“You said we should only fart in the toilet,” I said.
At first he didn’t answer.
“It’s different when you’re outside in the open air,” he said, without meeting my gaze. “Then you can, well, let your farts go free.”
He brought down the ax onto the log and split it in half at the first attempt. The sound of the blow rebounded off the house wall and the cliff above, the latter with a strange delay, as though there were a man up there swinging an ax exactly one second after Dad.
Dad swung again and threw the four pieces of wood on the pile. Took another log.
“Could you start piling them up, Karl Ove?” he said.
I nodded and went over to the small pile.
How should I do it? What did he have in mind? Alongside the rock or coming off it? A narrow pile or a wide one?
I looked at him again. He didn’t notice. I squatted and picked up a piece of wood. Placed it up against the rock, on end. Placed another piece next to it. When I had laid five in a row, I laid one crosswise on top of them. It was exactly the same length as the width of the five logs. So I laid four more on top, making two equally large squares. Now I could either make two squares next to it, identical, or start a new layer on top.
“What are you doing?” Dad said. “Are you completely stupid? You don’t stack wood like that!”
He bent down and scattered the logs with his big hands. I watched him with tears in my eyes.
“You lay them lengthwise!” he said. “Have you never seen a woodpile before?”
He looked at me.
“Don’t stand there weeping like a girl, Karl Ove. Can’t you do anything right?”
Then he went on chopping. I started stacking the logs the way he told me. Sobs shook me every so often. My hands and toes were freezing. At least it wasn’t difficult stacking them lengthwise. The only question was when to stop. When I had laid them all in a row I stood up with my hands down by my sides and watched him as I had done before. The glint in his expression was gone; I saw that as soon as he glanced at me from the corner of his eye. But that didn’t necessarily mean something would happen, as long as I didn’t say or do anything that might irritate him. At the same time the thought of the match on TV was gnawing at me. It must have started ages ago. He had forgotten about it, but I couldn’t remind him, not the way the situation was. My toes and fingers were hurting me more and more. Dad just kept chopping. He paused and occasionally flicked back his hair in a typical gesture of his, a kind of slow toss of his head along with his hand.
We had just been given a post office box in Pusnes, which meant we no longer received mail in our mailbox on the hill, only a newspaper, and Dad had to drive there to collect our mail. Last Saturday I had sat in the car with him, and he had combed his hair in the mirror, perhaps for a whole minute, patting his thick, shiny locks afterward, and then got out. I had never seen that before. And when he went in, a woman had turned to look at him. She was unaware that someone who knew him was sitting in the car watching what went on. But why had she turned? Did she know him? I had never seen her before. Perhaps she was the mother of someone in his class?
I put the new logs he threw over on top of the first row. Wriggled my toes backward and forward in my boots, not that it helped, they hurt, hurt, hurt.
I was about to say that I was freezing cold, took a deep breath, but then I paused. Turned again and looked at the shiny pool that shouldn’t have been there. Watched a large transparent bubble breaking the surface right above the rusty manhole cover. When I turned back, Steinar was walking along the road. He was carrying a guitar case over his back, with his head bent, his long black hair falling over his shoulders and swaying gently to and fro.
“Hello there, Knausgård!” he said as he passed.
Dad stood up and sent him a nod.
“Hi there,” he said.
“Doing a bit of wood chopping, I see!” Steinar said, without slowing down.
“I am,” Dad said.
He resumed work. I paced backward and forward, backward and forward.
“Stop doing that,” Dad said.
“OK, but I’m freezing cold!” I said.
He sent me an icy stare.
“Oh, you’re fweezing, are you?” he said.
My eyes filled with tears again.
“Stop parroting me,” I said.
“Oh, so I can’t pawwot you now?”
“NO!” I yelled.
He stiffened. Dropped the ax and came toward me. Grabbed my ear and twisted it round.
“Are you talking back to me?” he said.
“No,” I said, looking down at the ground.
He twisted harder.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you!”
I raised my head.
“Do not talk back to me! Have you got that?”
“Yes,” I said.
He let go, turned, and put another log on the block. I was crying so much I could barely breathe. Dad ignored me and kept on chopping. There were only a couple of logs left now, then he was finished.
I walked back to the low stack of wood and added the new logs. Wriggled my toes in my boots. The tears receded, there was just the odd surreptitious aftershock in the form of an untimely and wholly uncontrollable sob. I dried my eyes on my sleeve, Dad tossed four logs over, I put them on the stack, when a thought fluttered in to lift me out of my misery. I wouldn’t watch the soccer. I would go straight to my room and let Yngve and him watch it without me.
Yes.
Yes.
“There we are,” he said, throwing over the last four. “That’s us finished.”
I followed him without a word, took off my boots and my coat and hung it up, went upstairs, gathered from the noise in the living room that Yngve was watching the match, and went into my room.
I sat down at my desk and pretended to read.
Just so that he got the message.
He did. A few minutes later he opened the door.
“The match has started,” he said. “Come on.”
“I don’t want to see it,” I said, without meeting his eyes.
“Are you being headstrong now?” he said.
He came into the room, grabbed my arm, and dragged me to my feet.
“Come on,” he said. He let go of my arm.
I stood still.
“I DON’T WANT TO SEE THE MATCH!” I said.
Without another word, he grabbed my arm again and dragged me crying out of my room, through the hall, and into the living room, where he hurled me onto the sofa next to Yngve.
“Now you sit there and watch the game with us,” he said. “Have you got that?”
I had thought of closing my eyes if he forced me into the living room, but now I didn’t dare.
He had bought a bag of glacier mints and a bag of English chocolate toffees. The toffees were my favorite, but the glacier mints were good as well. As usual, he had the bags next to him on the table. Now and then he threw one to me and Yngve. Today he did the same. But I wouldn’t eat them; I left them untouched in front of me. In the end, he reacted.
“Eat your candy,” he said.
“I don’t feel like them,” I said.
He stood up.
“Now you eat your candy,” he said.
“No,” I said, and started crying again. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to.”
“Now you EAT them!” he said. He grabbed my arm and squeezed.
“I-don’t-want-any … candy,” I gasped.
He seized the back of my head and pressed it forward, almost down to the table.
“There they are,” he said. “Can you see them? Eat them. Now.”
“OK,” I said, and he let go. Stood over me until I had unwrapped a chocolate-coated toffee and put it in my mouth.