A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgård

Author:Karl Ove Knausgård [Knausgård, Karl Ove]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature
ISBN: 9780374534141
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2009-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

The loft room, which had been my grandparents’ bedroom once upon a time but which for as long as we could remember had been reserved for guests, was the only one in the house he hadn’t touched. Everything in it was as before. There was dust on the floor, and the duvets had a slightly stale odor, but it was no worse than what you find in a mountain cabin you haven’t entered since the previous summer, and after the nightmare downstairs this was a relief. We unloaded our bags on the floor, I hung my suit on a cupboard door and Yngve stood with his arms propped against the window frame, looking out at the town.

“We can start by getting rid of all the bottles, can’t we,” he said. “To a supermarket for the deposit. That way we can get out a little.”

“Right,” I said.

After going down to the kitchen we heard the sound of a car in the drive. It was Gunnar. We stood waiting for him to come up.

“There you are!” he said with a smile. “Long time, no see, eh!”

His face was suntanned, hair blond, body sinewy and strong. He wore well.

“It’s good to have the boys here, I imagine,” he said to Grandma. Then he turned to us again.

“It’s terrible, what happened here,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“I suppose you’ve had a look around? So you’ve seen what he got up to…”

“Yes,” Yngve said.

Gunnar shook his head, jaws clenched.

“I don’t know what to say,” he said. “But he was your father. I’m sorry that things went as they did for him. But you probably knew which way the wind was blowing.”

“We’re going to clean the whole house,” I said. “We’ll deal with everything from now on.”

“That’s good. I got rid of the worst in the kitchen early this morning and threw out some trash, but there’s quite a bit left, of course.”

There was a flicker of a smile.

“I’ve got a trailer outside,” he continued. “Could you move your car, Yngve? Then we can put it on the lawn beside the garage. We can’t have the furniture here, can we? And all the clothes and everything. We’ll drive it over to the dump. Isn’t that the best idea?”

“Yep,” I said.

“The boys and Tove are at the cabin. I just dropped by to say hello. And to leave the trailer. But I’ll be back tomorrow morning. Then we can take it from there. It’s terrible. But that’s life. You two will manage.”

“Course we will,” Yngve said. “You parked behind me, didn’t you? So you’ll have to pull out first.”

Grandma had watched us for the first few seconds when Gunnar arrived, and smiled at him, but then she went back inside her shell, and sat staring ahead as if she were all alone.

Yngve started down the stairs. I was thinking I ought to stay with her.

“You’ll have to come with us as well, Karl Ove,” Gunnar said. “We have to push it up the slope and it’s pretty heavy.”

I followed him down.

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.