My Struggle, Book 6

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  “You’re too little,” I said. “Try again next year.”

  “Lift me up!” he said.

  I did, and held him up so he could see the elevator through the small rectangular window in the door when it came gliding down to find us.

  When we got upstairs I pushed the stroller into the hall. If I woke Heidi up now she’d cry and whine for an hour at least, and I wasn’t in the mood. The price for leaving her be was that she wouldn’t be able to sleep when she went to bed tonight.

  I put a film on for them so I could make the dinner in peace. Then I gave them each an apple, got the groceries out of the bags and sorted them, fruit in the fruit bowl in the cupboard, milk in the fridge, vegetables on the counter, falukorv on the chopping board. I’d thought about boiling some rice but changed my mind, there was still some macaroni left, we could have that instead. I went and got the phone in the hall, called Geir Angell, measured out some water and milk, put it in a saucepan, added the recipe mix, and started stirring all before he answered.

  “What are you up to?” I asked. “You normally answer right away.”

  “I was in the bath, my book got wet and I had to dry it with the hair dryer.”

  “The hair dryer?”

  “That’s right, the hair dryer.”

  I made an incision in the tight dark red sheath of plastic around the sausage, tore it away, and began chopping the meat into little chunks.

  “How’s it going?” Geir asked. “Still as bad?”

  “Still as bad.”

  I filled another saucepan with water and put it on the heat.

  “He’s got me in his power. Him turning against me is the worst that could happen. But being scared stiff of him is only part of it. There’s the issue itself. I’ve offended him. He didn’t do anything, he didn’t ask for this. And once it gets published he won’t be able to defend himself against it either. It’s his mother, after all. They’re real people.”

  “Have you ever been in doubt about it?” Geir asked.

  “No, but you know what it’s like when you’re writing.”

  “I know what it’s like to be written about.”

  “You didn’t call for two days. You were pissed off with me.”

  “At first, yes. But then I thought about it. I think Ernst Billgren got it right when he was asked to comment on having appeared in Den högsta kasten. He said he was aware there was a character in the book with the same name as him. In my case, I can’t see it that way, what you’ve written about is too close to home for that, but the point is that he indicates an escape route that’s open to any person in a novel. There’s a character in that book who’s got the same name as me.”

  “But you’re a literary person. I’ve never seen a book in Gunnar’s house. I don’t think he reads. That makes it a different thing altogether.”

  “You talk about him like he was defenseless! For God’s sake, didn’t you read what he wrote? He’s making you out to be half-baked! And sending it off to your publisher! He’s out to destroy you, Karl Ove. He’s not defenseless. You can’t just sit there and let him get on with it. I bet you’ve even thought about not publishing the book at all?”

  “That goes without saying.”

  “In which case you’d be letting an accountant in Kristiansand decide the path of Norwegian literature. You can’t do that, can you?”

  “I will publish it.”

  I went to the cupboard and got the box of macaroni out, shook some into the boiling water, stirred a bit with a fork, and turned the heat down.

  “The question is by what right. The right of literature? That means I’m saying literature is more important than the life of the individual. And not only that, I’m saying my literature is more important than his life.”

  “But it’s not his life! It’s your father’s life. He’s the brother, you’re the son. The son’s closer.”

  I angled the chopping board over the saucepan and scraped the chunks of sausage into the sauce, took four plates out of the cupboard and put them on the table, opened the drawer and got the knives and forks out.

  “And then there’s the law,” I said.

  “The law can’t preside over literature.”

  “Of course it can.”

  “Of course it does, would be more accurate. Mykle was taken to court, but his book still gets read.”

  “There’s a big difference between offending the sexual morals of the day and offending an individual. Besides, there was another aspect to the Mykle case. Maybe it was what broke him in the end. The people he wrote about recognized themselves. And not just in any old context. All the women he slept with recognized themselves in his descriptions. That was what the scandal was really all about. Tarjei Vesaas spoke about it, as far as I remember, once he realized. ‘Rather unfortunate,’ he said. Something like that, anyway.”

  “Ha ha ha!”

  “You can laugh, but Vesaas was a decent man. Maybe the most decent Norwegian ever. If he says something isn’t good, you can be damn sure of it.”

  “Didn’t you say they found an envelope full of Marilyn Monroe cuttings among his things after he died?”

  “I did, yes. Even in sin he was decent.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  I got four glasses out of the cupboard, turned off the two rings on the cooker. and filled a jug with water.

  “Anyway, I’ve got to go,” I said. “I’ve got the dinner ready.”

  “Are you going to be OK?” he said.

  “Yes, yes. I just have to get through it, that’s all.”

  “What exactly are you scared of anyway?”

  “What, do you think the papers aren’t going to write about it? That they’re just going to let it pass without mention? It’s going to be a storm. I’m going to be all over every newspaper in the land.”

  “Lie back and think about how rich you’re going to be instead.”

  I didn’t bother answering, and went into the hall.

  “Cheer up. It’ll be fun!”

  “Speak to you later,” I said.

  “Hope so.”

  “All right.”

  I hung up and put the phone back in the charger.

  “Dinner’s ready,” I called into the living room. Vanja said something I did’t catch. I went in.

  “John’s asleep,” she said.

  He was lying there like a little cushion in a corner of the sofa.

  “We’re the only two awake, then,” I said.

  “Mm,” she replied, immersed in a film, Totoro.

  “Dinner’s ready,” I said.

  “Can I have mine in front of the television? Please?”

  “Seeing as it’s only you,” I said. “And if you promise not to make a mess.”

  She nodded. I went back into the kitchen and transferred the macaroni into a colander, then spooned some onto the plate, dished some of the sausage stroganoff onto it, cut a tomato into wedges that I placed next to the sauce for the sake of presentation, and took the whole thing into the living room and put it in front of her. I wasn’t hungry in the slightest and made do with chomping a tomato on my way into the bedroom to check my e-mail. There was nothing more from Gunnar, and nothing from anyone else involved. Still, just seeing his name, and the subject he’d given his e-mail, “Verbal rape,” was enough to petrify me. I stretched out on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. The fear and dread came back in full. I couldn’t use the children to keep me going, that wasn’t good, they were supposed to need me, not the other way around.

  I got to my feet and went to the bathroom, found the blue IKEA bags and spent a couple of minutes sorting through the pile of dirty clothes, telling myself I’d have to go down in the morning after I’d dropped the children off and see if there was a slot so I could do the washing, then all of a sudden I couldn’t be bothered and went back through the hall, stopping in the doorway to check on Vanja, she had a forkful of food paused in front of her mouth, completely spellbound by what she was watching.

  Tot
oro roared. It was a terrifying roar, but he was good at heart, that much was obvious, and there was something reassuring about it.

  The phone rang.

  I looked at the display.

  Linda.

  I answered.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Hi, it’s me,” she said. “How’re things?”

  “Good,” I said.

  “Did you get home all right?”

  “Yes, everything went fine.”

  “Can I have a word with them?”

  “Heidi and John are asleep. I’ll see if Vanja wants to.”

  I held the receiver against my chest as I went into the living room.

  “Do you want to say hello to Mommy?” I asked.

  “Can you pause it?” she said.

  I nodded and she reached her hand out for the phone.

  “Hi,” she said, and went out of the room. I looked around for the remote, fining it on the bookshelf, pressed pause, and went out after her. She’d gone into their room. When she saw me she closed the door.

  She’d grown up so much she wanted to be left alone when she was on the phone!

  I checked on Heidi, she was still asleep in the stroller. Then John, he was asleep too. I opened the door onto the balcony, lit a cigarette, took a few drags, stubbed it out, and went in again. I didn’t know what to do with myself, too much on edge to sit down.

  I went into the kitchen and filled a glass with water from the tap, downing it in one gulp. I got some coffee going, and the sound it made as it began to trickle through the machine was soothing, I’d been hearing it all my life and had always connected it with something good.

  All I wanted was to lie down next to someone who could run their fingers through my hair and tell me everything was going to be all right.

  I hadn’t wanted that since I was a little boy.

  No one had ever done that then. Now there was someone who could, if only I let her. I never had. There was something shameful about it, degrading almost.

  Nevertheless, it was what I wanted.

  I went into the hall and opened the door of the children’s room. Vanja had climbed onto the desk and stood there chatting away.

  “Can you give me the phone back when you’ve finished talking?” I said.

  “I’m finished now,” she said. “Bye.”

  She handed me the phone.

  “It’s me again,” I said, and went down the hall. “What did she tell you?”

  Linda laughed.

  “All about what she did today.”

  “She didn’t tell me anything,” I said. “And as soon as I gave her the phone she went into her own room, as if she didn’t want me to listen.”

  “It was so nice talking to her. She’s such a big girl all of a sudden.”

  “She is, yes.”

  “How are you feeling?” Linda asked.

  “Not so good. It’ll get better, I suppose. I miss you.”

  “I miss you too. Do you think you could call back later?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said.

  “I think we’re having a barbecue. Maybe if you phone about ten-ish?”

  “Fine. Speak to you then.”

  “Bye.”

  I hung up. Vanja had resumed the film herself. She’d barely touched her dinner.

  “Can’t you eat something?” I said. She sighed, took two mouthfuls, then pushed the plate away.

  “Is that all?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “But you’ll be pestering me for a sandwich soon. It’s better to eat your dinner.”

  “I’m not hungry, I said.”

  Now it was my turn to sigh. I picked up the plate and took it into the kitchen, leaving it on the table for her to eat later, went out onto the balcony, looked down at the square, went inside again, looked at the clock on the kitchen wall, half past five, then went into the bedroom and checked my e-mail. Nothing. I opened a couple of online newspapers, Aftenposten and Dagbladet, then NRK, and after that a couple of book blogs I half kept up with. One of them had come to my attention after I’d been invited to contribute an article. I declined, but would sometimes read what others were posting there, mostly one-book authors, occasionally someone better known. Those who commented all seemed to be people who were writing and wanted to get published, they were especially interested in the process and anything that had to do with the way publishers worked. The way they looked at literature and the things they wrote about authors were for the most part childish, they got steamed up about the slightest thing and seemed to view themselves as important people with important opinions.

  It struck me that was exactly how Gunnar saw me.

  It was almost word for word. I had a small though in my own view excessively large ego, he had written.

  In other words I was a small person, yet blind to the fact, considering myself important, and what I did to be equally important.

  It was a rather accurate description, I was indeed a small person. But the high thoughts I had were not about myself, but about what I did, or was capable of doing. In more positive frames of mind I believed I could achieve something big one day. But could a small person create something big? Didn’t external greatness have to be founded on internal greatness?

  How could I dismiss the people who posted comments on the blog as inconsequential? I was elevating myself above them, and so I was the same as them, important in my own eyes.

  In my own eyes I was a better writer than most. Only seldom did I read the work of another novelist and think, I could never do this. But after my first novel came out that was how I looked at it, what I had written was so close to my own person I told myself anyone could do the same thing, all they had to do was write. Yet with the second book I had not only written in the third person, but also told a story as far removed from myself and my own reality as I could. That extended my radius. The unattainable for me was closely bound up with the person who had written it. Thomas Bernhard, for instance, what he wrote and achieved was completely out of my reach. Jon Fosse the same. But not a writer like Jonathan Franzen. Him I could match, and probably even surpass. The same was true of Coetzee, he also was a writer who lacked the distinctive aspect of personality that could take his writing that final stretch of the way; what he wrote didn’t seem out of reach to me, and he’d been given the Nobel Prize. The issue was whether or not excellence was bound up with the personal. If that was what made the excellent excellent. And what point could there be in attaining the level below excellence, that which was good, perhaps even recognized internationally as high standard, if the excellent still remained? Clearly, it was because the value lay in the work, not in the appraisal of it. It didn’t matter what kind of work you did, you were obliged to do your best. A joiner’s work had to be as good and precise as possible. There was satisfaction in that. Should an ordinary joiner, whose work was run-of-the-mill, without panache, who went to work every morning and was there for his family in the afternoons and evenings, be troubled by the existence of a master joiner somewhere in Austria, a joiner who produced the most magnificent work, and ask himself what point there could possibly be in all his own solid yet unspectacular work? Should he lay down his hammer and nails because of that master joiner in Austria?

  Of course not. He should carry on with his work, to the best of his abilities. Perhaps even be glad to at least be a better joiner than the one the newspaper had written about only recently, people knew about him, he wasn’t as good a joiner as everyone said. His work might seem good, but on closer inspection it was shoddy. Thank goodness one’s own work was solid!

  The value lay in the work itself, not in the appraisal of it.

  But to Gunnar I was nonetheless still a status seeker with ideas above his station, a bigheaded nephew willing to trample on the dead in order to make himself superior.

  To him what I did was entirely without value.

  And writing was such a fragile thing. It wasn’t hard to write well, but it was hard to make writing th
at was alive, writing that could pry open the world and draw it together in one and the same movement. When it didn’t work, which it never really did, not really, I would sit there like a conceited idiot and wonder who I thought I was, supposing I could write for others. Did I know any better than everyone else? Did I possess some secret no one else possessed? Were my experiences particularly valuable? My thoughts about the world especially valid?

  Gunnar had pointed his finger at me. He had said, I know you. You think you’re someone, but you’re just a little shit. And you’ve meddled in something that’s none of your business, something you don’t even understand. If you go through with this, I’ll take you to court. I’ll make you bleed. I’ll destroy you. You little shit of a nephew.

  That was what he was saying.

  He had warned me of it back when I was seventeen and had written disparagingly about Sissel Kyrkjebø in the local newspaper Fædrelandsvennen. Who do you think you are, he’d said, seventeen years old and writing so unfavorably about an artist who can sell two hundred thousand records? He was embarrassed by me, presumably also because we shared the same name and he would be associated with what I’d done. Kristiansand was a small town, and everyone read Fædrelandsvennen.

  I was proud my name was in the paper. But when he said those words to me I squirmed on my chair and blushed, what he said hurt. I measured the world by my indie yardstick, it was how I judged the quality of everything in the field of culture. He knew nothing about that world at all, to him it was nonsense, and that was what I felt, that he was measuring me by the real world. The adult world, the world of responsible people. I opposed that world, but that was when I was on my own, because no sooner was I confronted by it than what did I do? I bowed my head in deep and heartfelt shame.