Karl Knausgaard - Dancing in the Dark

‘Oh, Karl Ove, what a one you are,’ she said.

‘It’s a terrible cliché, but I can’t stop thinking about her.’

‘You’ll never make it with her. It just won’t work. In fact, it is inconceivable.’

‘Saying that is not helpful,’ I said. ‘I have got to try.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to Finnsnes, go to the disco, miss the bus home and crash out at her place.’

‘Why can’t she come with us to the disco?’

‘She doesn’t like discos.’

It was a plan, and we followed it to the letter.

On Friday night we stood outside a house behind a bank, not far from a disco, Hege rang the bell and Ine came down.

If she was angry that her sister had tricked her, she didn’t show it.

They hugged, I looked down and tried to be as unassuming as possible, followed them up the stairs, sat down on a chair and not on the sofa so that she wouldn’t feel compelled to sit next to me.

She was just as casually dressed this time as last. Shiny tracksuit bottoms tight around her thighs and a plain white T-shirt.

She made some tea and they did the talking, I sat listening and offering the occasional comment.

The bedsit consisted of a single room with a little kitchenette at one end. The room was quite big, though by no means immense, and while I sat there I kept wondering what Hege had imagined. How could anything possibly happen here?

Ine made up a bed on a mattress on the floor, it was positioned right next to the door and that was where I was to sleep. Hege would be sharing the double bed with her.

Ho hum.

The light was switched off, the two of them whispered for a while, then all went quiet.

I lay on my back staring at the ceiling.

How strange my life had become.

As if in a dream a figure rose from the bed. It was Ine, she came over and slipped in beside me.

Jesus, she was naked.

She snuggled up to me, breathing hard.

We kissed, I caressed her whole body, her wonderfully large dark breasts, oh, I devoured them, and I felt her smooth hair against my thigh, and she was breathing heavily and I was breathing heavily, was it going to happen now, I caught myself thinking, with this stupendous motorbike girl?

She rubbed herself against me, and I came.

I twisted away and pressed myself against the mattress.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

‘Did you come?’ she said.

‘Mhm,’ I said.

She got up, crept back into bed and slid back into the dream from which she had so enticingly risen only a few minutes earlier.

And thet was thet, as Fleksnes used to say.

For the next few days my love grappled with the remainder of my pride. I couldn’t go to see her again. I couldn’t ring, couldn’t write a letter, couldn’t look her in the eyes again.

She was still all I thought about, but the incident in her bedsit had been so definitive and so humiliating that not even the most enamoured thoughts could withstand the pressure and slowly but surely they disappeared from my system.

Then it was just school again. School and writing and drinking.

But the days lengthened, the snow melted, spring was on its way. One day there was an envelope marked H. Aschehoug & Co. in my post box. I took it with me outside with the other letters, lit a cigarette, gazed at the jagged white mountains across the fjord gilded by the sun, which with every day that passed came closer to the village with its retinue of rays. The sight was invigorating, there was in fact a light that burned for us out in space.

A car drove past. I didn’t see who it was but waved all the same. Some gulls screeched over by the fish-processing factory, I glanced across, they were circling in the air above the quay. The waves lapped against the stones on the shore. I opened the envelope. There were my two short stories. So they had been rejected. There was a letter attached, I read it. No contributions had been selected, it said. The general standard had been too poor, the anthology would not be published.

So at least I hadn’t been rejected!

I walked up to the road and ambled towards our yellow house. Tor Einar’s old blue Peugeot was parked outside. Tor Einar was chatting to Nils Erik in the sitting room, along with his cousin, Even, a boy in the eighth class, it was Saturday, we were going to Finnsnes. As I turned on to the little path down to the door, they came out.

‘Are you ready?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘Are we going now?’

‘That was the idea.’

I went back up, opened the passenger door and got in. On the rear seat Even leaned forward and spread his arms across the front seats. He had kind blue eyes, dark hair, a small wispy moustache above his upper lip. His voice rose and sank in ways even he could not predict. Tor Einar started the car and drove slowly through the village, waving to the right and left to people on their way to or from the shop. I set about opening the pile of letters I had taken from the post box. The original twenty people I corresponded with had shrunk to twelve, still enough to ensure the post box was seldom empty. One of the letters was from Anne. She had worked as a technician on the radio programmes I had done in Kristiansand. She lived in Molde now, went to the university there or whatever it was, I wasn’t very interested, she was though, the letters I received were rarely less than twenty pages.

I opened it and took out the thick wad of paper. A small brownish lump came with it and fell onto my thigh.

‘What was that?’ Even said.

Christ! It was hashish.

‘What was what?’ I said, placing my hand over it.

‘What fell out. What did you get?’

‘Oh that?’ I said. ‘It was nothing. A friend of mine’s studying horticulture. She’s interested in trees. So she’s sent me a piece of bark off a rare specimen.’

‘Can I see?’ he said.

I stared ahead at the tunnel opening a few metres in front of us. What would he do if he knew what it was? Tell someone? There would be a hell of a fuss then. DRUGS SEIZED ON HÅFJORD TEACHER. They drank like nutters, but they didn’t have anything to do with hashish, marijuana, amphetamines or that sort of thing.

‘Let me see then!’ he said.

‘There’s nothing to see,’ I said. ‘Just a rare specimen of bark.’

‘Why did she send it to you then?’

I shrugged. ‘We had a relationship.’

Tor Einar glanced at me. ‘Tell us about it,’ he said.

‘Nothing to tell,’ I said, putting the lump in my pocket with one hand while grabbing the handle above the door with the other. Not that it was necessary, Tor Einar was driving carefully as always. He and Nils Erik had to be the only motorists in the village who kept to the speed limits.

‘Am I going to see it or not?’ Even said.

Strange how persistent he was.

I turned. ‘Give me a break,’ I said. ‘I’ve put it in my pocket now. It’s just a bit of bloody bark.’

‘But it was rare,’ he said.

‘Are you interested in bark ?’ I said.

‘No,’ he said, and laughed.

‘Well, there you are. Now I want some peace and quiet to read if that’s all right with you,’ I said, skimming through Anne’s pages.

When we returned a few hours later Tor Einar and Nils Erik were going to go skiing. They asked me if I wanted to join them, as usual I said no, I was going to write. The moment they were out of the door I took out the lump of hashish, warmed it up, mixed it with tobacco and rolled a joint. I drew the curtains, locked the door, sat down on the sofa and smoked it.

On the wall next to my Betty Blue poster Nils Erik had hung one of Charlie Chaplin. Sitting there, I imagined I was him and then I mimicked his walk. With my feet at a quarter to three and a stick happily whirring around in one hand I walked to and fro across the floor. It was a perfect imitation and I didn’t want to stop, I waddled up the stairs into my bedroom, which was bare except for a pile of clothes and a mattress against the wall, down again, did a circuit of the kitchen, back into the sitting room. I laughed several times, not because it was funny but because it felt so good. I was the tramp, I swung my stick and staggered around taking tiny footsteps, sometimes I lifted my hat and made a little pirouette to greet everyone. I could do no wrong. And my insides were lubricated to perfection, every movement rippled through my body, soon I was lying on the sofa and lifting first one shoulder, then the other, tensing my calf muscles, knees, abs, biceps, and it was as if I was both floating in the sea and the waves therein.