After we had been there for a few hours and had settled down in two armchairs in a little room at the back of the club Sæterbakken joined us and asked if he could give us a foot massage. He was good at it, he claimed. I said no, not for me. Linda removed her shoes and put her feet in his lap. He started to knead and stroke while looking into her eyes.
‘I am good at it, aren’t I?’ he said.
‘Yes, that’s wonderful,’ Linda said.
‘But now it’s your turn, Knausgaard.’
‘Not for me.’
‘Don’t be a coward. Come on, take off your shoes.’
In the end I did as he asked, took off my shoes and rested my feet in his lap. In itself it was pleasant, but the fact that it was Stig Sæterbakken sitting there and squeezing my feet with a fixed smile on his face it was difficult to interpret as anything other than devilish, gave the situation a certain ambivalence, to put it mildly.
After he had finished I asked him about his last collection of essays, dealing with evil, then went for a little wander, drank one glass after another, and caught a glimpse of Linda, she was leaning against a wall with a girl I had seen at Valborg, Hilda, Wilda? Shit. No, Gilda.
Linda was so beautiful.
And so unbelievably alive.
Could she really be mine?
Hardly had I articulated the thought when her gaze brushed mine.
She smiled and waved to me.
I walked over.
The time was ripe.
It was now or never.
I swallowed, put my hand on her shoulder.
‘This is Gilda,’ she said.
‘We’ve met before,’ Gilda said with a smile.
‘Come here,’ I said.
She sent me a quizzical look.
Her eyes were dark.
‘Now?’ she said.
I didn’t answer, just took her hand.
Without a word, we walked through the room. Opened the door, went up the steps. The rain was pelting down.
‘I’ve taken you aside once before,’ I said. ‘That time it didn’t go very well. And maybe this will go belly up too. In which case, so be it. But there is something I want to say. About you.’
‘About me?’ she said, standing in front of me and looking up, her hair already wet, her face shiny with raindrops.
‘Yes,’ I said.
And then I began to tell her what she was to me. Everything I had written in the letter I told her. I described her lips, her eyes, the way she walked, the words she used. I said I loved her even though I didn’t know her. I said I wanted to be with her. It was all I wanted.
She stretched up onto the tips of her toes, raised her face to me, I bent forward and kissed her.
Then everything went black.
I woke up with two men dragging me by the feet across the tarmac into a gate entrance. One was talking on his mobile, he said, might be drugs, we don’t know. They stopped, leaned towards me.
‘Are you conscious?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Where am I?’
‘Outside Vertigo. Have you been taking drugs?’
‘No.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Karl Ove Knausgaard. I think I fainted. There’s no problem. I’m absolutely fine.’
I saw Linda coming towards me.
‘Is he conscious?’ she asked.
‘Hi, Linda,’ I said. ‘What happened?’
‘You don’t need to come,’ the man said on the phone. ‘It’s fine here. He’s conscious and appears to be coping all right.’
‘You fainted, I think,’ Linda said. ‘You suddenly collapsed.’
‘Oh Christ,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry about that.’
‘Nothing to be sorry about,’ she said. ‘What you said. No one has ever said anything as nice to me.’
‘Are you OK?’ one of the men asked.
I nodded and they left.
‘It was when you kissed me,’ I said. ‘It was like I felt something black come shooting up. And then I woke up over here.’
I got up, staggered a few steps.
‘It’s probably best to go home,’ I said. ‘But you can stay if you want.’
She laughed.
‘We’ll go to my place. I’ll take care of you.’
‘I love the idea of you taking care of me,’ I said.
She smiled and took a mobile phone from her jacket pocket. Her hair was plastered to her forehead. I surveyed my clothes. My trousers were dark with rain. I ran a hand through my hair.
‘Strangely enough, I’m not drunk any more,’ I said. ‘But I am hellishly hungry.’
‘When did you last eat?’
‘Yesterday some time, I think. In the morning.’
At that moment she got through to the taxi rank, rolled her eyes at me, gave the address and ten minutes later we were in a taxi on our way through the night and the rain.
When I first woke up I didn’t know where I was. But then I saw Linda and remembered everything. I snuggled up to her, she opened her eyes, we made love again, and it was so right, was so good I knew with the whole of my being it was her and me, and I told her.
‘We must have children together,’ I said. ‘Anything else would be a crime against nature.’
She laughed.
‘It’s meant to be,’ I said. ‘I’m absolutely sure. I’ve never felt like this ever.’
She stopped laughing and looked at me.
‘Do you really mean that?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I do,’ I replied. ‘If you don’t feel the same then that’s something else. But you don’t, do you. I can feel that too.’
‘Is this real?’ she said. ‘Are you lying here in my bed? And saying you want children with me?’
‘Yes, you do feel the same, don’t you?’
She nodded.
‘But I would never have said so.’
For the first time in my life I was completely happy. For the first time there was nothing in my life that could overshadow the happiness I felt. We were together constantly, suddenly reaching for each other at traffic lights, across a restaurant table, on buses, in parks, there were no demands or desires except for each other. I felt utterly free, but only with her, the moment we were apart I began to have yearnings. It was strange, the forces were so strange, and they were good. Geir and Christina said we were impossible to be with, we had eyes only for each other, and it was true, there was no world beyond the one we had built. On Midsummer’s night we went to the island of Runmarö, where Mikaela had rented a cabin, I found myself laughing and singing through a Swedish night, a happy chuntering idiot, for everything gave meaning, everything was laden with meaning, it was as if a new light had been cast over the world. In Stockholm we went swimming, we lay in parks reading, we ate in restaurants, it didn’t matter what we did, it was the fact that we did it that was important. I read Hölderlin, and his poems flowed into me like water, there was nothing I didn’t understand, the ecstasy in the poems and the ecstasy in me were the same, and above all this, every single day throughout June, July and August, the sun shone. We told each other everything about ourselves, the way lovers do, and even though we knew it couldn’t last, and the thought that in fact it might was frightening because there was also something unbearable about it, all this happiness, so we lived in it as if we didn’t know. The fall had to come, but we didn’t bother ourselves about it — how could we when everything was so great?
One morning when I was in the shower, she called me, I went into the bedroom, she was lying naked on the bed, it was by the window now, so that we could see the sky.