My Struggle: Book 2: A Man in Love (30 page)

‘I’ll be quick,’ I said. ‘Hang on.’

‘
I miss you too. I’m at KB
.’

‘It’s Linda, isn’t it,’ Geir said.

‘It is,’ I answered.

‘You’re all over the place,’ he said. ‘Do you realise? I almost felt like turning round in the door when I saw you.’

New message.

‘
You come to me, Karl Ove. At Folkoperan. Waiting
.’

I got up.

‘Sorry, Geir, but I’ve got to go.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come on, man. Surely she can bloody well wait half an hour? I caught the Metro all the way here, and I didn’t do that to sit and have a drink on my own. I can do that at home.’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ll call you.’

I ran into the street, flagged down a taxi, could have screamed with impatience at the lights, but then it pulled over by Folkoperan, I paid and went in.

She was sitting on the ground floor. As soon as I saw her I knew there was no hurry.

She smiled.

‘How quick you were!’ she said.

‘I had the impression it was urgent.’

‘No, no, no, not at all.’

I gave her a hug and sat down.

‘Do you want a drink?’ I asked.

‘What are you going to have?’

‘I don’t know. Red wine?’

‘That sounds good.’

We shared a bottle of red, chatted about this and that, nothing of any significance, it was all between us, every time our eyes met a quiver ran through me, and then there was a heavy thud, that was my heart.

‘There’s a party at Vertigo now,’ she said. ‘Feel like coming along?’

‘OK, sounds good.’

‘Stig Sæterbakken’s there.’

‘That’s perhaps not so good. I panned him once. And then I read an interview in which he said he had kept all the reviews which had panned him. The one I wrote must be one of the worst. A whole page in
Morgenbladet
. And then he went after me and Tore in a debate once. Called us Faldbakken and Faldbakken. But I don’t suppose that means much to you.’

She shook her head.

‘We can go somewhere else?’

‘No, no, God, no. Let’s go to the party.’

As we left Folkoperan it had started to grow dark. The cloud cover that had been there all day was thickening.

We caught a taxi. Vertigo was situated in a cellar, it was jam-packed, the air was hot and dense with smoke, I turned to Linda and said perhaps we didn’t need to stay so long.

‘Isn’t that Knausgaard?’ a voice said. I turned. It was Sæterbakken. He smiled. ‘Knausgaard and I are foes,’ he said, and added, ‘aren’t we?’ with a look up at me.

‘I’m not,’ I said.

‘Don’t chicken out now,’ he said. ‘But you’re right. We’ve put it behind us. I’m writing a new novel, and I’m trying to do as you’ve done. Write a bit more in your style.’

Jesus, I thought. That was quite a compliment!

‘You don’t say,’ I said. ‘Sounds interesting.’

‘Yes, it is very interesting. You wait and see!’

‘Talk to you later,’ I said.

‘Right.’

We went to the bar, ordered gin and tonics, found two unoccupied chairs and sat down. Linda knew lots of people here, mingled and kept coming back to me. I became more and more drunk, but the congenial, relaxed mood I had when I saw Linda at Folkoperan continued. We looked at each other. We were a couple. She placed her hand on my shoulder. We were a couple. She met my gaze through the room in the middle of a conversation with someone and smiled. We were a couple.

After we had been there for a few hours and had settled down in two armchairs in a little room at the back of the club Sæterbakken joined us and asked if he could give us a foot massage. He was good at it, he claimed. I said no, not for me. Linda removed her shoes and put her feet in his lap. He started to knead and stroke while looking into her eyes.

‘I am good at it, aren’t I?’ he said.

‘Yes, that’s wonderful,’ Linda said.

‘But now it’s your turn, Knausgaard.’

‘Not for me.’

‘Don’t be a coward. Come on, take off your shoes.’

In the end I did as he asked, took off my shoes and rested my feet in his lap. In itself it was pleasant, but the fact that it was Stig Sæterbakken sitting there and squeezing my feet with a fixed smile on his face it was difficult to interpret as anything other than devilish, gave the situation a certain ambivalence, to put it mildly.

After he had finished I asked him about his last collection of essays, dealing with evil, then went for a little wander, drank one glass after another, and caught a glimpse of Linda, she was leaning against a wall with a girl I had seen at Valborg, Hilda, Wilda? Shit. No, Gilda.

Linda was so beautiful.

And so unbelievably alive.

Could she really be mine?

Hardly had I articulated the thought when her gaze brushed mine.

She smiled and waved to me.

I walked over.

The time was ripe.

It was now or never.

I swallowed, put my hand on her shoulder.

‘This is Gilda,’ she said.

‘We’ve met before,’ Gilda said with a smile.

‘Come here,’ I said.

She sent me a quizzical look.

Her eyes were dark.

‘Now?’ she said.

I didn’t answer, just took her hand.

Without a word, we walked through the room. Opened the door, went up the steps. The rain was pelting down.

‘I’ve taken you aside once before,’ I said. ‘That time it didn’t go very well. And maybe this will go belly up too. In which case, so be it. But there is something I want to say. About you.’

‘About me?’ she said, standing in front of me and looking up, her hair already wet, her face shiny with raindrops.

‘Yes,’ I said.

And then I began to tell her what she was to me. Everything I had written in the letter I told her. I described her lips, her eyes, the way she walked, the words she used. I said I loved her even though I didn’t know her. I said I wanted to be with her. It was all I wanted.

She stretched up onto the tips of her toes, raised her face to me, I bent forward and kissed her.

Then everything went black.

I woke up with two men dragging me by the feet across the tarmac into a gate entrance. One was talking on his mobile, he said, might be drugs, we don’t know. They stopped, leaned towards me.

‘Are you conscious?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Where am I?’

‘Outside Vertigo. Have you been taking drugs?’

‘No.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Karl Ove Knausgaard. I think I fainted. There’s no problem. I’m absolutely fine.’

I saw Linda coming towards me.

‘Is he conscious?’ she asked.

‘Hi, Linda,’ I said. ‘What happened?’

‘You don’t need to come,’ the man said on the phone. ‘It’s fine here. He’s conscious and appears to be coping all right.’

‘You fainted, I think,’ Linda said. ‘You suddenly collapsed.’

‘Oh Christ,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry about that.’

‘Nothing to be sorry about,’ she said. ‘What you said. No one has ever said anything as nice to me.’

‘Are you OK?’ one of the men asked.

I nodded and they left.

‘It was when you kissed me,’ I said. ‘It was like I felt something black come
shooting
up. And then I woke up over here.’

I got up, staggered a few steps.

‘It’s probably best to go home,’ I said. ‘But you can stay if you want.’

She laughed.

‘We’ll go to my place. I’ll take care of you.’

‘I love the idea of you taking care of me,’ I said.

She smiled and took a mobile phone from her jacket pocket. Her hair was plastered to her forehead. I surveyed my clothes. My trousers were dark with rain. I ran a hand through my hair.

‘Strangely enough, I’m not drunk any more,’ I said. ‘But I am hellishly hungry.’

‘When did you last eat?’

‘Yesterday some time, I think. In the morning.’

At that moment she got through to the taxi rank, rolled her eyes at me, gave the address and ten minutes later we were in a taxi on our way through the night and the rain.

When I first woke up I didn’t know where I was. But then I saw Linda and remembered everything. I snuggled up to her, she opened her eyes, we made love again, and it was so right, was so good I knew with the whole of my being it was her and me, and I told her.

‘We must have children together,’ I said. ‘Anything else would be a crime against nature.’

She laughed.

‘It’s meant to be,’ I said. ‘I’m absolutely sure. I’ve never felt like this ever.’

She stopped laughing and looked at me.

‘Do you really mean that?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I do,’ I replied. ‘If you don’t feel the same then that’s something else. But you don’t, do you. I can feel that too.’

‘Is this real?’ she said. ‘Are you lying here in my bed? And saying you want children with me?’

‘Yes, you do feel the same, don’t you?’

She nodded.

‘But I would never have said so.’

For the first time in my life I was completely happy. For the first time there was nothing in my life that could overshadow the happiness I felt. We were together constantly, suddenly reaching for each other at traffic lights, across a restaurant table, on buses, in parks, there were no demands or desires except for each other. I felt utterly free, but only with her, the moment we were apart I began to have yearnings. It was strange, the forces were so strange, and they were good. Geir and Christina said we were impossible to be with, we had eyes only for each other, and it was true, there was no world beyond the one we had built. On Midsummer’s night we went to the island of Runmarö, where Mikaela had rented a cabin, I found myself laughing and singing through a Swedish night, a happy chuntering idiot, for everything gave meaning, everything was laden with meaning, it was as if a new light had been cast over the world. In Stockholm we went swimming, we lay in parks reading, we ate in restaurants, it didn’t matter what we did, it was the fact that we did it that was important. I read Hölderlin, and his poems flowed into me like water, there was nothing I didn’t understand, the ecstasy in the poems and the ecstasy in me were the same, and above all this, every single day throughout June, July and August, the sun shone. We told each other everything about ourselves, the way lovers do, and even though we knew it couldn’t last, and the thought that in fact it might was frightening because there was also something unbearable about it, all this happiness, so we lived in it as if we didn’t know. The fall had to come, but we didn’t bother ourselves about it – how could we when everything was so great?

One morning when I was in the shower, she called me, I went into the bedroom, she was lying naked on the bed, it was by the window now, so that we could see the sky.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘Can you see the cloud?’

I lay down beside her. The sky was perfectly blue, there were no clouds apart from the one which was drifting slowly closer. It was shaped like a heart.

‘Yes,’ I said, squeezing her hand.

She laughed.

‘Everything’s perfect,’ she said. ‘I’ve never ever been like this. I’m so happy with you. I’m so happy!’

‘Me too,’ I said.

We took a boat to the skerries. Rented a cabin in the forest outside a youth hostel. We walked round the island for hours, delved deep into the forest, everything smelt of pine and heather, suddenly we encountered a steep rock face: beneath us was the sea. We went on, came to a meadow, stopped and watched the cows, they watched us, we laughed, took pictures of each other, climbed up a tree, sat in it chattering like two children.

‘Once,’ I said, ‘I had to buy cigarettes for my father at a petrol station. It was a couple of kilometres from home. I must have been about seven or eight years old. The path there went through a forest. I knew it like the palm of my hand. I still know it like the palm of my hand. Suddenly I heard a rustling in the bushes. I stopped and looked over. There I saw an absolutely fantastic bird, you know, big and multicoloured. I had never seen anything like it before, it was more like a visitor from some distant exotic continent. Africa or Asia. It scampered off and then flew away and disappeared. I’ve never seen that kind of bird since and I’ve never found out what it might have been.’

‘Is that true?’ Linda asked. ‘I had exactly the same experience once. At a girlfriend’s summer house. I was sitting in a tree, yes, like now, waiting for my friends to return. I got impatient and jumped down. Strolled around aimlessly and suddenly saw a fantastic multicoloured bird. I’ve never seen it since either.’

‘Is that true?’

‘Yes.’

That was how it was, everything gave meaning and our lives were interwoven. On the way home from the island we discussed the name of our first child.

‘If it’s a boy,’ I said, ‘I would prefer a simple name. Ola, I’ve always liked that. What do you think?’

‘It’s good,’ she said. ‘Very Norwegian. I like that.’

‘Yes,’ I said, looking out of the window.

A little boat bobbed up and down on its way across. The registration plate on the side said
OLA
.

‘Look there,’ I said.

Linda leaned forward.

‘Then it’s decided,’ she said. ‘Ola it is!’

Late one evening we had been walking up the hill towards my flat, still in the first, feverish phase of the relationship and, after quite a silence, she had said, ‘Karl Ove, there’s something I have to tell you.’

‘Oh yes?’ I said.

‘I tried to take my life once.’

‘What did you say?’ I said.

She didn’t answer and looked down at the ground in front of her.

‘Was that a long time ago?’ I asked.

‘Two years ago maybe. It was when I was in the clinic.’

I looked at her, she didn’t want to meet my eyes, I went up to her and hugged her. We stood like that for a long time. Then we went up the stairs and into the lift, I unlocked the flat, she sat down on the bed, I opened the window and the sounds of a late summer night rose to meet us.

‘Would you like some tea?’ I asked.

‘Please,’ she said.

I went to the kitchenette, switched on the kettle, took out two cups and put a teabag in each. After I had passed her one and stationed myself by the open window, sipping at the other cup, she began to tell me what had happened. Her mother had collected her from the hospital, they were on their way to her flat to pick something up. As they got closer Linda set off at a run. Her mother ran after her. Linda ran as fast as she could, through the door, up the stairs, into the flat, to the window. By the time her mother arrived, a few seconds later, Linda had opened the window and clambered up onto the ledge. Her mother sprinted to the window as Linda was about to jump, grabbed her and pulled her back in.