Karl Knausgaard - Dancing in the Dark

He nodded, and we got into the car. We slowly drew away, said our goodbyes to east and west, and for every metre we covered part of the village disappeared for good for me, I didn’t look back and I would never, under any circumstances, set foot here again.

The chapel disappeared, the post office disappeared, Andrea and Roald’s house disappeared, Hege and Vidar’s house disappeared, and then the shop was gone, and my old flat, and Sture’s house. And there went the community centre and the football pitch, and then the school. .

I leaned back in my seat.

‘How absolutely wonderful that it’s over,’ I said as the darkness of the tunnel filled the car. ‘I’ll never do a job again in my life, that’s for sure.’

‘So you are a shipowner’s son after all?’ Nils Erik said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Same shipping, new wrapping,’ he said. ‘Whack a cassette in, will you.’

After a night in a cheap hotel in Tromsø I caught a flight for Bergen the next morning, and at three I jumped off the airport bus in Bryggen and headed for the Hotel Orion, where Yngve worked as a receptionist. I was wearing black cotton trousers, wide at the thighs, a white shirt, a black suit jacket, black shoes and a pair of Wayfarer Ray-Bans. Slung over my shoulder was my seaman’s kitbag. The sun was shining, the water in Vågen glittered, a gentle wind blew in across the fjord.

I saw myself as a kind of primeval inhabitant going to a city for the first time because every time a car revved or a bus or a lorry thundered past I gave a start, and the sight of all these faces moving back and forth on the pavement made me feel insecure. Then I was reminded of something Yngve had once said, that his friend Pål always called them prime evil inhabitants, and once that was in your mind it was impossible to see anything else.

I smiled and gleefully slung the kitbag over my other shoulder.

Yngve was at the reception desk when I entered, wearing the hotel uniform, hunched over a little map on the counter explaining something to an elderly couple in shorts, caps and bumbags. He looked up and motioned with his head to the sofa, where I slumped down.

As soon as the Americans had gone he came over.

‘I’ll have finished in about ten minutes. Then I’ll have to get changed and we’ll be off. OK?’

‘OK,’ I said.

He had a car now, a little red Japanese number he had leased from the volleyball team he played for, and half an hour later we were heading for his flat in Solheimsviken. It was situated some way up the mountainside, towards the end of a long row of brick-built terraced houses originally designed for shipyard workers.

We sat on the doorstep with cold beers in our hands. From the sitting room ‘Teenage Kicks’ by the Undertones wafted over, evidently this summer’s favourite band.

‘Are you going to Roskilde then?’ he said.

I nodded. ‘Think so.’

‘I may pop down there too,’ he said. ‘Arvid and Erling are going, but there are lots of others too, so I’ll just have to scrape together some money, then. . the Church are playing, you know?’

‘Are they?’

‘Yes. I wouldn’t like to miss out on the chance to see them.’

Cars were parked nose to tail on both sides of the street. People were constantly going in and out of the neighbouring houses. The town beneath us was buzzing, an endless stream of cars passing through the streets. In the sky there was the occasional flash of a plane, long white plumes of condensed water hovered in the air long after they had gone. The sun burned in the sky to the west. The roofs down the mountainside shimmered in red and orange, and between them stood trees swaying in the breeze.

After a while we went indoors, Yngve made pasta carbonara for dinner, and then we had another couple of beers on the doorstep. Our conversation flagged, it was as though a little distance had grown between us since we last met, but it didn’t matter, it could have been for all sorts of reasons.

In one of the letters he had sent he had, very discreetly, told me to remember to use a condom. I appreciated his concern, but I had smiled when I saw that, because he would never have been able to say it to my face. It was only possible in a letter, and then en passant . Or if he was drunk.

‘Are you still suffering after Kristin?’ I said after we had sat down.

‘It’s one big suffering,’ he said.

‘And you can’t get her back? There’s no hope of that?’

‘Do you think I would be sitting here with you if there were?’

‘Maybe not.’ I smiled.

‘It was my fault. I took her for granted. All of a sudden she didn’t want to go on, and by then it was too late. Shit, that’s the hardest part to deal with, that I could have prevented it. But I took it for granted. I didn’t value it highly enough.’

‘But you do now?’

‘Now I’m in the privileged position of being able to see what I had, yes.’

The sun was no longer shining on the doorstep, and I took off my sunglasses, folded them and put them in the breast pocket of my shirt.

‘You shouldn’t keep them there,’ Yngve said. ‘It doesn’t look good.’

‘You’re right,’ I said, and took them out again.

‘And while I’m at it, that studded belt of yours might have had its day.’

‘Possible,’ I said. ‘But I’ll give it a while yet.’

There was a silence. We smoked, gazed down at the sunless but warm street.

‘May I ask you something?’ I said at length.

‘Of course,’ he said.

‘When did you. . first have it?’

He glanced at me. Then gazed down again.

‘When I was eighteen. On the trip to Greece. When I went with Helge, if you remember. On Antiparos beach. At night. In the moonlight.’

‘Is that true?’

‘Yes, it was late but good. Or, in retrospect, it seems better than it was. Why do you ask?’

I shrugged.

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t slept with a girl yet? You’re not a virgin, are you?’

‘No, no, of course not,’ I said. ‘You know I’m not.’

We fell silent again. The air around us was full of noises. All the windows were open, all the shouting, bikes occasionally whizzing past, cars creeping slowly up the mountainside, the wonderful solid sound of car doors shutting.

It wasn’t a lie. Technically speaking, I wasn’t a virgin, I had penetrated that girl at the russ party — not much, a centimetre or two — but for Christ’s sake there had been contact, I had fucked. It wasn’t a lie.

‘I’ll order a taxi,’ Yngve said, getting up. ‘We’ll nip down to Ola’s first. Him you’ve got to meet.’

My possessions arrived a few days later, we fetched the boxes from the hurtigrute quay, put them in the cellar, and then I travelled down to Kristiansand, where I mostly stayed in Lars’ bedsit. After Roskilde we were going to hitch down through Europe together, and we planned the journey, first to Brindisi on the south-eastern tip of Italy, and then across to Athens, and from there to the Greek islands. I suggested Antiparos, he agreed. I managed to fit in a visit to grandma and grandad as well, and Gunnar, who’d heard I was in town, invited me to theirs on the last evening. I had to meet my cousins, we were a small family, as he put it, it was important to stay in contact. He picked me up from Rundingen, Tove was waiting for us with dinner, we spent the evening chatting, his two sons kept crawling all over him, and the fact that they weren’t frightened of him — indeed they exuded trust, this struck me every time I was there — gladdened my heart. No one said a word about dad, and that was fine, it seemed to me. I slept in their cellar, and in the morning, after a hurried breakfast, Gunnar drove me to the ferry terminal, where Lars and his girlfriend were waiting for me.