Karl Knausgaard - Dancing in the Dark

‘I’ve wondered about that many times myself,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’

We ate for a while without speaking. It was odd to think we had been in Sørbøvåg only this morning. It seemed like much longer. It was a different world.

‘Well, I don’t have a good answer to that,’ she said at length. ‘There were so many reasons. Divorce would have been a defeat. And then we’d been together all our lives. That creates a lot of bonds of course. And I loved him, that goes without saying.’

‘I don’t quite understand that,’ I said. ‘But I hear what you say.’

‘You can say what you like about your father,’ she said. ‘But he wasn’t boring to live with.’

‘No,’ I said and stood up to get my tobacco pouch from my jacket in the hall.

‘What about Kjartan then?’ I said as I returned. ‘Surely there’s a kind of inner chaos in him too?’

‘Is there?’ mum said.

‘Isn’t there?’ I said, and opened the pouch, took a rolling paper, filled it with tobacco and plucked a bit out to create better air flow.

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘At any rate, he’s searching for something. He’s been searching all his life, I would say. Now he’s found it he’s holding on to it.’

‘You’re thinking of communism, are you?’

‘For example.’

‘What about you?’ I said, rolling the paper back and forth around the tobacco. ‘Are you searching?’

She laughed.

‘Me, no! I’m trying to survive. That’s what I’m doing.’

I licked the gum on the edge, stuck it down and lit up.

The next evening I went out, first of all I sat around drinking with a few others in a gymnas friend’s house, we pinched some beers from the cellar and were thrown out, ran downhill to town, everywhere was covered with snow, it cracked and creaked beneath our shoes, and the freezing-cold wind was all around us, buffeting against our faces as we walked, we forced our way through, it was endless. At the Shell station in Elvegate we flocked around a little man who had been talking to one of the girls there and laughed at him, we sang, ‘Here comes toughie, toughie, toughie, tough,’ and then, ‘Here comes dickie, dickie, dickie, dick’ to the tune of ‘Here comes Pippi’. I kicked him up the arse as he turned and everyone laughed. After we had paid and left, he was standing there waiting for us all, with a pal. The pal was much bigger than him. Who could possibly have guessed? ‘Him,’ the little man said, pointing at me over by the pumps. The big pal came over to me, said nothing, then looked me straight in the eye. A second passed, perhaps two, then he nutted me. I collapsed in a heap. Hot blood ran from my nose down onto the concrete. What happened? I thought. Had he nutted me? It didn’t hurt.

Behind me I heard Hauk. I’m only sixteen! he was shouting. I’m only sixteen! I’m only sixteen! I sat up. They ran down the hill. Hauk and two others in front of him, the big man at the back. He was brandishing a knife. I got up and went over to the girls, whom no one had threatened. Marianne dashed into the toilet and emerged with an armful of paper, and I wiped off the blood. Not long afterwards Hauk and the others returned from the opposite direction, they were still frightened, went into the kiosk and asked the assistant to ring the police. The sparkle went out of the evening, the group dispersed, suddenly I was the only person left who wanted to carry on, and I had to catch a taxi home, sitting on the back seat while my nose and head pounded and throbbed.

The moment I opened the door I knew that Yngve had come home. Luggage scattered across the floor, his jacket on a hook, his sturdy boots. I decided to surprise him. My joy at the idea made my chest bubble with excitement, and when I opened the door, switched on the light and shouted, ‘Da-da!’ and he sat up in bed, utterly bewildered, I burst into laughter. I completely lost control, just kept on laughing, he looked at me, what happened, he asked, what’s up with your nose, I was laughing so much I couldn’t answer, he said, go to bed, Karl Ove, that’s best and we can talk tomorrow.

‘Have you just got back from China?’ I said, continuing to laugh, closed the door behind me and went into my room, where I undressed and clambered into bed still sniggering. My head felt as if it were a box full of objects swaying to and fro whenever I moved it. Now they were continuing to sway even though my head was still, I noticed, and then I fell asleep.

I woke up with my face aching. I remembered what had happened and sat up in horror.

Then I remembered Yngve was here.

Great.

There was a faint smell of smoke, they had lit the fire. Their low voices could be heard from the floor below, they were probably sitting in the kitchen and having breakfast.

I put on a T-shirt and a pair of trousers and went downstairs.

They looked at me. Yngve smiled.

‘Just need a wash,’ I said and went into the bathroom.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

My nose was slightly crooked, the bone beneath the bridge. In addition, it was extremely swollen and my nostrils were full of crusted blood. I washed it carefully and went back into them.

‘What happened to you yesterday?’ Yngve said.

‘Someone nutted me,’ I said, sat down and put a roll on my plate. ‘I didn’t do anything. A guy at the petrol station came over and just nutted me. Then he ran after the others I was with and chased them down the hill with a knife. Pure thuggery.’

Mum sighed, but she said nothing and in a second it was over because Yngve talked about China, which I assumed he must have been doing for a long time. He was full of it. He talked and talked, and I could visualise it: throngs of people swarming around Kristin when they arrived, attracted by her blonde hair, what fun it had been on the Trans-Siberian Railway, how wild it had been in Tibet and how foreign the colours were. Big yellow rivers and tree-clad cliffs, the alien cities and cheap hotels, the Great Wall of China, ferries and trains, crowds of people everywhere, dogs, hens, as far from the deserted snow-covered frozen countryside as it was possible to be.

Two days later, on New Year’s Eve, Yngve went to Vindilhytta while I went down to Bassen’s wearing shiny new shoes and a dinner suit I had rented. Hanne was there. I drank vodka and juice, I wanted to dance with her, we did, I drank more, I said we should get together even though it was ages since I had last seen her, it was almost an obsession, she laughed off my suggestion, I was offended, danced with other girls, got more and more drunk, and at twelve when everyone gathered together on the road, including people from the other houses in the vicinity, things degenerated, people lit rockets and held them until the very last second so that they whizzed around those standing there, people screamed and shouted, there were bangs and explosions, and I watched Hanne, she was shivering, and she was so beautiful, she really was, why couldn’t I be hers and stand there with my arm around her? I thought, and then a rocket landed by her feet.

People screamed and ran away.

But this was my chance, so I ran forward, I went to kick it away and just as I did, it exploded. It was a bizarre feeling, my calf went all hot, and looking down I saw my trousers in tatters. Blood was flowing. There was even a big hole in my shoe! I refused to go to A & E, someone washed the blood off with a cloth and wound a bandage around my leg, I shouted that I was Hamsun’s Lieutenant Glahn and had shot myself in the foot so that Hanne would realise how much I loved her, jumped around in tattered trousers and with the bandage soaked in blood, I’m Lieutenant Glahn, I yelled, and I have a vague memory of sitting on a chair in a corner and crying, but I am not absolutely sure. At any rate I got home at five, I remember asking the taxi driver to stop by the post boxes, as I always did, so the engine noise wouldn’t wake mum, and I put my trousers and shoes at the back of the wardrobe before going to sleep. The next morning I took off the bandage, put it in a plastic bag and shoved it to the bottom of the rubbish bin, washed the wound, which was quite deep, put a plaster over it and went in to have a hearty breakfast.