Karl Knausgaard - Dancing in the Dark

Hanne filled me to the brim. I had thought about her all day. It was a long time since I had erased her from my mind, she didn’t want to be with me, but now the whole rusty funfair, once shiny and gleaming, returned once more.

What would have happened if I had snuggled up to her last night?

Suddenly I saw everything in a new light. Suddenly I saw what had really happened.

Oh my God.

That was what she had wanted all along.

Oh, how obvious it was.

Oh my God. Oh my God.

Or was it? Was it only in my mind?

I half sat up, I had to ring her, then I slumped back on the sofa.

‘What is it?’ mum said.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘A thought just struck me.’

Down at dad’s the dinners had come to a complete halt, at the weekend he generally sat alone drinking, apart from the occasional afternoon when he was sober and received visits from relatives. I had told him that grandma had rung, yes, he knew, he said, and they’re right, your mother should take better care of you. I pay huge sums in child maintenance, you know. Yeah, yeah, I knew. But the fact that I was so upset about not being allowed to go there any more must have passed him by, or else that was precisely what hadn’t happened, for I had said I would pop by on his birthday, he was turning forty-two, and grandma and grandad were there. I could smell her perfume in the hallway, but by then it was too late, I couldn’t run off now, instead I opened the door to the living room where grandad’s brother Alf and his wife Sølvi were sitting, as well as grandma and grandad, Gunnar and Tove and their children. I didn’t look at grandma when I said hello, nor when I sat down at the table. I kept my eyes cast down as I ate a piece of cake and drank a cup of coffee. The gathering dispersed, some sat on the sofa, some took their plates out, the conversation swung this way and that. No alcohol was served, of course. I got up and went to the toilet, on my return grandma was in the kitchen.

‘That wasn’t how we meant it, Karl Ove,’ she said. ‘Not like that .’

‘I see,’ I said and walked past her.

So now all of a sudden she hadn’t said it?

I suppose she hadn’t rung mum either.

It then struck me that everyone here had heard about what had happened. They might have discussed it. Me and my behaviour. What the most appropriate way of dealing with it was.

While dad, who drank himself senseless several times a week, he could just invite them here and pretend nothing had happened and everything was hunky-dory.

Oh shit, why wasn’t Yngve here?

Why did I have to cope with all this on my own?

I stood my ground against grandma and grandad for a few more weeks, but then, one afternoon when I was down at dad’s, he asked me to go there with him and told me I shouldn’t be so childish, I was too old for that, of course I should visit them.

I did, and everything was as it had always been.

Dad formal, grandad formal, grandma who kept the wheels in motion, grandma who winked mischievously, who served us food and who took dad with her into the garden afterwards. It didn’t matter to me that dad had clearly split into two different personalities, one when he was drinking and one when he wasn’t, which was the one I was used to and knew, this was just how it was, it wasn’t something I gave much thought.

For the whole year, from when he moved out, through all the sentimental drunken blather, all the rows and reconciliations, through all the jealous spats and all the chaos he created, dad never tired of telling us about the day when his separation from mum would become a divorce and he would finally be free to do what he wanted. The moment it happened he would marry Unni. I have such a good relationship with Unni, he said, I’m so happy when I wake up with her beside me, I want to do this for the rest of my life, so we’re going to get married, Karl Ove, you may as well prepare yourself for that. Had it not been for the bloody law we would have done it a year ago. That’s how much it means to me.

That’s fine, I said in response, unless I was drunk myself and just smiled stupidly, perhaps even with tears in my eyes because that happened too, I was as sentimental as he was, and we sat there in our chairs, each with moist eyes.

When the day came he was true to his word. It was July. In the morning Yngve, Kristin and I caught the bus to dad’s flat, where they were walking around nervously, dad in a flamboyant white shirt, Unni in a white dress made from coarse material. They weren’t quite ready; Unni asked if we wanted something to drink while we were waiting. I glanced across at dad. He was standing with a beer in his hand. Help yourselves to anything in the fridge. I’ll get it, I said. I went into the kitchen and returned with three beers. Dad looked at me. Perhaps you might wait a bit with that, he said. It’s early yet and it’s going to be a long day. But you’ve got a bottle in your hand yourself! Unni said, and dad smiled, yes, well, I suppose there’s no harm in it.

Getting ready took longer than they had anticipated, I had time for two beers before we went to wait for the taxi to take us to the registry office. The sky was overcast and it was cold. I could feel the effect of the alcohol, it lay like a thin membrane over my thoughts, a canopy of mixed feelings. Yngve and Kristin had their arms around each other. I smiled at them, lit a cigarette and gazed down at the river, which also seemed heavy beneath the sombre sky, but the taxi arrived before I had even taken the first drag. We couldn’t all fit in, no one had considered that. Dad said he could walk, it was only round the corner. No, Unni said, not on your wedding day.

‘We can walk,’ Kristin said. ‘Can’t we, Yngve?’

‘Of course,’ he said.

And so it was decided. I went with Unni and dad to the registry office, where the witnesseses were waiting. I vaguely remembered them from the party at our house the summer before. A small bald man and a large buxom woman with a mass of hair. I shook hands, they smiled, we stood waiting in a room, dad looked at his watch impatiently, soon it would be their turn, but it would be quite a few minutes before Yngve and Kristin arrived.

They came rushing in through the hall, red-cheeked, ready for anything. Dad stared at them blankly, we went in, they stood in front of the official conducting the ceremony with a witness on either side, both said yes, passed each other the rings, after which dad was married again. They chose a name which was new to both of them, or rather two names, each of which was fine and elegant on its own, but in combination sounded ridiculously stilted and pretentious.

On our way to the Sjøhuset restaurant, where we were going to have lunch, dad said that one of the names, which was originally Scottish, had some connection with our family as actually in the distant past we had come from Scotland. Unni, for her part, said that the name existed in the ancestral past of her family. I could believe that, but what dad had said was just rubbish, that much I did know.

Yngve shared my opinion, for our eyes met when dad started talking.

We were shown to a table at the back of the maritime-themed restaurant and ordered shrimps and beer. Dad and Unni smiled and skål- ed, this was their day.

I had five beers there. Dad noticed, he told me to take it easy, not in a particularly unfriendly way, and I said I would, but I was in control. Yngve had flu, so he wasn’t going at it like me. Besides, Kristin was there, he kept turning to her, they sat there laughing and chatting about something or other.

I was alternately flying — that must have been because of the alcohol, at least I was able to take the initiative and talk to everyone with ease in that lofty manner that occasionally but not very often took hold of me — and alternately completely on the fringes, when everyone around the table, Yngve too, appeared alien to me, indeed not only that, but also totally irrelevant.