My Struggle: Book One (36 page)

My novel had been accepted at more or less the same time that they had started their business, and there was never going to be any other option than their designing the cover and getting a foot in the doorway to the world of publishing. Naturally, the publishing house didn't see things like that. The editor, Geir Gulliksen, said that he would get in touch with a design agency and asked if I had any thoughts about the cover. I said I would like my brother to do it.

“Your brother? Is he a graphic designer?”

“Well, he's just started. He's set up a business with an old friend in Stavanger. They're good. I can vouch for them.”

“This is how we'll do it,” Geir Gulliksen said. “They make a proposal and we'll look at it. If it's good, okay, then there's no problem.”

And that was what happened. I went down to see them in June, I had a book about space travel from the 1950s, it had belonged to Dad, and was full of drawings in the optimistic, futuristic style of the fifties. I also had an idea about a creamy color I had seen on the cover of Stefan Zweig's
The World of Yesterday
. Furthermore, Yngve had managed to lay his hands on a couple of pictures of zeppelins which I believed would suit the book. Then they sat in their new office chairs in the loft, with the sun baking down, putting together a proposal while I sat in the armchair behind, watching. In the evenings we drank beer and watched the World Cup. I was happy and optimistic; the feeling that one era had finished and a new one was starting was strong in me. Tonje had completed her studies and had a job at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation in Hordaland, I was making my debut as a novelist, we had just moved into our first real flat, in Bergen, the town where we had first met. Yngve and Asbjørn, on whose coattails I had hung throughout my student
days, had set up on their own, and their first real job was my book cover. Everything was brimming with possibilities, everything pointed forward, and it must have been the first time in my life I had experienced that.

The yield from these days was good, we had six or seven wonderful covers, I was satisfied, but they wanted to try something else, and Asbjørn brought over a bag of American photographic magazines, which we scoured. He showed me some pictures by Jock Sturges, they were quite exceptional, I had never seen anything like them, and we selected one, of a long-limbed girl, twelve years old perhaps, or thirteen, standing naked with her back to us and looking across a lake. It was beautiful but also charged, pure but also threatening, and possessed an almost iconic quality. In another magazine there was an advertisement where the writing was white in two blue strips, or boxes; they decided to snatch the idea, but do it in red, and half an hour later Yngve had the cover ready. The publishers were given five different proposals, but were in little doubt, the Sturges one was the best, and the book due to come out in a few months' time bore the young girl on the cover. It was asking for trouble, Sturges was a controversial photographer, his house had been turned upside down by FBI agents, I had read, and searching for his name on the net I found some of the links always led to child pornography sites. Yet I had not seen any photographer reproduce the rich world of childhood in such an impressive way, Sally Mann included. So I was happy about that. Also that it was Yngve and Asbjørn who had done it.

In the car on the way from Sola on this strange Friday evening we did not say much. Chatted a little about the practical details of what awaited us, the funeral itself, of which neither Yngve nor I had had any previous experience. The low sun made the passing rooftops glow. The sky was high here, the countryside flat and green, and all the space gave me a sense of wasteland that not even the largest gathering of people would succeed in filling. Small by comparison were the people I saw, standing outside a shelter and waiting for the bus to town, cycling along the road, heads bowed over the handlebars, sitting on a tractor and driving across a field, leaving the gas station shop
with a hot dog in one hand and a bottle of Coke in the other. The town was deserted as well, the streets were empty, the day was over and the evening had not yet begun.

Yngve played Björk on the car stereo. Outside the windows, the number of shops and office blocks dwindled, apartment buildings increased. Small gardens, hedges, fruit trees, children on bikes, children skipping.

“I don't know why I started crying back there,” I said. “But something touched me when I saw you. I suddenly understood that he was dead.”

“Yes . . .,” Yngve said. “I'm not sure it's sunk in for me yet.”

He shifted down as we rounded the bend and ascended the last hill. There was a play area to the right; two girls were sitting on a bench with what looked like cards in their hands. A bit farther up, on the other side of the road, I saw the garden in front of Yngve's house. No one was there, but the sliding door to the living room was open.

“Here we are,” Yngve said, driving slowly into the open garage.

“I'll leave the suitcase here,” I said. “We're off tomorrow anyway.”

The front door opened, and Kari Anne came out with Torje in her arms. Ylva stood beside her, holding her leg, watching me as I closed the car door and walked over to them. Kari Anne offered her cheek and put an arm around me, I gave her a hug, ruffled Ylva's hair.

“Sorry to hear about your father,” she said. “My condolences.”

“Thank you,” I said. “But it didn't exactly come as a surprise.”

Yngve slammed the trunk and walked over with a shopping bag in each hand. He must have done some shopping on the way to the airport.

“Shall we go in?” Kari Anne said.

I nodded and followed her into the living room.

“Mmm, that smells good,” I said.

“It's what I always make,” she said. “Spaghetti with ham and broccoli.”

With Torje still hanging from one arm, she moved a cooking pot to the side of the stove with her other hand, switched it off, bent down and took a colander from the cupboard as Yngve came in, placed the bags on the floor and began to put things away. Ylva, who apart from a diaper was quite naked, stood motionless in the middle of the room, looking back and forth between
us. Then she ran off to a doll's bed beside a bookshelf, lifted up a doll, and came over to me holding it at arm's length.

“What a nice doll you've got,” I said, kneeling in front of her. “Can I see her?”

She held the doll to her chest with a determined expression on her face, and half-turned.

“Show Karl Ove your doll now,” Kari Anne said.

I straightened up.

“I'm going out for a smoke, if that's okay,” I said.

“I'll join you,” Yngve said. “Just have to finish this first.”

I went through the veranda door, closed it, and sat down on one of the three white plastic chairs on the flagstones. There were toys scattered across the whole lawn. At the far end, by the hedge, there was a round plastic pool filled with water and littered with grass and insects. Two golf clubs leaned against the leeward wall, next to a couple of badminton rackets and a soccer ball. I took my cigarettes from my inside pocket and lit one, leaned back. The sun had disappeared behind a cloud, and the bright green, gleaming grass and leaves were suddenly grayish and matte, drained of life. The uninterrupted sounds of a manual lawn mower being trundled back and forth reached me from the neighbor's garden. The clatter of plates and cutlery from inside the kitchen.

I loved being here.

At home in our flat everything was us, there was no distance; if I was troubled, the flat was also troubled. But here there was distance, here the surroundings had nothing to do with me and mine, and they could shield me from whatever was troublesome.

The door opened behind me. It was Yngve. He was holding a cup of coffee in one hand.

“Tonje sends her love,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said. “How is she?”

“Fine,” I said. “She started work on Monday. She had an item on the news on Wednesday. Fatal accident.”

“You said,” he said, sitting down.

What was that? Was he grumpy?

We sat for a while without speaking. In the sky above the blocks of flats to the left of us, a helicopter flew past. The distant whump of the rotor blades was muffled. The two girls from the play area came walking up the road. Someone from one of the gardens farther away shouted a name.
Bjørnar
, it sounded like.

Yngve took out a cigarette and lit up.

“Have you taken up golf?” I said.

He nodded.

“You should give it a try. You're bound to be good. You're tall and you've played soccer and you've got that killer instinct. Feel like having a few whacks? I've got some practice balls lying around somewhere.”

“Now? I don't think so.”

“It was a joke, Karl Ove,” he said.

“Me playing golf or trying it now?”

“Trying it now.”

The neighbor, who was standing just behind the hedge separating the two gardens, stopped, straightened up and ran his hand across his bare, sweaty skull. On the veranda sat a woman dressed in a white T-shirt and shorts, reading a magazine.

“Do you know how Grandma is?” I said.

“No, I don't,” he said. “But she was the one who found him. So you can imagine she probably isn't feeling too good.”

“In the living room, right?”

“Yes,” he said, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray and getting up.

“Well, shall we go in and have a bite to eat?”

The next morning I was woken by Ylva standing at the bottom of the stairs in the hall and howling. I half-propped myself up in bed and raised the blinds so that I could see what time it was. Half past five. I sighed and sank back down. My room was full of packing cases, clothes, and various other things that had not yet found their place in the house. An ironing board stood by one wall,
piled with neatly stacked clothes, next to it an Asian-looking screen, folded and leaning against the wall. Beyond the door I could hear Yngve's and Kari Anne's voices, soon afterward their footfalls on the old wooden staircase. The radio being switched on downstairs. We had decided to set off at around seven, then we would be in Kristiansand at about eleven, but there was nothing to stop us going earlier, I supposed, swung my feet onto the floor, put on my trousers and T-shirt, leaned forward and ran a hand through my hair while inspecting myself in the wall mirror. No traces of yesterday's emotional outbursts visible; I just looked tired. So, back to where I was. Because yesterday had not left any traces internally either. Feelings are like water, they always adapt to their surroundings. Not even the worst grief leaves traces; when it feels so overwhelming and lasts for such a long time, it is not because the feelings have set, they can't do that, they stand still, the way water in a forest mere stands still.

Fuck, I thought. This was one of my mental tics. Fuck, ferk, fuckeroo was another. They flashed into my consciousness at odd intervals, they were impossible to stop, but why should I stop them, they didn't do anyone any harm. You couldn't see from my face that I was thinking them. Shit a brick, I thought, and opened the door. I saw straight into their bedroom, and looked down, things existed that I did not want to know, pulled the little wooden gate aside and went downstairs into the kitchen. Ylva was sitting on her Tripp Trapp chair with a slice of bread in her hand and a glass of milk in front of her, Yngve was standing by the stove and frying eggs while Kari Anne shuttled back and forth between the table and cupboards, setting the table. The coffee machine light was on. The last drops from the filter were on their way into the pot. The extractor hood hummed, the eggs bubbled and spat in the pan, the radio blared out the traffic news jingle.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Good morning,” said Kari Anne.

“Hello,” said Yngve.

“Karl Ove,” said Ylva, pointing to the chair opposite her.

“Shall I sit there?” I asked.

She nodded, sweeping head movements, and I pulled the chair out and sat down. Of her parents, she looked more like Yngve, she had his nose and eyes, and oddly many of his expressions also appeared in them. Her body had not yet outgrown the baby fat stage, there was something soft and rounded about all her limbs and parts, so that when she frowned and her eyes assumed Yngve's knowing air, it was hard not to smile. It didn't make her older but him younger: suddenly you saw that one of his typical expressions was not associated with experience, maturity, or worldly wisdom, but must have lived its life unchanged and independent of his face right from the time it was forming at the beginning of the 1960s.

Yngve slipped the spatula under the eggs and transferred them, one by one, onto a broad dish, put it on the table, beside the bread basket, fetched the pot of coffee, and filled the three cups. I generally drank tea at breakfast and had since I was fourteen, but I didn't have the heart to point this out, instead I took a slice of bread and flipped an egg on top with the spatula Yngve had rested against the dish.

I scoured the table for salt. But there was none to be found.

“Any salt?” I asked.

“Here,” Kari Anne said, handing it to me across the table.