Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Three

“I suppose you’re too old for these now?”

“Not for Ms,” I said. “You’re never too old for them, are you?”

I took the bag and turned to go into the kitchen when Anne Mai said: “What on earth’s that on your back? Trauma?”

She laughed.

“His soccer team’s called Trauma,” Mom said.

“Trauma!” Dagny said. Now all three of them were laughing.

“What’s wrong with it?” I said.

“That’s what we work with, you know. It’s when something terrible happens. You can have trauma. It was quite funny to see it on your back.”

“Oh,” I said. “But that’s not what it means. It comes from Thruma, the old name for Tromøya. From Viking times.”

They were still laughing when I went to my room. I put The Specials on the cassette recorder and lay down to read while the last rays of sun were shining on the wall beyond the bed, and the estate outside was slowly draining of noise.

Kajsa was constantly on my mind over the following weeks. I had two recurrent images of her. In one she was turning to me, with her blonde hair and blue eyes, wearing the pink and light-blue clothes of the 17th of May. In the second she was lying naked in front of me in a field. The latter I saw every night before I went to sleep. The thought of her big, white breasts with the pink nipples made my body ache. I lay writhing while imagining various indistinct but intense things I did with her. The second image aroused something else in me, and at other moments: jumping from a cliff on the island, floating in the air with the sun on my face, I caught a glimpse of her and a wild cheer broke free from my innards, more or less at the same instant as my feet hit the surface and my body plunged into the bluish-green sea water, breaking my fall of several meters, and, surrounded by a rush of bubbles and with the taste of salt on my lips, I headed for the surface again with slow arm movements and a quiver of happiness in my chest. Or at the dinner table, while I was peeling the skin off a piece of cod, for example, or chewing a mouthful of hashed lung, which had such an unpleasant consistency, it swelled and filled my mouth at first, but when I chewed, my teeth went right through the mass, which only resisted at the last, when it stuck to my gums, then the image of her could suddenly appear and she was so radiant that everything else was pushed into the shadows. But I didn’t see her at all in reality. The distance as the crow flew between our two estates could have been only a few kilometers, but the social distance was greater and could not be covered by either bike or bus. Kajsa was a dream, an image in my head, a star in the firmament.

Then something happened.

We were playing a match on the Kjenna field, the spring season was actually over, but a game had been cancelled and moved forward, so there we were, running around the grass in the heat with the usual ten to fifteen spectators when from the corner of my eye I espied three figures walking along the touchline, and I knew at once it was her. For the rest of the match I watched the spectators standing on the slope as much as the ball.

After the match a girl came over to me.

“Can I have a word with you?” she said.

“Yes, of course,” I said.

A hope so wild it made me smile was lit inside me.

“Do you know who Kajsa is?” she said.

I reddened and looked down.

“Yes,” I said.

“She wants me to ask you a question,” she said.

“Pardon,” I said.

A wave of heat surged up inside me, as though my chest were filling with blood.

“Kajsa was wondering if you would like to go out with her,” she said. “Would you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Great,” she said. “I’ll tell her.”

She made a move to leave.

“Where is she?” I said.

She turned.

“She’s waiting over by the changing room,” she said. “Will we see you there afterward?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s fine.”

As she went away I looked down at the ground for a second.

Thank God, I said to myself. Because now it had happened. Now I was going out with Kajsa!

Was it true?

Was I really going out with Kajsa?

With Kajsa.

Dazed, I began to walk along the touchline. Suddenly it struck me that I had a big problem. She was there and waiting for me. I would have to speak to her. We would have to do something together. What would it be?

On my way into the changing room I could either pretend I didn’t see her or just flash a fleeting smile because I had to go in and change. But when I had to go out again …

It was a mild evening, the air smelled of grass and was filled with bird song, we had won, and the voices rising from the changing room were animated. Kajsa was standing in the road nearby with two other girls. She was holding her bike and glanced at me when I looked over. She smiled. I smiled back.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” she said.

“I’ll just get changed,” I said. “Be out afterward.”

She nodded.

In the shed-like changing room I undressed as slowly as possible while feverishly trying to find a way to extricate myself with honor. To go off with her, unprepared, was inconceivable, it would never work. So I had to find a convincing excuse.

Homework? I wondered, loosening a shin pad, slippery with sweat on the inside. No, that would give a bad impression of me.

I put one shin pad in the bag and took off the other, staring at the lake through the small window. Unwound the bandage from my foot and rolled it up. The first boys had already gone out. “Jesus Christ, are you crazy or what?” John said to Jostein, who was smacking John’s face with a goalie’s glove. “Give it up, you bastard,” John shouted. I’m going out with Kajsa, I felt like saying, but I didn’t, of course. Got up and put on my light-blue jeans instead.

“What posh pants,” Jostein said.

“You’re the one with posh pants,” I said.

“These?” he said, motioning toward his red-and-black-striped trousers.

“Yes,” I said.

“They’re punk trousers, you jerk,” he said.

“They’re not,” I said. “They’re from Intermezzo, and that is definitely a posh shop.”

“Is the belt posh, too?” he said.

“No,” I said. “It’s a punk belt.”

“Good,” he said. “But your pants are definitely pretty posh.”

“I am not posh,” I said.

“But you are a bit of a jessie,” John piped up.

A jessie? What did that mean?

“Ha ha ha!” Jostein laughed. “Come on, Jessie!”

“What did you say, you daddy’s boy?” I said.

“Is it my fault my father has a lot of money?” he said.

“No,” I said, zipping up the blue-and-white Puma top.

“Bye,” I said.

“Bye,” they said, and I went out to Kajsa, without having prepared anything.

“Hi,” I said, stopping in front of them, with my hands around the handlebars.

“You were so good, all of you,” Kajsa said.

She was wearing a white T-shirt. Her breasts bulged beneath it. Levi’s 501 with a red, plastic belt. White socks. White Nike sneakers with a light-blue logo.

I swallowed.

“Do you think so?” I said.

She nodded.

“Are you coming back with us?”

“In fact, I don’t have a lot of time this evening.”

“No?”

“No. I really should be going now.”

“Oh, that’s a shame,” she said, meeting my eyes. “What have you got to do?”

“I promised I would help my father with something. A wall he was building. But can’t we meet tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

“Where then?”

“I can go to your place after school.”

“Do you know where I live?”

“Tybakken, right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”