Karl Knausgaard: Dancing in the Dark

‘You’re free in the first lesson, aren’t you?’ I said.

He nodded. His cheeks were slightly flushed. His hair was black and he had the same unruly tufts of hair that my old best friend had. His eyes were light blue.

‘I’m so damned nervous,’ I said, sitting down in the chair opposite.

‘What are you nervous about?’ he said. ‘You know there are only five or six pupils in each class, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I do,’ I said. ‘Nevertheless.’

He smiled.

‘Shall we trade places? They don’t know who’s who anyway. I’ll be Karl Ove and you’re Nils Erik.’

‘Could do,’ I said. ‘But what do we do when we have to swap back?’

‘Swap back? Why would we have to?’

‘No, you’ve got a point there,’ I said, glancing out of the window. The pupils were standing around in groups. Some were running hither and thither. Scattered between them were also some mothers. The children were smartly dressed.

Of course they were. Some were here for the first time. It was their very first school day.

‘Where am I from, then?’ I said.

‘Hokksund,’ he said. ‘And me?’

‘Kristiansand.’

‘Great!’ he said.

I shook my head.

‘No, you’re wrong there,’ I said.

He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye.

‘You might think so now ,’ he said. ‘But just wait a few years.’

‘What’s happening in a few years?’ I said.

At that moment the bell rang.

‘In a few years you’ll think of your hometown as paradise on earth,’ he said.

What the hell do you know about that? I thought, but said nothing, just got up, took my coffee cup in one hand, the pile of books in the other and headed for the door.

‘Good luck!’ he said from behind me.

There were five pupils in the seventh class. Four girls, one boy. In addition to them, I was also responsible for the three in the fifth and sixth classes. So, in all, eight pupils.

When I stopped in front of the teacher’s desk and put my things down all of them were staring at me. My palms were damp, my heart was thumping and as I drew breath it was with a tremble.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘My name’s Karl Ove Knausgaard. I come from Kristiansand and I’m going to be your form teacher this year. I thought we might begin with a little roll call? I’ve got your names here, but I don’t know who’s who yet.’

While I was talking they exchanged glances; two of the girls giggled. The attention they were paying me was not hostile, I sensed that at once, it was childlike. They were children.

I took out the list of names. Studied it, studied them.

I recognised the girl from the shop. But the one who made the strongest impression on me was a girl with reddish hair and black-rimmed glasses. She was sceptical, I could tell. There was no sharpness from any of the others.

‘Andrea?’ I said.

‘Here,’ said the girl from the shop. She said it with downcast eyes, but as her voice trailed off she looked up at me.

I smiled to reassure her.

‘Vivian?’

The girl beside her giggled. ‘That’s me!’ she said.

‘Hildegunn?’

‘Yes,’ said the girl with the glasses.

‘Kai Roald?’

He was the only boy in the seventh class. Wearing jeans and a denim jacket, he sat fiddling with a pen.

‘Here,’ he said.

‘Live?’ I said.

A girl with long hair, a round face and glasses smiled. ‘Yup, that’s me.’

Then there was the boy and the girl from the sixth, and the girl from the fifth.

I put down the list and sat on the desk.

‘I’ll be taking you for Norwegian, maths, religion and science. You’re all very good, though, aren’t you?’

‘Not that good,’ said the redhead with the glasses. ‘We’ve always had unqualified teachers from the south who only stay for a year.’

I smiled. She didn’t.

‘What subjects do you like?’

They looked at one another. No one seemed to want to answer.

‘How about you, Kai Roald?’

He squirmed. A pink flush spread across his cheeks. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Woodwork maybe. Or gym. Not Norwegian anyway!’

‘And you?’ I said, motioning to the girl from the shop as I looked down at my list. ‘Andrea?’

She had crossed her legs under the desk and was leaning forward, drawing something on a sheet of paper.

‘I haven’t got any favourite subjects,’ she said.

‘Do you like them all or dislike them all?’ I said.

She peered up at me. A glint appeared in her eyes.

‘Dislike!’ she said.

‘Is that the same for all of you?’ I said.

‘Yes!’ they said.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘But the thing is that we have to be here for all these lessons whether you like them or not. So we may as well make the best of it. Don’t you agree?’

No one answered.

‘Since I know nothing about you, I’m going to spend the first few lessons getting to know you better and find out what we have to work on.’

I got up, took a swig of coffee and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. In the corner on the other side of the open-plan block someone started singing. A clear, high-pitched voice, that had to be Hege, and then some very young children’s voices joined in.

They were the first-formers!

‘So I thought I would simply start by giving you an exercise,’ I continued. ‘You have to write a page about yourselves. A presentation.’

‘Oh no. Do we have to write?’ Kai Roald said.

‘What’s a presentation?’ Vivian asked.

I looked at her. There was so little angularity about her chin that her whole face seemed almost square, though not harsh. She had something soft and puppy-like about her. Her blue eyes almost disappeared entirely when she smiled, and she smiled a lot, I could already see that.

‘It’s writing about who you are,’ I said. ‘Imagine you have to say who you are to someone who doesn’t know you. What’s the first thing you would write?’

She shifted her position on the chair and pressed her calf-like knees together.

‘Maybe that I’m thirteen years old. And in the seventh class at Håfjord School?’

‘Yes, that’s good,’ I said. ‘And perhaps that you’re a girl?’

She sniggered. ‘Yes, he’d have to know that,’ she said.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Write a page about yourselves. Or more if you like.’

‘Are you going to read it out?’ Hildegunn said.

‘No,’ I said.

‘What are we supposed to write on?’ Kai Roald said.

I smacked my forehead.

‘You’re right! I haven’t given you any books!’

They chuckled, they were children, they thought things like this were funny. I dashed to the staffroom, grabbed a pile of exercise books, handed them out and soon they were all writing while I stood by the window gazing at the mountain peaks across the fjord where they seemed to writhe their way upwards, so cold and black against the light airy sky.

When the bell rang at the end of the lesson I gathered my papers with an exuberant, almost jubilant, feeling in my body. It had gone well, there was nothing to be afraid of. And after twelve years of continuous education, the next moment — opening the door and going into the staffroom — was a particular pleasure: I had crossed the line, I was on the other side, an adult and responsible for a class of my own.

I put down my books and papers in front of my place at the table, poured coffee into a cup, sat down on the sofa and observed the other teachers. I was backstage, I mused, but what at first was a wonderful thought was immediately replaced by its antithesis, for this was not what I wanted, for Christ’s sake, I was a teacher , was there anything sadder than that? Backstage, that was bands, women, drinking, tours, fame.