March 10, 2016
“My Struggle: Book Five” will be published in the United States by Archipelago Books in April.
...I got up, wrapped a towel around my waist, walked down the cold stairs, along the cold corridor, and into the equally cold shower room. After half an hour under the boiling hot water I went back upstairs and dressed, carefully and methodically. A black shirt and the black vest with the gray back. The black Levi’s, the studded belt, the black shoes. Not a drop of gel spared to make my hair stand up as it should. I had also saved a plastic bag Yngve had given me, from Virgin, and in it I put my notebook and a pen, as well as the copy of Knut Hamsun’s “Hunger” I’d bought with the last of my money, to give it a bit more weight.
I
made the bed into a sofa again, had a cup of tea with a generous
helping of sugar as I didn’t feel like any breakfast, sat looking out
the window, at the shiny telephone booth, sparkling in the sunshine, the
sunless grass in the park behind, the trees at the back, and then the
mountain that rose steeply, with the row of brick houses above, also in
shadow.
A chimney sweep came down
the street with his long brush wound into a ring over one shoulder. A
cat strolled across the grass. An ambulance drove down the road along
the mountainside, behind the brick houses, visible between them as it
passed, it moved slowly, no siren blaring, no lights flashing.
Right there, at that precise moment, I felt as if I would be able to meet whatever challenges came my way, as if there were no limits to what I could do. This wasn’t about writing, this was something else, a boundlessness, as if I could get up and go now, this very minute, and then just walk and walk to the end of the earth.
This
feeling lasted for thirty seconds perhaps. Then it was gone, and even
though I tried to summon it back, it refused to return, a bit like a
dream that goes, slips from your grasp as you struggle to recall it
after waking...
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