Karl Knausgaard - Dancing in the Dark

I switched on the typewriter again, took out the sheet and inserted another.

The fish were lined up side by side on a bed of ice, everything glinted and glistened in the sunlight. The air smelled of salt, exhaust fumes and perfume. Voluminous women with bulging bags and money to spend walked back and forth between the respective stalls, pointing authoritatively at what they wanted. Prawns, crabs, lobsters, mackerel, pollock, cod, haddock, eels and plaice. The sounds of mumbling and laughing filled the air. Some children were shouting. A bus issued a deep sigh as it stopped at the bus stop across the street. The pennants along the quay were flapping in the wind. Flap! Flap! Flap! A little boy, pallid and puny, was holding a Winnie the Pooh balloon in one hand and clutching the pram his mother was pushing with the other.

The steam from the boiling pan wafted in through the door. I switched off the typewriter again, poured the water over the tea leaves, took the teapot with a cup, a carton of milk and a bowl of sugar into the sitting room, sat down, rolled a cigarette and with it hanging from my lips continued to read The Big Adventure , this time without an eye for the detail or a thought about the style, within a few minutes I was totally absorbed. So when the doorbell shrieked through the flat a little later there was something brutal about the way it jerked me back into reality.

It was Hege.

‘Hi,’ she said, pulling the scarf down from her mouth. ‘You haven’t gone to bed?’

‘Gone to bed? No. It’s only half past nine.’

‘It’s ten actually,’ she said. ‘Can I come in?’

‘Of course, sorry,’ I said. ‘Has something happened or what?’

She came into the hall, unwound the huge scarf, unzipped her down jacket.

‘No, but that’s the problem. Nothing is happening. Vidar’s at sea and I was mooching around getting bored. And then I thought you were probably up.’

‘Good timing,’ I said. ‘I’ve even got some tea on the go.’

We went into the sitting room, she sat down on the sofa, picked up the book and looked at the title.

‘It’s Kjærstad’s latest,’ I said. ‘Have you read it?’

‘Me? No. You’re talking to an illiterate. Am I going to get some tea or was that just polite conversation?’

I fetched a cup, placed it in front of her and sat down in the chair on the opposite side of the table. She tucked her legs beneath her and poured.

She was thin, long-limbed, with an almost boyish body. Her facial features were pronounced, long nose, full lips, hair big and curly. There was a hardness about her, but in her eyes, which were vivacious and sparkling, often something else would appear, something softer and warmer. She was sharp, had a ready answer for everything and treated the fishermen around her with a characteristic unflinching aloofness.

I liked her a lot, but I wasn’t attracted by her at all, and that was what I realised allowed us to be friends. If I had been attracted by her I would have been sitting there paralysed, thinking about what I should say and the impression I was making. As I wasn’t, I could be who I was, without a further thought, just chat away. The same applied to her. And as was so often the case when I talked to girls I liked but wasn’t attracted by, the conversations tended towards emotional intimate matters.

‘Anything new?’ she said.

I shook my head.

‘Not really. Oh yes, Nils Erik has suggested we move into the yellow house on the bend.’

‘What was your response?’

‘I thought it was a good idea. So we’re going to move after Christmas.’

‘I can’t imagine two more different men than you and Nils Erik,’ she said.

‘I’m a man now all of a sudden, am I?’

She looked at me and laughed. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘I don’t feel like one.’

‘What do you feel like then?’

‘A boy. An eighteen-year-old.’

‘Yes, I can understand that. You aren’t a man like the others here in the village.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Have you ever had a look at your arms? They’re as thin as mine! Can’t say you’re broad-shouldered either.’

‘So?’ I said. ‘I’m not a fisherman.’

‘Oh, moody now, eh?’

‘No.’

‘No,’ she said with the same intonation and laughed. ‘You’re right though. All you have to do is sit still and write for the rest of your life. You don’t need big muscles to do that.’

‘No, you don’t,’ I said.

‘Come on, Karl Ove,’ she said. ‘You don’t take yourself that seriously, do you?’

‘It’s got nothing to do with how seriously I take myself,’ I said. ‘What you say is true. I’m very different from Vidar, for example. But that doesn’t mean you can walk all over me.’

‘Oooh, I obviously touched a sore spot there!’

‘Pack it in now.’

‘Ooh dear!’

‘Do you want me to throw you out?’

I raised my cup in a threatening manner.

She laughed again.

I leaned back, took my tobacco pouch and started to roll a cigarette.

‘I know you want men to be men,’ I said. ‘In fact, you’ve said that many times. The strong silent type. But what does Vidar do to get on your nerves? What do you usually complain about? He never says anything, he never talks about himself or the two of you, there isn’t a scrap of romanticism in him.’

She eyed me. ‘Is there anything more romantic than being fucked hard by a strong man?’

I could feel my cheeks glowing, made a grab for the lighter and lit the roll-up.

Then I laughed.

‘Actually, I know nothing about that. I can’t even imagine what it’s like.’

‘Have you never fucked a girl hard?’

I sensed she was watching me and our eyes met.

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ I said, averting my gaze. ‘I was thinking the other way round. Of your role in all of this.’

I got up and went over to my record collection.

‘Any requests?’ I said, turning to her.

‘You choose,’ she said. ‘I have to go soon anyway.’

I put on the latest deLillo record: Før var det morsomt med sne .

‘The biggest argument in favour of moving is that I won’t have to listen to the two upstairs any longer,’ I said, and pointed to the ceiling.

‘Torill and Georg?’

I nodded.

‘The walls are terribly thin here. Especially between bedrooms. And there’s lots of romanticism, to use your definition of the term.’

‘How nice for Torill.’

‘And him by the sound of it.’

I sat down again. ‘You don’t like Torill much, do you,’ I said.

‘No, I can’t say I do.’

A false smile slid across her mouth, she raised her face and chirruped some words. ‘She’s so good and sincere it hurts to watch and at the same time she offers herself to everyone who wants to look.’

‘Offers herself?’

‘Yes, you don’t think she walks around like that when she’s on her own, do you?’

She pushed out her bosom, wiggled her hips on the sofa and coquettishly stroked her hair from her forehead.

I smiled.

‘It had never struck me,’ I said. ‘But now you say that I believe it has struck Nils Erik. And pretty hard. He hurried into the loo immediately after she had bent forward in front of the fridge today.’

‘You see. She knows what she’s doing. And you?’

‘Torill?’ I said with a snort. ‘She’s twelve years older than me.’

‘Yes, of course, but do you like her?’

‘I don’t dislike her at any rate. She’s pleasant enough.’

There was a pause. The windows reflected the light from the lamps and between them the vague outlines of the furniture in a room that seemed to be underwater.

‘Have you got any plans for Friday coming?’ Hege said.