Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Three

“Hello, everyone,” Frøken said. “And welcome to Sandnes School! My name is Helga Torgersen, and I’m going to be your class teacher. I’m really looking forward to this, I can tell you! We’re going to have a lot of fun. And do you know what? You are not the only ones who are new to this school. I am new, too. You are my very first class!”

I looked around me. All the adults were smiling. Almost all the children were craning their necks and glancing at one another. I knew Geir Håkon, Trond, Geir, Leif Tore, and Marianne. And the boy who used to throw stones at us and had that frightening dog. I had never seen the others before.

“Now we are going to do a roll call,” Frøken said from the dais. “Do you know what a roll call is?”

No one answered.

“You call out a name and the person with that name answers,” I said.

Everyone looked at me. I put on a broad smile over my protruding teeth.

“That’s correct,” Frøken said. “And we start with the letter A. That’s the first letter in the alphabet, you see. You’ll learn all about that later. So, A. Anne Lisbet!”

“Yes,” said a girl’s voice, and everyone turned toward the sound, I did, too.

The voice belonged to a thin girl with shiny, black hair. She looked like an Indian.

“Asgeir?” Frøken said.

“Yes!” said a boy with big teeth and long hair.

After the roll call we sat down at our desks while our parents stood by the wall. Frøken gave everyone a recorder, an exercise book and a notebook, a schedule with our lessons printed on it, as well as a money box and a leaflet with a picture of a yellow ant on it from a local savings bank. Then she told us about some of the events that would be taking place during the autumn, one of which was a swimming class to be held in a pool at a school on the next island, as there wasn’t a swimming pool on Tromøya. She handed out a piece of paper with a slip you could fill in and return if you were interested. Then we did some drawing, with our parents still there watching, and then it was over. The following day school would start in earnest, we would catch the bus on our own, and be there for three hours without our parents breathing down our necks.

As we left the classroom I was still wide-eyed with all the newness and strangeness, and the feeling continued when everyone in the new class got into their respective cars with their parents, normally it was only on the seventeenth of May that there was this level of synchronous vehicle activity, that a location was left simultaneously by so many children, but as we were driving home disappointment began to set in, and I became more and more dejected the closer we came to home.

Nothing had happened.

I could read and write, and I had counted on having a chance to show that on the first day. A bit at least! And I had been looking forward to having break time, to the bell ringing at the end of one lesson and the start of the next. To using my new pencil case and the compartments in the satchel.

No, the day hadn’t lived up to my expectations, and I had to take off the clothes I looked so good in and hang them up in their place in my wardrobe, to await future formal occasions. I sat on the kitchen stool chatting to Mom while she made dinner, it was rare I had her to myself in the middle of the day, and on top of this she had been with me where it counted most, so I exploited the opportunity for all it was worth, and babbled away.

“I wish we had a cat I could play with,” I said. “Can’t we have a cat?”

“That would be nice,” Mom said. “I like cats. They’re good company.”

“So is it Dad who doesn’t like them then?”

“I don’t know,” Mom said. “He’s just not that interested, I think. And he probably thinks they’re a bit too much work.”

“But I can take care of it,” I said. “That’s no problem.”

“I know,” Mom said. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

“Wait and see, wait and see,” I said. “But if Yngve wants a cat, that’ll make three of us.”

Mom laughed.

“It’s not that simple,” she said. “You’ll have to be patient. Who knows what will happen.”

She put the peeled carrot on the board and chopped it up, lifted the board, and slid the pieces into the large pot where there were already bones and bits of meat. I looked out of the window. Through the many small holes in the orange curtain Mom had crocheted I could see the road outside was empty, which it invariably was in the middle of the day.

There was a sudden pungent smell of onions, and I turned to Mom, who was peeling one with her arms outstretched and her eyes full of tears.

When I turned back I saw Geir come bounding down the hill. He had also changed into his normal clothes. A second later I heard a crunch of gravel through the half-open window as he walked up the drive.

“Karl Ove, are you coming?” he shouted.

“I’m going out for a bit,” I said to Mom, slipping off the stool.

“Fine,” she said. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t go far then.”

“No, I won’t,” I said, and hurried down, opened the door so that Geir wouldn’t think the house was empty and go away, said hi, and put on my sneakers.

“I’ve got a box of matches,” he whispered, patting his shorts pocket.

“You haven’t!” I also whispered. “Where did you get hold of them?”

“Home. They were in the sitting room.”

“You just took them?”

He nodded.

I straightened up and went out, closing the door after me.

“Let’s set fire to something,” I said.

“Yes, let’s,” he said.

“What then?”

“Doesn’t matter, does it. We’ll just find something. The box is half full. We can set fire to a lot of things.”

“But we’ll have to go somewhere no one can see the smoke,” I said. “Up on the mountain maybe?”

“OK.”

“And we’ll need something to put the fire out with,” I said. “Just a sec. I’ll get a bottle of water.”

I opened the door again, kicked off my shoes, and went upstairs to Mom, who turned to me as I walked in.

“We’re going for a walk,” I said. “I need a bottle of water.”

“Wouldn’t you prefer juice? You can take some, you know. It’s still your first school day!”

I hesitated. It had to be water. But that might make her suspicious because I always preferred juice to water. I looked at her and said, “No, Geir’s got water, so that’s what I want, too.”

My heart beat faster as I spoke.

“As you like,” she said. She found an empty juice bottle in the cupboard under the sink, dark green glass, almost opaque, she filled it with water, screwed on the top, and passed it to me.

“Would you like some smørbrød as well?”

I considered her offer.

“No,” I said. “I mean yes. Two with liver paste.”

As she took the bread and started to cut it, I pushed the window further open and poked my head out.

“Be down in a minute!” I shouted. Geir looked up at me with grave eyes and nodded.

After she had made and wrapped the smørbrød , I put them in a plastic bag with the bottle and hurried back down. Soon we were on our way up the hill. The heat had made the edge of the road soft and crumbly. It was harder where the cars went. Sometimes we lay down on the tarmac like cats and let the heat give us a good baking. But now we had other things on our minds.

“Can I see them?” I asked.

Geir stopped and dug the box up from his pocket. I shook it a little. Full. Then I opened it. All the matchheads were red.

Start a fire, start a fire.

“It’s a new box,” I said, giving it back. “Won’t they notice you’ve taken it?”