Karl Knausgaard - Dancing in the Dark

Suddenly I remembered how I had once tricked Dag Lothar. I had got into the pool a few minutes before him, turned my bathing cap inside out so that it was all white, pulled it away from my head so that it was wrinkled and looked like the caps old ladies wore, and started to swim in a studiously slow style with my head as far out of the water as I could manage. This mimicking of an old lady swimming was so good that Dag Lothar didn’t see me, even though there were only four of us in the big pool. He glanced at me, categorised me wrongly and thus I didn’t exist. He called my name and when he received no answer went back into the changing room.

Chest first, I moved slowly out into the water, ducked my head beneath the surface and took a couple of powerful strokes that were almost enough for me to glide to the far edge. Nils Erik was ploughing along on the other side, doing front crawl. I swam as fast as I could for a few lengths, then stopped at the end by the window and gazed out into the snowstorm.

I turned, rested my elbows on the edge and watched the white foam spraying up around Nils Erik’s thrashing arms and legs, and was reminded of what Geir’s father had once said, that you should lie as if on cotton when you swim crawl, and behind Nils Erik I saw the open door to the empty rooms beyond.

Shit, I had forgotten. The sauna.

I dragged myself out of the water, went to the changing room and switched on the stove. When I went back I dived in and swam back and forth for perhaps half an hour until we decided to give up.

We sat on the top bench in the sauna. I poured water on the stones in the stove, a wave of hot steam met my skin and drifted further into the small cube-shaped room.

‘This is the biggest fringe benefit we get with the job,’ Nils Erik said, stroking the wet hair at the back of his head.

‘It’s also the only one,’ I said.

‘Free coffee,’ he said. ‘And newspapers. And cake at the farewell do.’

‘Hurrah,’ I said.

There was a pause. He moved down to a lower bench.

‘Have you had lots of other jobs?’ I said at length, leaning back against the wall. The heat was making my head heavy, as though it was slowly being filled with lead or something similar.

‘No. Just the health service. Oh, and the parks a couple of summers ago. And you?’

‘Gardening, floor factory, newspaper, nuthouse. And radio. But it wasn’t paid, so I suppose that doesn’t count.’

‘No,’ he said lethargically. I looked at him. He had closed his eyes and was leaning back with his elbows on the step where I was sitting. There was an energy and vivacity about his personality that seemed to conflict with something else, an old-man-ish quality that was hard to define because it didn’t manifest itself in anything specific, it was more an aura he had, I only noticed it in a negative way, when for example I was taken aback that he had heard of the Jesus and Mary Chain and liked them, because why indeed would he not have heard of them?

He sat up straight and turned to me.

‘Karl Ove,’ he said. ‘Just had a thought. You know Hilda’s cottage?’

‘Hilda’s cottage? What’s that?’

‘The yellow house on the bend. It used to belong to Hilda, Eva’s mother-in-law. She died a few years ago, and now the house is empty. I’ve had a chat with them, and they’d be happy to rent it out. After all, it’ll fall into disrepair faster if no one’s living there. So they don’t want much rent. Five hundred a month, that’s all.’

‘And?’ I said.

‘Living in a whole house on my own is no good. I wondered perhaps if we could rent it? We’d save loads of money on accommodation, and food would be cheaper if there were two of us. What do you reckon?’

‘Ye-es,’ I said. ‘Why not?’

‘We can have a room each and share the rest.’

‘But everyone will think we’re a couple of gay boys,’ I said. ‘Two young teachers have found each other, they’ll say.’

He laughed. ‘And here we are in the sauna all alone. .’

‘So the rumours have already started?’

‘No, are you out of your mind? You’ve shown an unequivocal interest in the opposite sex up here. No one is in any doubt about your preferences. Well, are you in or out?’

‘Yes. I mean no. I have to write and for that I need to be alone.’

‘There’s a room next to the sitting room. You can have that. It’s perfect.’

‘OK, why not then,’ I said.

After we had got dressed and were on our way upstairs I asked him about something that had been occupying my mind for a long time but which my nakedness had prevented me from articulating.

‘I’ve got a little problem in the area we touched on the other day,’ I said.

‘What was that?’ he said.

‘About sex,’ I said.

‘Come on. Out with it!’ he said.

‘It’s not easy to talk about,’ I said. ‘But the thing is. . well, I come too quickly. Put bluntly. That’s the long and short of it.’

‘Ah, a classic,’ he said. ‘And?’

‘No, there’s nothing else. I was just wondering if you had any tips. When it happens it doesn’t feel great, but I’m sure you understand.’

‘How quickly are we talking about here? A minute? Three minutes? Five?’

‘Erm, it varies,’ I said, inserting the key into the lock of the large glass door and pushing it open. My skin was so hot after the sauna that the cold wind didn’t bite, I watched it sweep between the buildings but barely noticed it. ‘Maybe three or four?’

‘That’s not bad, you know, Karl Ove,’ he said, winding his scarf around his neck, pulling his hat well down over his ears. ‘Four minutes, that’s a pretty long time.’

‘How do you get on in this area?’

‘Me? The opposite. I can hump away till eternity and nothing happens. In fact, that’s a problem too. I can be at it for half an hour without getting near an orgasm. Sometimes I just have to give up.’

We set off down the road.

‘And when you beat the meat?’ he said. ‘Is it the same?’

My cheeks went red, but he couldn’t see that in the dark. He wasn’t expecting a lie, so I was on safe ground.

‘About the same,’ I said.

‘Mhm,’ he said. ‘I’ve got problems there too. Well, you may have realised that today. I can keep at it for ever.’

‘Do you think it’s physiological?’ I said. ‘Or is it a mental thing? I wish I could swap. The opposite problem would be a thousand times better.’

‘No idea,’ he said. ‘Probably physiological. I’ve always been like this anyway. Ever since the first time. So I don’t know anything else. But I’ve heard it’s supposed to help if you pinch the tip. Hard. Or pull at the scrotum. Then just keep pumping.’

‘I’ll try that next time,’ I said and smiled into the darkness.

‘Yes, should an opportunity ever present itself,’ he said.

‘At Christmas, for example? All the young women from the district will be back then.’

‘Do you reckon they’ll be coming back here to get laid? I don’t think so. I think they’re getting it where they are now and they come back here for some R & R ready to go again in January.’

‘Yes, you’re probably right,’ I said, and came to a halt, we had reached the road to my flat. ‘If everything goes through with the house when do we move in?’

‘We have to give notice first and so on. After Christmas? If we shorten our holiday by two days we can do it then.’

‘Sounds good,’ I said. ‘See you!’

I raised my hand and waved, opened the door and went in. Ate eight slices of bread and drank half a litre of milk, lay down on the sofa and read the first pages of a new book I had bought: The Big Adventure by Jan Kjærstad. I had read Mirrors and Homo Falsus by him before and had just borrowed The Earth Turns Quietly from the library in Finnsnes. But this one was new, it had just been published, and the first thing I did when I held it in my hand was to smell the fresh paper. Then I flicked backwards and forwards. Every chapter started with a big O. Some of the chapters were set in several columns — one column looked like notes and popped up here and there alongside another, which was the main story. Some chapters were letters. Some were printed in bold type, some in italics, some in normal font. Something called Hazar and something called Enigma cropped up at regular intervals. And definitions of k — that had to stand for kjærlighet , love.