My Struggle: Book 3 by Karl Ove Knausgård Page A

study, the newspaper folded under his arm, without saying another word to anyone. Mom started clearing the table and I went to Yngve’s room. He was packing his bag. I sat down on his bed and watched. He had real soccer cleats, a pair of black Adidas with screw-on studs, decent Umbro shorts and some yellow-and-black IK Start socks. Mom had bought black-and-white Grane socks for him at first; he didn’t want them, so he gave them to me. But the best equipment he had was the Adidas tracksuit, it was blue with white stripes, in some smooth, shiny material, not that matte, crepe, elastic, gymsuit-style material that all tracksuits used to be made of. Sometimes I sniffed it, buried my nose in the smooth material, because it smelled wonderful. Perhaps I thought that because I wanted one myself so much the smell was imbued with my own desire, perhaps I thought it because the smell, so thoroughly synthetic, didn’t remind me of anything else – it didn’t seem to belong to this world. That in some way it bore a promise of the future. In addition to this tracksuit, he also had some blue-and-white Adidas wet-weather gear.
    He said nothing as he packed. Pulled the big, red zipper to and sat down at his desk. Looked at the schedule lying on it.
    “Did you get any homework?” I said.
    He shook his head.
    “We didn’t either,” I said. “Have you covered your books yet?”
    “No, we’ve got the whole week to do it.”
    “I’m going to do it tonight,” I said. “Mom’s going to help me.”
    “Good for you!” he said, getting up. “I’m off. If I’m not back before midnight the headless man’s devoured me. I’d like to see how he manages that!”
    He laughed and went downstairs. I watched him from the bathroom window, saw him put first one foot on the pedal, then shove off with the other and swing it over the crossbar and pedal as fast as he could in the highest gear until he reached the hill at such a speed that he could freewheel down to the crossroads.
    When he had disappeared from view I went onto the landing, stood motionless for a moment to locate Mom and Dad. But all was silent.
    “Mom?” I called softly.
    No answer.
    I went into the kitchen, she wasn’t there, then into the back room, she wasn’t there, either. Could she have gone to their bedroom?
    I went there and stood outside the door for a moment.
    No.
    In the garden perhaps?
    From various windows I scoured all four sides of the garden without catching a glimpse of her.
    And the car was parked outside, wasn’t it?
    Yes, it was.
    Not knowing where she was somehow loosened my hold on the house, it was slackened in a confusing, quite disturbing way, and to counter it I went into my room and sat down on the bed to read some comics; that was when it struck me that of course she was downstairs in Dad’s office.
    I almost never set foot in there. The few times I had, it had been to ask about something, if I could stay up and watch a particular TV program, for example, after knocking first and waiting for him to say, “Come in.” Knocking on the door came at a great cost, often so high that I preferred to go to bed without seeing the program. On a couple of occasions he had actually asked us to come in, when he wanted to show us something or give us something, such as envelopes with stamps on them. We put them in the sink in the spare kitchen, which, as far as I knew, was used exclusively for that purpose, to dissolve the gum, and, after drying them for a few hours, we were able to put them in our albums.
    Otherwise I never went there. Even when I was on my own at home it never occurred to me. The risk that he would find out was much too great, he would discover anything untoward that was going on, he would sniff it out by some means or other, however well I tried to cover my tracks.
    As he had with the hill when we were having dinner. Even though he hadn’t seen anything, only us on our way up, he knew we had been doing something wrong. Had he not been