Karl Knausgaard - Dancing in the Dark

‘Why are you wrapping the blanket round him?’ he said. ‘Isn’t he big enough to do it himself? You’ve never wrapped a blanket round me when I ’ve been feeling a bit off colour.’

‘Oh yes, I have,’ Unni said.

‘Oh no, you haven’t!’ dad almost shouted.

‘Calm down now,’ Unni said.

‘That’s rich coming from you,’ dad said, and went into the kitchen, where he sat down in a chair with his back to us.

Unni chuckled. Then she went in to pacify him. I drank half of the beer in one go, belched up the froth and, realising that Kristin was there, swallowed a couple of times with my hand in front of my mouth.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

She laughed. ‘That’s definitely not the worst thing that has happened this evening!’ she said, so low that it could only be heard around the table, and then laughed in an equally muted tone.

Yngve smiled. I went to get another beer from the fridge. As I passed the newly-weds dad got up and went back into the living room.

‘I’m going to ring grandma,’ he said. ‘They didn’t even send me so much as one single flower!’

I opened the fridge door, took out a beer and then, suddenly, I was back in the living room reaching for the opener on the table.

Yngve and Kristin were staring awkwardly into the middle distance. Dad was speaking in a loud voice.

‘I got married today,’ he said. ‘Have you two realised? It’s a big day in my life!’

I threw the bottle top onto the table, took a swig and sat down.

‘You could at least have sent some flowers! You could at least have shown that you care about me!’

Silence.

‘Mother! Yes, but, Mother, please!’ he shouted.

I turned.

He was crying. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. When he spoke his face contorted into an enormous grimace.

‘I got married today! And you didn’t want to come! You didn’t even send any flowers! When it was your own son’s wedding!’

Then he slammed down the receiver and stared into space for a few moments. Tears continued to run down his cheeks.

In the end he got up and went into the kitchen.

I belched and looked at Unni. She got to her feet and ran after him. From the kitchen came the sound of sobbing and crying and loud voices.

‘What do you reckon?’ I said after a while, looking at Yngve. ‘Shall we go out on the town while we’re at it?’

He sat up.

‘I’m not well,’ he said. ‘Think I might have a high temperature. Best to go home. Shall we ring for a taxi?’

‘Without asking dad first?’ I said.

‘Without asking dad what?’ dad said from the doorway between the two rooms.

‘We were thinking of slowly making a move,’ Yngve said.

‘No, stay for a while,’ dad said. ‘It’s not every day your father gets married. Come on, there’s more beer. We can enjoy ourselves a bit longer.’

‘I’m not well, you know,’ Yngve said. ‘I think I’ll have to go.’

‘What about you then, Karl Ove?’ he said, gazing at me through his glazed, almost completely vacant eyes.

‘We’re sharing a taxi,’ I said. ‘If they go, I have to go.’

‘Fine,’ dad said. ‘I’ll go to bed then. Goodnight and thanks for coming today.’

Straight afterwards we heard his footsteps on the stairs. Unni came in to see us.

‘That’s how it is sometimes,’ she said. ‘Lots of emotions, you know. But you go. We’ll see you soon and thanks for coming!’

I got up. She gave me a hug, then she hugged Yngve and Kristin.

Outside I had to sit down on the kerb, I was much too tired to stand up for the minutes it would take the taxi to arrive.

When I woke up in bed the next day there was something surreal about all that had happened, I wasn’t certain of anything, other than that I had been more drunk than I had ever been before. And that dad had been drunk. I knew how drunkenness appeared in the eyes of the sober and was horrified, everyone had seen how drunk I had been at my father’s wedding. That he had also been drunk didn’t help because he hadn’t shown it until right at the end when we were alone in his flat and all his emotions were flowing freely.

I had brought shame on them.

That was what I had done.

What good was it that I only wanted the best?

I spent the last weeks of the summer in Arendal. Rune, the programme director at the radio station, ran a kind of agency, he sold cassettes to local petrol stations, and when one evening I complained that I didn’t have a summer job he suggested I sold his cassettes on the street. I bought them from him for a fixed sum, he wasn’t bothered about only making a small profit, and so I could sell them at whatever price I liked. The towns in Sørland were full of tourists in the summer, purse strings were loose, if you were selling music from the charts you were bound to be in with a chance.

‘Good idea,’ I said. ‘My brother’s living in Arendal this summer. Perhaps I can set up there?’

‘Perfect!’

And so one morning I loaded a bag of clothes, a camping chair, a camping table, a ghetto blaster and a box of cassettes into mum’s car, which Yngve had at his disposal all summer, sat in the passenger seat, put on my new Ray-Bans and leaned back as Yngve engaged first gear and set off down the hill.

The sun was shining, which it had done all July, there was very little traffic on this side of the river, I rolled down the window, stuck out my elbow and sang along with Bowie as we raced through the spruce forest, the gleaming river appearing and disappearing between the trees, occasionally alongside sandbanks where children were swimming and screaming and shouting.

We chatted about grandma and grandad, whom we had visited the previous day, about how time seemed to stand still there compared with the house in Søbørvåg, where in the last two years it seemed to have accelerated and caused everything to go into decline.

We drove through the tiny centre of Birkeland to Lillesand and from there onto the E18, the stretch I knew inside out after all the journeys back and forth in my childhood.

I put on a cassette by the Psychedelic Furs, their most commercial LP, which I loved.

‘Have I told you about the girl who came up to me in London?’ Yngve said.

‘No,’ I said.

‘“You’re the spitting image of the lead singer in Psychedelic Furs,” she said, and then she wanted someone to take a photo of us together.’

He looked at me and laughed.

‘I thought it was Audun Automat from Tramteatret you looked like?’ I said.

‘Yes, but that’s not quite as flattering,’ he said.

We drove past Knut Hamsun’s Nørholm property, I leaned forward to look past Yngve and into the grounds, I had been there once, on a class trip when I was in the ninth, we were shown round by Hamsun’s son and saw the cottage where he wrote and a few pieces of furniture he had made.

Now it was empty and looked overgrown.

‘Do you remember dad saying he had seen Hamsun on the bus to Grimstad once?’

‘No,’ Yngve said. ‘Did he say that?’

‘Yes, an old man with a stick and a white beard.’

Yngve shook his head. ‘Imagine all the lies he’s told us over the years. There must be loads we still believe without realising it.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I can’t say I’m sorry he’s moving.’

‘No,’ Yngve said. ‘Nor me.’

Dad and Unni had got jobs in Northern Norway, they were going to work at the same gymnas and during recent weeks had packed everything they owned and sent it north. They would be driving up in a couple of days’ time.

‘Has Kristin recovered from the wedding?’ I said. ‘I assume it must have been a bit of a shock?’

‘It was somewhat special, yes,’ he said.