Karl Knausgaard - Dancing in the Dark

Dad started undressing.

I turned away. I had never seen him undress, I had never been in the same room as him before when he was doing something so intimate. Sitting on the bench, he folded his trousers, rolled his socks in a ball and undid his shirt.

I felt myself getting hot and flustered, didn’t know where to look or what to do with myself, because now he was taking off his underpants and for a few seconds he was completely naked.

I had never seen him naked before, and a shudder went through me as I cast my eyes over him.

He looked at me and smiled.

Everything else had been removed, there was just the smile he sent me before turning away to put on his trunks.

I put on mine and together we walked into the spacious swimming area.

When we returned home Unni had made dinner, a fondue, dad drank a bottle of red wine on his own, afterwards Yngve and Kristin showed their slides of China. Unni had borrowed a projector from school. They talked and explained, dad sat and looked on with no interest at all, I could see Yngve was getting annoyed, why did it bother him, I thought, he should give up on dad.

Fredrik was ironic with dad, who got angry and rebuked him, which made Unni furious, she went to her room, he struggled to his feet and followed, they shouted at each other while, in the living room, we pretended everything was fine. Something smashed against the wall, a shout became a scream, then there was silence. Dad emerged, said nothing, had a drink, suddenly looked up at us and grinned that inane grin of his, looked at Fredrik and said they could go fishing tomorrow if he wanted, his sons weren’t interested in fishing.

Of all the days dad described in his notebooks this is the only one I have a clear memory of, presumably because I saw him naked for the first and only time in his life.

In the notebook he wrote:

Friday 6 March

With K.O. and Fredrik in the swimming pool.

Nice to swim again. Home for fondue and slides of China.

Thereafter chat. Too much to drink. Scenes. Unni fed up — broke clock.

Shame.

On the last evening in Northern Norway I was alone again in the living room after the others had gone to bed. I smoked, made myself some tea, read a book I found, got up and found their photo album, wanting to see the disconcerting pictures once more, and at the back I came across some papers from which it emerged that the travel company had been informed by the hospital where dad had been admitted that the heart problems had been induced by an excess of medicines and alcohol.

I read this with a chill that ran through my whole body.

Medicines?

What sort of medicines was he taking?

There were several documents, I flicked through them, some were connected with a lawsuit he had clearly been involved in that spring. The trigger was an incident with a Securitas guard at the bus station in Kristiansand, and as I read it I remembered that he had mentioned something about it once, he had been harassed, but I knew nothing about him taking the matter to the law courts. However, he had lost resoundingly and had been ordered to pay the costs.

What was he doing?

I put the photo album back, cleaned my teeth and went into the narrow room where my bed was, undressed, got into bed, switched off the light and rested my head on the pillow.

But I couldn’t sleep. After a while I got up, sat down on the sofa closest to the little telephone table, picked up the receiver and dialled Hanne’s number.

I would do this on occasion, call her in the night. If her father answered I would put down the receiver, but he never did, she had a phone next to her room and was always quick to answer. This time too.

We chatted for an hour. I told her about what was going on here, that I would have a brother or a sister by the end of the summer and I was unsure what that would be like. I told her about my father and about Yngve and Kristin. She listened, laughed when I said something funny and in this way the heaviness in me lifted and we began to talk about other things, the exams that were in the offing, all my skiving, her choir, what we would do after we left school.

Suddenly the door burst open and dad charged in.

‘I have to ring off,’ I said and put down the receiver.

‘What are you doing, lad?!’ he said. ‘Do you know what the time is?’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I was trying to speak as softly as I could.’

‘And who said you could use the phone? How long have you been talking?’

‘An hour.’

‘An hour! Are you aware how much that costs? I paid for your ticket here! And this is my thanks, is it? Into bed with you, now.’

I lowered my head so that he wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes, got up, my body half-turned away from him, and walked to my room. My heart was pounding, terror had spread to every part of me, I was shaking as I lifted a leg to pull off my trousers.

I waited until I was sure he had gone to sleep, then tiptoed out again, found a pen, some paper and an envelope, wrote an ironic note about how sorry I was for having used his precious phone, anyway here was the money for the call. Then I put a hundred-krone note in the envelope, sealed it, wrote his name on it and slipped it onto the bookshelf, where he would probably find it after I had gone.

At home I seldom gave dad a thought, apart from when he rang or his name came up. But there were still problems. I had gradually begun to live a double life. I liked being at home in the evening with mum, we either drank tea and chatted, listened to music, watched TV or did our own work, but I also liked being out at night and drinking. I didn’t have a driving licence and buses were few and far between, but mum always said she would pick me up, it wasn’t an issue, all I had to do was call, even if it was in the middle of the night. I called, she answered, an hour later I opened the car door and hopped in. She had no objection to me having a glass, but she wasn’t happy if I was drunk, to put it mildly, so I had to hide that from her. I solved this by sleeping at people’s houses or I said she didn’t need to pick me up, there were people around with a car, and sometimes there were, then I got a lift, sometimes I took a taxi, sometimes the night bus. She didn’t wait up, she trusted me, from my behaviour at home she had every reason to. And it was the real me when I was with her. It was also the real me when I was with Hilde. It was also the real me when I got drunk with Espen or any of the others at school. I was the real me, but the real me s were irreconcilable.

There were other matters I hid from mum. For example, all the skiving from school. I did it more and more, I was absent almost more often than I was present. She caught me one day, I hadn’t gone to school, I was at home relaxing, she turned up earlier than usual and we had a row. She said I had to go to school, it was important, I had to get a grip on what was important. She said I’d had a strict upbringing, much too strict, and now she was trying to give me some freedom, but I was abusing it. This was all about norms and they had to come from me. I said school wasn’t the most important thing in my life, she said that was all well and good, but now you’re at school, this is what you do and you have to fulfil your obligations. Can you promise me that? Yes, I could. I didn’t keep the promise, but I camouflaged what I did better. I had a more-than-understanding form teacher, he had realised I was having a difficult time, on a school trip he had been sitting on the seat next to me and said, I know you’re having a difficult time at the moment, Karl Ove, say if there is anything I can do to help or if there is anything you want to talk to me about. I smiled and said I would, and for a few seconds tears were imminent, the concern for me had come out of the blue, but the next moment they were gone. Naturally enough it wasn’t because I was going through a difficult time that I had been skiving, on the contrary it was because I liked doing it so much, drifting around, meeting people in cafés, popping into the radio station, buying records or just lying around at home and reading. I had decided ages ago that I would not continue my education after school, what we learned was just rubbish, basically what life was about was living, and living in the way you want, in other words, enjoying your life. Some enjoyed their lives best by working, others by not working. OK, I was aware that I would need money, which meant that I would also have to work, but not all the time and not on something that would deplete all my energy and eat into my soul, leaving me like one of the middle-aged halfwits who guarded their hedges and peered across at their neighbours to see if their status symbols were as wonderful as their own.