Karl Knausgaard: Dancing in the Dark

‘Fiction is fiction, I suppose,’ I said.

There was a silence.

‘You’re from Kristiansand, I hear,’ Frank said.

I nodded.

‘Have you got a girl down there?’

I mulled that one over.

‘Yes and no,’ I said.

‘Yes and no? That sounds interesting!’ Remi said.

‘Sounds like something for you,’ Frank said with a glance at Remi.

‘For me? No. I’m more the either-or type.’

There was another silence as they took a mouthful of coffee.

‘Have you got any children?’ Remi said.

‘Children?’ I said. ‘Bloody hell. I’m only eighteen!’

At last a comment from the heart.

‘It’s happened before in the history of the world,’ Remi said.

‘Have you two got children then?’ I said.

‘Frank hasn’t. But I have. A son of nine. He lives with his mother.’

‘He’s from the “or” time,’ Frank said.

They laughed. Then they both looked at me.

‘Well, we shouldn’t bother him any more on his first day here,’ Remi said and got up. Frank got up too. They took their jackets and went into the hall.

‘Think about the party tonight,’ Remi said. ‘We’ll be at Hege’s if you change your mind.’

‘He doesn’t know where Hege lives,’ Frank said.

‘You walk up the top road. Then it’s the fourth house on the left. You’ll see it straight away. There’ll be cars outside.’

He stuck out a hand.

‘Hope you’ll come. Thanks for the coffee!’

After I had closed the door behind them I went into the bedroom and lay down on the bed. Stretched out my arms and legs and closed my eyes.

A car came up the hill and stopped outside.

I opened my eyes. More visitors?

No. A door banged somewhere else in the house. It was my neighbours, whoever they were, coming home. After shopping in Finnsnes perhaps.

Oh, I was dying to ring someone I knew for a chat!

I couldn’t sleep, which I was also keen to do, to get away from all of this. Instead I went to the bathroom, undressed and had another shower. It was a way of tricking myself into believing something new was beginning. Not as good as sleeping, it was true, but better than nothing. Then, with wet hair and my shirt sticking to my back, I sat down and went on writing. I had the two ten-year-olds walking around in the forest. They were scared of meeting foxes and had cap guns in their hands to frighten them away if they showed up. Suddenly they heard a shot. They ran over to where the sound had come from and saw a rubbish dump in the middle of the forest. There were two men lying on the ground shooting at rats. Whereupon something seemed to flash through me, an arc of happiness and energy; now I couldn’t write fast enough, the text lagged slightly behind the narrative, it was a wonderful feeling, shiny and glittering.

The men shooting at the rats went on their way, the two boys pulled up two chairs and a table in the forest and sat there reading porn magazines. One of them, the one called Gabriel, stuck his dick in a glass bottle and suddenly felt a terrible stinging pain, he pulled it out and there was a beetle on the end. Gordon laughed so much he fell back into the heather. They forgot all about time, then Gabriel realised, but it was too late, his father was furious with him when he got home, punched him in the mouth, which began to bleed, and locked him in the tiny room with the hot water tank, where he had to stay all night.

When I had finished, it was getting on for eight, and seven closely written pages lay in a pile beside the typewriter.

So great was my sense of triumph that something inside me screamed out to tell someone. Anyone! Anyone!

But I was all alone.

I turned off the typewriter and buttered some slices of bread, which I ate standing in front of the kitchen window. A figure hurried past on the road under the greying though still blue sky. Two cars emerged from the tunnel, one right after the other. I had to go out. I couldn’t stay inside any longer.

Then there was a knock at the door.

I answered it. A woman of around thirty, dressed in only a T-shirt and slacks, stood outside. Her face had gentle features, her nose was big though not obtrusively so, her eyes were warm and brown. Her hair was dark blonde and tied in a knot at the back.

‘Hi!’ she said. ‘I just had to say hello. We’re neighbours. I live upstairs. And we’re also colleagues. I’m a teacher too. My name’s Torill.’

She proffered her hand. Her fingers were thin, but her grasp was firm.

‘Karl Ove,’ I said.

‘Welcome to Håfjord,’ she said with a smile.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘You arrived yesterday, I hear?’

‘Yes, by bus.’

‘Yes, well, we’ll have to talk another time. I just wanted to say that if there’s anything you need just ring the bell. I mean, sugar or coffee or bed linen or whatever it is you’re short of. A radio, for example. Have you got one? We’ve got at least one we don’t use.’

I nodded.

‘I’ve got a Walkman,’ I said. ‘But thanks anyway. It was very kind of you to pop down!’

Very kind .

She smiled.

‘See you then,’ she said.

‘Yes, see you,’ I said.

I stood in the hall long after she had gone. What had happened actually?

Every meeting here was like a dagger to the soul.

No, I had to get out and walk.

I put on a coat, spent a few seconds in front of the mirror in the bathroom straightening my beret, locked the door behind me and started walking down the hill. Some way down you could see past the edge of the mountain and out to sea, the razor-sharp horizon against the sky. Two large very white clouds hung motionless, hovering on high. On the other side of the fjord a little fishing boat was chugging back towards the harbour. The fjord was called Fugleøyfjord. Bird Island fjord. And the island there was obviously Bird Island. OK, they, the first people who arrived here, must have thought: What shall we call this fjord? Fishfjord? No, that’s what we called the last one, didn’t we. What about Birdfjord then? Yes! Good idea!

I continued along the road past the fish-processing plant, which was deserted apart from the seagulls huddled on the roof, and on towards the bend which led to the higher part of the village. Beyond the last house the mountain soared straight up. There was no intermediate stage, which I was used to where I had grown up, those diffuse, hard-to-define places which were neither private property nor open nature. This was real nature, and not the low, gentle Sørland type of nature but wild, harsh, windswept Arctic nature, which confronted you as soon as you opened the door.

Were there a hundred houses here in total?

Way up here, beneath the mountains, by the sea.

I had the feeling I was walking on the edge of the world. That it wasn’t possible to go any further. One more step and I was gone.

But, my God, how fantastic it was to be able to live here.

Now and again I saw movements behind the windows in the houses I passed. The flickering lights of TV sets. All somehow submerged beneath the crash of the waves as they washed up on the shore below, or woven into it, for so even and regular was this roar that it seemed more like a quality of the air, as though the air could not only be colder or warmer but also louder or softer.

In front of me appeared the house where I assumed the girl they had called Hege lived, at any rate there were lots of cars in the drive, music was coming from an open veranda door, and behind the large 1970s-style windows I glimpsed a group of people sitting around a table. It was tempting to go over and knock on the door, they could hardly expect anything of me, after all I didn’t know anyone, a certain shyness would only be natural, so it would be OK just to sit there drinking without uttering a word until the alcohol kicked in and loosened everything in me, including my heart, which was now so small and constricted.