Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Three

Or was it?

Dad went into the living room with a cup in his hand, he didn’t usually have breakfast, but sat in there smoking and drinking coffee instead. Yngve came in, sat down on his chair without saying a word, poured out some cornflakes and milk, sprinkled sugar over the top, and started wolfing it down.

“Looking forward to it?” he said at length.

“A little,” I said.

“It’s nothing to look forward to,” he said.

“Yes, it is,” Mom said. “You certainly looked forward to starting school anyway. I can remember it well. Can you?”

“Ye-es,” Yngve said. “I suppose I can.”

He cycled to school, usually a little while before Dad left, unless Dad had some work to do before the first lesson, that is, which was sometimes the case. Yngve was not allowed to have a lift, except on very special occasions, such as when it had snowed a lot overnight, because he wasn’t to have any advantages just because his father was a teacher at the school.

When breakfast was finished and they had left, I sat with Mom in the kitchen. She read the newspaper, I chatted.

“Do you think we’ll have to write in the first lesson, Mom?” I asked. “Or is it usually math? Leif Tore says we’ll have drawing so that we can relax a bit at the beginning, and not everyone can write. Or add and subtract. Only me actually. As far as I know at least. I learned when I was five and a half. Do you remember?”

“Remember when you learned to read? What do you mean?” Mom said.

“That time outside the bus station when I read the sign? ‘Kaffe-fetteria?’ You laughed. Yngve laughed, too. Now I know it’s called ‘kafeteria.’ Shall I read some headlines?”

Mom nodded. I read aloud. Bit staccato, but everything was correct.

“You managed that nicely,” she said. “You’ll do really well at school.”

She scratched an ear as she read, the way only she could, she held her ear between her fingers and moved them back and forth incredibly fast, just like a cat.

She put down the newspaper and looked at me.

“Are you looking forward to it?” she asked.

“And how,” I said.

She smiled, patted me on the head, got up, and started to clear the table. I went to my room. School didn’t begin until ten o’clock as it was the first day. Nevertheless, we ended up being short of time, which was often the case with Mom, she was pretty absentminded when it came to matters like this. From the window I saw the excitement mounting outside the houses where there were children starting school, that is, in the families with Geir, Leif Tore, Trond, Geir Håkon, and Marianne, hair was combed, dresses and shirts were straightened, photographs taken. When it was my turn to stand outside, smiling at Mom, with one hand shielding my eyes from the sun, which had moved above the tops of the spruce trees by this time, everyone had gone. We were the last, and all of a sudden we were late, so Mom, who had taken the day off work for the occasion, hurried me along, I opened the door of the green VW, pushed the seat forward, and got in the back while she rummaged for the key in her shoulder bag and inserted it in the ignition. She lit a cigarette, reversed after casting a quick glance over her shoulder, put the car in first gear a few meters up the hill, and drove down. The roar of the engine resounded off the brick walls. I moved to the middle of the car so that I could see between the two seats at the front. The two white gas holders across Tromøya Sound, the wild cherry tree, Kristen’s red house, then the road down to the marina where we almost never went, along the route where in the course of the next six years I would become familiar with every tiniest clearing and stone wall, and out to the small places on the east of the island, where Mom didn’t know her way, which made her a bit agitated.

“Was it this way, Karl Ove, do you remember?” she said, stubbing out the cigarette in the ashtray as she peered into the mirror.

“I don’t remember,” I said. “But I think so. It was on the left, anyway.”

Below, there was a shop by a quay and a clump of houses encircling it, no school. The sea was a deep blue, bordering on black beneath the shadow of the buildings; untouched by the high temperatures, this fullness distinguished it from most of the other colors in the landscape, which were as though bleached after the weeks-long heat wave. The sea’s cool blue contrasted with the yellow and brown and the faded green.

Now Mom was driving along a gravel road. Dust whirled up behind us. As the road narrowed and nothing of any significance seemed to lie ahead, she turned and drove back. On the other side, down by the water, there was another road she tried. That didn’t lead to any school, either.

“Are we going to be late?” I asked.

“Maybe,” she replied. “Fancy not bringing a map with me!”

“Haven’t you been here before then?” I said.

“Yes, I have,” she said. “But my memory’s not as good as yours, you know.”

We drove up the hill we had come down ten minutes earlier and turned onto the main road by a chapel. At every sign and crossroads she slowed down and leaned forward.

“There it is, Mom!” I shouted, pointing. We still couldn’t see it, but I remembered the green to the right; the school was at the top of the gentle gradient that followed. A narrow gravel road led down to it, there were lots of parked cars, and as Mom turned into it, I spotted the school playground swarming with people and a man everyone was staring at was gesticulating on top of a rock, beneath the flagpole.

“We’ve got to hurry!” I said. “They’ve started! Mom, they’ve started!”

“Yes, I know,” Mom said. “But we have to find somewhere to park first. There, maybe. Yes.”

We had ended up right down by the woodwork-room-cum-gym hall. A large, white building from the olden days, and outside it, on tarmac, Mom parked the car. We weren’t exactly familiar with the school layout, so instead of going to the end and taking the shortcut across the soccer field, we followed the road on the other side up to the playground. Mom scooted along, with me in tow. The satchel bumped up and down so wonderfully as I ran, every bump reminding me of what I had behind me, shiny and glossy, and hot on the heels of that thought, the light-blue trousers, the light-blue jacket, the dark-blue shoes.

When we finally reached the playground, the crowd was slowly moving into the low school building.

“We seem to have missed the welcome ceremony,” Mom said.

“That doesn’t matter, Mom,” I said. “Come on!”

I caught sight of Geir and his mother, ran over to them with Mom holding my hand, they smiled in greeting, and we went up the steps in the middle of the crowd of parents and children. Geir’s satchel was identical to mine, as most of the boys’ satchels were, whereas, from what I could glean in passing, the girls sported quite a wide variety.

“Where are we going? Do you know?” Mom asked Martha, Geir’s mother.

“I’m afraid I don’t.” Martha laughed. “We’re following their teacher.”

I looked in the direction she nodded. And there, sure enough, was our Frøken. She stopped in front of the staircase and said that all those who were in her class should go ahead, and Geir and I ran down the stairs, through all the people, and along the corridor to the end. But Frøken stopped in front of a room close to the staircase, making us not the first, as we had imagined, but almost the last.

The room was full of children dressed in smart clothes and their mothers. Through the windows you looked down onto a narrow field; the forest was close behind. Frøken stood at her desk, which was on a little dais; on the blackboard was written HELLO, CLASS 1B in pink chalk with a flowery border around it. On the wall above the desk there were maps and charts.