Karl Knausgaard - Dancing in the Dark

I woke up to someone knocking on the door. Outside, it was pitch black. I looked at my watch. It was half past five. I sat up, rubbed my hands over my face several times. There was another knock. The smell of hashish still hung in the air. I considered not answering, but when the third bout of knocking started I thought the person knocking must be sure I was here, I let some air in through a window, closed the sitting-room door behind me, went to the hall and opened up.

A man in his forties was standing outside. He was the father of one of my pupils although offhand I couldn’t say which. I had a faint rushing sound in my ears.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’m Jo’s father. I wanted to have a little chat with you. It’s nothing serious, but I’d like to talk about Jo. It’s been on my mind for a while to drop by, but it hasn’t been convenient until now. Is this a suitable time for you? I know this is not exactly school hours but. .’ He laughed.

‘No problem at all,’ I said. ‘Come in. Would you like some coffee?’

‘Please, if it’s on the go. But don’t make any especially for me.’

He walked past me into the kitchen.

‘I was just about to make some,’ I said. ‘I’ve been having a nap. It’s been a long week.’

He sat down at the kitchen table. Hadn’t taken off either his jacket or his boots. I filled the coffee pot with water.

It was always women who took care of everything to do with children and school. They were the ones who went to parents’ evenings, they were the ones who signed the slips children took home, they were the ones who did voluntary work and made sure school trips and so on were paid for.

I switched on the stove and sat down opposite him at the table.

‘Yes, our Jo,’ he said. ‘He’s not happy at school at the moment.’

‘Oh?’ I said.

‘No, he isn’t. He says he doesn’t want to go to school any more, he wants to stay at home. Sometimes he cries as well. If I ask him why, he won’t say. Or else he says it isn’t anything. But we can see there’s something wrong. He really doesn’t want to go. Well, he is. . he always got on fine before, when he was smaller. He liked school then. But now. . no. .’

He looked at me.

‘I’ve come to you. . erm, you aren’t his form teacher. . I know perhaps it would have been more normal to go and see her. . but he talks very warmly about you. He likes you so much. It’s Karl Ove said this and Karl Ove did that all the time. And so I thought I could talk to you about this. After all you know him.’

I was so upset when he said that, I hadn’t been so touched for many years. The trust he showed in me I had already betrayed. Not through anything I had done, but through what I had thought. Now, with him sitting opposite me, his face grave and tormented, it was obvious he loved his son, that for him Jo was unique and precious. I realised that what for me had been a minor matter, a maladjusted boy who cried for nothing, for him was major, it filled his life, indeed it was his life, everything he had.

My guilt burned in me like a forest fire.

I would have to make amends. I would have to make amends now, to the father, who fortunately, oh how fortunately, had no idea what I had been thinking. And then I would have to make amends to Jo. As soon as I saw him I would do that.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘He’s a fine boy.’

‘Have you noticed anything at school? Have there been any incidents?’

‘No, nothing specific. But I’ve noticed he doesn’t fit in. And that sometimes the others don’t want him along, or they make fun of him. Nothing serious though, if you know what I mean. That is, no violence or systematic bullying. I haven’t seen anything like that. I don’t think it happens either.’

‘No,’ he said, rubbing his chin as he looked at me.

‘But he’s a. . well, chubby lad. Others tell him that. And perhaps he’s not as good at ball games as some of the others. So he avoids them. And that means he’s sometimes left to his own devices. He goes around on his own.’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know what we should do,’ I said. ‘But it’s a small school. We’re not talking about a lot of pupils. Everything’s quite open. Everyone knows everyone else inside out. So if he was being bullied it would be easy to do something about it. I mean, these are not children we don’t know, big gangs or anything like that. This is Stig, Reidar, Endre. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? It shouldn’t be impossible to talk to them about it.’

‘No,’ he said.

Oh, he did trust me, he was thinking through what I had said, and it hurt, it hurt him, he was a father in his forties, I was a boy of eighteen, so should he listen to me?

‘It’s all fine in the classroom,’ I went on. ‘There may be the odd comment, but there is about everyone, more or less, and if anything more serious crops up of course it’s dealt with at once, so what we’re really talking about is the breaks. Maybe we can try to set up some activities he likes and can do, and get others to join in? I can talk to Hege about it, and then we can draw up a little plan. It might be as simple as talking to the other boys and explaining the situation to them. I don’t think they know how he feels.’

‘I think they do,’ he said. ‘I think they know all too well. They never come back to play with him any more, and they exclude him from their games.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘But I don’t have the impression there’s anything malicious in it or that it means much to them. It’s more that it’s just happened that way.’

‘Won’t it get worse if you talk to them about it?’

‘It’s a risk we have to take. It has to be handled sensitively. And they’re nice children, all of them. I think it’ll be fine.’

‘Do you think so?’ he asked.

I nodded.

‘I’ll have a word with Hege on Monday. Then we’ll put together a plan of action.’

He got up. ‘Then I won’t take up any more of your time.’

‘It’s not a problem,’ I said.

‘Thank you very much!’ he said, and shook my hand.

‘Everything will be fine,’ I said.

After he had gone I flopped down on the sofa. The sitting room was freezing cold, the window was still open. Noises filtered in from outside and filled the room, which in the atmospheric conditions became distorted, everything seemed to be close. It sounded as if the waves on the shore were beating against the house wall. Footsteps on the road, the crunch of the snow, seemed to come from out of thin air, as though a ghost were walking past, on its way to the sea. A car passed, the drone of the engine rebounded off the wall I was lying next to. Someone laughed somewhere, how eerie, I thought, the devils are out tonight. The state of disquiet Jo’s father had produced in me, the chasm between his trust and my betrayal, was like an ache in my chest. I got up, put on a record, the one I had been playing most of that year, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions’ latest, which I sensed would always remind me of the moods up here, lit a cigarette, closed the window, pressed my forehead against the chilly glass. After a while I went into the little study adjoining the sitting room, full of piles of books and papers, switched on the light and sat down at the desk.

The second I laid eyes on the sheet in the typewriter I saw someone had written something on it. I went cold. The first half of the page was mine, and then came five lines that weren’t. I read them.

Gabriel stuck his fingers up her wet cunt. Oh my God, Lisa groaned. Gabriel took his fingers out and smelled them. Cunt, he thought. Lisa was squirming underneath him. Gabriel knocked back a slug of vodka. Then he grinned and unzipped his fly and stuffed his hard dick up her wrinkly cunt. She screamed with delight. Gabriel, that’s my boy!