My Struggle: Book 3 by Karl Ove Knausgård Page B

in such a good mood he would have brought everything into the open.
    I lay on my stomach and started reading a
Tempo.
It was Yngve’s, he had borrowed it from Jan Atle, I had already read it many times. It was for older kids and for me it had a strong aura of belonging to a distant but utterly radiant world. I didn’t have any particular preferences regarding the settings of the comic books – it made no difference whether it was the Second World War, as in
På Vingene
or the
Kamp
series; nineteenth-century America, as in
Tex Willer, Jonathan Hex,
or
Blueberry
; England between the two World Wars, as in
Paul Temple
; or the fantasy realities, which the Phantom, Superman, Batman, the Fantastic Four, and all the Disney characters appeared in – but my feelings for them were different, they aroused different emotions in me, such that some of the series in
Tempo,
for example, the one that took place on a racetrack, or some in
Buster,
for example,
Johnny Puma
and
Benny Goldenfoot,
were particularly absorbing, perhaps because they were closer to the reality that I knew existed. In the summer you could see motorcyclists wearing the leathers and helmets with Formula 1 visors, you could see the low-slung cars with all those spoilers on TV, where they occasionally crashed into the barriers or one of the other cars, rolling over and catching fire, the driver being either burned to death or emerging from the flaming wreckage and calmly walking away.
    Usually I was totally engrossed by these stories, without giving them a thought, the whole point of course was that you didn’t think, at least not with your own thoughts, you just followed the action. That afternoon, however, I quickly put the comic to one side, for some reason I couldn’t sit still, and it wasn’t much later than five o’clock, so I decided to go out again. I stopped at the top of the stairs, not a sound, she was still down below. What was she doing? She was hardly ever there. At least not at this time, I thought, bending down for my shoes in the hallway and tying the laces. I knocked on the door to Dad’s study. That is, the door leading to the corridor into which three rooms opened: the bathroom, the study, and the kitchen with the little box room at the end. In fact, it was a self-contained flat, but we had never rented it out to anyone.
    “I’m going out!” I shouted. “Up to Geir’s!”
    That is what I had been told to do, to tell them if I was going anywhere and say where.
    Nevertheless, after a few seconds of silence, Dad’s irritated voice sounded from inside the study.
    “All right, all right!” he shouted.
    A few more seconds of silence passed.
    Then Mom’s voice, friendlier, as if to compensate for Dad’s.
    “That’s fine, Karl Ove!”
    I shot out, closed the door carefully behind me, and ran up to Geir’s. I stood outside, called a few times until his mother came around the house. She had gardening gloves on, and was otherwise wearing khaki shorts, a blue blouse, and a pair of black clogs. In her hand she was holding a red trowel.
    “Hi, Karl Ove,” she said. “Geir went out with Leif Tore a while ago.”
    “Where did they go?”
    “I don’t know. He didn’t say.”
    “OK. Bye.”
    I turned and walked slowly down the drive with my eyes glazed with tears. Why hadn’t they called at my house?
    I stopped by the barrier between the two roads. Stood for a moment stock-still, listening. Not a sound. I sat down on one of the barriers. The rough concrete chafed against my thighs. Dandelions grew in the ditch below, all gray with dust. There was a grid next to it, rusty and with a sun-faded cigarette packet stuck between the bars.
    Where could they have gone?
    Down to Ubekilen?
    Down to the pontoons?
    To the soccer field and the play area?
    Had Geir taken Leif Tore to one of our places?
    Up the mountain?
    I scanned the mountain. No sign of them there anyway. I got to my feet and started to make my way down. At the crossroads by the cherry