Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Three

I sat for a while on the bench, bent forward with my hands on my knees, watching the others coming out of the shower one by one, all with big heads, fair hair, darkened now by the water, pale skin where, after only a few weeks, the clear marks left by a T-shirt and swimming trunks were now disappearing, and skinny bodies, no one was fat in our class, not even Vemund, he was just a bit flabby and had round cheeks, but still he was called fat, the class fatty. Someone had to be. The skin on my arms was developing goose pimples in the cold air and I ran my hands over them quickly a few times. I tried to recapture the happiness the chlorine had filled me with, but now it was as if I couldn’t regain it, as if it had been used up or taken over by everything else that was happening.

Through the chink in the open door I saw that the lights in the swimming pool had been switched on.

“It’s starting!” someone shouted.

The few boys left in the showers hurried out. The rest put on their bathing trunks, goggles, and caps.

A whistle sounded from inside. I took the cap from my bag, crumpled it up in my hand, and went to the pool, after Geir, before John. The girls came out of their changing room opposite at exactly the same moment. The teacher stood by the edge of the pool beckoning to us. The whistle hung from a cord around her neck. She was holding a sheet of paper in a transparent plastic sleeve.

She blew the whistle again. The last boys came running out of the changing room, laughing.

“Don’t run!” she yelled. “We never run in here. It’s slippery and the floor’s hard.”

She adjusted her glasses.

“Hello and welcome to the class!” she said. “We’ll be meeting here six times this autumn, and our goal is to teach everyone to swim. As this is our first lesson today, we’ll take things slowly. First of all, we can play in the water for a bit, and then we’ll practice some strokes on the mats you can see over there.”

“On land?” Sverre said. “Are we going to learn to swim on land?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Now, there are some simple rules we have to follow. You always shower before getting into the pool. Is there anyone here who hasn’t had a shower?”

No one said anything.

“Good! And you must all wear caps. There is to be no running, not even when we have finished. There is to be no dunking! Not under any circumstances! There is to be no jumping into the pool. Always use one of the two ladders you can see.”

“Are we allowed to dive then?” John asked.

“Can you dive?” she asked.

“Yes, a bit,” John said.

“No, you are not allowed to dive,” she said. “Not even ‘a bit.’ So, no jumping, no diving, and no running. And whenever I blow this whistle you pay attention to me. Have you got that?”

“Yes.”

“Right, let’s start with the roll call. Answer me when I say your name.”

Anne Lisbet was the first to have her name called out, as usual. She was standing right at the back in a red swimsuit, smiling, laughing almost, as she answered. I felt a tingle go through me. At the same time I dreaded my name being read out, hated the way every name was sliced off like a piece of bread and put to one side, until it was my turn. Usually I looked forward to this, sitting in class with everyone’s attention drawn to me for a second, how loud and clear my voice was … but this was different.

“John!” she said.

“Yes, here,” John said, waving his raised hand.

She sent him a sharp glance before going on to the next.

“Karl Ove!” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

She looked at me.

“Where’s your bathing cap? Haven’t you got it with you?”

“Here,” I said, raising my hand with the cap so that she could see.

“Put it on then, young man!” she said.

“I’d prefer to wait until I’m in the water,” I said.

“There’s no ‘preferring’ here. On with it!”

I unfurled it, drew apart the sides, and wriggled it into position on my head. This did not go unnoticed.

“Look at Karl Ove!” someone said.

“He’s wearing a woman’s cap!”

“A cap with flowers on it! That’s for old biddies!”

“Now, now,” said the swimming teacher. “All caps are acceptable here. Marianne!”

“Yes,” Marianne said.

But I didn’t escape so lightly. All around me there were grins, nudges, and amused grimaces. The cap seemed to be burning on my head.

When the roll call was over everyone went as quickly as they could to the two ladders at the corners of the pool. The water was cold, it was best to submerge your body as fast as possible, and I crouched down, launched myself, and took as many strokes as I could manage along the bottom. I could swim underwater; the problem was on top. But what a feeling it was, with the bottom only a few centimeters beneath my body and all the water above me! As I broke the surface and stood up, I searched for Geir.

“Did you borrow your mom’s cap, or what?” Sverre said.

“No, I did not,” I said.

Geir and Leif Tore had both taken a kickboard, they lunged forward with it in their hands, and kicked as hard as they could. I went over to them.

“Want to go a bit further up and dive?” I said.

They nodded, and we waded off with the slow, heavy steps you take when you walk in water, until it was up under our arms.

“Is it true your eyes can be open underwater?” Leif Tore said.

“Yes,” I said. “All you have to do is keep them open.”

“But it’ll sting!” he said.

“It doesn’t sting mine,” I said, happy for the opportunity he had given me to shine. For a while we tried to dive the way divers did, swimming on the surface of the water and then bobbing down with their legs in the air. None of us could do it, but Geir was quite close. He was good at everything in water.

When the whistle sounded and we assembled by the thin blue mats to practice strokes, I had almost completely forgotten about the cap. But then Marianne came over to me.

“Why do you have a woman’s cap?” she said. “Did you think the flowers were so pretty, or what?”

“That’s enough about the cap,” the teacher said. She had been standing right behind us. “OK?”

“OK,” Marianne said.

We lay on our stomachs on the mats, waving our arms and kicking our legs like pale overgrown frogs. The teacher walked around correcting our movements. Then we had to go into the pool again, take a kickboard, and practice our kicks. When we had been doing that for some time, the lesson was suddenly over. After a short get-together at the end of the pool, when she praised us, told us what we would be doing in the next lesson, and reminded us to have a shower, we went into the changing room. I sat down on the bench and was about to put the cap in my bag when Sverre bounded over and grabbed it out of my hand.

“Let me have a look!” he said.

“No,” I said. “Give it to me.”

I lunged at him, but he jumped back. He put on the cap and walked around wiggling his hips.

“Oh, what lovely flowers I have on my cap,” he said in a girl’s voice.

“Hand it over,” I said, getting up.

He took a couple more mincing steps.

“Karl Ove’s got a woman’s cap, Karl Ove’s got a girl’s cap,” he said. As I ran at him he removed the cap, dangled it in front of me, and took a couple of steps backward.

“Let me have it,” I said. “It’s mine!”

I made another lunge at it. Sverre threw it to John.

“Karl Ove’s got a girl’s cap,” he chanted. I turned to him and tried to grab it. He gripped my arm and squeezed while holding the cap in front of my face.

I started to cry.

“I want it!” I shouted. “Give it to me!”