Karl Knausgaard - Dancing in the Dark

We drove down to Grimstad, past the Oddensenter Mall, the old Hotel Norge, where Hamsun had done some of his writing, up the steep incline and onto the wide plain.

‘And what was that business with the hotel?’ I said. ‘They booked a room at the hotel where we ate, they even went up to see it. But did they sleep there?’

Yngve shrugged.

‘Perhaps they went back there after we left?’

‘Didn’t look like that.’

‘No, but there are a few things in their lives they don’t plan. Such as when they said, if you remember, they wouldn’t be having a honeymoon. But the day after they caught the boat to Denmark and stayed at a hotel in Skagen.’

‘That’s true,’ I said.

We drove past Kokkeplassen, mum’s old workplace, where I had been at a nursery for a year, and I craned my neck, there had been a cliff there, we had climbed up a tree over the cliff every day, I seemed to remember. But it wasn’t a cliff, it was just a little slope, I could see now. And the tree must have been chopped down. Then we motored down the hill with Arendal below us and beyond it the island of Tromøya, in all its nostalgic splendour, flooded with sunshine.

‘Well?’ Yngve said. ‘Are you going to find a pitch right now?’

‘May as well,’ I said.

Nothing had been arranged in advance; Rune thought all you had to do was ask in a shop whether they minded if you set up outside in the street and used their electricity, and then hope they didn’t charge you a commission. Offer them a couple of hundred if they dithered was his advice.

Yngve parked the car, we walked down the pedestrianised street, I popped into a randomly chosen boutique and asked whether it was all right if I sold cassettes in the street outside and if they had a socket I could use. Might attract customers for them too.

No problem.

Once that was arranged we drove up to his bedsit. He had taken his prelims that spring, after finishing the foundation year in comparative politics before Christmas, and now he was working at the Central Hotel in town to earn some money for a trip to China he and Kristin were planning later in the autumn.

The bedsit he rented was by Langsæ, outside Arendal, and I would be staying for three weeks, sleeping on a lilo on the floor.

We hadn’t spent so much time together since we were little.

The next day he drove me to the town centre with all my paraphernalia. It was fantastic standing there in the quiet morning streets, with the sea so blue and heavy and still before us, erecting the old yellow 1970s camping table, arranging the cassettes on it — Genesis, Falco, Eurythmics, Madonna and anything else that sold well in those months — pulling the cable from the shop, plugging in the cassette recorder, sitting down on the chair, putting on my shades and pressing play.

The King of Arendal, that was me.

Beside my table was an ice cream stand, and soon after I arrived a girl started work there. She swept the street in front, carried in a few boxes, came out with a rag in her hand and wiped the outside of the window, went back in and stayed there.

She looked great. Reddish hair, freckles, big curves. When I saw her next, half an hour later, she was wearing a white apron.

Terrific!

But she didn’t look in my direction, not once.

That could be arranged.

Gradually people began to trickle by, they walked up and down the small pedestrian street, passed my table several times, I kept a careful eye on them and was quick to recognise faces and bodies. Some of them stopped and examined my selection of cassettes, and if they pointed to one, I jumped up, took an unopened one from the box beside the table, pocketed the money they passed me, thanked them, registered a cross on a sheet of paper I kept handy and sat down.

What a job!

At eleven sales began to take off with a vengeance. Through to one I sold loads of cassettes, then business flagged until I shut up shop at a few minutes to four, when Yngve came to collect me.

At his place I counted out the money due to Rune and put it in a plastic bag. The rest I spent when we went out in the evening. I bought bottles of white wine in ice buckets, danced, chatted to whoever came over to Yngve’s table. White wine, that was the discovery of the summer for me, it slid down like water, and the buzz it produced made me feel light and happy.

The next day the girl in the ice cream stand smiled at me when she arrived. A little smile, it was true, but unmistakable.

I knocked on her window at eleven and asked if I could have a glass of water.

She handed me one.

‘We’re neighbours,’ I said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Sigrid,’ she said.

Her accent was curious. The ‘r’ was hard. She also pronounced the ‘d’.

‘Where are you from?’

‘Iceland,’ she said with a beam.

That was as far as we got, she didn’t come over to exchange a word or two, a little smile and a nod sufficed: the day had begun.

A couple of evenings later she was suddenly standing in front of me at the disco. I was so drunk that everything except her face was blurred. When I woke up in her bed the next morning I couldn’t remember how I had got there, was mystified as to how I had managed it, everything was black apart from a couple of scenes from her bedsit: she is lying on the bed wearing only panties and I’m on top of her, we’re snogging, I kiss her magnificent breasts, I put my hand between her legs, no, she says, absolutely no way, and I get up and take off my underpants and stand in front of her in all my glory, which can’t have impressed her as much as I must have imagined it would because she laughed at me and said no again.

I held my head in shame. I had of course registered long ago that she wasn’t there, but I hadn’t considered where she was until the next second, when I sat up and said hello into the empty room.

No answer. Was she in the toilet perhaps?

I stood up.

Oh no, I was still naked.

On the table in the middle of the room there was a note.

Hi, King of Arendal!

I’ve gone to sell some ice creams.

See you again, maybe.

S.

(Put the door on the latch when you leave)

Why on earth had she underlined maybe ?

I got dressed, stuffed the note in my back pocket, put the door on the latch as she had requested and went down the narrow, gloomy and musty-smelling staircase. I hadn’t the slightest idea where I was. For all I knew, I could have been kilometres out of town.

The sunlight hit me in the eyes as I emerged.

A street, a house on the other side.

Where was the town?

I followed the street down, rounded a corner and suddenly saw where I was. Somewhere up by Skytebanen!

I strolled down to the centre, gave the ice cream stand a wide berth and sat down in Pollen with a Coke and a bag of rolls. The mere smell of seawater put me in a good mood.

After watching the boats entering and leaving the harbour, the gulls circling and the cars heading along Langbrygga on the other side, all beneath a deep-blue motionless sky, I went to see Yngve at the hotel. He was dealing with some guests, I sat down on the sofa and observed him, his patient smile and polite nod, speaking in English, dressed in his not quite immaculate hotel uniform.

When they had gone he came over to me.

‘Where did you get to then?’

‘I went back to the ice cream girl’s place,’ I said and could hear what a wonderful sentence that was to say.

‘How was it? Are you two together now?’

‘Don’t think so. She wasn’t there when I woke up. But she left me a note on which she had underlined the word maybe. See you again, maybe . What do you think that means?’