He reached for a pen lying beside the telephone, raised his head and looked at us.
“But now I need some information from you,” he said. “What’s your father’s name?”
I said his name. It felt strange. Not because he was dead, but because I hadn’t said it for so many years.
Yngve glanced at me.
“Well. .,” he said cautiously. “He did change his name a few years ago.”
“Ah, I’d forgotten that,” I said. “Of course.”
The idiotic name he had chosen.
What an idiot he had been.
I looked down and blinked a few times.
“Have you got his National Insurance number?” the director said.
“No, not all of it,” Yngve said. “Sorry. But he was born on April 17, 1944. We can find out the other numbers later if we have to.”
“That’s fine. Address?”
Yngve gave Grandma’s address. Then glanced at me.
“Mm, I’m not sure that’s his official address. He died at his mother’s house. That’s where he was living.”
“We’ll sort that out. And then I need your names as well. And a telephone number where I can reach you.”
“Karl Ove Knausgaard,” I said.
“And Yngve Knausgaard,” Yngve said, and gave him his mobile number. After noting that, he put down the pen and looked at us again.
“Have you had an opportunity to think about the funeral? When it would be appropriate to hold it and what form you would like it to take?”
“No,” Yngve said. “We haven’t. But I suppose it’s normal to hold the funeral a week after the death?”
“That is the norm, yes. So would next Friday be a suitable date?”
“Ye-es,” Yngve said. “What do you think?”
“Friday’s fine,” I said.
“Well, let’s say that for the time being. As far as the practical details are concerned, we can meet again, can’t we? And in that case, if the funeral is to be on Friday, we would have to meet early next week. Perhaps no later than Monday. Does that work for you?”
“Yes,” Yngve said. “Could it be early?”
“Certainly. Shall we say nine o’clock?”
“Nine’s good.”
The funeral director jotted this in his book. Once he had finished he stood up.
“We’ll make the arrangements now. If you have any worries, do by all means give me a call. Any time at all. I go to my cabin in the afternoons and stay there all weekend, but I take my mobile phone with me, so all you need to do is call. Don’t be shy. We’ll meet again on Monday.”
He proffered his hand and we both shook it before leaving the room, and he closed the door behind us with a brief nod and a smile.
Back out on the street, as we walked toward our car, something had changed. What I saw, what we were surrounded by, was no longer in focus, it had been pushed into the background, as though a zone had been installed around me from which all meaning had been drained. The world had vanished, that was the feeling I had, but I didn’t care because Dad was dead. While in my mind the undertaker’s office in all its detail was very vivid and clear, the town around it was fuzzy and gray, I walked through it because I had no choice. I wasn’t thinking differently, inside my mind I was unchanged, the only difference was that now I demanded more room and hence I was excluding external reality. I couldn’t explain it in any other way.
Yngve unlocked the car door. I noticed a white band wrapped around the roof rack, it was glossy and resembled the sort of ribbon you tie around presents, but surely it couldn’t be?
He opened the door for me, and I got inside.
“That went well, didn’t it,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “Shall we drive to Grandma’s then?”
“Let’s,” I said.
He indicated and moved into the traffic, took the first left, then another left, onto Dronningens gate, and soon we saw our grandparents’ house from the bridge, yellow and imposing above the small marina and harbor basin. Up Kuholmsveien and into the alley that was so narrow you had to drive downhill a little way, then reverse into the footpath before you could drive up to and park by the front steps. I had seen my father perform the operation perhaps a hundred times in my childhood, and the fact that Yngve was doing exactly the same now moved my tears to the very edge of my consciousness, only a mental wrench prevented them from falling again.
Two large seagulls took off from the steps as we drove up the gentle slope. The space in front of the garage door was covered with sacks and garbage bags, that was what had been entertaining the gulls. They had pulled out all sorts of discarded plastic and strewn it around in their search for food.
Yngve switched off the engine but did not move. I too remained where I was. The garden was completely overgrown. The grass was knee-high, like a meadow, grayish-yellow in color, flattened in some places by the rain. It had spread everywhere, covering all the beds, I wouldn’t have been able to see the flowers had I not known where they were, now only scattered glimpses of color allowed you to guess. A rusty wheelbarrow lay on its side by the hedge, looking as if it had grown into the wilderness. The ground under the trees was brown with rotten pears and plums. Dandelions abounded and in some places stripling trees had sprung up. It was as if we had parked by a clearing in the forest and not in front of a detached house in the middle of Kristiansand.
I leaned forward and looked up at the house. The bargeboards were rotten and the paint was peeling in various places, but the decay was not as obvious there.
Some drops of rain struck the windshield. A few more drummed lightly on the roof and hood.
“Gunnar isn’t here anyway,” Yngve said, undoing his seat belt. “But I suppose he’ll be down eventually.”
“He must be at work,” I said.
“Figures for rainfall might go up in the holiday month, but that doesn’t attract accountants back to work,” Yngve commented drily. He withdrew the car key, put the bunch in his jacket pocket, opened the door, and got out.
I would have preferred to stay put, but of course that was not possible, so I followed suit, closed the door, and looked up at the kitchen window on the second floor where Grandma’s gaze had always met us whenever we came.
No one home today.
“Hope it’s open now that we’re here,” Yngve said, climbing the six steps that once had been painted dark red but were now just gray. The two gulls had settled on the roof of the neighbor’s house and were carefully monitoring our movements.
Yngve pressed down the handle and pushed in the door.
“Oh Christ,” he said.
I clambered up the stairs, and as I followed him through the doorway into the vestibule I had to turn away. The smell inside was unbearable. It stank of mold and piss.
Yngve stood in the hall surveying the scene. The blue wall-to-wall carpet was covered with dark stains. The open built-in wardrobe was full of loose bottles and bags of them. Clothes had been tossed all over the place. More bottles, clothes hangers, shoes, unopened letters, advertising brochures, and plastic bags were strewn across the floor.
But the worst was the stench.
What the hell could reek like that?
“He’s destroyed everything,” Yngve said, slowly shaking his head.
“What is that godawful stench?” I said. “Is something rotting?”
“Come on,” he said, moving towards the stairs. “Grandma’s waiting for us.”
Empty bottles were strewn halfway up the staircase, five, six, maybe, but the closer we got to the second floor landing the more there were. Even the landing outside the door was almost totally covered with bottles and bags of bottles and every step of the staircase that continued up to the third floor, where my grandparents’ bedroom had been, was full, apart from a few centimeters in the middle to put your feet. Most were plastic 1.5 liter bottles and vodka bottles, but there were a few wine bottles as well.