole.

  I hadn’t recovered that much information in one go since I’d lost my memory.

  A sorrow went through me when I thought about it.

  He didn’t want to know me.

  Had I done something to him?

  What could it be?

  He was Son.

  He’d said he had to go back.

  Back where?

  It could be anywhere.

  * * *

  —

  I returned to Home in the afternoon. It felt good, though I was missing Son. I sat with my back against the rock, looking out into the forest without really seeing anything, and that too felt good. When darkness came, I lit a fire.

  It was as if my body absorbed its hunger, like the planks of a wooden boat will swell with moisture to seal their joins.

  I dozed by the fire as I had done the previous evening, and again there was a rustle close by.

  “Is it you, old woman?” I said.

  Without a word, she emerged into the glow from the flames and sat down.

  I paid her no attention, only reached backward and picked up a new log which I placed on the fire.

  “Did you find your son?” she said.

  I shook my head.

  “How far did you go?”

  “To the river on th
e Heath,” I said.

  “Did you cross it?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “There’s a cable ferry there—didn’t you see it?”

  “No.”

  “Not on the Heath, but in the forest.”

  I sensed her looking at me.

  “What’s on the other side?” I said, without returning her gaze.

  “The same as here,” she said. “Forest and water.”

  “So why would he want to go there?”

  “There’s a bridge there.”

  “And?”

  “He wants to cross the bridge to the other side. It’s the only thing he wants.”

  “What place is it?” I said.

  “The land of the dead.”

  “I thought this was the land of the dead?”

  She shook her head.

  “This is the land of those who are not.”

  And then we were silent.

  Presently, as if from nowhere, a deep and resonant hum rose above the forest. It passed through the sky like thunder, though it was not thunder, but a persistent tone that reverberated in the landscape around us.

  I got to my feet to go down to the Heath, for this was its command, but Old Woman gripped my arm and held me back.

  “Don’t listen to it,” she said urgently. “Stay here.”

  I pulled free and went out into the darkness. It was as if the hum overrode all else. Inside me there was room for it alone. It was so beautiful, all I wanted was for it to go on. And I wanted to obey it. To become a part of it.

  And that was why I went to the Heath, for the hum told me to.

  Yet when I came to the stream, the hum stopped.

  Its absence brought pain to my chest.

  I halted.

  All around me I heard a rustling, and whispered voices.

  It was the Undead. But not just one or two, they were everywhere, passing among the trees, like people in a dream. Their clothing was dark, their faces and hands white and shimmering in the darkness. And their eyes, their eyes shone.

  One of them went past me. It whispered something, though not to me, for it seemed not to notice me at all. It was whispering to itself.

  The great hum rose and sounded again.

  It filled me up.

  Oh, how beautiful it was.