My Struggle, Book 6

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  “What we have to do is reverse the depression,” she said after a while. “One way to do that is through ECT, electroconvulsive therapy. I know it sounds terrible, but the fact is it works. In a sense it applies a brake to the process and gives the brain a kind of new start. Is that perhaps something you could imagine trying? It’s thoroughly safe, you know. And it will stop this.”

  Linda turned to me when the doctor said this, and her expression was the same as when she had looked at me the first time the doctor had suggested going to the hospital.

  Her mouth opened and closed as though she were gasping for air, and her eyes streamed with tears.

  “No,” she said. “No.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I think we’ll just have to ride this one out.”

  “I understand,” the doctor said, looking at Linda. “The most important thing is you have to get out of bed for a while every day. You’ve been walking, so that’s good. If you have the strength it would be good if you could do some of what you normally do.”

  “I don’t do anything,” Linda whispered.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “I don’t do anything.”

  “It’s not so easy to see when you’re depressed,” she said. “It’s like you don’t do anything and so you’re not worth anything. But I imagine there’s something you like doing more than anything else, isn’t there?”

  Linda shook her head.

  “You don’t have any hobbies, something you particularly like doing?” Linda shook her head again.

  “You like films,” I said. “And reading.”

  “They’re too much for me,” she said.

  “Well,” the doctor said. “I wasn’t thinking about big things. If you can put on the dishwasher, even if it’s only for a couple of glasses, that’s good.”

  Linda nodded.

  “How’s it going with your children? Do you spend any time with them?”

  Linda shook her head.

  “Yes, you do,” I said. “You’ve watched TV with them.”

  “That’s good, Linda. Perhaps you should try to read to them as well. Do you think you could manage that?”

  “Yes.”

  * * *

  She read to them that afternoon, one after the other, as she didn’t have the energy to deal with all three of them at once, and they would only have vied for her attention. First she read for John while Heidi was in the hall waiting her turn, then Heidi, and last of all Vanja. After that she slept. A pattern was beginning to crystallize in these new days of hers: while I took the children to school, she had breakfast in bed, then she got dressed and went for a short walk with either Ingrid or me, slept, got up and had lunch, started the dishwasher, slept, read to the children when they came home, slept, got up and had her evening meal, watched TV with the children, slept. Every so often I wrote a little, but not much, just a few lines every day. Elisabeth called, she had an agreement with Aftenposten, they would send a journalist next week.

  “The journalist’s name is Siri Økland,” Elisabeth said.

  “But she works for Bergens Tidende. Wasn’t it supposed to be someone from Aftenposten?”

  “Yes, it was, but they work together. The big regional papers. They often print the same articles.”

  “OK,” I said.

  I had actually decided I would never do any more interviews for Bergens Tidende because of the way they had behaved toward me when the first volume came out and because of the way they had treated me and my books since. Everything they had written had a negative slant; sometimes it was sarcastic to the point of mudslinging, sometimes morally indignant. I hadn’t read the paper myself, but both Mom and Yngve lived in the area BT covered, so I had an impression of the tone they used. When I was in Odda I had received an inquiry via the event organizers regarding an interview for BT, and the journalist had assured them it would be done with propriety, it wouldn’t be slanted in the way things had been so far. This was so outrageous that my jaw dropped when I read it. First of all they pissed on me, then they asked if they could have an interview, and promised they wouldn’t piss on me again.

  But I really didn’t want to create problems for anyone. I trusted Siri Økland and, besides, the deal was already agreed. Publishing an interview she had conducted couldn’t be damaging.

  * * *

  Linda wasn’t getting any better. Whenever I was alone with her I told her the same, I said I loved her, I knew she was having a terrible time, but it would pass and everything would be fine. It was as though everything I said disappeared inside her, it just dissolved in the darkness and was gone. She never answered, nor did she look at me as I spoke. We walked to the little park, sat there for a while, walked back. I realized this was probably going to be long term, and the next time we went to the doctor I asked for a sick note so that we could cancel the trip to Corsica and get our money reimbursed. She read to the children every afternoon and was worn out afterwards, but I was so happy she could do it, this was like a lifeline, a vital minimum for the children, which meant they weren’t marked by what was happening to her. That is to say, this was the case for Heidi and John, they accepted everything as it was, while Vanja, on the other hand, was filled with a mass of conflicting emotions she didn’t know how to handle. One evening she had a furious outburst. Linda was sitting in a chair in the living room and Vanja started hitting her as she shouted.

  “You’re ugly! You’re ugly! You’re ugly!” she yelled.

  I lifted her off Linda, she kicked and wriggled and tried to hit me. I had to sit down with her and hold her tight for several minutes before she quieted down and was still. Afterwards, sitting alone in my study while everyone was asleep, I cried. I don’t know why, I just cried. At school they said everything was fine, they couldn’t see any difference in their behavior. Vanja was the oldest child there now and had come into her own. She also had a new best friend, they would start in the same class in the autumn, we had chosen this school for precisely this reason, and they talked forever on the phone in the afternoons. And she had a strong attachment to her grandmother.

  Children do what is necessary for them, they take what they need, compensate and counterbalance, all without realizing this is what they are doing.

  * * *

  One morning Linda came into the kitchen. She was trembling and in tears. She held a credit card in her hand.

  “I found this on the floor,” she said. “It was on the floor.”

  She cried as she said it.

  “You don’t keep things clean,” she said. “Everywhere there’s chaos.”

  “It’s my credit card,” Ingrid said. “It must’ve fallen out of my pocket.”

  “It was on the floor,” Linda said in a trembling voice. “You’re so messy.”

  She turned and slowly shuffled back to her bedroom. I followed her.

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “I appreciate that you think everything’s in chaos. But it isn’t. Everything’s under control. Completely. Don’t give it another thought.”

  She was shaking. I wondered if it was a side effect of all the medication she was taking.

  “You’d better get some sleep,” I said. “But the credit card doesn’t mean a thing. It’s not what you think. Everything’s under control.”

  “No, it isn’t,” she said, lying down.

  “Yes, it is,” I said. “It is. Actually everything’s fine. We have three great children. They’re beginning to grow up. They’re doing very well. You’ve had a book accepted. You’re a writer. We have money. We could buy a house if we wanted. You see, everything’s fine. Everything is actually good.”

  She looked at me as I said that. Her eyes were large. It was as though she knew nothing of what I had told her. As though it were new to her.

  Then she closed her eyes, I got up and said I would be back soon. I went into the kitchen, tipped some coffee into the filter, and switched on the machine.

  * * *

  That evening Ingrid asked
me if I had the second novel in audiobook format. I nodded. She asked if she could borrow it. That was the last thing I wanted. Why would she want to go through it? What else could I do but find her a copy and hand it over.

  She always turned in early, about the same time as the kids, closed the door, and was on her own until the next morning, when she got up and made pancakes or baked bread for the children. I usually watched TV for an hour after everybody had gone to bed unless I was in my study leafing through one of the art books. This evening I could hear she hadn’t fallen asleep as she usually did. When I turned in, she was still awake. The next morning she said she hadn’t slept a wink all night. She had been listening to the novel I had written. She said I had sent it to her just before it was about to go to press, she hadn’t had time to read it and hadn’t understood the Norwegian. That was why she had told me what I’d written about her was fine. She had trusted me.

  As she said this she was standing in front of the stove making pancakes. I stood with a cup in my hand, on my way out to smoke a cigarette. I was afraid of her. But I couldn’t go, nor could I defend myself, I had to stand there and listen and concede she was right. And she was too. It was her prerogative. She was furious with me. But in the bedroom we had Linda, whom she loved and who she feared would die, in the living room we had her grandchildren, whom she loved and for whom she would do anything, even sacrifice her own life, of that I was sure. Linda was my wife, her grandchildren were my children. She was distraught, and so was I. I couldn’t make excuses for myself. I couldn’t defend myself, all the right was on her side. The only argument I had was that she had been given the book to read in advance, and she had approved it, but now that was invalid because it was true what she said, she’d only had a few days because the manuscript had been sent to the wrong address.

  That was all she said, but I knew her, she was furious, sad, and afraid.

  Beneath everything lay the unspoken reproach that it was because of what I had written that Linda had lost her bearings and was in bed. I felt it all the time. It came from both me and her. She was lying in there, and I was keeping everyone away from her. I was keeping the children away from her, and I was keeping Ingrid away from her. It was a terrible feeling, filled with gloom, because it was my fault she had ended up there, in the bedroom, in bed. I hadn’t taken care of her. Had I done so, this wouldn’t have happened. But I had done the opposite. I had made sure the pressure on her had been unbearable. What she was struggling with was her identity, who she was. Once before, when the pressure in her life had been immense, everything had unraveled, and she had fled into a kind of fantasy version of herself and then plummeted into the darkness. There was no connection between the person she was and the person she wanted to be or thought she was. The difference between the Linda I first set eyes on and the Linda I met two years later was enormous. She had caught up with herself, I had thought. She was whole or “wholer.” Having children was something she could feel at ease with, what had to be done and who she had to be were obvious, there was no choice, that was how it was and that was how she was. Then I had written that life was an illusion, a notion, inauthentic. And not only that, I had talked at length about life to everyone. Her life, our children, our problems. And not only that, this particular book exploded in the public arena and was on everyone’s lips. It hit her where she was most vulnerable, in the question of her identity, who she was. I held up a mirror, and not only did she see herself there, but so did everyone else.

  After the books had come out her therapist had called her once from Stockholm, I answered the phone, her voice was ice-cold as she asked to speak to Linda. She knew Linda inside out, she knew exactly what she was struggling with and understood how dangerous my experiment was.

  Every time I walked through the hall into the bedroom I had the same feeling, that I had damaged her and now she was hiding. We had lived together for almost ten years, and my premise was that we were like everyone else and our conflicts were like everyone else’s and Linda had to manage as everyone else did. I had seen her outbursts, I had seen her attempts to control me, but I hadn’t seen her fear of losing everything, the feeling that she was standing on the edge of a precipice. I had seen buckets and cloths, washing machines and bags of diapers. I had seen strollers and children’s clothes, baths and cots. I had seen how close Linda was to the children, she gave them everything they needed, but I hadn’t seen what it had cost her. Now I could see, for she had lost her grip and was sinking. She was sinking deeper and deeper, and she was drawing further and further away. Everyday life was beyond her reach now. She could see it from the depths of where she was, and if she exerted herself to the maximum she could stretch out a hand and touch it, be there for a few minutes, have a child on her lap, no more though, nothing of what a life consists of, and which is so easy, so unbelievably easy, giving them some fruit, telling a joke, asking them about something that interests them, dressing them, going with them to the park. All this is easy, and therefore nothing we appreciate while it is happening; it is only later – when the children are bigger – that it can hit us, what we did when they were two or four, both they and we are different people now, and the people we were then are lost forever.

  * * *

  This is how it is. Life is easy, life is a game, until the bottom falls out, and you fall, you are in the hospital and you plunge into the darkness, then it is suddenly impossible, then it is suddenly unattainable. Linda could see this but was unable to do anything about it, her thoughts, even when her children were jumping around in there, were about her not being worthy of life, we would be better off without her, she was destroying everything, and she continually fantasized about dying, which was so radically removed from us, who wanted to live, this was unbearable.

  * * *

  Ingrid accompanied Linda on walks to the park, I saw them, the daughter with her head bowed, her plodding movements, her empty eyes, the mother with her arm entwined in hers, encouraging, chatting, positive. I accompanied Linda on walks to the park, I told her I loved her, she was having a terrible time now, but it would pass, and everything I said disappeared inside her, there was no resistance, her inner life was like an abyss and the darkness so dense that nothing could lighten it. Nothing. Not even those she loved most – Vanja, Heidi, and John – could lighten the darkness.

  * * *

  My mother came, we had arranged a long time ago that the two grand mothers would be at home and help while I sat in the cabin writing the end of the novel. That was no longer relevant, but we still needed them, for now we were in dire need.

  Mom and Ingrid had always got on well together, as different as they were, and they did so now too, as the tensions at home increased, because almost everything that lay between us was unsaid and unprocessed, bordering on unconscious, traces were evident in our body language and our voices, impossible to pinpoint yet hugely present.

  In the evenings, when everyone was asleep, I sat up talking to Mom. It felt like betrayal. It shouldn’t have felt like betrayal because I was being torn to shreds and needed someone to talk to, but it still felt like betrayal because I was guilty of what I was being torn to shreds over, and it was not me who was suffering but Linda, so I had no right to the relief I gained from talking to someone who was unconditionally on my side.

  Mom said Linda was in a much worse state than she had imagined. She sat on the sofa knitting while I sat in the chair with my feet on the table and a cup of coffee in my hand. She didn’t say this was what she had feared when Linda and I had got together, but I knew it was the case and thought it strange I had never been afraid of this outcome. I had been sure everything would be fine. My philosophy had been to follow your heart. Not your mind, not rationality, not money, but your heart. My first thought when we got together had been that I wanted to have children with her. Not one, not two, but three. And we had them. When I wrote about us, I had also followed my heart. It was cold then.

  * * *

  I called the travel agent and
canceled the trip to Corsica. The plan had been that we would be there for a week at first, just Linda, Vanja, Heidi, John, and I, then Yngve and his kids, and Asbjørn and his family would join us there the following week. The departure date was the day after the deadline for the novel, the trip was supposed to be the reward for everything. Now I could forget the deadline, the novel had been set aside, it meant nothing. The real estate agent called regularly, she was doing viewings during the week and on weekends, she put ads in the papers and on the Net, people came, saw, and no one wanted it. I went for a stroll in the park with Linda, she put plates in the dishwasher, slept, watched TV with the children, read to them. Sometimes the fear in her grew so strong that she turned white and was incapable of moving, then she took an extra tablet and entered a kind of twilight state where she could sleep. Oh, Linda, Linda. Enough was happening around the children, with two grandmothers there, by and large they were happy, they had already got used to their mommy being ill. I didn’t know what to do. Occasionally my anger spilled over, it rose inside me, couldn’t she pull herself together, get up, and take hold of her life? I love you, it’s terrible now, but it’ll be fine. We went for a walk, she put on the dishwasher, had lunch with us, watched TV with the children, read to them. I knew that all her thoughts were black. I knew she wanted to die, but she couldn’t.

  * * *

  Evening meal in the kitchen. Ingrid, Sissel, Vanja, Heidi, John, and I. Linda in the bedroom. Without looking at me, Ingrid said:

  “Have you considered the consequences of writing about your children?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “How it will be for them when they grow up? Everyone knowing who they are? Have you taken that into account? That they’re vulnerable?”

  This is her daughter, I thought. Let her be angry at me.

  “I don’t think there’s any danger,” I said. “I don’t think that any of what I’ve written is dangerous.”