My Struggle, Book 6

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  “Vanja once said there are no grown-ups in this family,” she said. “But I think you’re well on the way to becoming one and I hope I’m not far behind. But I’m not going to make a speech. I was thinking of bursting into song. And as I never learned to play an instrument I was thinking of playing the ukulele.”

  She took a few steps back, and when she reappeared she was holding a ukulele. I knew she couldn’t play and feared the worst. But it transpired one of the parents at the nursery school had taught her, she had learned the chords of a song, and whenever I had been out during the previous month she’d practiced.

  So there she stood, playing and singing a song to me. It was the one she handed to me in the castle café and I read it with tears rolling down my cheeks.

  Only once I saw that man

  My eyes were transfigured

  He moved like the wind

  Swift and bold, master of his fate

  He looked at me and smiled

  He saw me blush and smiled

  And he walked on by

  But he did walk by

  Then I saw the man again

  My eyes were transfigured

  He beamed like the sun

  He was to turn my life around

  He touched me and smiled

  He touched my hand and smiled

  And he didn’t walk on by

  No, he didn’t walk by

  The days have turned to years

  And my eyes are transfigured

  Such a man, such a man is he

  A touch of his hand made my life complete

  He looked at me and smiled

  I saw his lion heart and smiled

  Karl Ove, my beloved

  I love you so, I love you so.

  I had never even entertained the idea of having a party on my fortieth; it had been absolutely out of the question. But in early autumn the previous year, September 2008 to be more precise, when we had been visiting Yngve in Voss, Linda and Yngve had brought up the subject. We had been sitting on the veranda in the evening, after the children had gone to bed, each of us with a glass of red wine in hand. The sky above us was pitch black and ablaze with stars. The air was cold and clear.

  “We’ve been talking about your fortieth birthday,” Linda said, looking at me in the faint light from the veranda door.

  “Have you?” I said.

  “Yes, we have. We’ve decided you should have a big party and celebrate it properly.”

  “Invite everyone you know,” Yngve said. “And maybe Lemen and Kafkatrakterne could play.”

  “But that’s the last thing I want,” I said. “I couldn’t imagine anything worse.”

  “We know that,” Linda said. “But you’ve been hiding out for long enough, haven’t you?”

  “But there’s nobody to invite.”

  “There are lots of people,” Yngve said. “You know more people than you imagine. If you give it some thought.”

  “Possibly,” I said, looking at Linda. “If it were up to me I’d celebrate it with you, like any normal birthday. That’s nice, too. You come in with candles and presents and sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ That’s enough celebration for me.”

  “Of course,” Linda said.

  “But this isn’t for you,” Yngve said. “It’s to give everyone you know a chance to make a fuss over you. And to have a party. If you send out invitations in plenty of time so people can plan, book hotels, and planes, and so on, I’m sure everyone’ll come. I’m definitely up for it anyway.”

  “That I don’t doubt,” I said with a smile. “But you didn’t celebrate your own fortieth.”

  “And I regret it.”

  “So what do you say?” Linda asked.

  “No,” I answered.

  * * *

  Something about the suggestion did appeal to me though, it was true what Linda had said, I’d been hiding out for long enough.

  Why had I done that?

  It was a form of survival. In my terrible twenties I had tried to involve myself in the life around me, normal life, the one everyone lived, but I’d failed, and so strong was my sense of defeat, this glimpse of shame, that little by little, unbeknown to myself as well, I shifted the focus of my life, pushed it further and further into literature in such a way that it didn’t seem like a retreat, as though I were seeking a refuge, but like a strong and triumphant move, and before I knew what was happening it had become my life. I didn’t need anyone else, life in my study and the family was sufficient, actually, more than sufficient. It wasn’t because I had problems with the social world that I withdrew from, no, it was because I was a great writer or wanted to be one. That solved all my problems and I thrived on it.

  But if it was true that I was hiding, what was I frightened of?

  I was frightened of other people’s judgments of me, and to avoid this I avoided them. The thought that anyone would like me was a dangerous thought, perhaps the most dangerous one for me. It never occurred to me, I didn’t dare think it. I didn’t even think that Mom might actually like me. Or Yngve or Linda. I assumed they didn’t, not really, but that the social and family bonds we were entangled in nonetheless meant that they had to see me and listen to what I had to say.

  If I had been responsible for only myself there would have been nothing to consider. I would manage whatever the circumstances. But I had three children with Linda and didn’t want them to grow up in a home that was hidden away, didn’t want them to believe that hiding was an acceptable way of engaging with the world. All I could give them was what I was giving them now, and this wasn’t given through what I said but what I did. I wanted them to be surrounded by people, I wanted them to become independent and fearless, able to develop their full potential, by which I mean to be as free as possible within the unfree limits of this society. And, most important of all, I wanted them to feel secure in themselves, to like themselves, to be themselves. At the same time they had the parents they had, I thought, and we couldn’t change our personalities in any fundamental way, which would have been both senseless and catastrophic: having two parents who pretended to be something they weren’t would obviously just bring more misery. This was about our living conditions. They were fixed, but not immutable. The way I had behaved during the first three or four years of having children, when, much too often, I took out my frustrations on them, must have affected their self-esteem, the one thing in them you, as a parent, mustn’t fuck up. I had got out of this, it hardly ever happened anymore, we never argued in front of them now and I never lost my temper, but I said a silent prayer almost every day that this hadn’t left any marks, that what I had done wasn’t beyond redress. I imagined that their self-esteem was a beach, I had left my footprints there, but then the waves washed ashore, the sun shone, the sky was blue, and the water, so fantastic at adapting to its environment, covered everything, erased everything, salty and cold and wonderful.

  I thought about this, but I knew I should never intervene directly, I should never let these concerns, which all parents feel, take on a form that they would notice and react to. Vanja wasn’t even a year old when she began to close her eyes if strangers visited, and where did that come from? Was it genetic, a shyness so great that it forced her to shut out everything? Or had she picked it up from us, the atmosphere in the house, the way I behaved with other people? It continued, she hid from strangers, and if she couldn’t do that she closed her eyes, the last occasion at the age of three and a half years old in the stroller one afternoon, we met one of the parents from school, Vanja slid down and pretended she was sleeping. It didn’t matter, but it bothered me nonetheless, I just wanted her to be happy. The worst that could happen was that she noticed my unrest. I shouldn’t tie them to me, shouldn’t allow my concerns to be noticeable, I should just try to fix everything quietly. I had to snap out of my prevarications, my evasive looks, my reclusiveness, my life closeted in the study.

  Linda had much of the same in her. But with her it was changeable: an introverted, depressed, and pas
sive period in the daytime when she was unable to do anything but lie on the sofa and watch undemanding films was followed by an extroverted, enthusiastic, and very active period when she suddenly would swing the children around as if nothing in the world could be more natural. So there were two of us with problems adjusting to our surroundings. A mother and a father. Their mother and father.

  When we got married, in the spring of 2007, the wedding had been as minimal as possible. Linda’s maid of honor, Helena, my best man, Geir, and his girlfriend Christina, Linda’s mother, Ingrid, and my mother, Sissel. Five people attended our wedding in the town hall, lasting two minutes, plus Vanja and Heidi. An hour later only five people sat around the table we had booked in Västra Hamnen and ate with us. No speeches, no dancing, no fuss. That was how I wanted it, I hated being the center of attention, even with people I knew.

  Did Linda want it like that?

  She said she did, and I believed her, but later I realized that she might have wanted a bigger wedding. For me the fact that we were marrying was the most important; for her the emphasis was more on the way we did it.

  In the evening we went to Copenhagen without the children, stayed at the Hotel d’Angleterre, had dinner at a nearby fish restaurant, and the next day flew with the children to the Canary Islands, Linda pregnant with John, and spent two weeks there, at a terrible holiday center for Scandinavians where they showed the Norwegian nine o’clock news on TV in the bars and sold Dagbladet in the lobby. We arrived absolutely exhausted, schlepped the enormous pile of luggage, double stroller to the waiting buses, the children hungry and thirsty and snarling with irritation, drove through the barren, desert-like landscape, from which the holiday bunkers and shopping malls had extracted all hope, and arrived an hour later at the place where we were going to stay. Rows of two-story concrete blocks, a parched lawn, asphalt, and two big hotels, all inside high fences, next to a pile of rocks, full of Scandinavians and Brits, this was the location for our honeymoon. I was so wound up with frustration and Linda was so exhausted that she began to cry when I growled at her for not being able to find the key when we were standing outside the door. Vanja got angry with me; I shouldn’t talk to Mommy like that. Heidi looked frightened. We went inside, the two rooms were dark, but there was a balcony, which was something at least. I ventured out to buy some food, close by there was a sort of supermarket. When I returned Heidi and Vanja were in their swimming suits. For them this was a fairy tale come true, so, I realized, if I pulled myself together, they would be happy.

  For us it was anything but a fairy tale. In fact, the very antithesis. There was nothing enchanting about it, there was no magic, not so much as a hint of allure. We fell into a rhythm: out of bed at half past five when Heidi woke up, play a movie on the laptop to kill the first uneventful hours, shop for breakfast when the extortionate supermarket opened, eat, go down to the pool and swim with the children until lunch, have lunch in the restaurant there, which catered for several hundred customers and served hamburgers, sausages, and spaghetti, with waiters who hated us, then take Heidi home for a nap while one of us went with Vanja and sat in a café drinking coffee while she drew with crayons and ate ice cream. Go swimming again when Heidi woke up, play for a while in one of the two small playgrounds, eat at one of the four restaurants, and then take part in the evening entertainment for the children. This was provided by a happy young Swede, maybe nineteen years old, who played songs on a stereo that the children were supposed to sing along to, he threw in a few comments about a clown coming later and asked if they were enjoying themselves. The clown was the star turn, he came, danced around, and handed out lollipops to everyone, then he was gone. A couple of times we took the children to the Teddy Bear Club, they were too young to be left on their own and too shy to do anything but stare at the young person dressed up as a teddy bear or draw pictures.

  One evening toward the end of the first week there was to be a birthday party for the clown and all the children were invited. Vanja who, along with Heidi, stared wide-eyed at the clown every evening, and didn’t see that behind the mask was a Swedish kid with, at best, one semester of drama under his belt, was really looking forward to the party. She put on her nicest clothes and went there with her mother full of excited anticipation while I strolled with Heidi along a path beside the sea. We had arranged to meet up at the evening event. Heidi sat calmly in the stroller looking into the distance. Her eyes were large, in photos her face was all cheeks and eyes, in character she was gentle and outgoing. When she was born Vanja clung to her mother with a passion and Heidi was left to me, I carried her around the apartment, first the one in Stockholm, then the one in Malmö, so often that she never really weaned herself off it, she still wanted to be carried. I wanted it too, there were few things I liked more than having her in my arms, and even if I knew she should walk as much as possible, to become independent and self-reliant, all it took was a pair of outstretched arms for her to be back. As was the case this afternoon as well. With the stroller under one arm, Heidi in the other I walked toward the café on the headland, only twenty meters or so above the breakers, which both she and I stared at hypnotically as we passed. At the café she had an ice cream, and the concentration she ate it with was a relief because no matter how close I felt to her there was always an element of self-consciousness or perhaps even shyness in my relationship with her, which was also true of Vanja when I was on my own with her, just different, as she was older and more verbal. It felt as though I always had to perform with her, we couldn’t just walk in silence, so I filled it with little comments and questions. What a relief when she laughed! Only for the pressure to return in the ensuing silence. All this was emotion, but rationally I knew it was OK to go through quiet periods with your children, that they absolutely did not have to be entertained all the time, they had to learn it didn’t matter if nothing happened, and that expectations of something special didn’t come from them but from me.

  What kind of person is shy with his own children? And what does it do to the children?

  Getting really close to Heidi, which I did this evening when she suddenly placed her soft cheek against mine and smiled, was too much to endure. I walked faster and almost ran down the narrow asphalt path beneath the tropical trees, the wind from the Atlantic gentle and fresh against my face and the lights from our holiday center glowing far ahead of us in the falling dusk.

  The clown’s birthday party, which Vanja had been looking forward to all week, had not been as she had imagined. At first the staff refused to allow Linda in, the whole point of the exercise was that parents would not be present, the idea was that they should have a few hours on their own, so if Linda had time for Vanja, this was not the place to be.