Karl Knausgaard - Dancing in the Dark

In fact I wasn’t going to go home when we arrived in Kristiansand, I was off to a class party in a cabin on an island, and Hanne would probably be there too. I had written a few letters to her over the summer, two of them from Sørbøvåg, where I walked along the river, alone with my Walkman, without a soul in sight, thinking only of her, and where I got up in the night and went outside, under the starry sky, walked up the river valley to the waterfall, climbed up alongside to sit high on a plateau beneath the stars and think of her.

She had answered my letters with a postcard.

But after Lisbeth my confidence was high, and even the sight of the vast sea could not dent it, or the urges in me, which were so vast that I was driven outside at night and tears formed in my eyes at all the beauty that existed in the world, but I couldn’t turn these urges to any use and nor could I sublimate them.

‘Hi, Elk,’ Jøgge said behind me. ‘Would you like a last beer?’

I nodded, and he passed me a can of Tuborg and stood next to me.

I opened it, foam squirted over the shiny lid. I slurped it up. Then I tipped my head back and took a proper swig.

‘There’s nothing like drinking for four days in a row!’ I said.

He laughed in that strange manner of his, it was almost ingressive, which was so easy to imitate and indeed everyone did.

‘Quite a girl, that Lisbeth,’ he said. ‘How did you nobble her?’

‘Nobble? I’ve never nobbled a girl in my life,’ I said. ‘You’re asking the wrong man.’

‘You were snogging for a week. She went back home with you. If that’s not nobbling, I don’t know what is.’

‘But that wasn’t me! It was her! She just came up to me! Then she put her hand on my chest. Like this.’

I placed my hand flat against his chest.

‘Hey, stop that!’ he shouted.

We laughed.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, looking at me. ‘Do you think I’ll ever get a girl? Honestly?’

‘ Ev er? Hon estly?’

‘Cut the crap. Do you think there’s someone who will have me?’

Jøgge was the only person I knew who could ask questions like that and really mean them. He could be completely open. He was as honest as the day was long. But good-looking? Maybe not many would call him that. Nor elegant. Robust, that was perhaps the word. Solid. A hundred per cent reliable. Intelligent. A good person. A sense of humour. But he was no male model.

‘There’s got to be someone,’ I said. ‘You aim far too high. That’s your problem. You want. . well, who do you want?’

‘Cindy Crawford,’ he said.

‘Now you cut the crap,’ I said. ‘Come on. Which girls do you usually talk about?’

‘Kristin. Inger. Merethe. Wenche. Therese.’

I spread out my arms.

‘There you are. The cream! You’ll never get any of them! You’ve got to understand that!’

‘But those are the ones I want,’ he said with his broadest grin.

‘Same here,’ I said.

‘Oh?’ he said, turning his head towards me. ‘Thought it was just Hanne with you?’

‘That’s something else.’

‘What’s that then?’

‘Love.’

‘Oh my God,’ he said. ‘Think I’ll join the others.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

They were playing cards around a table in the café, drinking Coke now; we were approaching land. I sat down with them. Harald, his protegé Ekse, Helge and Tor Erling were there. They didn’t like me, I had no real relationship with any of them, except on occasions like this. I was tolerated, but no more than that. A sarcastic comment was never far away. It didn’t matter though, I couldn’t give a shit about them.

Jøgge was different. We had been in the same class for two years, discussed politics until smoke came out of our ears, he was a Fremskrittsparti man, a right-winger of all things, I was a Sosialistisk Venstreparti supporter, the left. He liked good music, strangely enough, out there in farming country he was the only person I knew who had an ounce of good taste. He had lost his father when he was small, lived at home with his mother and younger brother, he had always had big responsibilities. Now and then people tried to tease him, he was an easy target, but he just laughed and so they gave up. The crowd we were sitting with used to bait him in a good-natured way and if he reacted they would just imitate his laugh, then he went quiet or laughed along with them.

Yes, he was a good man. He went to the business gymnas , as a couple of others in the team did, the rest went to the technical school, and I had written a few essays for him and been paid for it, he had been concerned that they shouldn’t be too good, the teachers would never swallow that. Once, when he had been in the danger zone, I had written a poem for him to hand in and his teacher considered that way out of character for Jøgge. But he scraped through; he had been obliged to interpret this poem, which he did satisfactorily and was awarded a pass grade.

I had been a little disappointed because I had put my heart and soul into that poem and I’d had a top grade in mind. But this was the business gymnas , so what could you expect?

In town, in one of the cafés, I would have probably looked in a different direction if Jøgge had walked in, he was a different breed, the wrong breed, but he may have known that himself. At any rate, I never saw him in such surroundings.

‘Hey, Casanova, want another beer?’ he said now.

‘Why not,’ I said. ‘But who are you then? Anti-Casanova?’

‘My name is Bøhn, Jørgen Bøhn,’ he said and laughed.

An hour and a half later I walked ashore in Kristiansand with my big seaman’s kitbag over my shoulder. The others were going up to Tveit, I was going to a party with Bassen, who was waiting for me when I came out of customs.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Had a good summer?’

‘So-so. And you?’

‘Good.’

‘Any women?’ I said.

‘Of course. A couple, I suppose.’

He laughed, and we headed for the bus station to catch a bus to the ferry quay. We had a kind of competition running that year, to see who could make out with most girls in our class, we chatted about that as we sat drinking beer and waiting for Siv to come in her boat and collect us. The approaching night was the last chance to change the score, which was heavily weighted in Bassen’s favour: he had snogged seven; I had snogged only four.

Occasionally I wondered what school would be like in the autumn. He was going down the science route, I was doing social subjects, until now we had been in the same class, which meant it was natural to hang out together.

In one of the first lessons we had sat next to each other, and after the form teacher had handed out slips of paper for us to write down three personal qualities we had Bassen had looked at my answer. Sombre, torpid and serious , I had written.

‘Are you a complete idiot?’ he had said. ‘You should add lacking in self-knowledge ! I’ve never seen anything like it. You aren’t bloody sombre or torpid, are you. And there’s no way you’re serious, either. Who’s put these ideas in your head?’

‘What did you write then?’

He showed me.

Down to earth, honest, randy as hell .

‘Chuck your piece of paper away. You can’t write that!’ Bassen said.

I did as he said. Then on a new piece I wrote, intelligent, shy, but not really .

‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Jesus! Sombre and torpid !’

The first time I went to his house, late that autumn, I was filled with respect, I could hardly believe it, he was all I wanted to be, and even later, when we saw more of each other, that thought was never far away. Also now. His presence pervaded every part of me, I admired everything he did, I noticed every look he cast, even across the sea in boredom, and reflected on it.