The Third Realm

The following is from Karl Ove Knausgaard’s The Third Realm. Knausgaard’s first novel, Out of the World, was the first ever debut novel to win the Norwegian Critics’ Prize and his second, A Time for Everything, was widely acclaimed. The My Struggle cycle of novels has been heralded as a masterpiece wherever it has appeared.

It’s amazing what a summer can do. Some of the boys who had started the school holidays in June thin­limbed and slight, with the high­ pitched voices of children, returned to the classrooms in August tall and gangly, with whopping great hands and feet and voices like rust. There was a lethargy about them now as well, something you don’t see in young children but which throws a shroud over many teenagers. The girls had shot up a year or two before, so the imbalance that had char­ acterised years six and seven, when the boys had been children and the girls young women, often a whole head taller, now evened itself out. ‘Lovely to see you all!’ I said. ‘Did you have a nice holiday?’

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A few mumbled in the affirmative, some nodded, others sat doodling in their own world.

‘Did you?’ Sindre said, and let out an unmotivated laugh.

‘I did indeed. We were in Crete. Interesting place. Have you ever heard about the man from Crete who said that all men from Crete were liars?’

‘Why did he say that?’ said Sindre. ‘Are they?’

‘The man who said that was called Epimenides. He lived two and a half thousand years ago. Why do we still remember what he said? Because it’s what we call a logical paradox. If what he said is true, then he’s a liar, which means it’s false. In which case it’s true! Do you follow? And, if it’s true, then it’s false! And on it goes into infinity.’

They gawped at me. I smiled and went over to my desk, sat down and took out the register.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘That was just a digression. And I promise not to ask you what a digression is.’

‘It’s when you lose the thread,’ said Astrid. Her name always made me think of Princess Astrid, Mrs Ferner, as she was officially called, so in my mind she was never anything but Mrs Ferner. She was as sharp as a knife, but overly sensible too, which was a shame.

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Anyway, as you’ve no doubt realised by now, I’m your form teacher again this year. Besides that, I’ll be taking you in maths and science – and social studies! I’m even looking forward to it. No newcomers this year either, and no leavers. Are we all here?’

‘Gudrun isn’t.’

‘Anyone know if she’s ill?’

There was a shaking of heads. Gudrun was a bit special, she kept her­ self to herself, and barely spoke. Hardly a word to anybody. I’d been told about her when I’d taken over as form teacher the year before, but I’d assumed it was just shyness. I’d pushed her a bit the first few days, cautiously, only for some of the others to turn against me in one of those typically exaggerated displays of solicitude that groups of young girls so often put on. It makes them feel like they’re responsible and doing the right thing, it boosts their self-­awareness.

I’d had a lot of trouble with Gudrun. She was clearly a case for the schools services’ mental health counsellor but couldn’t be referred without the consent of her parents, which they wouldn’t give. It was the mother I’d spoken to. I’d found it striking how little she resembled her daughter. The daughter’s face was lean, the mother’s fleshy, and while the daughter avoided all eye contact, the mother seemed to seek it as often as she could. Her eyes were fixed on me when she explained to me that Gudrun was talkative enough at home, there was nothing special about her in that or any other way, she was just a normal child of that age. But she won’t say anything at school, I said. She won’t talk to anyone. Not even to me. In which case, perhaps it’s the school that’s the problem, she said, not Gudrun. Did that occur to you?

Mothers. Some of them will defend their children to the last drop of blood.

I compromised and arranged for the counsellor to sit in on one of our lessons so as to observe her. Afterwards she told me Gudrun was indeed communicative and had been shaking and nodding her head and smiling too, so she wasn’t shutting the world out in any way. And she was writing as well, wasn’t she? Yes, I said, she hands in all the writ­ ten assignments. So she’s just decided not to speak, the counsellor said. That’s it, yes, I said. And that’s not normal. No, it isn’t, she said. It’s a sign something’s not quite right, I went on. Very likely, she said. But if neither Gudrun herself nor her parents want to talk to me, there’s nothing I can do.

Gudrun stuck out from the other girls, always in the same old clothes, presumably hand­-me-­downs, things no other teenager would be seen dead in. She looked special too, with her pallid face and jutting chin, her deep­-set eyes and the bluish skin of her sockets.

‘The poor girl,’ said Kathrine when I told her about her. ‘Nothing’s worse than not fitting in when you’re that age.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Sometimes she looks like she’s from the nineteenth century. You know, those old photos of consumptive children?’

‘What’s she like at home?’

‘No idea. The mother seemed all right, though. I think they’re quite poor, not that it means anything necessarily.’

‘It means they’re poor,’ said Kathrine.

As I noted her absence in the register I decided to ring the mother at home if Gudrun wasn’t at school the next day either. They could have moved away for all I knew, it wasn’t unknown for parents not to inform the school, they thought it happened automatically.

*

That afternoon the kids and I ran Kathrine down to the airport shuttle bus. I’d offered to take her all the way to the airport, but she said it was a waste of resources, so instead we said goodbye at the side of the main road in the rain.

She crouched down and kissed the kids on the cheek, drew herself up again and gave me a peck on the mouth, a couple of brief little pats on the back.

‘Have a nice time,’ she said.

‘You too,’ I said. ‘Enjoy your freedom!’

‘What freedom?’ she said with a laugh. ‘I’ll be working!’

When we got home again, Marie wanted to text her and sent her a whole load of emojis. In reply she received a single heart. I imagined

*

Kathrine thought all her love was contained in it, but that was a bit too advanced for Marie, who wondered why her mum had only sent one emoji when she’d sent so many.

I put them to bed early, then sat in the basement with my guitar and the Moog. I never used the word compositions for what I did down there, preferring instead to think in terms of ambient soundscapes or sound collages. Kathrine liked it, at least. And Martin too, when I’d allowed him to listen. The thought of putting it out in some way had occurred to me, but I didn’t know of any suitable forum. I could have sent something to one of the radio stations, but nearly all of them played purely commercial music, while the ones that didn’t, like P2, hadn’t the kind of programme that aired music by unsigned artists. Spotify or SoundCloud might have been options, but my thinking was that my stuff would only drown there. Besides, how much fun would it be to have eight or nine followers, knowing that every time I logged on I’d be confronted with how few listens I’d got. The work I did in the basement would take on a different slant then, it would seem like I had ambitions, and was failing. All of which meant I was better off as I was, making music on my own down there, pretending it wasn’t important. The piece I was working on at the moment was entitled ‘Nature. A Sermon’. It began with a kind of electronic murmur over which I’d laid a simple guitar part.

Di­-da­-da-­doo
di-­da-­da-­doo
di-­da-­da-­dii
di-­da-­da-­diiii

The synth provided a warm background, and the idea was that the guitar part was a living creature. A bird over a whispering sea, perhaps, or a fox cub on a windy day in the woods. After it had looped a few times I started building it up. The Moog could distort the input from the guitar, making it almost unrecognisable, and it was so easy to get something good out of it that sometimes it felt like I was cheating. You hardly needed to be able to play anything. A little sequence of chords could be manipulated until it sounded like an entire orchestra of syn­thesised sound. In the case of this particular composition, this sound collage or whatever it was, I laid down various guitar patterns one after another, then manipulated them to produce a storm of sound. Or a storm of life, as I was alluding to in the title. On top of that I put in a good old-­fashioned guitar solo with a lot of distortion. I played it back to myself, then went upstairs into the living room to watch the televi­sion news and to come down to earth again. It wasn’t that I missed Kathrine, that would have been absurd, she’d only been away a few hours, but the house did feel strangely empty nonetheless. Emptier still when I climbed into the double bed on my own. But it was a good feel­ ing too in a way, to know that I wasn’t taking her for granted. I picked up my phone from the bedside table and typed her a text about the bed being empty without her, only to delete it before I’d sent it. She didn’t care much for sentimentality, and besides, it might make her think I didn’t want her to go anywhere. Which wasn’t the case at all. On the contrary, it had been good to spend a whole evening on my own in the basement, it had been ages since I’d had the chance.

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