Karl Knausgaard - Dancing in the Dark

Why did he want to meet me? I had nothing that was of any use to him.

When we were together I always left early so that he would not discover how boring I really was. There was a kind of fever in me, two conflicting emotions, such as on the spring morning when we skived off school and went by moped back to his and listened to records on the lawn. It was fantastic, yet I had to bring it to a close, something told me I wasn’t worthy or couldn’t fulfil his expectations. So I lay on his lawn with my eyes closed, like a cat on hot bricks, listening to Talk Talk, whom we had discovered at the same time. ‘It’s my life,’ they sang, and everything should have been great, it was spring, I was sixteen years old, had skived off school for the first time and was lying on the grass with my new friend. But it wasn’t great, it was unbearable.

He probably thought I feared a reprimand for skipping school and that was why I got up to go. How could he have known that it was because it was much too good? Because I liked him too much.

Now we hadn’t said anything for perhaps five minutes.

I rolled a cigarette to fill the silence with a normal activity. He glanced at me. Took a packet of Prince Mild from his shirt pocket, poked a filter tip in his mouth.

‘Got a light?’ he said.

I passed him a yellow Bic lighter. He lit up and blew out a cloud of smoke, which hung in the air for a few seconds in front of him before dissolving.

‘How’s it going with your mum and dad?’ he said, passing me the lighter. I took it, lit my roll-up, crushed the empty can with my free hand and threw it down into the rocks by the water.

Dusk fell over the islands in front of us, heavy with the low pressure system. The sea was calm and grey. The can clattered against the rocks below.

‘It’s going OK, I think,’ I said. ‘Dad’s living in Tveit now with his new partner. Mum’s in Vestland. She’ll be home in a few days.’

‘Is it still the two of you living up there?’

‘Yes.’

Around the headland came a boat. The person at the helm had long blonde hair that shone against all the grey, and when we got up and lifted our rucksacks she waved and screamed something which was reduced to a faint squeal across the hundred metres between us.

It was Siv.

We loaded our rucksacks on board, sat down and ten minutes later we moored beneath her cabin.

‘You’re the last,’ she said. ‘So now finally we can eat.’

Hanne was there. She was sitting at the table. Dressed in a white shirt and blue jeans. Her fringe had grown, I noticed.

She smiled, a touch embarrassed.

Probably caused by the letters I had sent.

We ate shrimps. I drank beer, and the intoxicating effect on me was greater and more deeply seated than I had ever experienced before, presumably because of all the drinking over the previous days. It affected not only my head and my thoughts, it started in the depths of my body and slowly spread, and I knew that the wave that was coming would be long-lasting.

And so it was. We cleared the sitting room and danced as night fell over the skerries, we went outside and swam in the darkness, gingerly I walked along the diving board, above me the sky was black, below me the sea was black, and when I dived it felt as if I would never reach the water, I fell and fell and fell and then suddenly I was enveloped by cold salty water, I saw nothing, everything was black, but it was not dangerous, a few strokes and I broke the surface and could see the others standing on land like small pale trees in the darkness.

Hanne was waiting for me with a towel, which she wrapped around my shoulders. We sat high up the mountainside. Some of the girls below were swimming naked.

‘They’re skinny-dipping,’ I said.

‘I can see,’ Hanne said.

‘Don’t you want to join them?’

‘Me? No! That’s the last thing I would do.’

Silence.

She looked at me.

‘Would you like me to?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thought so!’ she said with a laugh. ‘What about you?’

‘The water’s so cold. It’d disappear.’

‘It?’ she said and smiled at me.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You’re a strange boy,’ she said.

There was another silence. I gazed at all the islets, a touch blacker than the sky above. A ribbon of light hung over the horizon. Surely day couldn’t be coming already?

‘It’s great sitting here with you,’ I said. ‘I love you.’

She shot me a rapid glance. ‘I’m not so sure about that.’

‘How can’t you be? I don’t think about anyone else apart from you. When I was in Vestland — oh, by the way, it was fantastic, even though you weren’t there — I was full of you, in a way. Absolutely drunk.’

‘You drink too much,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t you be a bit more careful? For my sake?’

‘Drunk with you,’ I said.

‘I know that! But seriously. You don’t have to drink so much, do you?’

‘Happy clappy Christian? Intoxicated by Jesus?’

‘No, don’t make jokes. I am a bit worried about you. Is that a problem?’

‘No.’

We fell quiet. On the diving board there were two figures fighting. One was Bassen, I guessed.

Both fell in the water. Those watching on land screamed and clapped.

Somewhere in the distance a lighthouse flashed. Music blared out from an open door in the cabin behind us.

‘Actually you know nothing about me,’ she said.

‘I know enough.’

‘No, what you see is something else. It’s not me you see.’

‘You’re wrong there,’ I said. ‘You are actually wrong there.’

We stared at each other. Then she smiled.

‘Well, shall we join the others?’ she said.

I sighed and got up. ‘For a bit more to drink, if nothing else,’ I said.

I held out my hand and pulled her up.

‘You promised!’ she said.

‘I promised nothing. Hanne?’ I said.

‘Yes?’

‘Can I hold your hand the short distance to the cabin?’

‘Yes.’

I put on my trousers and jacket and danced to ‘(Don’t You) Forget About Me’ by Simple Minds with Bassen while Hanne sat at the table chatting to Annette and watching us.

I stood next to her and poured vodka and juice into a glass.

‘You’re so sexy when you wear a jacket,’ she said.

‘Do you think so too?’ I said, looking at Annette.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course I don’t. Aren’t you two going to kiss soon?’

‘Not in this life by the look of things,’ I said.

‘Perhaps in heaven then?’ she said.

‘But I don’t believe in God,’ I said.

Hanne laughed, and I went over to Bassen, who was poring over the record collection.

‘Find anything?’

‘Well,’ he said. ‘There’s some Sting. But I need a kip. I’m off to England tomorrow. I don’t want to miss the boat.’

‘You can kip on the boat,’ I said. ‘You don’t need to go to bed now.’

He laughed. ‘Why not? You’ll have a free hand when I’m out of the way.’

‘OK, you win. I didn’t stand a chance.’

He took out the inner sleeve and held it at an angle so the record slid out. With his thumb on the edge and his other fingers on the label in the centre, he placed it on the deck.

‘How’s it going with you and Hanne?’ he said, swinging the pick-up arm to the first groove and lowering it with the little lever.

‘It’s not,’ I said.

‘You looked pretty happy out there on your rock.’

‘That’s as far as it goes,’ I said.

Then ‘If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free’ streamed out of the loudspeakers and soon everyone inside was dancing.

We slept in the loft, I lay dozing till late in the morning and dragged out the time for as long as I could after that, I didn’t want it to end, I wanted to be there, in the happiness I had felt, but then Siv had to take the last group back, and I jumped on board, sat quietly in the bow on the way across, found a seat to myself right at the back of the bus, pressed my forehead against the window and gazed out at the rolling Sørland countryside, which gradually became more and more urban until we reached the bus station and I got onto a bus that would take me home, to where dad was living now with Unni.