Karl Knausgaard - Dancing in the Dark

He swayed forward and put the empty bottle on the floor, took another and flipped the top off with the opener on his key ring. He always fetched three or four bottles at once so that he wouldn’t have to keep running into the kitchen, as he put it. Lifted it to his lips, glugged down a few mouthfuls. Mm, he said. Sun’s nice. Yes, I said. I’ve got a tan anyway! he said. Yes, I said. Me too. Know what?! he said, blowing out his cheeks. We’ve bought ourselves a solarium up north, you know. Have to in all that darkness. Yes, I said. I saw it when I was up there. Yes, you may have done, he said. Took another long swig, put the empty bottle down by the previous one, rolled a cigarette, lit it, opened another bottle. When do you want dinner? he asked. Makes no odds, I said. You two decide. Yeah, I don’t get hungry in this weather, he said, snatching the section of the newspaper that lay on the table. I rested my arm on the balustrade and looked down. The grass beneath the veranda was scorched, more yellow and brown than green. The grey road was deserted. This side of it was a dusty gravel area, beyond it some trees, behind them the walls and roofs of houses. They knew no one here, neither in the immediate vicinity nor in town. A small propeller plane flew past high in the blue sky. From the living room I heard Unni’s heavy footsteps on the floor. Another head-on collision on the E18, dad said. A car and an articulated lorry. Oh? I said. Almost all these accidents are disguised suicides, he said. They drive straight into a lorry or into a mountainside. No one can possibly know whether it was intentional or not. So they’re spared the shame. Do you really believe that? I said. Indeed I do, he said. And it’s effective too. A little swing to the side and seconds later they’re dead. He lifted the paper to show me. Not much chance of surviving that, is there, he said. The photo showed a car that had been completely crushed. No, I said, and got up, went downstairs and into the toilet. Sat down on the seat. I was slightly drunk. Got up again and splashed some cold water over my face. Flushed the loo in case anyone noticed such details. When I reappeared on the veranda he had discarded the newspaper and was sitting with his elbow over the balustrade, and I remembered he used to sit like that when he was driving the car in the summer, with his elbow sticking out of the open window. How old was he actually? I wondered and counted. Forty-three this May. Then I thought about his birthdays, how we had always bought him the same green Mennen aftershave and how I had always puzzled over what he did with it as he had a beard. I smiled. He rose to his feet unsteadily, paused for a second to find his balance. Then he walked into the living room, taking his usual long strides and hitching his shorts up from behind.

The idea he had sown, to work as a teacher in Northern Norway, had grown and grown afterwards. In fact, there were only advantages: 1) I would be far away, far from everyone and everything I knew, and totally free. 2) I would be earning my own money doing a respectable job. 3) I would be able to write.

And now here I was, I thought, looking down at the book in front of me again. At the end of the little vestibule just outside the staffroom, where our two toilets were, Torill hove into sight. She smiled but said nothing, bent forward and took out a thin file from her shelf.

‘Great being a teacher!’ I said.

‘Give it time. .!’ she said, flashing me a smile, and was off again. Outside, Nils Erik was crossing the playground with my pupils around him.

Five years ago I had been the same age as them. And in five years I would be the same age as him.

Oh, by then I would have made my debut. By then I would be living in a city somewhere, writing and drinking and living the life. I would have a beautiful slim lissom girlfriend with dark eyes and big breasts.

I got up and went into the staffroom, lifted the coffee Thermos and shook it. It was empty, I filled the jug with water, poured it into the machine, popped a filter paper into the funnel, measured five spoonfuls and started the whole shebang, lots of spluttering and gurgling, the slow rise of black liquid in the jug and the bright red eye.

‘All going OK so far?’ a voice worryingly close to me said. I turned. It was Richard, he was staring at me with those intense eyes of his and a broad smile. What was this? Could he move through the school without making a sound?

‘Yes, I reckon so,’ I said. ‘It’s exciting.’

‘It is,’ he said. ‘Being a teacher is a very special, a fine profession. And, not least, a responsible one.’

Why did he say that? Did he feel I needed to hear it, that it was a great responsibility, and if so, why? Did I give off an aura of irresponsibility perhaps?

‘Mm,’ I said. ‘My father’s a teacher actually. Bit further north.’

‘You don’t say!’ Richard said. ‘Is he from Nordland?’

‘No. It was the tax incentives that brought him up here.’

Richard laughed.

‘Would you like a cup?’ I said. ‘It’ll be ready any second.’

‘Pour it in the Thermos, will you, and I’ll have some later.’

He stole away as soundlessly as he had come. I didn’t know which was worse, pour it in the Thermos or will you . It was patronising whichever way you looked at it. Because I was only eighteen didn’t mean he could treat me like a schoolboy! I was an employee here, no different from him.

Straight afterwards the bell rang and the teachers came in one by one, some silent, others with chirpy one-liners for everyone. I had put the Thermos on the table and was standing by the window with a full cup in my hand. The pupils were already running around outside. I tried to put names to the faces, but the only one I could remember was Kai Roald, the boy in the seventh class, perhaps because I had sympathised with him, the reluctance I had sensed in his body occasionally countermanded by an interested, perhaps even an enthusiastic, glint in his eyes. And then Liv, the stunner in the ninth, of course. She was standing up against the wall, her hands in her back pockets, wearing a beige anorak, blue jeans and worn grey trainers, chewing gum and stroking away some strands of hair that the wind had blown into her face. And Stian, over there, standing legs apart, hands in his pockets, chatting to his beanpole of a friend.

I turned back to the room. Nils Erik smiled at me.

‘Where do you live?’ he said.

‘Down the hill from here,’ I said. ‘A basement flat.’

‘Under me,’ Torill said.

‘Where did you end up?’ I said.

‘At the top of the village. Also a basement flat.’

‘Yes, under me!’ Sture said.

‘So that’s how they’ve organised it,’ I said. ‘The trained teachers get the flats with the view and everything while the temps get the cellars?’

‘You may as well learn that right from the start,’ Sture said. ‘All privileges have to be earned. I grafted for three years at a teacher training college. There has to be some bloody payback.’

He laughed.

‘Shall we carry your bags for you too, then?’ I said.

‘No, that’s too much responsibility for the likes of you. But every Saturday morning you’re expected to come and clean for us,’ he said with a wink.

‘I’ve heard there’s a party in Hellevika this weekend,’ I said. ‘Anyone here going?’

‘You’ve settled in fast, I have to say,’ Nils Erik said.

‘Who told you?’ Hege said.

‘Heard it on the grapevine,’ I said. ‘I was wondering whether to go or not. But it’s not much fun going alone.’

‘You’re never alone at a party up here,’ Sture said. ‘This is Northern Norway.’

‘Are you going?’ I said.

He shook his head.