My Struggle: Book One (44 page)

“I'll get you some water,” I said.

“No need,” she said, placing the tablet on her tongue, raising the cup of cold coffee to her mouth, jerking back and swallowing.

“Ugh,” she said.

I put the newspaper on the table and glanced at Yngve, who had resumed scouring.

“It's good you're here, boys,” Grandma said. “But don't you want to take a break, Yngve? You don't have to kill yourself working.”

“That might not be such a bad idea,” Yngve said, and removed the gloves, hung them over the oven handle, wiped his fingers over his T-shirt a few times, and sat down.

“I wonder if I should start on the downstairs bathroom,” I said.

“It might be better to stick to the same floor,” Yngve said. “Then we'll have some company along the way.”

I inferred he didn't want to be alone with Grandma, and nodded.

“I'll take the living room then,” I said.

“What hard workers you are,” Grandma said. “It's not necessary, you know.”

Why did she say that? Was she ashamed of the way the house looked and the fact that she had not managed to keep it in order? Or was it that she didn't want us to leave her alone?

“A bit of cleaning doesn't do any harm,” I said.

“No, I suppose it doesn't,” she said. Then she glanced at Yngve.

“Have you contacted the undertaker's yet?”

A chill went down my spine.

Had she been so clear-headed the whole time?

Yngve nodded.

“We dropped by this morning. Everything's in hand.”

“That's good.” She sat quite still, immersed in herself, for a moment, then continued.

“I didn't know if he was dead or not when I saw him. I was on my way to bed, I said good night, and he didn't answer. He was sitting in the chair in there, as he always did. And then he was dead. His face was white.”

I met Yngve's eyes.

“You were going to
bed
?” he said.

“Yes, we'd been watching TV all evening,” she said. “And he didn't move when I got up to go downstairs.”

“Was it dark outside? Do you remember?” Yngve asked.

“Yes, I think so,” she said.

I was close to retching.

“But when you called Gunnar,” Yngve said, “that was in the morning, wasn't it? Can you remember?”

“It might have been in the morning,” she said. “Now that you say so. Yes, it was. I went upstairs and there he was, in the chair. In there.”

She got to her feet and left the kitchen. We followed. She stopped halfway into the living room and pointed to the chair in front of the television.

“That's where he was sitting,” she said. “That's where he died.”

She covered her face with her hands for an instant. Then she walked quickly back to the kitchen.

Nothing could bridge this. It was impossible to deal with. I could fill the bucket with water and start washing, and I could clean the whole damned house, but it would not help an iota, of course it wouldn't, nor would the idea that we should reclaim the house and hold the funeral here, there was nothing I could do that would help, there was nowhere I could escape to, nothing that could protect me from this.

“We need to talk,” Yngve said. “Shall we go onto the veranda?” I nodded and followed him down into the second living room and onto the veranda. There was not a breath of air. The sky was as gray as before but a touch lighter above the town. The sound of a car in a low gear rose from the narrow alley below the house. Yngve stood with both hands around the railing staring out to the fjord. I sat down on the faded sun-lounger, got up the next moment, collected some bottles and put them by the wall, cast around for a bag but couldn't see one.

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” Yngve asked at length and straightened up.

“I think so,” I said.

“Grandma is the only person to have seen him,” he said. “She's the only witness. Gunnar didn't see him. She called him in the morning, and he called an ambulance. But he didn't see him.”

“No,” I said.

“For all we know he might have been alive. How would Grandma know? She finds him on the sofa, he doesn't answer when she speaks to him, she calls Gunnar, and then the ambulance arrives, the house is full of doctors and medical staff, they carry him out on a stretcher and are gone, and that's that. But suppose he wasn't dead? Suppose he was only dead drunk? Or was in some kind of coma?”

“Yes,” I said. “When we turned up she said she'd found him in the morning. Now she said she found him in the evening. And that's it.”

“And she's going senile. She keeps asking the same questions. How much did she understand when the place was full of paramedics?

“And then there's the medication she's taking,” I said.

“Right.”

“We have to know,” I said. “I mean for certain.”

“Oh, shit, what if he was alive,” Yngve said.

I was filled with a horror I hadn't felt since I was small. I paced to and fro alongside the railing, stopped and glanced through the window to see if Grandma was there, turned to Yngve, who once again was staring into the horizon, his hands clasped around the railing. Oh, fuck. The logic was as clear as crystal. The only person to see Dad was Grandma, her testimony was the only one we had, and with her being in that confused, devastated state, there was no reason to believe it was accurate. By the time Gunnar appeared it was all over, the ambulance had taken him away, and after that no one spoke to the hospital or the staff who had been here. And they didn't know anything at the undertaker's. Just over twenty-four hours had passed since she found him. He could have been in a hospital during that time.

“Shall we call Gunnar?” I said.

Yngve turned to me.

“He doesn't know any more than we do.”

“We'll have to talk to Grandma again,” I said. “And then perhaps give the funeral director a call. I suppose he must be able to find out.”

“I was thinking the same,” Yngve said.

“Will you call?”

“Yes, I'll do that.”

We went in. A sudden gust of wind blew the curtains hanging in front of the door into the living room. I closed the door and followed Yngve up into the dining room and kitchen. Down below, the front door slammed. I met Yngve's look. What was going on?

“Who could that be?” Grandma asked.

Was it Dad?

Was he returning?

I was as frightened as I had ever been.

Footfalls sounded on the stairs.

It was Dad, I knew it.

Oh, shit, shit, shit, here he is.

I turned and went into the living room, to the veranda door, ready to step out, run across the lawn and flee the town, never to return.

I forced myself to stand still. Heard the sound of footsteps twisting as they reached the bend in the stairs. Up the last steps, into the living room.

He would be incandescent with fury. What the hell were we doing, messing around with his things like this, coming here and bursting into his life?

I stepped back and watched Gunnar walk past into the kitchen.

Gunnar, of course.

“You two have done quite a bit, I can see,” he said from the kitchen.

I joined them. I didn't feel stupid, more relieved, for if Gunnar was here when Dad came it would be easier for us.

They were sitting around the table.

“I thought I could take a load to the dump this afternoon,” Gunnar said. “It's on the way to the cabin. Then I'll come back with the trailer tomorrow
morning and give you a hand. I think what's in front of the garage will probably be close to a full load.”

“So do I,” Yngve said.

“We can fill a couple more bags,” Gunnar said. “With clothes from his room and whatever else.”

He got up.

“Let's get cracking then. Won't take long.”

In the living room he stopped and looked around.

“We can take these clothes while we're at it, can't we? That'll save you having to look at this while you're here . . . disgusting . . .”

“I can take them,” I said. “Better use gloves, I suppose.”

I put on the yellow gloves as I went in and dropped everything on the sofa into a black garbage bag. Closed my eyes as my hands held the dried shit.

“Take the cushions as well,” Gunnar said. “And the rug. It doesn't look too good.”

I did as he said, carried the load downstairs to the front of the house where I hurled it into the trailer. Yngve brought up the rear, and we threw in the bags that had been left there. Gunnar's car was parked on the other side, that was why we hadn't heard the engine. As soon as the trailer was full, he and Gunnar repeated the shunting forwards and backwards until Gunnar's car was backed up and all we had to do was attach the trailer to the tow bar. After he had driven off and Yngve was parked by the garage again, I sat down on the doorstep. Yngve leaned against the door frame. His brow was shiny with sweat.

“I was sure that was Dad coming up the stairs,” he said after a while.

“Me too,” I said.

A magpie flew down from the roof on the other side of the garden and glided toward us. It flapped its wings a couple of times and the sound, somehow leatherlike, was unreal.

“He's probably dead,” Yngve said. “He is. But we have to be sure. I'll call.”

“Damned if I know what to think,” I said. “We have only Grandma's word
for it. And with all the booze and mess there's been in the house he might well have been no more than dead drunk. In fact, that could easily have been the case. That would be typical, wouldn't it. He comes back while we're nosing through his things. And what she said about . . . how come she didn't find him until the morning? What about the evening? How is it possible to be mixed up about this?”

Yngve looked at me.

“Perhaps he died in the evening. But she thought he was just sleeping. Then she found him in the morning. That's a possibility. This might be tormenting her so much she can't admit it. So she made up the business about him dying in the morning.”

“Yes,” I said. “That's possible.”

“But it doesn't change the main point,” Yngve said. “I'll go upstairs and call.”

“I'll come with you,” I said, and followed him upstairs. While he searched his wallet for the funeral director's business card, I closed the door to the kitchen, where Grandma was sitting, as quietly as possible, and went back down to the second living room. Yngve dialed. I barely had the strength to listen to the conversation, but couldn't resist, either.

“Hello, this is Yngve Knausgaard speaking. We came to see you earlier today, if you remember . . . yes, exactly. Mm, we were wondering . . . well, if you knew where he was. The circumstances have been a bit hazy, you see . . . The only person present when he was taken away was our grandmother. And she's very old and not always compos mentis. So we simply don't know for certain what happened. Would you be able to make a few inquiries for us? . . . Yes . . . Yes . . . Yes. Very good. Thank you . . . Thank you very much. Yes . . . Goodbye.”

Yngve looked down at me as he replaced the receiver.

“He was at his cabin. But he's going to make a few calls, and he'll find out. He'll call back later.”

“Good,” I said.

I went into the kitchen and filled a bucket with hot water, poured in some green soap, found a cloth, went into the living room and stood for a while not quite knowing where to begin. There was no point starting on the floor until we had thrown out the furniture that had to be thrown out, and then in the days to come there would still be some to-ing and fro-ing. Cleaning the window and door frames, doors, sills, bookshelves, chairs and tables was too little and too fiddly, I wanted something that would make a difference. The bathroom and toilet downstairs were best, where every centimeter had to be scrubbed. It was also the logical next step as I had already done the laundry room in the cellar and it was opposite the bathroom. And I could be alone there.

A movement to my left caused me to turn my head. An enormous seagull was standing outside the window and staring in. It banged its beak against the glass, twice. Waited.

“Seen this?” I called to Yngve in the kitchen. “There's a huge seagull here knocking on the glass with its beak.”

I heard Grandma getting up.

“We'll have to find it some food,” she said.

I went to the doorway. Yngve was emptying the wall cupboards; he had piled up the glasses and plates on the counter beneath. Grandma was standing beside him.

“Have you two seen the seagull?” I said.

“Film or play?” Yngve said.

He smiled.