Karl Knausgaard - Dancing in the Dark

‘What does it say in the textbooks?’ Reidar asked.

‘It doesn’t say anything,’ I answered. ‘As I said, no one knows.’

‘No one?’

‘No.’

‘Why should we learn that then?’ he said.

I smiled.

‘You have to learn about where we live. And that is, of course, the universe. Well, if we take a broader view of it, the cosmos. What you see above us every night. Or what you don’t see because you’re such tiny tots you’d have gone to bed.’

‘He-ey, we’re not tiny tots!’

‘Just joking,’ I said. ‘But the stars you can see when it’s dark. And the moon and the planets. You have to learn about them.’

I turned and wrote THE UNIVERSE on the board.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Can anyone in the class name any of the planets in our solar system?’

‘The earth!’ Reidar said.

Scattered laughter.

‘Any more?’

‘Pluto!’

‘Mars!’

‘Good!’ I said. When no more suggestions were forthcoming I drew the whole solar system on the board.

SUN

MERCURY

VENUS

EARTH

MARS

JUPITER

SATURN

URANUS

NEPTUNE

PLUTO

‘Here on the board it looks as if they’re right next to each other. But there’s an incredible distance between the planets. It would take many, many years to travel to Jupiter, for example. I’d like to give you an idea of the distances. So put on your coats and we’ll go out onto the football pitch.’

‘Are we going out? During the lesson?’

‘Yes, get weaving. Put your coats on and we’ll be going.’

They jumped up from their seats and converged on the line of coat hooks. I stood waiting by the door with the bag hanging from my hand.

They flocked closely around me as we walked across the pitch. I felt a bit like a shepherd, so different from these small frisky creatures.

‘Right, we’ll stop here!’ I said and took a ball from the bag. Placed it on the ground. ‘This is the sun, OK?’

They looked at me somewhat sceptically.

‘Come on. Now let’s walk a bit further!’

We walked for another twenty metres or so before I stopped and placed the plum on the ground.

‘This is Mercury, the planet that is closest to the sun. Can you see the sun over there?’

Everyone stared over at the ball, which cast a light shadow over the shale, and nodded.

Next I placed two apples, two oranges, the swede, the cauliflower and, last of all, right up by the door of the community centre, the grape, which was supposed to represent Pluto.

‘Do you all understand now how far it is between the planets?’ I said. ‘The tiny sun so far away, and Mercury, which is like a plum, we can’t even see it from here, can we. And all this,’ I said, looking at them as they stared blankly across the football pitch, ‘is just a tiny, weeny, weeny, weeny bit of the cosmos! Tinsy winsy! Isn’t it funny that the earth we live on is millions of miles away from the other planets?’

Some of them were thinking so hard you could see the smoke. Others were gazing across the village and the fjord.

‘Let’s go back in now,’ I said. ‘Come on. Run, run, run!’

In the staffroom I took out a copy of my short story, stapled the pages together and passed it to Nils Erik, who was sitting on the sofa and reading Troms Folkeblad .

‘Here’s the short story I was telling you about,’ I said.

‘Interesting!’ he said.

‘When do you think you’ll have read it? By tonight?’

‘Urgent, is it?’ He looked at me and smiled. ‘I was planning to go to Finnsnes this afternoon actually. Would you like to come, by the way?’

‘Love to. Good idea.’

‘Then I can read your short story by tomorrow, and we can have a little seminar afterwards?’

Seminar, which to me meant universities and academia, studies, girls and parties.

‘Great,’ I said and went to get a cup of coffee.

‘What actually were you doing outside with them?’ Nils Erik said to my back.

‘Nothing special,’ I said. ‘I was just trying to help them visualise the cosmos.’

When I entered the classroom for the next lesson three of the girls were standing in a huddle by the window and whispering excitedly. My entrance hadn’t made the slightest impression on them.

‘You can’t stand there nattering!’ I said. ‘The lesson has started! Who do you think you are? You’re pupils. You have to obey the rules and do what the teachers tell you!’

They spun round. On seeing I was smiling they just continued.

‘Hello there!’ I said. ‘Come and sit down!’

Then, with a dilatoriness I would later that day consider exquisite, because their movements became so strikingly sophisticated and their ungainliness suddenly transformed into feminine poise, they went to their seats.

‘I’ve read your presentations now,’ I said, handing out their books. ‘They were very good. But there are a couple of things we can sort out straight away since they apply to all of you.’

They opened their books to see what I had written.

‘Don’t we get grades?’ Hildegunn said.

‘Not for such a small exercise,’ I said. ‘I gave you the exercise mostly so that I could get an impression of you.’

Andrea and Vivian compared their comments.

‘You’ve written almost the same for both of us!’ Vivian said. ‘Are you so feeble?’

‘Feeble?’ I said with a smile. ‘You’ll get grades which will show you all where you stand soon enough. I’m not sure that’s much to look forward to.’

Behind me, the door opened. I turned. It was Richard. He went over and sat down at a table by the wall while motioning me to carry on.

What was this? Was he going to observe me?

‘The first thing we have to get to grips with is your dialect,’ I said. ‘You can’t write like you speak. That’s no good at all. You have to write jeg and not æ. Er and not e. Hvordan and not koss .’

‘But that’s what we say !’ Vivian said and twisted round in her chair to glance at Richard, who sat with his arms crossed and face impassive. ‘Why should we write jeg when we say æ , eh?’

‘And Harrison said we could write like that last year,’ Hildegunn said.

‘He said it was better to write something than to write correctly,’ Live said.

‘Last year you were at a school for children,’ I said. ‘This year you’re in a higher school. Where your language has to be standardised, as it’s known. This is how it is up and down the country. We can talk as we like, but when we write, it has to be standard Norwegian. There is nothing to discuss. Unless you want your essays covered in red ink and low grades, you have to do this.’

‘Oh!’ Andrea said, looking first at me, then Richard. The others giggled. I asked them to get out their books and then, when they had all turned to the same page, I asked Hildegunn to start reading. Richard got up, nodded briefly to me and left the room.

In the break I went to his office and knocked on the door.

He looked up from his desk as I walked in.

‘Hi, Karl Ove,’ he said.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I was just wondering why you came into my lesson.’

The gaze he sent me was partly probing, partly curious. Then he smiled and chewed his lower lip, this was a quirk of his, I had realised, his bearded chin jutted forward and made him resemble a goat.

‘I just wanted to see how you were getting on in the class,’ he said. ‘I will be doing that now and again. There are quite a few of you who have no training. I need to get an idea of how you are coping. Teaching is not easy , you know.’

‘I promise to tell you if I have any problems,’ I said. ‘You can trust me.’