Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book One

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “But perhaps we should join the others?”

“No,” she said. “Let’s wait a bit.”

“Okay,” I said.

So we resumed. We embraced, but it did not arouse anything in me, I might just as well have been cutting a slice of bread, I kissed her breasts, that aroused nothing in me, everything was strangely neutral, her nipples were nipples, her skin was skin, her navel a navel, but then to my amazement and delight, everything about her suddenly changed back, and again there was nothing I would rather do than lie there kissing everything I touched.

That was when someone knocked on the door.

We sat up; she quickly wriggled her trousers into position and pulled down her top.

It was Jan Vidar.

“Are you coming out?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Susanne. “We’re on our way. Hang on.”

“It’s half past ten, you know,” he said. “We’d better be off before your parents come back.”

While Jan Vidar was collecting his records I met Susanne’s eyes and smiled at her. When we were in the hall, ready to go, about to kiss them goodbye, she winked at me.

“See you tomorrow!” she said.

Outside, it was drizzling. The light from the streetlamps we walked under seemed to merge with every single water particle in large haloes.

“Well?” I said. “How did it go?”

“The usual,” said Jan Vidar. “We made out. I’m not sure I want to be with her much longer.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “You’re not exactly in love then.”

“Are you?”

I shrugged.

“Maybe not.”

We arrived at the main road and set off up the valley. On one side there was a farm, the waterlogged ground that glistened in the light by the road disappeared in the darkness and did not reappear until the farmhouse, which was brightly illuminated. On the other side there were a couple of old houses with gardens reaching down to the river.

“How did it go with you?” Jan Vidar asked.

“Pretty well,” I said. “She took off her top.”

“What? Really?”

I nodded.

“You’re lying, come on! She didn’t.”

“She did.”

“Not Susanne surely?”

“She did.”

“What did you do then?”

“Kissed her breasts. What else?”

“You lying toad. You didn’t.”

“I did.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him she had also taken off her panties. If he had made any progress with Margrethe, I would have told him. But as he hadn’t I didn’t want to brag. Besides, he would never have believed me. Never.

I could hardly believe it myself.

“What were they like?” he asked.

“What were what like?”

“Her breasts of course.”

“They were great. Just the right size and firm. Very firm. Stood up even though she was lying down.”

“You bastard. It’s not true.”

“It is, for Christ’s sake.”

“Shit.”

After that we didn’t say anymore. Crossed the suspension bridge where the river, so shiny and black, silently swelled, went through the strawberry field, and onto the tarmac road which, after a sharp bend, climbed a steep pass with black spruce trees leaning over, and then after a couple of curves at the top passed our house. Everything was dark and heavy and wet, apart from my consciousness of what had happened, which overrode everything and rose to the light like bubbles. Jan Vidar had accepted my explanation, and I was burning to tell him that her breasts were not the whole story, there was more, but as soon as I saw his sullen look I let it go. And that was fine too, to keep it a secret between Susanne and me. Yet the spasm worried me. I had almost no pubes on my dick, just a couple of long, black hairs, otherwise it was mostly down, and one of the things I feared was that this would come to the ears of the girls, and in particular Susanne’s. I knew I couldn’t sleep with anyone until the hair was in situ, so I assumed the spasm was a kind of false orgasm, and that I had done more and gone further than what my dick was actually up to. And that was why it had hurt. That I had had a kind of “dry” ejaculation. For all I knew it might be dangerous. On the other hand, my underpants were wet. It might be pee, it might also be semen. Or blood even? The latter two I considered unlikely, after all I was not sexually mature, and I had not experienced pains in my loins until that moment. Whatever the reason, it had hurt, and I was concerned.

Jan Vidar had left his bike outside our garage, we stood there chatting, then he cycled home, and I went in. Yngve was at home that weekend, he was sitting with Mom in the kitchen. I could see them through the window. Dad must have been in the flat in the barn. After taking off my outdoor clothes, I went to the toilet, locked the door, dropped my trousers to my knees, lifted my underpants and pressed my forefinger against the damp patch. It was sticky. I raised my finger, rubbed it against my thumb. Shiny and sticky. Smelt of the sea.

Sea?

That must be semen then?

Of course it was semen.

I was sexually mature.

Exultant, I went into the kitchen.

“Do you want some pizza? We saved a few slices for you,” Mom said.

“No thanks. We ate out there.”

“Did you have a good time?”

“Of course,” I said, unable to suppress a smile.

“His cheeks are all red,” Yngve said. “Is that with happiness, I wonder?”

“You’ll have to invite her here one day,” Mom said.

“Yes, I will,” I said and just went on smiling.

The relationship with Susanne came to an end two weeks later. Long ago I had made a deal with Lars, my best friend in Tromøya, to swap pictures of the most beautiful girls there with pictures of the most beautiful girls here. Don’t ask me why. I had forgotten all about it until one afternoon when I received an envelope in the mail containing photographs. Passport photos of Lene, Beate, Ellen, Siv, Bente, Marianne, Anne Lisbet, or whatever they were all called. They were Tromøya’s finest. Now I had to get my hands on pictures of Tveit’s finest. I conferred regularly with Jan Vidar over the next days, we drew up a list and then all I had to do was get hold of the photos. I could ask some girls directly, such as Susann, the friend of Jan Vidar’s sister, who was old enough for me to care about what she thought; I could get Jan Vidar to ask others for pictures of their girlfriends. As for myself, my hands were tied because asking for a photo was tantamount to showing an interest in them, and since I was going out with Susanne such an interest would be inappropriate enough for rumors to spread. But there were other methods. Per, for example, did he have any photos of Kristin in his class perhaps? He did, and in this way I eventually managed to scrape together six photos. That was more than enough, but the jewel in the crown, the most beautiful of them all, Inger, whom I very much wanted to show Lars, was missing. And Inger was Susanne’s cousin. .

So one afternoon I got my bike out of the garage and cycled to Susanne’s. We hadn’t made any arrangement and she seemed happy when she came downstairs to answer the door. I said hello to her parents, we went to her room and sat down for a while, discussed what we would do, without making any plans, chatted a bit about school and the teachers, before I presented my question as casually as I could. Did she have a photo of Inger I could borrow?

Sitting on the bed, she stiffened and stared at me with incredulity.

“Of Inger?” she queried, at length. “What do you want that for?”

It hadn’t occurred to me that this might cause a problem. After all, I was going out with Susanne, and the fact that I was asking her, of all people, could only imply that my motives were pure.