Karl Knausgaard - Dancing in the Dark

‘Yes. Lively style. Actually I don’t have much more to say than that. I’m not exactly a literary expert or a writer.’

‘Is there anything you particularly liked?’

He shook his head.

‘Nothing really, no. The writing’s even and good. Hangs together well.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘What do you think about the ending in relation to the rest?’

‘It was a strong ending.’

‘That’s what I want, you know,’ I said. ‘Something completely unexpected, the bit about the father.’

‘It is as well.’

He filled his glass. His lips were already red from the wine.

‘Have you read Saabye Christensen’s Beatles by the way?’ he said.

‘Of course I bloody have,’ I said. ‘It’s my favourite novel. That was what made me decide to become a writer. That and White Niggers by Ambjørnsen.’

‘Guessed as much,’ he said.

‘Oh? Is it similar?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Too similar?’

He smiled.

‘No, I wouldn’t say so. But I can see you were influenced by it.’

‘What did you think of the blood bit? The bit that comes in the middle? Where everything changes into the present tense?’

‘I don’t think I noticed it.’

‘That was what I was most pleased with, in fact. I describe him seeing Gordon’s blood and veins and flesh and sinews. It’s quite intense in the middle there.’

Nils Erik nodded and smiled.

Then there was another silence.

‘It was much easier to write than I’d thought,’ I said. ‘It’s the first short story I’ve ever written. I’d written bits in papers and so on before, but that was quite different. That was sort of why I came up here. I just wanted to try and write a book. And then I began and well. . yes, all I had to do was write. It wasn’t difficult at all.’

‘I see,’ he said. ‘Are you planning to go into writing as a career?’

‘Yes, yes, that’s what this is all about for me. I’m planning to write another short story this weekend. Have you read Hemingway by the way?’

‘Oh yes. Part of growing up.’

‘A bit like that, yes. Straight to the point. Simple and clear.With weight behind it.’

‘Yes.’

I refilled my glass to the brim and drank it in one go.

‘Have you wondered what it would have been like if we had applied for a different school?’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, it’s such an incredible quirk of fate that it happened to be Håfjord. It could have been anywhere. Then we would have had to adjust to whoever lived there , wouldn’t we, and life would have been very different from what’s going to happen here .’

‘Not to mention the fact that two different people would have been listening to wine and drinking Chris Isaak. Or vice versa. The wine would have been listening and Chris Isaak drinking. Well, have you ever heard the like? Or is it: have you ever leard the hike? I’m all inside out! Spoutside up! Upside down!’

Nils Erik laughed.

‘ Skål , Karl Ove, and I’m glad it’s you sitting there and not someone else!’

We raised our glasses and said skål .

‘Although, if it’d been someone else would I have said the same to him?’

At that moment the doorbell rang.

‘That must be Tor Einar,’ I said, getting up.

He was standing with his back to me and staring down at the village when I opened the door. The grey August light hung between the mountainsides, seemingly of a completely different texture from that which illuminated the sky, for that was blue and gleamed like metal.

‘Hi,’ I said.

Tor Einar turned in a slow studied manner. Here was a guy who had plenty of time.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘May I enter?’

‘Step right in.’

He did so in the same precise punctilious way I had associated with his personality from the first moment I saw him. It was as though he had thought through his movements a couple of times before he executed them. All with a smile playing on his lips.

He raised his hand and waved in greeting to Nils Erik.

‘What are you two talking about?’ he said in broad dialect.

Nils Erik smiled.

‘We’re talking about fish,’ he said in his version of the dialect.

‘Fish and fanny,’ I said in mine.

‘Salty fish and fresh fanny or fresh fish and salty fanny?’ Tor Einar asked.

‘What’s the filleting difference, can you tell me that?’ I said.

‘Yes, now listen here: salty sole and sole salt, they’re not the same thing. Nor are fish and fanny. But they’re close. Incredibly close.’

‘Sole salt?’ I queried.

‘Yes. See, now you’re saying it.’

He laughed, hitched up the knees of his trousers and sat down beside Nils Erik.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘Have you done a round-up of the week?’

‘That’s what we were doing,’ Nils Erik said.

‘They seem to be a good bunch,’ Tor Einar said.

‘Are you thinking about the teachers?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘In fact, I already know them all, apart from you two.’

‘But you’re not from here?’ Nils Erik said.

‘My grandmother lives here. I’ve been up every summer and Christmas since I was small.’

‘You’ve just finished gymnas as well, haven’t you?’ I said. ‘In Finnsnes?’

He nodded.

‘You don’t know someone there called Irene, do you?’ I said. ‘From Hellevika?’

‘Irene, yes,’ he said, brightening up. ‘Not as well as I’d like, I must admit. How come? Do you know her?’

‘That would be saying too much,’ I said. ‘But I met her on the bus on my way here. She seemed nice.’

‘Are you meeting her this evening? Is that the plan?’

I shrugged. ‘She’s coming anyway,’ I said.

Half an hour later we were walking up the hill from the flat. I was drunk in that pure merry way you can be from white wine, when your thoughts collide with one another like bubbles and what emerges when they burst is pleasure.

We had been at my place, I thought, and this filled me with pleasure.

We were colleagues and on our way to becoming friends, I reflected.

And I had written a damn good short story.

Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure.

And then there was this light, dim down among humans and things human, attended by a kind of finely honed darkness which became diffused in the light though did not possess or control it, only muted or softened it, high up in the sky it was gleamingly clean and clear.

Pleasure.

And there was this silence. The murmur of the sea, our footsteps on the gravel, the occasional noise coming from somewhere, a door being opened or a shout, all embraced by silence, which seemed to rise from the ground, rise from objects and surround us in a way which I didn’t formulate as primordial, though I sensed it was, for I thought of the silence in Sørbøvåg on summer mornings when I was a child there, the silence above the fjord beneath the immense Lihesten mountain, half-hidden by mist. The silence of the world. It was here too, as I walked uphill, drunk, with my new friends, and although neither it nor the light we walked in was the main event of the evening it played its part.

Pleasure.

Eighteen years old and on my way to a party.

‘That’s where she lives,’ Tor Einar said, pointing to the house I had strolled past one evening a few days ago.

‘Big house,’ Nils Erik said.

‘Yes, she lives with someone,’ Tor Einar said. ‘His name’s Vidar and he’s a fisherman.’

‘What else!’ I said, stopping at the door and raising my arm to ring the bell.

‘Here everyone just walks in,’ Tor Einar said. ‘We’re in Northern Norway now!’

I opened the door and went in. From upstairs came the sound of voices and music. Smoke hung in the air above the stairs. We quietly removed our shoes and went up. The floor above was open plan with the kitchen straight ahead, a living room at the back to the left, presumably the bedroom was at the back on the right.