Karl Knausgaard: My Struggle: Book Three

When we arrived, with the sky blue, the grass green, and the river glinting down below I ran from window to window and peered in so that he could see how enthusiastic I was, which was not entirely insincere, just somewhat exaggerated, and the matter was decided. If it was available we would buy it. Mom applied for a job at the nursing college, Dad would continue at the gymnas, and I would start at a new school here. What Yngve would do was less clear. He refused to move. For the first time in his life he stood up to Dad. They argued, and that had never happened before. We had never argued with Dad. He was the one who told us off, and we were on the receiving end.

But there was Yngve saying no.

Dad was furious.

But Yngve continued to say no.

“I don’t want to spend my last year in Kristiansand,” he said. “Why should I? All my friends are here. I’ve only got one year of school left. It would be ridiculous to start afresh somewhere new.”

They stood face to face in the living room. Yngve was as tall as Dad.

I hadn’t noticed before.

“You might think you’re grown-up, but you’re not,” Dad said. “You have to stay with your family.”

“No, I do not,” Yngve said.

“All right,” Dad said. “Can you tell me how you’re going to manage? You won’t be getting one øre from me, you know.”

“I’ll take out a loan,” Yngve said.

“Who do you think will give you a loan?” Dad said.

“I can apply for a study loan,” Yngve said. “I’ve checked.”

“Are you going to take a study loan before you begin to study?” Dad said. “That’s very clever.”

“If I must, I must,” Yngve said.

“Where are you going to live?” Dad said. “The house will be sold, you know.”

“I’ll rent a bedsit,” Yngve said.

“You do that then,” Dad said. “But you won’t get any help from us. Not so much as a krone. Do you understand? If you want to live here, you can, but don’t you come running to us for any help. You’ll have to manage on your own.”

“OK,” Yngve said. “I’ll be fine.”

And that was what happened.

When the last day of the seventh class came, it had been announced that I was moving and my classmates of seven years had bought farewell presents. First of all, I was given a cabbage head as my name, Karl, as some called me, sounded in the broad dialect we spoke like “Kål,” cabbage, which became a nickname. Then I was given a cloth monkey because I looked like a monkey. That was it.

Then we went through the doors, and I never saw my classmates again.

But it wasn’t quite over. That evening there was to be a class party at Unni’s. Some of the girls met early that afternoon to get everything ready, and at around six the rest of us cycled over. The party was held in the garden and in the cellar, and as the summer night fell over the hills we could see across and all the red roofs of the houses on the estate glinted in the light of the setting sun, and the party slowly began to degenerate, even though no one was drinking. A year’s secret thoughts and desires began to stir. It was simply in the air. Hands wandered under sweaters, not as part of an assault or any brutality, it went on close by, among the lilac bushes in the garden, amid hot panting, mouths met, mouths kissed, and then some of the girls took off their tops, they walked around with their breasts bobbing, it was a kind of early puberty orgy that had been slowly building up steam and the very same girls who only one month earlier had said they didn’t like me offered themselves to me, one after the other, they sat on my lap, they kissed me, they rubbed their breasts against my face. The hierarchy the girls had been placed in, with some slowly climbing during autumn and others falling, had no significance here, it didn’t make any difference who it was, I pressed my face against their soft, white breasts, kissed their dark, erect nipples, ran my hands over their thighs and between their legs, and they didn’t say no, there wasn’t a no in their mouths on this night, instead they leaned forward and kissed me, their eyes were warm and dark, but also surprised, as mine must have been, is it really us doing this?

I haven’t seen any of them since that summer, and if I search for them on the Net to see what they look like or how life has treated them, there are no hits. They don’t belong to that class there, they belong to the class of blue- or white-collar parents who grew up outside the center and who have presumably remained outside the center of everything but their own lives. Who I am to them I have no idea, probably a vague memory of someone they once knew in their childhood years, for they have done so much to one another in their lives since then, so much has happened and with such impact that the small incidents that took place in their childhoods have no more gravity than the dust stirred up by a passing car, or the seeds of a withering dandelion dispersed by the breath from a small mouth. And, oh, wasn’t the latter a fine image, of how event after event is dispersed in the air above the little meadow of one’s own history, only to fall between the blades of grass and vanish?

After the moving van had left and we got into the car, Mom, Dad, and I, and we drove down the hill and over the bridge, it struck me with a huge sense of relief that I would never be returning, that everything I saw I was seeing for the final time. That the houses and the places that disappeared behind me were also disappearing out of my life, for good. Little did I know then that every detail of this landscape, and every single person living in it, would forever be lodged in my memory with a ring as true as perfect pitch.