Karl Knausgaard - Dancing in the Dark

I plumped down in the other chair.

Grandad was talking about the time he had fished for herring in the 1920s with his father, how you could hit the jackpot with one cast of the net and how that had actually happened once. His eyes gleamed as he recalled those times. He told us about the skipper who had stood in the bows as they approached Trondheim one evening, like a baying dog, he said laughing, because what he was baying for was women. He had spent a long time smartening himself up, now he stood at the very front of the boat sniffing the wind as they glided into the illuminated town. Then he talked about the time he had been the explosives boss on a road-building project: in the evenings they had played poker in the workmen’s hut and he had won time and time again, but he couldn’t spend the money, he had to buy a wedding ring for grandma and didn’t want the money for it to come from gambling, so he kept putting all the money back in the pot and sat watching the sweat pouring from the others’ foreheads. He laughed so much he had tears in his eyes as he described how the others had looked, and Yngve and I laughed too, grandad’s laughter was so infectious it was impossible not to. He was bent double with laughter, unable to speak and tears were streaming down his cheeks. But he not only entertained us with stories of the past, he wasn’t given to nostalgia, for as soon as he had regained his composure, he started to tell us about a trip he had made to America to visit his brother, Magnus. About how he had sat alone at night zapping through the endless variety of channels Magnus had, it was incredible, a miracle, and I smiled because he couldn’t speak English and understood nothing of what was being said as he sat there mesmerised in front of the television night after night.

Yngve shot me a look and got up. ‘Are you coming for a breath of fresh air?’

‘Yes, you boys do that,’ grandad said, leaning back against the sofa.

It was raining and we stepped under the overhang by Kjartan’s front door and lit up.

‘How’s it going with Hanne then?’ he said. ‘It’s a long time since you mentioned her.’

‘It’s going nowhere,’ I said. ‘We chat on the phone now and then, but it’s no good. She doesn’t want to go out with me.’

‘I see,’ Yngve said. ‘Might just as well forget her then, eh?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to do.’

He ground his heel into the soft gravel. Stopped, looked across at the barn. It was falling to pieces, the paint was peeling off here and there and the ramp to the hayloft was overgrown with grass, but even though the barn was decrepit it still stood out because the background — the green meadows, the grey fjord and the leaden grey sky — somehow thrust it forward, somehow elevated it.

Or else it was because the barn had been so important when I was young, it had been one of the most pivotal buildings in my young life.

‘Incidentally, I’ve met a girl,’ Yngve said.

‘Oh yes?’ I said.

He nodded.

‘In Bergen?’

He shook his head, took such a deep drag his cheeks were hollow.

‘In Arendal actually. It happened this summer. I haven’t seen her since then, but we’ve exchanged letters. And I’m going to meet her on New Year’s Eve.’

‘Are you in love?’

He eyeballed me. Such a direct question could go both ways; he didn’t always want to talk about things like this. But he was in love of course, he glowed in that peculiarly introverted way at any mention of her and probably wanted to talk about her all the time, at least if he was like me he would, and he was.

‘Yes, basically,’ he said. ‘That’s what it boils down to! To so few words! To one word, in fact!’

‘What does she look like then? How old is she? Where does she live?’

‘Can we start with her name? That’s the most practical.’

‘All right.’

‘Her name’s Kristin.’

‘Yes?’

‘She’s two years younger than me. She lives on Tromøya. She’s got blue eyes. Blonde curly hair. She’s quite small. . You went to the same school as her. She was in the class two years above you.’

‘Kristin? Doesn’t exactly ring any bells.’

‘You’ll recognise her when you see her.’

‘You’ll have to get together with her then.’

‘That was the idea.’ He looked at me. ‘Why don’t you come to the party? At the Vindilhytta cabin? If you’re not going to another party, that is.’

‘I don’t have any special plans,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I should.’

‘I’ll be going anyway. Come with me!’

I nodded and looked away so that he wouldn’t see how happy I was.

When we went back in, grandad was asleep with his chin resting on his chest and his arms folded.

It was five o’clock, Sølvguttene, The Silver Boys , was starting on TV, I went downstairs from my room dressed and ready. White shirt, black suit, black shoes. The whole house smelled of lamb. Grandma was wearing her finest dress and her hair was brushed. Grandad was in a blue suit. Kjartan a 1970s-style grey suit. The table was set, a white cloth, the best dinner service, green serviettes next to the plates. Four bottles of beer, room temperature, the way it was drunk here, and a bottle of aquavit in the middle. All that was missing was the food, which Yngve had gone out to fetch. Grandad had cooked it.

‘There are only five potatoes,’ Yngve said. ‘There isn’t even enough for one each!’

‘I can go without,’ mum said. ‘Then you can have one each.’

‘Even so,’ Yngve said. ‘One paltry potato for Christmas dinner. .’

I helped him to carry in the dishes of food. Steaming lamb ribs, square pieces of roast pork with crackling, some with tiny bristles intact, mashed swede, sauerkraut, red cabbage, five potatoes.

The lamb was delicious, grandad had cured it, soaked it in water and cooked it to perfection. The sole criticism of the meal, the most important in the year, was the lack of potatoes. You should never skimp on anything, and certainly not the potatoes! But I recovered from my disappointment and no one else seemed to give it a thought. Grandma sat hunched over the table trembling, but her mind was clear, her eyes were clear, she saw us and she was pleased to have us there, I could see. Just the fact that we were there, that was enough for her and always had been. Grandad wolfed down the meat, his chin glistening with fat. Kjartan hardly touched the food, he rambled on about Heidegger and Nietzsche, a poet called Hölderlin and someone called Arne Ruste, to whom he had sent poems and who had made some kind comments. He mentioned several other names in his monologue and all of them were spoken with a familiarity he seemed to assume everyone shared.

When the meal was over Yngve and I carried the plates and dishes out while mum whisked the cream for the rice pudding. Kjartan sat in silence alone with his parents.

‘I suggest we institute a Heidegger-free zone,’ Yngve said.

Mum laughed. ‘But it is quite interesting,’ she said.

‘Perhaps not on Christmas Eve?’ I said.

‘No, you’re probably right there,’ she said.

‘Shall we have the dessert a bit later?’ Yngve said. ‘I’m absolutely full.’

‘Me too,’ I said. ‘The lamb was good this year.’

‘Yes, it was,’ mum said. ‘Bit salty though maybe?’

‘No, no,’ Yngve said. ‘It was just right. It was perfect.’

‘Shall we start on the presents then?’ I said.

‘Could do,’ Yngve said.

‘Will you do the honours?’

‘OK.’

I was given an EP by Yngve, The Dukes of Stratosphear , a sweater and Wandrup’s Bjørneboe biography by mum, a torch by Kjartan and a big slice of salmon by my grandparents, as well as a cheque for two hundred kroner. I gave mum a cassette of Vivaldi she could listen to in the car, Yngve the solo LP by Marty Willson-Piper, the guitarist in The Church, Kjartan a novel by Jan Kjærstad. Yngve read out the names in a confident voice and distributed the presents with a firm hand, I scrunched up the wrapping paper, threw it into the roaring wood burner and took occasional sips from the cognac grandad had brought in. Yngve passed him a present from Kjellaug and Magne’s youngest daughter Ingrid, born many years after her siblings, and when he opened it and saw what it was he stiffened. Suddenly he was on his feet and heading for the wood burner.