A Man In Love: My Struggle Book 2 (My Struggle 2) by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Author:Karl Ove Knausgaard [Knausgaard, Karl Ove]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2013-04-25T04:00:00+00:00

‘I don’t suppose there’s much else we can do,’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked warily.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Where shall we go?’

‘Skeppsholmen maybe?’

‘OK, let’s do that.’

Since I’d had Vanja in the week, Linda took care of her now. She sat Vanja on her lap, dressed her in a small red knitted jumper we had inherited from Yngve’s children, brown corduroy trousers, the red romper suit Linda’s mother had bought for us, the red cap with the strap under the chin and the white brim and a pair of white woollen mittens. Until a month ago she had always sat still when we changed her, but of late she had begun to wriggle and squirm in our hands. It was particularly difficult when you had to change her nappy, the crap could end up anywhere as she kept wriggling, and more than once I had raised my voice. LIE STILL! Or LIE STILL FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! And my grip on her tightened more than was necessary. For her part, she thought it was funny to try and wriggle away, she always smiled or laughed whenever she succeeded and at first she simply did not understand the loud irritated voice. Sometimes she ignored it totally, or she stared at me in surprise, now what was that meant to be? Or she cried. First the lower lip puckered and started to quiver, then the tears flowed. What on earth was I doing? I thought. Had I gone completely mad? She was one year old, as innocent as only the innocent can be, and there I was, yelling at her!

Luckily she was easy to comfort, easy to make laugh, and luckily she had a short memory. From that perspective, it was worse for me.

Linda had more patience, and after five minutes Vanja was fully dressed in her arms with an expectant smile on her lips. In the lift she tried to press the buttons, Linda pointed to the right one and guided her hand. The button lit up, the lift set off. While Linda went into the bicycle room with her, where the buggy was, I lit a cigarette outside. The wind was still strong and the sky heavy and grey. The temperature was around zero or minus one.

We walked down Regeringsgatan, into Kungsträdgården, past the National Museum, and turned left onto the island of Skeppsholmen, along the quays where all the houseboats were. A couple of them were from the turn of the last century and in their heyday had plied between the many islands outside Stockholm. There was also a kind of small boatyard here, or so it seemed, with a keel and timbers arranged like a skeleton inside a wooden warehouse. Now and then a bearded face poked out as we walked past, otherwise the area was deserted. Up on a small hill was the Moderna Museet, where Vanja had spent, considering the length of her short life, a disproportionately large number of days. But admission was free, the restaurant was good and child-friendly, there were play areas and some of the art was worth seeing.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.