Karl Knausgaard: My Struggle: Book One

It was different in the lessons. I was in a class with three other boys and twenty-six girls, and I had a role, I had a place, I could speak there, answer questions, discuss, do schoolwork, be someone. I had been brought together with others, all of them had been, I had not forced myself on anyone and my being there was not questioned. I sat at the back in the corner, beside me was Bassen, before me Molle, at the front of the same row Pål, and the rest of the classroom was occupied by girls. Twenty-six sixteen-year-old girls. I liked some better than others, but none of them enough to say I was in love. There was Monica, whose parents were Hungarian Jews, she was as sharp as a razor, knowledgeable, and doggedly defended Israel to the bitter end when we debated the Palestine conflict, a stance I could not understand, it was so obvious, Israel was a military state, Palestine a victim. And there was Hanne, an attractive girl from Vågsbygd, who sang in a choir, was a Christian and quite naïve, but someone whose appearance and presence cheered you up. Then there was Siv, blond, tanned, and long-legged who on one of the first days had said the area between the Cathedral School and the Business School was like an American campus, a statement which singled her out for me at first as she knew something I didn’t, about a world of which I would have liked to be part. She had lived in Ghana for the last few years and boasted too much and laughed too loud. There was Benedicte too with sharp, almost fifties-like facial features, curly hair, clothes with a hint of class. And Tone, so graceful in her movements, dark-haired and serious, she sketched, and seemed more independent than the others. And Anne, who had braces on her teeth and whom I had made out with in Bassen’s mother’s hairdressing chair at a class party that autumn; there was Hilde, fair-haired and rosy-cheeked, firm of character but still somehow anonymous, who often turned around to me; and there was Irene, the girls’ focal point, she had that attractiveness that can dazzle and wilt in the space of one glance; and there was Nina who had such a robust, masculine frame but also something fragile and bashful about her. And Mette, small, edgy, and scheming. She was the one who liked Bruce Springsteen and always wore denim, the one who was so small and laughed all the time, the one who dressed in clothes that were as provocative as they were vulgar and smelled of smoke, the one whose gums were visible every time she smiled, attractive apart from that, but her laughter, a kind of constant giggle that accompanied everything she said, and all the stupid things she came out with, and the fact that she had a slight lisp, detracted from her beauty, in a way, or invalidated it. I was in the midst of a deluge of girls, a torrent of bodies, a sea of breasts and thighs. Seeing them in formal surroundings alone, behind their desks, only made their presence stronger. In a way it gave my days meaning, I looked forward to entering the classroom, sitting where I was entitled to sit, together with all these girls.

That morning I went down to the canteen, bought a bun and a Coke, then took my place and consumed my snack while flicking through a book, as the classroom around me slowly filled with pupils, still sluggish in both movement and expression after a night’s sleep. I exchanged a few words with Molle, he lived in Hamresanden; we had been in the same class at our old school. Then the teacher came, it was Berg, wearing a smock, we were going to have Norwegian. Besides history, this was my best subject, I was on the cusp between an A and an A plus, couldn’t quite make the top grade, but I was determined to try for it at the exam. The natural sciences were of course my weakest subjects, in math I was getting a D, I never did any homework, and the teaching was already way above my head. The teachers we had for math and natural sciences were old-school, for math we had Vestby, he had lots of tics, one arm jiggled and writhed the whole time. In his lessons I sat with my feet on the table chatting to Bassen until Vestby, his compact, fleshy face ablaze, screeched out my name. Then I put my feet down, waited until he had turned and continued to chat. The science teacher, Nygaard, a small, thin, wizened man, with a satanic smile and childlike gestures, was approaching retirement age. He too had a number of tics, one eye kept blinking, his shoulders twitched, he tossed his head, he was a parody of a tormented teacher. He wore a light-colored suit in the summer months, a dark suit in the wintertime, and once I had seen him use the blackboard compasses as a gun: we were hunched over a test, he scanned the classroom, clapped the compasses together, put the instrument to his shoulder and sprayed the class with jerking motions, an evil smile on his face. I could not believe my own eyes, had he lost his senses? I chatted in his classes too, so much so that now I had to pay the penalty for whoever did any talking: Knausgaard, he said if he heard some mumbling somewhere, and raised his palm: that meant I had to stand beside my desk for the rest of the lesson. I was happy to do so because inside me I had a rebellious streak developing, I longed not to give a damn about anything, to start skipping classes, drinking, bossing people around. I was an anarchist, an atheist, and became more and more anti — middle class with every day that passed. I flirted with the idea of having my ears pierced and my head shaved. Natural sciences, what use was that to me? Math, what use was that to me? I wanted to play in a band, to be free, to live as I pleased, not as others pleased.

In this I was alone, in this I had no one with me, so for the time being it remained unrealized, it was a thing of the future and was as amorphous as all future things are.

Not doing any homework, not paying attention in class was part and parcel of the same attitude. I had always been among the best in every subject, I had always enjoyed showing it, but not anymore, now there was something shameful about good grades, it meant you sat at home doing your homework, you were a stick-in-the-mud, a loser. It was different with Norwegian, I associated that with writers and a bohemian lifestyle, besides you couldn’t gut it out, it required something else, a feeling, a natural talent, personality.

I doodled my way through lessons, smoked outside the doorway in breaks, and this was the rhythm for the whole day, as the sky and the countryside beneath slowly brightened, until the bell rang for the last time at half past two, and I could make my way home to my digs. It was the fifth of December, the day before my birthday, my sixteenth, and Mom was coming home from Bergen. I was looking forward to seeing her. In many ways it was fine being alone with Dad, in the sense that he kept as far away as possible, stayed at Sannes when I stayed in town and vice versa. When Mom came this would end, we would all be living together up there until well into the new year, so the disadvantage of meeting Dad every day was almost completely outweighed by Mom’s presence. She was someone I could talk to. I could talk to her about everything. I couldn’t say anything to Dad. Nothing beyond purely practical things such as where I was going and when I was coming home.

When I arrived at the flat his car was outside. I went in, the hall reeked of frying; from the kitchen I could hear clattering noises and the radio.

I poked my head in.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

“Yes, quite. What are you making?”

“Chops. Take a seat, they’re ready.”

I went in and sat down at the round dining table. It was old, I assumed it had belonged to his grandmother.

Dad put two chops, three potatoes, and a small pile of fried onions on my plate. Sat down and heaped his plate.

“Well?” he said. “Anything new at school?”