The real estate agent took the cabin off the market and put it back in spring, at the first viewing there was an offer, it was low, but we accepted it, money was no longer of any consequence in this dream. From October that autumn we spent every weekend in the new house. We celebrated Christmas there, all twelve of us, the snow was meters high outside, Vanja and Heidi saw me put on a Christmas elf outfit, but were still spellbound when I came across the snow with a lantern in my hand. After Christmas I ditched the manuscript and started anew with this one. I got up at four every morning and worked until the children had to be picked up, and I have been doing that until now, as I sit here writing this. The story of last summer that I have just told looks different now, I know, from the way it really was. Why? Because Linda is a human being and her unique essence is indescribable, her own distinctive presence, her nature and her soul, which were always there beside me, which I saw and felt regardless of whatever else was going on. It didn’t reside in what she did, it didn’t reside in what she said, it resided in what she was.
It resides in what she is. Leaning over Heidi, whispering something in her ear, Heidi laughing her trilled laugh. Lying on the sofa with Vanja on top, laughing at something our clever daughter has said. The tenderness in her gaze as she looks at John. And her hand at the base of my neck, warm, those totally unguarded eyes of hers.
I am so happy about Linda, and I am so happy about our children. I will never forgive myself for what I’ve exposed them to, but I did it, and I will have to live with it.
* * *
Now it is 7:07, and the novel is finally finished. In two hours Linda will be coming here, I will hug her and tell her I’ve finished, and I will never do anything like this to her and our children again. Then we’ll take the train to Louisiana. I am going to be interviewed onstage, after which it will be her turn, because her own book has come out and it glitters and sparkles like a star-filled night sky. Afterwards we will catch the train to Malmö, where we will get in the car and drive back to our house, and the whole way I will revel in, truly revel in, the thought that I am no longer a writer.
Malmö, Glemmingebro, February 27, 2008–September 2, 2011
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A Note About the Author
Karl Ove Knausgaard was born in Norway in 1968. My Struggle has won countless international literary awards and has been translated into at least fifteen languages. Knausgaard lives in Sweden with his wife and four children. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Part 1
The Name and the Number
Part 2
Bibliography
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
175 Varick Street, New York 10014
Copyright © 2011 by Karl Ove Knausgaard
English translation Part One copyright © 2018 by Martin Aitken
English translation Part Two copyright © 2018 by Don Bartlett
All rights reserved
Originally published in Norwegian in 2011 by Forlaget Oktober, Norway, as Min kamp 6
English translation originally published in 2017 by Harvill Secker, an imprint of Random House, Great Britain
First published in the United States in 2018 by Archipelago Books, New York
First Farrar, Straus and Giroux e-book edition, 2018
FSG E-Book ISBN: 978-0-374-71118-4
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eISBN 9780374711184
First eBook edition: September 2018
My Struggle, Book 6 Page 132