The Wolves of Eternity, page 1
Also by Karl Ove Knausgaard
A Time for Everything
My Struggle: Book 1
My Struggle: Book 2
My Struggle: Book 3
My Struggle: Book 4
My Struggle: Book 5
My Struggle: Book 6
Home and Away: Writing the Beautiful Game
(with Fredrik Ekelund)
Autumn
(with illustrations by Vanessa Baird)
Winter
(with illustrations by Lars Lerin)
Spring
(with illustrations by Anna Bjerger)
Summer
(with illustrations by Anselm Kiefer)
So Much Longing in So Little Space: The Art of Edvard Munch
The Morning Star
PENGUIN PRESS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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Copyright © 2021 by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Translation copyright © 2023 by Martin Aitken
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
Originally published in Norwegian as Ulvene fra evighetens skog by Forlaget Oktober, Oslo.
This book was translated into English with the financial support of NORLA.
The epigraph is from Revelation 21:4.
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Names: Knausgård, Karl Ove, 1968– author. | Aitken, Martin, translator.
Title: The Wolves of Eternity : a novel / Karl Ove Knausgaard ; translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken.
Other titles: Ulvene fra evighetens skog. English
Description: New York : Penguin Press, 2023.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023028991 (print) | LCCN 2023028992 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593490839 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593490846 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Philosophical fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PT8951.21.N38 U4813 2023 (print) | LCC PT8951.21.N38 (ebook) | DDC 839.823/74—dc23/eng/20230623
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023028991
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023028992
Cover design: Stephanie Ross
Cover images: Crow by Circular Puddle of Water, Christopher Harrison / Millennium Images, UK; (black background) Olga Siletskaya / Getty Images; (font sky background) Pochatenko / Shutterstock
Designed by Amanda Dewey, adapted for ebook by Cora Wigen
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
pid_prh_6.1_144937132_c0_r0
Contents
Cover
Also by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Helge
Syvert
Yevgeny
Vasilisa
Alevtina
The Wolves of Eternity: Vasilisa Baranov
Syvert
Yevgeny
Vasilisa
Alevtina
Syvert
Sources and Acknowledgments
About the Author
_144937132_
For Michal
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes;
and there shall be no more death,
neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain:
for the former things are passed away.
HELGE
I’ve just been listening to the Status Quo album Rockin’ All Over the World. I’m still shaking. I played it non-stop when it first came out. That was in 1977, and I was eleven years old. I hadn’t listened to it since. Not until now, when, sitting bored in the office, I began wandering along some pathways back into the past, a band that reminded me of another band, and then another, on the screen in front of me. The cover alone sent a tingle down my spine. The image of the world, shining in the darkest firmament, the band name in electric lettering and the album title underneath in computer script – wow! But it didn’t really knock me out until I pressed play and started listening. I remembered all the songs, it was as if the melodies and riffs hidden in my subconscious came welling up to reconnect with their origins, their parents, those old Status Quo songs to which they belonged. But it wasn’t only that. With them came shoals of memories, a teeming swathe of tastes, smells, visions, occurrences, moods, atmospheres, whatever. My emotions couldn’t handle so much information all at once, the only thing I could do was sit there trembling for three-quarters of an hour as the album played.
I had it on cassette – no one I knew owned a record player back then, apart from my sister, who only ever listened to classical and jazz anyway – and I played it all the time on the black cassette player I’d got for Christmas the year before. It ran on batteries and I used to take it outside with me nearly everywhere I went. Invariably, I sang along too. How brilliant to hear the album again now!
Status Quo, Slade, Mud, Gary Glitter, they were the bands we listened to. Those a bit older than us added in Rory Gallagher, Thin Lizzy, Queen and Rainbow. Then everything upended, at least it did for me, and all of a sudden it was Sham 69, the Clash, the Police, the Specials, nothing else would do. But they’re bands I’ve kept listening to, on and off. That’s never been the case with Status Quo. That’s why it hit me the way it did, like an explosion. And it’s why suddenly I cried when I heard the chorus of the title song.
It wasn’t as if there was much good happening that year, 1977, certainly not in my own life, it was more the feeling that something was happening, and not least that something existed.
That I existed. And that I was there.
In my room, for example.
Yes, the smell of the electric heater.
The music on the cassette player.
Not too loud, because Dad was home, but loud enough for the feelings to pervade me.
The snow outside. The smell of it when it was wet, as much rain as snow.
An ai laik it ai laik it ai laik ai laik it ai la la la la laik it la la la laik it.
Hilde, opening the door.
‘There’s a girl hanging around outside. Do you know her?’
I stepped over to the living-room window. Sure enough, a girl was traipsing up and down the road out there, on the other side of the fence. She stopped and looked up at the house. She couldn’t see me, but still. And then she started again, disappearing from view behind the bushes, reappearing, back and forth, following the line of the fence.
‘Do you know her, then, or what?’ said Hilde.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s Trude. She’s in the same year as me at school.’
‘So what’s she doing here?’
I shrugged.
‘Following me around, maybe.’
‘Ha!’ said Hilde. ‘You’re only eleven, you know.’
‘I’ve had loads of girlfriends,’ I said.
‘Kissed them on the cheek, have you?’
‘I’ve snogged a few.’
‘Go out to her, then.’
I shook my head.
‘Why not? Are you seeing someone else?’
‘She’s a bit special.’
‘Not right in the head?’
‘No, not like that. Just different.’
‘Sounds all right to me.’
‘That’s because you’re special yourself,’ I said, and looked at her; she lit up when I said it.
‘Not right in the head, I mean,’ I added.
Then the doorbell rang.
‘It’s Trude,’ Hilde said. ‘Aren’t you going to go?’
‘Can you do me a favour and say I’m not in?’
‘What’s it worth?’
‘Something.’
‘Half your sweets on Saturday.’
‘OK.’
I stood behind the stairs and heard Hilde say I wasn’t in and that she didn’t know where I was. I could see Trude trudge off home through the snow.
I don’t know if that was exactly how it was. I remember seeing her, and I remember having to give Hilde a load of my sweets for lying for me. But the thing I remember best is the snow, the feeling of snow, the atmosphere of it. It was foggy too. Soft white snow, grey fog. And Rockin’ All Over the World.
Is there ever a memory that isn’t affirmative?
Of course not, a person consists of memories that can only ever be affirmative, they’re what that person is.
But one of my memories stands apart in a way. One that isn’t connected with anything else. It was something I saw. And it was that winter, a few weeks before Christmas, 1977. But I can remember it without the help of any music. It’s a memory that shimmers, ungraspable inside me.
Acr
That night, I went down the road on my own. It was dark and still foggy, the snow had partly melted during the day, the road was covered in slush. I don’t know where I was going, or where I’d been, all that’s been erased from my mind. Maybe I was going down to the pontoons to see if there was anyone there, it was a place where we often used to hang out. Whatever: dark, foggy, the slushy road. Anorak gleaming in the road lighting. Across the bridge. The water black and cold.
But what was that?
Something shining down there.
Deep down in the black water, something was shining.
A few seconds passed before I realised what it was.
It was a car.
I saw then that a kerbstone was gone, there were wheel marks that went to the edge.
It must have just happened, if the headlights were still working.
I turned round and ran back up the road. I had to get to a phone and call an ambulance. But when I got to the houses I wasn’t sure any more. It didn’t have to be a car. It could have been something else. I might have been about to set a massive rescue operation in motion for nothing. What was Dad going to say then?
I came to our house and went in, took off my coat and my boots. Dad poked his head out of his office as soon as he heard me.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Up to the new shop,’ I said.
‘Tea’s on the table,’ he said. ‘And straight to bed afterwards.’
‘OK,’ I said.
I did what I was told. Ate the sandwiches he’d made, then went to bed. Lay for a long while in the dark, thinking about the headlights in the water, the car in the water, its headlights shining as I lay there.
The next day there was an ambulance, a police car and a crane truck down there. The day after that it was on the front page of the newspaper. Everyone was talking about it. Except me. Now, thirty-five years on, I still haven’t told anyone what I saw that night, or what I did. I know, you see, that I could have saved him if only I’d done the right thing. But I didn’t do the right thing, and he died. No one needs to know. It’s my memory, and mine alone, and unless something unforeseen happens, I’ll take it with me to the grave.
SYVERT
The airport shuttle was waiting outside the little arrivals hall in the drizzling rain with the engine running and its headlights on. I jogged towards it, put my rucksack in the open luggage compartment and got on, then sat down on one of the seats at the back. I recognised the driver who was standing smoking under the canopy wearing the bus company’s shapeless grey uniform; it was Eva’s father, Eva, a girl I used to go to school with. He gazed emptily across the car park, the car roofs, while shielding his cigarette in his cupped hand.
I wondered what he might be thinking. Sunday roast, with sprouts? The fact that no one liked sprouts, but ate them anyway because they went with the roast? Or did appearances deceive? Was his mind on kinky sex when he drove his bus?
He was so heavy the vehicle swayed slightly as he stepped inside. I counted the passengers absently, there weren’t many, ten including myself. They sat apart in silence. One, a guy my own age, but with much longer hair, had a pair of headphones on. The sound that leaked from them was like buzzing bees or something.
With his money bag at his hip the driver started coming down the aisle for the fares. When he got to me all I had was a thousand-krone note.
‘Haven’t you got anything smaller?’ he said.
‘I’m afraid not,’ I said.
He looked at me a second, diverted his gaze when I looked up at him, and began picking through the notes in his bag. The peak of his cap was wet and glistened in the light of the ceiling lamp just above his head.
‘I can’t give you change for that,’ he said.
‘What do we do, then?’
‘I’ll have to let you off, won’t I?’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
Shortly after, he threw the big engine into gear and pulled away from the forecourt. I got my headphones out of the pocket of my anorak and put them on, turned the cassette over in the Walkman and pressed play. It was Van Halen, their first album, and with that in my ears, the asphalt, the road lighting, the airport fencing and the faint thrum of the bus engine were as if foregrounded, while the landscape of trees, small outcrops of rock, river water and sand-covered shores seemed to draw back as if they belonged to some second-order reality.
* * *
*
It had been four months since I’d last been home. It had been Christmas then, I’d been on leave, the town was full of people I knew, and I’d been out every night. Now it was April, everyone else was back in Oslo or Bergen or Trondheim, and I’d done my stint. I thought it’d be a good idea to take a couple of months off and work out what I was going to do with my life, but as the bus went up the hill after the bridge, and the flatland outside the town emerged in front of us, I had the feeling I was only going to be bored. What was I going to do in the daytime?
I could forget about lying in bed all morning, unless I wanted Mum going on at me. She’d allow it for a week, maybe, as a kind of well-deserved holiday, but then she’d start nagging. I could hear her voice in my inner ear, the way she could shout my name as if pronouncing sentence.
We stopped at some lights. I lifted my knees and wedged them against the back of the seat in front, slid down into my own. On the other side of the window a cyclist stood with one foot on the ground, the other poised on the pedal. His lightweight rain jacket billowed like a carrier bag in the wind.
Either drawn-out and torturous – Syy-yvert! – or else a short, stinging lash – Syvert! – that was the sound of my name when it was she who uttered it. The fact that it had also been my father’s name was in there somewhere too. At least I imagined it was. At any rate, she was still angry at him for dying and leaving her saddled with everything.
* * *
*
Some teenagers were hanging around in a little group outside the Narvesen when we pulled into the bus station, but apart from that the place was as good as empty when I crossed the concourse to change buses. I tried the same trick with the new driver, only for him to thumb out nine hundreds and a fifty without a word, before pressing the rest of the change out of his coin machine and issuing me the familiar small, square, pale yellow ticket.
Just before the bus was due to leave, Gjert came running towards it. I could tell it was him straight away. We’d played for years on the same teams together, handball as well as football, so I could hardly fail to recognise his short, rather stocky, angular frame.
He stopped in front of the driver after he got on, produced a bus card from his wallet and started walking up the aisle towards the back, undoing the cord of his hood with one hand, pulling the hood back with the other.
‘Getting the bus now, are we?’ I said. ‘Lost your licence?’
He halted abruptly and his face lit up in a smile.
‘Syvert,’ he said. ‘Have they given you leave again?’
‘No, I’m discharged, as of today.’
‘Well done,’ he said, and sat down on the seat in front of me, leaning back against the window and putting one leg up on the seat beside him.
‘Not sure about it, to be honest,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t have minded staying on a few months, if I’d had the chance.’
‘You were a cook, weren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sounds like a decent turn.’
‘It was all right.’
The door closed, the bus pulled out from the empty departure area towards the traffic lights next to the railway station.
‘Have you lost your licence?’ I said.
‘No, course not. Only I bashed my car.’
‘Wouldn’t they give you a courtesy car?’
‘It’ll cost me more to get it fixed than I paid for it. I’m looking for a new one.’
‘I see,’ I said.
