My Struggle: Book One (39 page)

He was still here in this town, in some cellar somewhere, being handled by strangers, as we sat there in a car on our way to the undertaker's. He had grown up in the streets we saw around us, and had been walking them until a few days ago. At the same time my memories of the streets were aroused,
for over there was the gymnas, there was the neighborhood I walked through every morning and afternoon, so in love it hurt, there was the house where I had been so often alone.

I cried, but it was nothing serious, just a few tears down my cheeks. Yngve didn't notice until he looked at me. I dismissed them with a wave and was pleased my voice carried as I said: “Take a left there.”

We drove down to Torridalsveien, past the two shale soccer fields where I had trained so hard with the seniors the winter I turned sixteen, past Kjøita and up to the intersection by Østerveien, which we followed over the bridge, then again we bore right, onto Elvegata.

“What number was it?” I said.

Yngve scanned the house numbers as we drove slowly past.

“There it is,” he said. “Now we'll have to find somewhere to park.”

A black sign with gold lettering hung from the wooden façade on the left. Gunnar had given Yngve the undertaker's name. It was the company they had used when Grandad died, and for all I knew, it was the one the family had always used. I had been in Africa at the time, on a two-month visit to Tonje's mother, and hadn't been told about Grandad until after his funeral. Dad had assumed responsibility for informing me. He never did. But at the funeral he said he had spoken to me and that I had told him I couldn't come. I would have liked to attend that funeral, and even though it would have been difficult from a practical point of view it would not necessarily have been impossible, and even if it had turned out to be impossible, I would have liked to have been informed of his death when it happened and not three weeks later, when he was already in the ground. I was furious. But what could I do?

Yngve drove down a little side street and pulled up to the curb. We un-buckled our seat belts at precisely the same moment and opened the door at precisely the same moment, and looked at each other with a smile. The air outside was mild but more sultry than in Stavanger, the sky a touch darker. Yngve went to the parking meter, and I lit a cigarette. I hadn't been to my maternal grandmother's funeral either. I had been in Florence with Yngve at the time. We had caught the train down and stayed at some random
pensione
,
and since this was before mobile phones were the norm it had been impossible to locate us. It was Asbjørn who told us what had happened, on the evening we arrived home, he sat with us drinking the alcohol we had brought back. So, the only funeral I had attended was my maternal grandfather's. I had helped to carry the coffin, it was a fine funeral, the cemetery was on a hill overlooking the fjord, the sun was shining, I cried when my mother spoke in the church and, after it was all over and he was in the ground, and when she tarried by the open grave. She stood there alone, head bowed, the grass was green, the fjord far below blue and glassy smooth, the mountain opposite massive, towering and dark, and the earth in the grave shiny black and glistening.

Afterward we had meat broth. Fifty people, guzzling and slurping, there is nothing better for sentimentality than salted meat, or hot soup, for emotional outbursts. Magne, Jon Olav's father, spoke, but cried so much it was hard to understand what he was saying. Jon Olav made an attempt at a speech in church, but had to give up, he had been so close to his grandfather, and was unable to say a single word.

I took a few steps with stiff legs, looked up the street, which was almost deserted, apart from at the end, where it met the town's shopping street and from this distance seemed almost black with people. The smoke stung my lungs, as it always did when I hadn't smoked for a while. A car stopped about fifty meters farther up, and a man alighted. He bent forward and waved to those who had dropped him off. He had dark, curly hair and a bald patch, was probably around the fifty mark, wore light-brown velvet pants and a smart black jacket, narrow, square glasses. I turned away so he couldn't see my face as he approached, because I had recognized him, it was my Norwegian teacher from the first class at upper secondary, what was his name again? Fjell? Berg? Who cares, I thought, and turned around after he had passed. He had been enthusiastic and warm, but there had also been a sharpness about him, it didn't surface often, but when it did I had considered it evil. He raised the bag he was holding to check his wristwatch, sped up, and shot round the corner.

“I've got to have one, too,” Yngve said, joining me.

“The man who just went past, that was my old teacher,” I said.

“Oh yeah?” Yngve said, lighting a cigarette. “Didn't he recognize you, or what?”

“I don't know. I hid my face.”

I flicked the butt away and ransacked my pocket for some chewing gum. Seemed to remember there was some lying loose there. And there was.

“Only got the one,” I said. “Would have given you some otherwise.”

“Sure you would've,” he said.

Tears were close, I could feel, and I took a few deep breaths while opening my eyes wide as if to clear them. On a doorstep opposite sat an alcoholic I hadn't noticed. His head was resting against the wall and he appeared to be asleep. The skin on his face was dark and leathery and covered with cuts. His hair so greasy it had taken on a rasta style. Thick winter jacket, even though the temperature was at least twenty degrees, and a bag of junk next to him. Three gulls stood on the ridge of the roof above him. As I focused on them, one lifted its head back and screamed.

“Well,” Yngve said. “Shall we take the plunge then?”

I nodded.

He flicked his cigarette end away, and we set off.

“Have we got an appointment by the way?” I said.

“No, that's what we haven't got,” he said. “But there can't be such a rush, can there?”

“I'm sure we'll be fine,” I said.

Between some trees I saw a fleeting glimpse of the river, and as we rounded the corner, all the signs, shop windows and cars in Dronningens gate. Gray tarmac, gray buildings, gray sky.

Yngve opened the door to the undertaker's and went in. I followed, closed the door behind me, and was met with a kind of waiting room, a sofa, a few chairs and a table along one wall, a counter along the other. The counter was unmanned, and Yngve went over to peer into the room behind, knocked softly on the glass with a knuckle while I remained in the middle of the room.
A door in the side wall was ajar, I saw a figure in a black suit passing in the room behind. He looked young, younger than me.

A woman with blond hair and wide hips, closer to fifty, came out and sat behind the counter. Yngve said something to her, I didn't hear what, just the sound of his voice.

He turned.

“Someone will be here soon,” he said. “We've got to wait five minutes.”

“It feels like going to the dentist,” I said as we took a seat and looked around the room.

“If it were, he'd be drilling into our souls,” Yngve said.

I smiled. Remembered the chewing gum, which I took out of my mouth and hid in my hand while hunting for somewhere to dispose of it. Nowhere. I tore off a corner from the newspaper on the table, wrapped it around the gum, and put the package in my pocket.

Yngve drummed his fingers on the armrest.

Well, in fact, I had been to another funeral. How could I have forgotten? It had been for a young boy, the mood in the church was hysterical, there was crying, there was howling, there was shouting and moaning and sobbing, but also laughter and giggles, and it went in waves, one shout had been enough to trigger an avalanche of further emotional outbursts, there had been a storm in there, and it had all been unleashed by the white coffin at the altar in which Kjetil lay. He had died in a car, fallen asleep at the wheel early one morning, driven off the road and into a fence, an iron pole had impaled his head. He was eighteen years old, the kind of boy everyone liked, a boy who was always in a good mood and did not represent a threat to anyone. When we left school at sixteen he opted for the same branch as Jan Vidar and that was why he had been up so early, his job at the bakery started at four in the morning. Listening to news of the accident on the radio, I thought it had been Jan Vidar and was relieved when I discovered it wasn't, but I was also sorry, if not quite as sorry as the girls in our old class, they let their feelings go completely, and I know that because together with Jan Vidar I visited everyone in the days after the death to collect names and money for a class wreath. I was not entirely
at ease with this role, it felt as if I were drawing on a relationship with Kjetil to which I had no right, so I kept a low profile, occupied as little space as I could, walking around the village with Jan Vidar, who radiated grief, anger, and bad conscience.

I remember Kjetil well, I can picture him at will, hear his voice in my inner ear, although only one specific incident from the four years I knew him has stayed with me, and that is an extremely insignificant one: someone was playing Madness's “Our House” on the stereo in the school bus, and Kjetil, who was next to me, was laughing at how fast the vocalist sang. I have forgotten everything else. But in the cellar I still have a book I borrowed from him,
The A–Z of the Driving Test
. His name is on the title page written in the childish style almost everyone of our generation has. I should have returned it, but to whom? The book would have been the last thing his parents would have wanted to see.

The school he and Jan Vidar attended was only a block away from where I was waiting with Yngve now. Apart from several weeks two years before, I had hardly been to Kristiansand since that time. One year in northern Norway, six months in Iceland, close to six months in England, one year in Volda, nine years in Bergen. And except for Bassen, whom I still met sporadically, I no longer had any contact with anyone from my time here. My oldest friend was Espen Stueland whom I had met in the literary science department at Bergen University ten years before. It had not been a conscious choice, it was just the way it had come about. For me Kristiansand had vanished off the face of the earth. Intellectually, I was aware that almost everyone I knew from that era still lived and had their lives here, but not emotionally, as the time in Kristiansand had stopped for me that summer I left school and headed off for good.

The fly that had been buzzing around in the window ever since we came in suddenly set a course for the center of the room. I watched it circle around a few times under the ceiling, settle on the yellow wall, take off again and glide in a small arc around us to land on the armrest where Yngve was now drumming his fingers. Its front legs went back and forth, crossed, as if brushing
something off, then it moved forward and did a little jump through the air, its wings whirring, and down onto Yngve's hand, he, of course, lifted it at once, causing the fly to set off again and it flew back and forth before us, almost in irritation. Eventually, it settled back on the window, where it wandered up and down, confused.

“Actually we haven't talked about what sort of funeral he should have,” Yngve said. “Have you given it any thought?”

“You mean whether it should be in a church or not?”

“For example.”

“No, I haven't given it any thought. Do we have to decide that now?”

“We don't. But soon we'll have to.”

I caught a glimpse of the young man in the suit as he passed by the half-open door again. It struck me that bodies might be stored here. Perhaps this was where they received them for preparation. Where else would they do it?

As though someone inside had sensed the direction of my thoughts, the door was closed. And as though the door movements were coordinated as part of some secret system, the one opposite us opened at the same moment. A portly man, who might have been in his mid-sixties, stepped out, impeccably dressed in a dark suit and white shirt, and looked at us.

“Knausgaard?” he queried.

We nodded and rose to our feet. He said his name and shook our hands in turn.

“Come with me,” he said.

We followed him to a relatively large office with windows looking onto the street. He ushered us to two chairs in front of a desk. The chairs were of dark wood with black, leather upholstered seats. The desk he sat behind was deep, and it too was dark. A letter tray, the kind with several tiers, was on his left, beside it a telephone, otherwise the desk was empty.

Well, not quite, for on our side, right on the edge was a box of Kleenex. Practical of course, but how cynical it seemed! Seeing it, you visualized all the bereaved relatives who had come here and wept in the course of the day and you realized that your grief was not unique, not even exceptional, and
ultimately not particularly precious. The box of Kleenex was a sign that here weeping and death had undergone inflation.

He looked at us.

“How can I help you?” he said.

The suntanned dewlap beneath his chin hung over his white shirt collar. His hair was gray and neatly combed. A dark shadow hovered above his cheeks and chin. The black tie did not hang, it lay, along the curve of his bloated stomach. He was fat, but also erect, there was nothing flabby about him, punctilious was probably the word, and thus also confident and safe. I liked him.