My Struggle: Book 3 Read Free Page A

the landscape that follows later; they are charged in very different ways. In that landscape every rock, every tree had a meaning, and because everything was seen for the first time and because it was seen so many times, it was anchored in the depths of your consciousness, not as something vague or approximate, the way the landscape outside a house appears to adults if they close their eyes and it has to be summoned forth, but as something with immense precision and detail. In my mind, I have only to open the door and go outside for the images to come streaming toward me. The gravel in the driveway, almost bluish in color in the summer. Oh, that alone, the driveways of childhood! And the 1970s cars parked in them! VW Beetles, Citroën DS 21s, Ford Taunuses, Granadas, Consuls, Opel Asconas, Kadetts, Ladas, Volvo Amazons … Well, OK, across the gravel, along the brown fence, over the shallow ditch between our road, Nordåsen Ringvei, and Elgstien, which traversed the whole area passing two estates apart from our own. The slope of rich, dark earth from the edge of the road down into the forest! The way small, thin, green stems had almost immediately begun to shoot up from it: fragile and seemingly alone in the new black expanse, and then the rampant multiplication of them the year after until the slope was completely covered with thick, luxuriant shrubbery. Small trees, grass, foxgloves, dandelions, ferns, and bushes eradicating what earlier had been such a clear division between road and forest. Up the hill, along the sidewalk with its narrow brick curb, and, oh, the water that trickled and flowed and streamed down there when it rained! The path off to the right, a shortcut to the new supermarket B-Max. The bog beside it, no bigger than two spaces in a parking lot, the birches thirstily hanging over it. Olsen’s house at the top of the little hill and the road that cut in behind. Grevlingveien, it was called. In the first house on the left lived John and his sister Trude, it stood on a plot that was little more than a pile of rocks. I was always frightened when I had to walk past that house. Partly because John might be lying in ambush there, ready to throw stones or snowballs at any passing child, partly because they had an Alsatian … That Alsatian … Oh, now I remember it. What a dreadful beast that dog was. It was tied up on the veranda or in the drive, barked at all the passersby, slunk back and forth as far as its tether would allow, whimpering and howling. It was lean with yellow, sickly eyes. Once it came tearing down the hill toward me, with Trude hard on its heels and the leash dragging behind it. I had heard that you shouldn’t take flight when an animal is after you, for example, a bear in the forest; the secret was to stand perfectly still and act cool, so I did, stopping the instant I saw it bounding toward me. It didn’t help a scrap. It couldn’t care less whether I was motionless or not, just opened its jaws and sank them into my forearm, next to my wrist. Trude caught up with it a second later, grabbed the leash, and yanked so hard it was wrenched backward. I hurried off, crying. Everything about that animal frightened me. The barking, the yellow eyes, the saliva that ran from its jowls, the round, pointed teeth, of which I now had an imprint in my arm. At home I didn’t breathe a word about what had happened, for fear of being told off, because an incident like this offered so many opportunities for reproach: I shouldn’t have been where I was at the time, or I shouldn’t have whined or, a dog, was that any reason to be frightened? From that day on, terror had me in its grip whenever I saw the brute. And it was fatal because not only had I heard that you should stand still when a dangerous animal attacks, I had also heard that a dog can smell fear. I don’t know who told me that, but it was one of the beliefs that people passed on and that everyone knew: dogs can smell if you are frightened. Then