Free My Struggle: Book 3 by Karl Ove Knausgård Page B

to the conclusion that cornflakes were best when they were crispy, before the milk had soaked into them. But after I had been eating for a while and they were beginning to go soft, filled as it were with both their own taste and that of the milk, plus the sugar, of which I had sprinkled a liberal quantity, I changed my mind;
that
was when they were at their best.
    Or was it?
    Dad went into the living room with a cup in his hand, he didn’t usually have breakfast, but sat in there smoking and drinking coffee instead. Yngve came in, sat down on his chair without saying a word, poured out some cornflakes and milk, sprinkled sugar over the top, and started wolfing it down.
    “Looking forward to it?” he said at length.
    “A little,” I said.
    “It’s nothing to look forward to,” he said.
    “Yes, it is,” Mom said. “You certainly looked forward to starting school anyway. I can remember it well. Can you?”
    “Ye-es,” Yngve said. “I suppose I can.”
    He cycled to school, usually a little while before Dad left, unless Dad had some work to do before the first lesson, that is, which was sometimes the case. Yngve was not allowed to have a lift, except on very special occasions, such as when it had snowed a lot overnight, because he wasn’t to have any advantages just because his father was a teacher at the school.
    When breakfast was finished and they had left, I sat with Mom in the kitchen. She read the newspaper, I chatted.
    “Do you think we’ll have to write in the first lesson, Mom?” I asked. “Or is it usually math? Leif Tore says we’ll have drawing so that we can relax a bit at the beginning, and not everyone can write. Or add and subtract. Only me actually. As far as I know at least. I learned when I was five and a half. Do you remember?”
    “Remember when you learned to read? What do you mean?” Mom said.
    “That time outside the bus station when I read the sign? ‘Kaffe-fetteria?’ You laughed. Yngve laughed, too. Now I know it’s called ‘kafeteria.’ Shall I read some headlines?”
    Mom nodded. I read aloud. Bit staccato, but everything was correct.
    “You managed that nicely,” she said. “You’ll do really well at school.”
    She scratched an ear as she read, the way only she could, she held her ear between her fingers and moved them back and forth incredibly fast, just like a cat.
    She put down the newspaper and looked at me.
    “Are you looking forward to it?” she asked.
    “And how,” I said.
    She smiled, patted me on the head, got up, and started to clear the table. I went to my room. School didn’t begin until ten o’clock as it was the first day. Nevertheless, we ended up being short of time, which was often the case with Mom, she was pretty absentminded when it came to matters like this. From the window I saw the excitement mounting outside the houses where there were children starting school, that is, in the families with Geir, Leif Tore, Trond, Geir Håkon, and Marianne, hair was combed, dresses and shirts were straightened, photographs taken. When it was my turn to stand outside, smiling at Mom, with one hand shielding my eyes from the sun, which had moved above the tops of the spruce trees by this time, everyone had gone. We were the last, and all of a sudden we were late, so Mom, who had taken the day off work for the occasion, hurried me along, I opened the door of the green VW, pushed the seat forward, and got in the back while she rummaged for the key in her shoulder bag and inserted it in the ignition. She lit a cigarette, reversed after casting a quick glance over her shoulder, put the car in first gear a few meters up the hill, and drove down. The roar of the engine resounded off the brick walls. I moved to the middle of the car so that I could see between the two seats at the front. The two white gas holders across Tromøya Sound, the wild cherry tree, Kristen’s red house, then the road down to the marina where we almost never went, along the route where in