Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Three

Then he noticed my glance and his eyes met mine. With a smile on his lips he stretched up and pressed the palm of his hand against the shower head, stopping the jet, and the water appeared to bulge beneath it. He laughed and turned to me. I held my hands out. My fingertips were red and swollen from the water.

“They look like raisins,” I said.

He examined his.

“Mine, too,” he said. “Imagine if your whole body had gone like that when we were swimming!”

“My ball bag always goes all wrinkly,” I said.

We bent forward and peered down. I ran a finger slowly over the hard yet sensitive folds of skin and a tingle went through me.

“Stroking it feels nice,” I said.

Geir looked around. Then he turned off the shower, went to the row of hooks, and began to dry himself. I grabbed a bar of soap and squeezed hard. It skidded along the floor of the room, hit the wall in the corner, and finished up over one of the grids. I turned off the shower and was about to follow Geir when I suddenly couldn’t bear the thought of the soap lying there in the middle of the floor. I picked it up and threw it in the bin by the wall. I pressed my face against the dry frotté material of the towel.

“Imagine what it will be like when we’ve got pubes,” Geir said, walking with his legs wide apart.

I laughed.

“Imagine what it will be like if they’re really long!” I said.

“Right down to your knees!”

“Then we’d have to comb them!”

“Or make a ponytail!”

“Or go to the hairdresser’s! I’d just like a trim round my dick, please!”

“Oh, yes. And how would you like it, sir?”

“Crew cut, please!”

At that moment the door opened and we stopped laughing. A fat, elderly man with sad eyes came in and the vacuum the laughter had left in us was soon filled with giggles as he first nodded to us and then turned away in embarrassment to remove his trunks. As we grabbed our swimming things and were leaving the shower room, Geir said loudly:

“I bet he’s got a whopper!”

“Or a teeny-weeny one!” I said, just as loudly, and then we slammed the door behind us and ran into the changing room. We sat laughing, wondering whether he had heard us or not, until the normally quiet atmosphere also impacted on us and we sluggishly began to pack our gear and get dressed. The only sounds you could hear inside were feet on linoleum, rustling noises as legs were slipped into trousers, arms into jackets, the metallic clink as lockers were opened or closed, someone sighing to himself, perhaps drained by the heat in the sauna.

I took my bag from the locker and put my swimming things inside. First, the goggles, which I held in my hand and examined for a second, because they were new and filled me with such pleasure that they were mine. Next, trunks, cap, and towel and, last of all, the soap case. With its gently rounded lines, greenish color, and faint aroma of perfume, the case belonged to another world from the rest of my swimming equipment, intimately connected with Mom and the items in her wardrobe: earrings, rings, flasks, buckles, brooches, scarves, and veils. She herself was unaware there was such a world, she had to be, otherwise she would never have bought me a woman’s bathing cap that time. Because a woman’s cap belongs to that world. And if there was one thing everyone knew it was that one world should never be associated with the other.

Beside me Geir was almost ready. I stood up, pulled on my underpants, took my long johns, and put one leg in, followed by the other. Then I pulled them up tight to my waist before turning and starting to search through my clothes for my socks. I found only one and searched through the pile again.

It wasn’t there.

I looked in the locker.

Nothing, empty.

Oh no!

No, no, no.

I frantically went through my clothes again, shook item after item in the air, hoping desperately to see it drop out onto the floor in front of me.

But it wasn’t there.

“What’s up?” Geir said. He was sitting, fully clothed, on the opposite bench watching me.

“I can’t find my other sock,” I said. “Can you see it?”

He leaned forward and looked under the bench.

“It’s not there,” he said.

Oh no!

“But it’s got to be somewhere,” I said. “Can you help me look? Please!”

I could hear my voice quivering. But Geir didn’t let on that he’d noticed, if indeed he had heard anything at all. He leaned over and looked under all the benches while I walked toward the showers in case it had got caught up in my towel and dropped out. It wasn’t there, either. Perhaps, inadvertently, I had packed it in my bag with the other swimming things?

I hurried back and emptied the contents of my bag on the floor.

But no. No sock.

“It wasn’t anywhere there?” I said.

“No,” Geir said. “But we have to get going, Karl Ove. The bus is leaving soon.”

“I have to find the sock first.”

“Well, it’s not here. We’ve looked everywhere. Can’t you just go without it?”

I didn’t answer. Once again I shook all the clothes, crouched down, and scanned the floor under the benches; once again I went into the shower room.

“We’ve got to go now,” Geir said. He held his watch in front of me. “They’ll be angry if I miss the bus.”

“Can you search while I get dressed?” I said.

He nodded and halfheartedly wandered around examining the floor. I put on my T-shirt and sweater.

On the top shelf perhaps?

I stood on the bench and peered along.

Nothing.

I put on my trousers and quilted vest, zipped up my jacket, and sat down to tie my laces.

“We’ve got to go now,” Geir said.

“I’m getting there,” I said. “You wait outside.”

After he had left I hurried back into the shower room. I looked in the trash can, ran my hand along the windowsills, and even opened the door to the pool.

But no.

Geir was standing by the hill when I went out. He started running down before I had even caught up with him.

“Wait for meee!” I cried. But he showed no signs of stopping, he didn’t even turn, and I sprinted off after him. Down into the darkness, past the gray trees, into the light on the road below. For every step I took the bare foot rubbed against the coarse leather of my boot. I’ve lost my sock, a voice inside me said. I’ve lost my sock. I’ve lost my sock. A ticking started in my head. It happened now and again when I was running, my head ticked, somewhere inside my left temple, tick tick, it went, but although it was alarming, sounding as if something had come loose or perhaps it was rubbing against something else, I couldn’t tell anyone, they would just say I had a screw loose and laugh.

Tick, tick, tick

Tick, tick, tick

I ran behind Geir all the way down to the candy shop where we went; the bag of candy we came out with was always the high point of these trips. Geir was waiting outside, impatiently shifting from one foot to the other. I stopped in front of him. As a result of the snowplows’ work we were standing half a meter higher than usual, and the new angle changed our view of the candy shop. It had a cellar-like feel to it, and this feel transformed everything, at a glance I saw the shelves were only “shelves,” that the goods were “goods,” displayed in a very ordinary room in a house, in short that the shop was a “shop,” although I didn’t articulate this to myself, it was just an idea that struck me and disappeared as quickly as it had come.

Geir opened the door and went in.

I followed.

“Are we very short of time?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “It goes in eleven minutes.”