Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book One

“I like you,” she said. “But you already know that, don’t you.”

I leaned forward and adjusted one of the stays, flushing quite unexpectedly.

“No,” I said.

Then she didn’t say anything for a while, just lolled over the frame, chewing gum. Her girlfriends over by the pile of planks appeared impatient. In the end, she straightened up.

“Right,” she said, turned and was gone.

Passing up the opportunity was not a huge problem for me; far more important was the way it had happened, not having the pluck to take the final steps, to cross that last bridge. And when the novelty interest in me had died down nothing was served on a plate anymore. On the contrary, the old judgments of me slowly trickled back. I could sense them close at hand, felt the reverberations, even though there was no contact between the two places I had lived. On the very first day at school I had spotted a particular girl, her name was Inger, she had beautiful narrow eyes, a dark complexion, a childish short nose which broke up otherwise long, rounded features, and she exuded distance, except when she smiled. She had a liberating, gentle smile that I admired and found endlessly appealing, both because it did not embrace me or others like me, it belonged to the very essence of her being, to which only she herself and her friends had recourse, and also because her top lip was slightly twisted. She was in the class below me, and in the course of the two years I spent at that school I never exchanged a single word with her. Instead, I got together with her cousin, Susanne. She was in the parallel class to mine, and lived in a house on the other side of the river. Her nose was pointed, her mouth small, and her front teeth a touch harelike, but her breasts were well-rounded and pert, her hips just the right width and her eyes provocative, as if they were always clear about what they wanted. She was always comparing herself with others. Whereas Inger in all her unattainability was full of mystery and secrets, and her appeal consisted almost entirely of things unknown, suspicions, and dreams, Susanne was more of an equal and more likeminded. With her I had less to lose, less to fear, but also less to gain. I was fourteen years old, she was fifteen and within a few days we drifted together, as can often happen at that age. Shortly afterward Jan Vidar got together with her friend, Margrethe. Our relationships were located somewhere between the world of the child and that of the adult and the boundaries between the two were fluid. We sat on the same seat on the school bus in the morning, sat beside each other when the whole school gathered for morning assembly on Fridays, cycled together to the confirmation classes held once a week in the church, and hung out together afterward, at an intersection or in the parking lot outside the shop, all situations where the differences between us were played down and Susanne and Margrethe were like pals. But on weekends it was different, then we might go to the cinema in town or sit in some cellar room eating pizza and drinking Coke while we watched TV or listened to music, entwined in each other’s arms. It was getting closer, the thing we were all thinking about. What had been a huge step forward a few weeks ago, the kiss, had long been achieved: Jan Vidar and I had discussed the procedure, the practical details, such as which side to sit, what to say to initiate the process that would culminate in the kiss, or whether to act without saying anything at all. By now it was well on the way to becoming mechanical: after eating pizza or lasagne the girls sat on our laps and we started canoodling. Occasionally we stretched out on the sofa too, one couple at each end, if we felt sure no one would come. One Friday evening Susanne was alone at home. Jan Vidar cycled up to my place in the afternoon, we set off along the river, over the narrow footbridge and up to the house where she lived. They were waiting for us. Her parents had made a pizza, we ate it, Susanne sat on my lap, Margrethe on Jan Vidar’s, Dire Straits was on the stereo, “Telegraph Road,” and I was kissing Susanne, and Jan Vidar was fooling around with Margrethe, for what seemed like an eternity in the living room. I love you, Karl Ove, she whispered in my ear after a while. Shall we go to my room? I nodded, and we got up, holding hands.

“We’re going to my room,” she said to the two others. “So you can have a bit of peace here.”

They looked up at us and nodded. Then they went back to it. Margrethe’s long, black hair almost completely covered Jan Vidar’s face. Their tongues went round and round in each other’s mouths. He was stroking her back, up and down his fingers went, his body otherwise motionless. Susanne sent me a smile, squeezed my hand harder, and led me through the hall and into her bedroom. It was dark inside, and colder. I had been there before, and liked being in her house, even though her parents were always there, and in principle we only did what Jan Vidar and I normally did, that is, we sat chatting, moved into the living room and watched TV with her parents, had a bite to eat in the kitchen, went for long walks along the river, for this was not Jan Vidar’s dark, sweaty room we were sitting in, with his amplifier and stereo equipment, his guitar and records, his guitar magazines and comics, no, this was Susanne’s light, perfumed room, with its white flowery wallpaper, its embroidered bedspread, its white shelf full of ornaments and books, its white cupboard with her clothes nicely folded and hung up. When I saw a pair of her blue jeans there, or hanging over a chair, I gulped, because she would be pulling these very trousers over her thighs, hips, zipping up and buttoning. Her room was filled with such promise, which I could barely put it into words, it just sent surges of emotion through me. There were other reasons I liked being there. Her parents, for example; they were always friendly, and there was something in the family’s manner that made it clear I meant something to them. I was a person in Susanne’s life, someone she told her parents and younger sister about.

Now she went over to close the window. Outside it was misty, even the lights in the neighboring houses were almost invisible in the grayness. On the road below, a few cars drove past with their stereos throbbing. Then it went quiet again.

“Hmm,” I said.

She smiled.

“Hmm,” she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. I had no expectations, other than that we would lie here rather than nestling against each other. Once I had put my hand inside her Puffa jacket and placed it on a breast, and she had said no, and I had removed it again. The “no” had not been sharp or reproachful, more a statement of fact, as if it invoked some law to which we were subject. We did some caressing, that was what we did, and even though I was always ready for it whenever we met, I soon became tired of it. After a while I felt almost nauseous because there was something futile and unresolved about this caressing, my whole being longed for a way out, which I knew existed, but it was not a route that could be taken. I wanted to move on, but was forced to remain where I was, in the vale of rotating tongues and hair perpetually falling over my face.

I sat down beside her. She smiled at me. I kissed her, she closed her eyes and leaned back onto the bed. I crawled up on top of her, felt her soft body beneath mine, she groaned a little, was I too heavy? I lay beside her instead, with my leg over hers. Caressed her shoulder and down, along her arm. When my hand reached her fingers she squeezed it hard. I lifted my head and opened my eyes. She was looking at me. Her face, white in the semidarkness, was serious. I bent forward and kissed her neck. I had never done that before. Rested my head on her chest. She ran her hand through my hair. I could hear her heart beating. I stroked her hips. She tensed. I lifted her top and placed my hand on her stomach. Leaned forward and kissed it. She grabbed the hem of her top and slowly pulled it up. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There, right in front of me, were her naked breasts. In the living room, “Telegraph Road” was played again. I did not hesitate and closed my mouth around them. First one, then the other. I rubbed my cheeks against them, licked them, sucked them, finally put my hands on them and kissed her, for a few seconds I had completely forgotten her. My dreams or imagination had never stretched beyond this point, and now I was there, but after ten minutes there was the same sense of satedness, all of a sudden it was not enough, not even this, however great it was, I wanted to move on wherever it led, and made an attempt, started fumbling with her trouser button. It came open, she said nothing, lay with her eyes closed as before and her sweater pulled up under her chin. I undid the zip. Her white panties came into view. I swallowed hard. I tugged her trousers around her hips and drew them down. She said nothing. Wriggled a bit so that it was easier to remove them. When they were down to her knees I put my hand on her panties. Felt the soft hair beneath. Karl Ove, she said. I lay on top of her again, we kissed, and while we kissed I pulled down her panties, not a lot, but enough to slip in a finger, it glided down through the hair, and the moment I felt her moistness against my fingertip, something in me seemed to crack. It was like a pain shooting through my abdomen, followed by a kind of spasm in my loins. The next second everything was alien to me. From one moment to the next, her naked breasts and her naked thighs lost all meaning. But I could see that she was not having the same experience as me, she was lying as before, with eyes closed, mouth half-open, breathing heavily, engrossed in what I had been engrossed, but was not any longer.