Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Three

“Me, too?” I wanted to ask, but I held back, because he might have forgotten he had grounded me and the question would have jolted his memory. Also, if he remembered but had changed his mind, it would be best not to mention it, as it could be interpreted as his having made a mistake yesterday, his having done something wrong, and I didn’t want him to think that. So I went for my trunks and a towel from the line in the boiler room, put them in a plastic bag with the diving goggles, which would come in handy if we were going to one of the two beaches in Hove, and sat down in my room to await departure.

Half an hour later we left for the far side of the island, on what was perhaps the best day of the year, with the sea so calm it barely made a sound and therefore lent the surroundings, the previously so silent bare rocks and the previously so silent forest above, a semblance of something unreal, such that every footstep on the rocks and every clink of a bottle sounded as if it was the very first time, and the sun, which was at its zenith in the sky, appeared as something deeply primitive and alien on this day, when you could see the sea curve and disappear down into the depths beyond the horizon, above which the sky floated so airily with its light, soft, misty blueness; and Yngve and I and Mom and Dad put on our swimsuits and each of us in our own way dipped our bodies, hot from the sun, into the lukewarm water, while Grandma and Grandad sat there in their finery, apparently unmoved by their surroundings and our activities, as though the 1950s and Vestland were not only features that had stamped themselves on them superficially, through their clothes, behavior, and dialect, in other words externally, but also internally, to the depths of their respective souls, to the innermost core of their respective characters. It was so strange to see them there, sitting on the rocks, squinting into the bright light coming at us from all directions, it seemed so alien.

The day after, they went home. Dad drove them to Kjevik, grabbed the opportunity to visit his own parents while he was there while Mom took Yngve and me to Lake Gjerstad, the idea being that we could swim and eat cookies and relax, but first of all Mom couldn’t find a road to the lake, so we had to go on a long detour through a forest full of scrub and thickets; secondly, the part of the lake we arrived at turned out to be green with algae and the rocks slippery; and thirdly, it started to rain almost as soon as we had put down the cooler bag and the basket with the cookies and oranges.

I felt so sorry for Mom, who had wanted to take us on a nice trip, but it hadn’t worked out. There was no way to express this to her. It was one of those things you had to forget as quickly as possible. And that was not at all difficult; there were so many new experiences in store for us during those weeks. I would soon be starting school, and as a result so many new objects would become mine. Above all, a satchel, which, the next Saturday morning, I went to Arendal with Mom to buy. It was square, blue and all shiny and glossy, with white straps. Inside, there were two compartments, where I immediately put the orange pencil case I had also been given, containing a pencil, a pen, an eraser, and a pencil sharpener, and one of the notebooks we had bought, with orange and brown squares on the front, the same as on Yngve’s, plus some comics I put in to plump it up. There, nestling against the leg of the desk, it stood every night when I went to bed, not without some mental anguish for me, for there was still quite a time to go to the big day when I, along with almost everyone I knew, would be starting the first class. We had already been to school for a day, that past spring, we had had a chance to meet the woman who was to be our teacher and to do a bit of drawing, but this was different, this wasn’t anywhere near the same, this was the real thing. There were those who said they hated school, indeed, almost all the older children said they hated school, and strictly speaking we knew we should, too, but at the same time it was so alluring, what was about to happen, we knew so little and we expected so much, in addition to the fact that starting school in itself elevated us into the same league as the older children, from one day to the next, in one fell swoop we were like them, and then we could certainly afford to hate school, but not now…. Did we talk about anything else? Hardly. In fact the school we applied to, Roligheden, where both Dad and Geir’s father worked and where all the older children went, had no room for us, the year’s intake was too big, too many families had moved into the area, so we had to go to a school on the east of the island, five or six kilometers away, with all the kids we didn’t know from around there, and we were to be transported by bus. It was a great privilege and an adventure. Every day a bus would come to pick us up!

I was also given a pair of light-blue trousers, a light-blue jacket and a pair of dark-blue sneakers with white stripes over the instep. Several times, when Dad was out, I put on my new clothes and paced in front of the hall mirror, sometimes with the satchel on my back, so when the day finally arrived and I posed on the gravel outside the door for Mom to take a photograph of me, it wasn’t just the excitement and the uncertainty giving me butterflies but also the strange, almost triumphant, feeling I would have when I wore particularly attractive clothes.

The evening before, I’d had a bath, Mom had washed my hair, and when I woke in the morning it was to a quiet sleeping house, with a sun that was still climbing behind the spruce trees down beyond the road. Oh, what a pleasure it was to take my new clothes out of the wardrobe and put them on at last! Outside, the birds were singing, it was still summer, behind the veil of mist the sky was blue and immense, and the houses that now stood quiet on both sides of the road would soon be teeming with impatience and anticipation, like on Independence Day. I took the comics out of my satchel, hung it on my back, adjusted the straps, and took it off again. Pulled the zipper on the jacket up and down and speculated: it looked best with the zipper up, but then you couldn’t see the T-shirt underneath … Went into the living room, looked out of the window at the sun, a reddish-yellow, fiery orange behind the green trees, went into the kitchen without touching anything, peered across at Gustavsen’s house, where there was no sign of life. Stood in front of the hall mirror, pulling the zipper up and down … the T-shirt looked so good … it would be a shame if it couldn’t be seen …

Brush my teeth! I could do that.

Into the bathroom, out with the brush from the tooth glass, a drop of water and on with the white toothpaste. I brushed energetically for several minutes while studying myself in the mirror. The sound of the brush against my teeth seemed to fill the whole of my head from the inside, so I didn’t notice that Dad was up until he opened the door. He was wearing only underpants.

“Are you brushing your teeth before you’ve had breakfast? How stupid can you be? Put that brush down right now and go to your room!”

As I set foot on the red wall-to-wall carpet on the landing he slammed the door behind him and started pissing loudly into the toilet bowl. I knelt on my bed and looked up at Prestbakmo’s house. Was that two heads I could see in the darkness of the kitchen window? Yes, it had to be. They were up. It would have been good to have a walkie-talkie so that I could talk to Geir! That would have been perfect!

Dad left the bathroom and went into the bedroom. I could hear his voice, and then Mom’s. So she was awake!

I stayed in my room until she was up and on her way to the kitchen, where Dad had already been clattering around for a while. In the shelter of her back I sat down at my place. They had bought cornflakes, we almost never had them, and after she had put out a bowl and a spoon for me, and I had poured milk over the golden, somewhat perforated, irregularly formed flakes, I came to the conclusion that cornflakes were best when they were crispy, before the milk had soaked into them. But after I had been eating for a while and they were beginning to go soft, filled as it were with both their own taste and that of the milk, plus the sugar, of which I had sprinkled a liberal quantity, I changed my mind; that was when they were at their best.