Karl Knausgaard - Dancing in the Dark

When we were alone, we were , of course. Autumn descended upon us, we walked into the deepening gloom, hand in hand or entwined, Cecilie both delicate yet strong-willed, open yet closed, full of platitudes yet passionately herself.

One evening we went to the primary school I had once attended, not so far from their house. I had been twelve when I left, now I was seventeen. The five years felt like an eternity, there was almost nothing that connected me with the person I had been, and I remembered next to nothing of what I had done then.

But when I saw the school before us, hovering in the mist and darkness, my memories exploded inside me. I let go of Cecilie’s hand, approached the building and pressed my hand against the black timbers. The school really existed, it wasn’t merely a place in my imagination. My eyes were moist with emotion, it was as though the whole bounteous world that had been my childhood had returned for an instant.

And then there was the mist. I loved mist and what it did to the world around us.

I remembered Geir and me running around with Anne Lisbet and Solveig in the mist, and the memory had such power that the thought was painful. It tore me to pieces. The soft gravel, the trees glinting with humidity, the lights shimmering, shimmering.

‘Strange to think that you actually went to this school,’ Cecilie said. ‘I don’t connect you with Sandnes at all.’

‘Neither do I,’ I said, gripping her hand again. We walked alongside the building, towards the annexe, which in my imagination was brand new. I craned my neck the whole way, running my gaze over everything I could, absorbing it all.

‘We must have been here at the same time, mustn’t we?’ I said as we clambered down the ‘steep’ slope to the football pitch.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘When you were in the sixth class, I was in the fifth.’

‘And Kristin was in the eighth and Yngve the first at gymnas ,’ I said.

‘And now I’m in the second at gymnas ,’ she said.

‘Yep, it’s a small world,’ I said.

We laughed, walked across the empty field and followed the gravel path through the forest to Kongshavn. Only a few hundred metres further on, the sensation of coming home, of recognising, was gone, we were stepping into the outer zone of childhood, where I had been only a few times and where the scenery assumed a dreamlike quality which I both recognised and discovered anew.

Everything was so odd. It was so odd to be here, and it was odd to be with Cecilie, the sister of Yngve’s girlfriend. It was also odd to go home to mum and our life there, which differed so starkly from the life I lived away from home.

I had started at another local radio station, it was bigger, all the equipment was new, the rooms were fantastic, they had asked if I wanted to work for them and I did. I still played football, I still wrote for the newspaper, and I went out more and more often. When I wasn’t with Hilde, Eirik and Lars, I drank with Espen and his friends, or with colleagues from the radio station, unless I was hanging out with Jan Vidar. It was hard to take Cecilie into this world. She was something different for me. When I sat in Kjelleren drinking she was infinitely distant; when I was sitting next to her she was infinitely near.

One problem was her devotion to me, it placed me in a superior position, which I didn’t want. Yet I was inferior to her, indeed as low as anyone can be, that was where I was for the weeks that became months because what I was slowly realising, the terrible truth that my relationship with her had revealed, was that I couldn’t make love to anyone. I couldn’t do it. A naked breast or a hurried caress across the inside of a thigh was enough, I came long before anything had begun.

Every time!

So there I lay, beside her, this girl who was such a delight, and I was pressing my groin against the mattress in an attempt to hide my humiliating secret.

She was young, and for a long time I hoped she wouldn’t realise, she probably did though, but I doubted she could imagine it was a permanent condition.

One evening she mentioned that her mother had asked whether she had considered going to the doctor for the contraceptive pill.

She said this with a smile, but there was expectation in her voice, and I, trying to repress it, or deceiving myself into believing this really wasn’t happening, began to look for a way out. Not that I didn’t want it, I did too of course, no, there were other problems, greater ones, for example, that we lived in separate towns and that I couldn’t spend all my weekends with her. Those were my thoughts, at the same time I thought about her devotion, it was immense, she would do anything for me, I knew that, not least through her letters, which were permeated with longing even though they were written barely hours after we had last seen each other.

No, I had to get out of this relationship.

She came over one Saturday morning at the beginning of December, intending to stay until the following day, when her parents would come to pick her up, they wanted to meet mum, after all she was the future mother-in-law of both of their girls. It was a kind of endorsement of our relationship, and perhaps I didn’t want this. We went for a walk, the countryside was frozen, the grass in the meadow below the house glittered with rime in the light from the street lamps, afterwards we had dinner with mum, and then we caught the bus down to the Hotel Caledonien, Cecilie was wearing a red dress, we danced to Chris de Burgh, ‘Lady in Red’, and I thought, no, I can’t finish this, I don’t want to finish it.

We caught the night bus home, walked hand in hand over the last part, it was cold, she snuggled up to me. We entered the house, took off our coats and I thought: I’m going to do it now. We went upstairs, Cecilie first, she opened the door to my room.

‘What are you doing?’ I said.

She turned and gaped at me in surprise.

‘Going to bed?’ she said.

‘You’re sleeping in there,’ I said, pointing to Yngve’s room, which was adjacent to mine.

‘Why?’ she said, looking at me with big eyes.

‘It’s over,’ I said. ‘I’m finishing with you. I’m sorry, but this is no good.’

‘What did you say?’

‘It’s over ,’ I said. ‘You have to sleep in there.’

She did as I said, her every movement leaden. I undressed and went to bed. She was crying, I could hear her clearly, the wall was thin. I put my fingers in my ears and went to sleep.

The next day was torture.

Cecilie cried, mum was wondering what was wrong, I could see, but she didn’t ask, and neither of us wanted to say anything. After a while her parents drove up. Mum had laid on a big brunch, now we had to sit there and have a nice time, both families. But Cecilie was silent, her eyes were red. Our parents made conversation, I chimed in with the odd comment. Of course they knew something was wrong, but not what, and probably thought we’d had an argument.

But we had never argued. We had laughed, played, chatted, kissed, gone on walks together, drunk wine together and lain naked in bed together.

She didn’t cry while they were there, she sat quietly and ate very slowly, her movements constrained, and I could sense her parents were very concerned, it was as though they were embracing her with their presence and their actions.

Then at last they left.

Thank God they were going to Arendal. It was far away, and the bridge Yngve represented between the two families was even further away.

Some time between Christmas and New Year Dad phoned. He was drunk, I could hear that from the slur. He didn’t quite have full control of his voice, there was an added timbre, although the tone didn’t sound any more resonant or complex as a result.