Karl Knausgaard - Dancing in the Dark

Hug and kisses from Irene

Had they just come in and sat down?

Yes, they must have done.

And then left again?

I opened the door and stepped out to look for them, in case we had just crossed paths.

No, nothing.

Just the sound of the sea, the vast grey sky, a couple of tiny figures walking along the road at the bottom of the hill.

I went back in and boiled a whole packet of spaghetti, fried all the old potatoes I had in the fridge, and soon I was in the sitting room with a steaming mountain of spaghetti and browned potatoes on a plate in front of me, I applied ketchup liberally and wolfed it down. Wonderful. Then I made some coffee, put Led Zeppelin’s first LP on the record player, turned the volume up almost full and walked up and down clenching my fists and nodding my head. Now I’ll bloody show them. And then, pumped up with adrenaline and anger, I sat down and started to bang away on the typewriter.

The short story I wrote was based on a dream I’d had that summer. I had been doing exercises in some kind of net which stretched endlessly into the darkness on all sides, it was slippery but thick and strong, like an enormous sinew. This net turned out to be in my own brain. In other words I had swapped the relationship round: my thoughts didn’t exist in me, I existed in my thoughts. The dream had been a sensation, but when I wrote it down it dissipated into nothing, so I scrunched up the paper and threw it away, turned the record over and started afresh. This too was based on a dream, and in this too what I was standing on stretched into the darkness on all sides, however unlike in the first dream this darkness was broken by bonfires. Bonfire after bonfire burned around me as I walked. To my right there was a mountain, ahead of me the sea, that was all, nothing happened, there were just these elements, and I wrote it all down.

Oh shit, this was no good either!

All the fires in the darkness, the tall mountain and the immense plain, it had been so fantastic!

On paper it was nothing.

I moved to the sofa and started writing my diary instead. ‘Have to work on transferring the moods from inside to outside,’ I wrote. ‘But how? Easier to describe people’s actions, but that’s not enough, I don’t think. On the other hand, Hemingway did it.’ I raised my head and looked out at the mountains above the fjord. ‘But I’m happy here anyway. Who would have thought it? And I’ve met someone. Very pretty. Think I’m in with a chance. Rock ’n’ roll!’

Early that evening the upstairs front door opened. The footsteps that followed across the floor were heavier and more solid than Torill’s, and I remembered she had said her husband was coming home today. Life in the rooms above me now was completely different. They were laughing, music was blaring, and when I went to bed they were shagging above my head.

Oh, it went on for ages.

She screamed, he groaned, something was thumping to a regular, rhythmic beat, perhaps the bed knocking against the wall.

I thrust the pillow over my head and tried to think about something else.

But it didn’t work, how could it, I knew who she was and what she looked like.

All went quiet. I dozed off.

Then bugger me if they didn’t start up again.

I went to the sofa and lay down there. It was as though a shadow had fallen over me. The anticipation I had felt when I had thought that something might happen with Irene collapsed like an old mineshaft and tumbled in on me.

I could not do it.

I was eighteen years old, I was a teacher, I had my own place and an enormous record collection for my age with almost exclusively good music. I was good-looking, I could occasionally pass for someone in a band with my coat, black jeans, white basketball trainers and black beret. But what good was that if I couldn’t do the only thing I really wanted to do?

At last they finished, for the second time, and like a child I fell asleep on the sofa, lost to the world.

I wrote all next day, started work listening with clenched fists to Led Zeppelin, then sat tapping away for four hours without a break. I returned to the style of the first short story, and this time I had the two boys smashing a shed window on the estate where they lived and stealing the porn mags. The writing went well, except that I couldn’t find an ending. One boy couldn’t go home to his enraged father, something else had to happen, but what?

In the evening I walked up to the school. I still suffered pangs of conscience at being there alone, it felt as if I was snooping, but I wasn’t, I thought, and dropped the big bunch of keys on the staffroom table with a clatter, opened the door to the small telephone cubicle and dialled mum’s number.

She answered at once.

‘How’s it going?’ I said.

‘Quite well,’ she said. ‘In fact I’d been thinking of writing to you this evening.’

‘Did you get the short story?’

‘Yes. Thanks for that.’

‘What do you reckon then?’

‘I think it’s very good. I was surprised. Goodness me, I thought, this is literature !’

‘Is that true?’

‘Yes. You tell a story, there are two wonderful characters and the writing is so alive. It’s as though I’m there when I’m reading it.’

‘Was there anything you particularly liked?’

‘Erm, no, not really, no. I think everything’s very good.’

‘The ending?’

‘You mean the bit with the father?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s what the story is about, isn’t it?’

‘It is, yes. As well.’

There was a silence.

‘What about Kjartan? Have you heard anything from him? Actually, I sent it to him too.’

‘No, I usually ring him on Sundays. I’ll talk to him afterwards.’

‘Say hello from me.’

‘I’ll do that. How are you?’

‘Fine. Yesterday I went to football training. Tomorrow I’m back in harness.’

‘Is it hard work?’

I blew out my cheeks.

‘No, in fact it’s quite easy. I honestly don’t understand why teachers have to go to college for three years. It might be different with big classes though. There are only five or six pupils in each class here.’

‘Are you absolutely sure?’

‘About what?’

‘That it’s so easy,’ she said.

I smiled. ‘Typical of you to be sceptical,’ I said. ‘But, no, of course there are problems too.’

‘Have you got to know anyone?’

‘Yes, some of the teachers. Especially one, Nils Erik. People up here are unbelievably open. They drop by and ring your doorbell all the time.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, all sorts of people. Even my pupils!’

‘Sounds as if you’re having a good time.’

‘Yes, that’s what I said.’

We chatted for another half an hour, then I rang off and sat on the sofa to watch Sportsrevyen on TV. IK Start had lost again, things were beginning to look grim for them. If they didn’t get their act together they would be relegated.

Two days later Richard came into my lesson and beckoned to me.

‘There’s a call for you,’ he said. ‘I’ll take your class in the meantime.’

A call?

I hurried into the staffroom and grabbed the receiver, which was lying next to the phone.

‘Hello?’ I said.

‘Hi, this is Irene.’

‘Hi!’

‘Are you working?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you get my note?’

‘Yes. Bit of a surprise, I can tell you!’

‘That was the idea! Listen, Karl Ove, would you like to see me? There’s someone going to Håfjord on Friday and I can get a lift.’

‘Yes, that would be great.’

‘I’ll be over then. Bye.’

‘OK, bye,’ I said and rang off.

Richard hadn’t only kept an eye on the class, I could see, he was drawing something on the board and explaining it. He smiled at me, but there was a cold expression in his eyes, wasn’t there?