My Struggle: Book One by Karl Knausgaard Page A

said.
    â€œThat’s alright,” Dad said. “But you’ve got to be home by one.”
    â€œBut it’s New Year’s Eve,” I said. “Couldn’t we make it two?”
    â€œOkay. But two o’clock then, not half past. Is that understood?”
    So, on the morning of the thirty-first we cycled to the shop in Ryensletta, where Tom was waiting, gave him the money, and were handed two bags, each containing ten bottles, in return. Jan Vidar hid the bags in the garden outside his house, and I cycled home. Mom and Dad were in full swing, cleaning and tidying in preparation for the party. The wind had picked up. I stood outside my bedroom window for a moment watching the snow whirl past, and the gray sky that seemed to have descended over the black trees in the forest. Then I put on a record, grabbed the book I was reading and lay down on the bed. After a while Mom knocked on the door.
    â€œJan Vidar on the phone,” she said.
    The telephone was downstairs in the room with the clothes cupboards. I went down, closed the door, and picked up the receiver.
    â€œHello?”
    â€œDisaster,” Jan Vidar said. “That bastatd Leif Reidar . . .”
    Leif Reidar was his brother. He was twenty-something years old, drove a souped-up Opel Ascona, worked at the Boen parquet factory. His life was not oriented toward the southwest, toward the town, toward Kristiansand, like mine and most other people’s, but toward the northeast, to Birkeland and Lillesand, and because of the age gap I never quite got a handle on him, on who he was, what he actually did. He had a moustache and often wore aviator sunglasses, but he was not the average poser, there was a correctness about his clothes and behavior that pointed in another direction.
    â€œWhat’s he done?” I asked.
    â€œHe found the bags of beer in the garden. Then he couldn’t keep his damn mitts off, could he. The bastard. He’s such a hypocritical jerk. He told me off, him , of all people. I was only sixteen and all that crap. Then he tried to make me tell him who had bought the beer. I refused of course. Doesn’t have shit to do with him. But then he said he was going to tell my dad if I didn’t spill the beans. The fucking hypocrite. The . . . Jesus Christ, I had to say. And do you know what he did? Do you know the little shit did?”
    â€œNo,” I said.
    In the gusts of wind, the snow projected like a veil from the barn roof. The light from the ground-floor windows shone softly, almost clandestinely, into the deepening dusk. I glimpsed a movement inside, it must have been Dad, I thought, and sure enough, the next second his face took shape behind the windowpane, he was looking straight at me. I lowered my eyes, half-turned my head.
    â€œHe forced me into the car and drove down to Tom’s with the bags.”
    â€œYou’re kidding.”
    â€œWhat a prick he is. He enjoyed it. He seemed to be fucking reveling in it. Taking the moral high ground all of a sudden, the shit. Him . That really pissed me off.”
    â€œWhat happened?” I asked.
    When I glanced over at the windows again the face had gone.
    â€œWhat happened? What do you think? He gave Tom an earful. Then he told me to give the bags of beer to Tom. So I did. And then Tom had to giveme the money. As though I were a little brat. As if he hadn’t done the same when he was sixteen. Fuck him. He was lapping it up, he was, wallowing in it. The indignation, driving me there, giving Tom hell.”
    â€œWhat are we going to do now? Go there without the beer? We can’t do that.”
    â€œNo, we can’t, but I winked at Tom as we left. He got the message. So I called him when I got home and said sorry. He still had the beers. So I told him to drive up to your place with them. He’s picking me up on the way, so I can pay him.”
    â€œAre you coming here ?”
    â€œYes, he’ll be at my place in ten minutes.