Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book One

“I think I’ll have a smoke,” I said, nodding in the direction of the bus stop on the other side of the community center. “Shall we stand there for a bit?”

“Go on, you have a smoke,” Jan Vidar said. “It’s New Year’s Eve after all.”

“How about a beer as well?” I suggested.

“Here? What’s the point of that?”

“Are you in a bad mood or what?”

“Depends what you call bad.”

“Oh come on now!” I said. I took off my rucksack, found the lighter and the packet of cigarettes, fished one out, shielded it against the wind with my hand, and lit up.

“Want one?” I asked, proffering the packet.

He shook his head.

I coughed and the smoke that seemed to get trapped in the upper part of my throat sent a feeling of nausea through my stomach.

“Agh, shit,” I said.

“Is it good?” Jan Vidar asked.

“I don’t usually cough,” I said. “But the smoke went down the wrong way. It’s not because I’m not used to it.”

“No,” Jan Vidar said. “Everyone who smokes takes it down the wrong way and coughs. It’s a well-known phenomenon. My mother has been smoking for thirty years. Every time she smokes it goes down the wrong way and she coughs.”

“Ha ha,” I said.

Around the bend, out of the darkness, came a car. Jan Vidar took a step forward and stuck out his thumb. The car stopped! He rushed over and opened the door. Then he turned to me and waved. I threw away the cigarette, slung the rucksack onto my back, grabbed the bag, and walked over. Susanne stepped out of the car. She bent down, pulled a little lever, and slid the seat forward. Then she looked at me.

“Hi Karl Ove,” she said.

“Hi Susanne,” I said.

Jan Vidar was already on his way into the darkness of the car. The bottles clinked in the bag.

“Do you want to put the bag in the trunk?” Susanne suggested.

“No thanks,” I said. “It’s fine.”

I got in, squeezed the bag down between my legs. Susanne got in. Terje, who was behind the wheel, turned around and looked at me.

“Are you hitchhiking on New Year’s Eve?” he asked.

“We-ell. .,” Jan Vidar hedged, as if he considered that this was not actually hitchhiking. “We’ve just been pretty unlucky this evening.”

Terje put the car in gear, the wheels spun around until they caught up with the engine, and we rolled down the hill and onto the flat.

“Where are you going, boys?” he asked.

Boys .

What an idiot.

How could he go around with a perm and imagine it looked good? Did he think he looked tough with the moustache and the perm?

Grow up. Lose twenty kilos. Get rid of the stache. Get your hair cut. Then we can start talking.

What did Susanne see in him?

“We’re going to Søm. To a party,” I said. “How far are you going?”

“Well, we’re just going to Hamre,” he answered. “To Helge’s party. But we can drop you at the Timenes intersection if you like.”

“Great,” Jan Vidar said. “Thanks. Very nice of you.”

I looked at him. But he was staring out of the window and didn’t catch my look.

“Who’s going to Helge’s then?” he asked.

“The usual suspects,” Terje said. “Richard, Ekse, Molle, Jøgge, Hebbe, Tjådi. And Frode and Jomås and Bjørn.”

“No girls?”

“Yes of course. Do you think we’re stupid?”

“Who then?”

“Kristin, Randi, Kathrine, Hilde. . Inger, Ellen, Anne Kathrine, Rita, Vibecke. . Why? Would you like to join us?”

“No, we’re going to another party,” I said before Jan Vidar could say a word. “And we’re pretty late already.”

“Especially if you’re going to hitch,” he said.

Ahead of us, the airport lights came into view. On the other side of the river, which we crossed the very next second, the little slalom slope below the school was bathed in light. The snow had an orange tint.

“How’s it going at commercial school, Susanne?” I asked.

“Fine,” she said from her inviolable seat in front of me. “How’s it going at Cathedral School?”

“It’s fine,” I said.

“You’re in the same class as Molle, aren’t you,” Terje said, sending me a quick glance.

“That’s right.”

“Is that the class with twenty-six girls?”

“Yes.”

He laughed.

“Quite a few class parties then?”

The camping site, snow-covered and forlorn, appeared on one side of the road; the little chapel, the supermarket, and the Esso garage on the other. The night sky above the rooftops of the houses huddled together on the hillside was riven with flares and flashes from fireworks. A crowd of children stood around a Roman candle in the parking lot, it was shooting up tiny balls of light that exploded in a myriad of sparks. A stream of cars crawled, bumper to bumper, along the road that ran parallel to ours for a stretch. On the other side was the beach. The bay was hidden beneath a white layer of ice that fissured and broke into a sea of blackness a hundred meters out.

“What time is it?” Jan Vidar asked.

“Half past nine,” Terje said.

“Shit. That means we won’t manage to get drunk before twelve,” Jan Vidar said.

“Have you got to be home by twelve?”

“Ha ha,” said Jan Vidar.

A few minutes later Terje pulled in by the bus stop at the Timenes intersection, and we climbed out and waited under the bus shelter with our bags.

“Wasn’t the bus supposed to leave at ten past eight?” Jan Vidar asked.

“It was,” I replied. “Could be late though?”

We laughed.

“Christ,” I said. “Well, at least we can have a beer now!”

I couldn’t open the bottles with the lighter, so I passed it to Jan Vidar. Without saying a word, he whipped the tops off both and handed me one.

“Oooh, that was good,” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “If we knock back two or three now we’ve got ourselves a base for later.”

“My feet are fucking frozen,” Jan Vidar said. “How about yours?”

“Same,” I said.

I put the bottle to my mouth and drank for as long as I could. There was just a drop left after I lowered it. My stomach was full of froth and air. I tried to belch, but no air came up, just bubbles of froth that ran back into my mouth.

“Open another, will you,” I said.

“Okay,” Jan Vidar said. “But we can’t stand here all night.”

He flipped off another cap and passed me the bottle. I put it to my mouth and closed my eyes in concentration. I downed just over half. Another frothy belch followed.

“Oh Christ ,” I moaned. “Maybe not such a good idea drinking this fast.”

The road we were standing by was the main thoroughfare between the towns in Sørland. It was normally packed with traffic. But in the ten minutes we had stood there only two cars had passed, both heading for Lillesand.

The air beneath the powerful streetlamps was full of swirling snow. The wind, made visible by the snow, rose and fell like waves, sometimes in long, slow surges, sometimes with sudden twists and twirls. Jan Vidar kicked his left foot against his right, the right against the left, the left against the right. .

“Come on, drink” I said. I knocked back the rest, threw the empty into the forest behind the shelter.

“Another one,” I demanded.

“You’ll be chucking up soon,” Jan Vidar said. “Take it easy.”

“Come on,” I said. “One more. Soon be damn near ten o’clock, won’t it?”

He flipped the top off another bottle and passed it to me.

“What shall we do?” he asked. “It’s too far to walk. The bus has gone. There are no cars to get a lift with. There isn’t even a telephone box nearby so that we can ring someone to pick us up.”