Dancing in the Dark: My Struggle Book 4 (45 page)

There were quite a lot of people watching, most of them on the touchlines, a few on the slope facing. Vivian and Andrea were there, I waved to them before the match started, and when someone shouted, ‘Come on, Karl Ove,’ a few minutes later I looked across and smiled. It was Vivian, while Andrea was yanking at her jacket to make her stop.

We won 1–0, the mood in the dressing room afterwards was buoyant, everyone was going out for a drink, the majority to Finnsnes, as far as I could glean, and there was no shortage of invitations, but I couldn’t go, Irene was coming.

On the way down to my place I popped into the staffroom and rang Yngve.

‘How’s it going?’ I said.

‘It’s going fine,’ he said.

‘Where’s the letter you promised?’

‘Oh that,’ he said. ‘I’ve had so much to think about recently.’

‘Like what for example?’

‘Like finishing with Kristin.’

‘Is it
over
?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

There was a silence.

‘Karl Ove, I’m actually on my way out,’ he said. ‘I’m going to the film club tonight. We can talk later, can’t we?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

We rang off, I donned my jacket, locked the door and left. The sky was grey and a strong wind was blowing off the sea. The tips of the waves in the middle of the fjord were white. I put a ready-made lasagne in the microwave when I returned home, ate it straight from the white plastic packaging and drank a beer with it. I had just opened a second when a car pulled up outside.

That’s probably for me, I thought and got a hard-on. When the bell rang a second later, I stuffed one hand in my pocket to hide it and opened the door.

‘Hi,’ said Irene.

The car hooted its horn and set off down the hill.

‘Hi,’ I said.

She took a step forward and hugged me. I took my hand out of my pocket to reciprocate the hug and held back my groin so that she wouldn’t notice.

‘Nice to see you,’ she said. ‘I’ve been looking forward so much to coming here. I’ve almost been counting the hours!’

‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Come in!’

‘I have to go back tonight after all,’ she said. ‘But that’s ages away. Someone’s going to pick me up at half past eleven. Is that OK?’

‘Of course,’ I said.

I put the beer on the worktop, opened a bottle of white wine and filled two glasses. If this was going to work I would have to drink, and drink something stronger than beer, that much was clear.

‘
Skål
,’ I said, looking into her eyes.

‘
Skål
,’ she said, smiling.

I put on a Chris Isaak record, I had worked all this out in advance, the muted, melancholic yet slightly wild mood fitted perfectly.

She sat down on the sofa. I sat beside her, but not so close. She was wearing the same blouse she’d had on the first time she had been here. I couldn’t see her full breasts underneath, but I sensed their presence as indeed I sensed her thighs under the tight blue jeans.

Oh.

‘That was fun in Finnsnes,’ she said.

‘Yes, it was,’ I said. ‘Are they an item, the two others who were with us?’

‘Eilif and Hilde?’

‘Yes.’

She laughed. ‘No, they’re brother and sister. They’ve always been good pals.
This
close,’ she said, holding two fingers entwined.

‘Have you got any brothers or sisters?’ I said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Have you?’

‘Yes, a brother.’

‘Older or younger? No, let me guess. Older?’

‘Yes, how did you know?’

‘You’re not the big brother type.’

I smiled and refilled my glass. Knocked it back in one gulp.

‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a sister too. A half-sister.’

‘Had you forgotten?’

‘She’s just a few days old!’

‘Is she?’

‘Yes, she is. A newborn baby. I haven’t seen her yet. My father remarried.’

Conversation flagged.

We looked at each other and smiled.

The silence continued.

It had to happen now. We had no time to lose. It had to happen now even though I couldn’t feel the wine at all.

‘What do your parents do?’ I said, and cursed myself. A bigger turn-off was hard to imagine.

But she answered politely. ‘Dad’s a fisherman. Mum’s a housewife. And yours?’

‘My dad’s a
gymnas
teacher, my mum’s a teacher at a nursing college.’

‘And you’re a teacher here!’ she said. ‘Chip off the old block!’

‘I’m not a teacher,’ I said. ‘And I’m not going to be one either.’

‘Don’t you like it?’

‘Yes, I do. But I don’t want to spend my life teaching. I’m doing it for a year to earn money.’

‘How do you want to spend your life then?’

‘I’m going to write. I’m going to be a writer.’

‘Are you? How exciting!’

‘Yes, it is. But I’m not sure I’ll make it.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I mean, of course you will.’ She looked me in the eye.

‘Do you want a bit more wine?’ I said.

She nodded. I filled her glass. She took a sip. Then she got up and walked around the room. Stopped by the desk.

‘So this is where you write,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

She gazed out of the window.

I emptied my glass in one draught and got up. Went over to her. Smelled the fragrance of her perfume, it was fresh, light, like a meadow.

‘Nice view you’ve got from here,’ she said.

I swallowed and gently wrapped my arms around her. It was as though she had been waiting because she immediately leaned back, I rested my cheek against hers and stroked her stomach, she turned to me, I kissed her.

‘Oh,’ she said, turning round and wrapping her arms around me. We kissed, long and lingering. I pressed against her. I kissed her neck, I kissed her cheek, I kissed her naked arm. My ears were rushing, my chest was pounding.

‘Come on. Let’s go to my bedroom,’ I said, took her hand and led her in. She got onto the bed and lay back, I clambered on top of her. With trembling hands I unbuttoned her blouse, underneath she was wearing a bra, I fumbled around trying to get it off, she laughed, sat up, reached behind her back and undid the hook, let the bra fall, and her breasts were freed. Oh God, how big and beautiful they were. I kissed them, my mind was running wild, first one, then the other, the nipples stiffened in my mouth and she said oh oh and I began to fumble with her trouser buttons, eventually managed to undo them, pulled them off, tore off my own, wrestled my jumper over my head and got on top of her again, felt her skin against mine, she was so wonderfully soft, I pressed against her, as hard as I had ever done before, I rubbed against her, and then, oh no, for Christ’s sake, it can’t be true, not now! Not now!

But it was. A jerk, a spasm and it was all over.

I lay quite still.

‘What’s up?’ she said, looking at me. ‘Something happened?’

She half rose, supporting herself on her forearms.

‘Nothing,’ I said, turning away. ‘I was just thirsty. Think I’ll get something to drink. Do you want anything?’

If I could leave the bedroom without her seeing, I could ‘spill something’ in the kitchen so that she wouldn’t realise that the big wet patch on my underpants was sperm, she would think it was juice. And it worked. Standing in front of the fridge, I opened a carton of apple juice, poured some into a glass, some onto my underpants and my stomach.

‘SHIT!’ I shouted.

‘What happened?’ she said from the bedroom.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I’ve just spilled some juice. What did you say again? Did you want some?’

‘No, thanks,’ she said.

When I went back in to her she covered her top half with the duvet, she clung to it. I sat on the edge of the bed with the glass in my hand. The moment was gone, the chance had slipped through my fingers, now I had to repair the situation.

‘Ah, that’s good,’ I said. ‘Shall we have a smoke? I haven’t smoked since you arrived. You obviously exert a magnetic influence on me.’

I smiled and got up, casually pulled on my trousers and jumper, went into the sitting room and put on a record, played the Housemartins this time. There was no need for Chris Isaak and his hypnotic moods any more. Then I sat down on the sofa, filled my wine glass and rolled a cigarette. After a while Irene appeared, also dressed.

How the hell could I get out of this?

Was it possible to raise this situation from zero to the heights we had previously scaled?

All the excitement was gone. Irene sat down at the other end of the sofa, straightened her rumpled hair with her hand, then reached out for her glass.

When she looked at me a smile was playing around her lips and there was a glint in her eye.

A pain shot through my chest.

Was she mocking me because I wasn’t good enough?

‘I think I’m seriously falling in love with you, Karl Ove Knausgaard,’ she said.

What?

Was she making fun of me?

But there was nothing of that detectable in her eyes, they were warm and happy and passionate.

What was she thinking? Did she imagine that I had refrained from taking her and all she had to offer out of chivalry? Could she not see that I couldn’t do it? That I would never be able to do it? That a kind of freak, a monster, was lurking behind what she saw?

‘Do you like me a little bit too?’ she said.

‘Of course!’ I said. But the smile I sent her couldn’t have been very convincing. ‘Irene,’ I said. ‘Shall we go for a walk? It’s still nice out.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Good idea. Let’s do that.’

I regretted my suggestion the moment we were outside. Here there was only one walk, which was along the road between the houses and back again. We wouldn’t be on our own for a metre of it, we would be seen everywhere.

Irene held my hand and smiled up at me. Perhaps it didn’t matter, I thought, and smiled back.

We set off downhill. Neither of us said a word. The light pressure from her hand, which I felt now and then, and her presence only a few centimetres from me, were enough for my lust to return. Around us the countryside was at peace. The sea was perfectly calm. Some clouds hung motionless on the horizon and above the mountains on the other side, which in the gathering dusk were completely black. All I wanted to do was throw her to the ground and take her. But I couldn’t. Not here, not anywhere, not at home, I had just tried that, I hadn’t succeeded, it hadn’t worked. I could have yelled, I could have screamed. I wanted her, I could have her, but I wasn’t able to do it.

Darkness hovered above the sea, between the mountains, beneath the sky: floor, walls and roof. The first stars had begun to burst through. There wasn’t a soul around.

‘Are you going to go back to Kristiansand after you’ve finished here?’ Irene said.

I shook my head. ‘Definitely not,’ I said. ‘That’s the last place on earth I want to live.’

‘Is it so awful?’

‘Yes, you have no idea.’

‘I’ve been there. Dad’s got some family there.’

‘Oh? Where?’

‘I think it’s called Vågsbygd,’ she said. ‘But I don’t remember exactly.’

‘Yes, that’s what it’s called,’ I said.

We had reached the bend at the end of the village, by the chapel. She stopped and put her arms around me.

‘We’re going out now,’ she said. ‘Aren’t we?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

We kissed.

‘My writer,’ she said with a smile.

This time it was obvious she was teasing me. But also that she liked the idea.

Oh Christ, when was this going to end? I could barely walk I was so excited by having her this close to me.

We went on, she told me a bit about what she was doing in Finnsnes, I told her a bit about what I had done in Kristiansand.

As we approached my flat and I saw the school standing there like a social-democratic fortress it struck me that we could walk up there, I could unlock the pool and we could have a swim. Have a shower together, have a sauna together, swim together. But as I imagined it the certainty that I wouldn’t be able to perform and that it would be impossible to conceal it sank its claws into my breast.

I unlocked the door, we chatted and drank some more wine. The silences became longer and more uncomfortable until it was half past eleven and I could finally accompany her to the door and kiss her goodbye.

She looked back once on her way to the car. Her eyes were gleaming. Then she got in, the door closed and she was gone.

The next day I tried to write. It didn’t go very well, and the evening’s defeat cast a shadow over everything. Not only over my individual lessons and what I did in them but the whole of my accursed life. There was a reason for this, and I knew the reason, but it was somehow ill defined, surrounded by a fog-like vagueness, something deep, deep in the mists of my mind.

The fact was I had never masturbated. Had never wanked. Had never played with myself. I was eighteen years old now and it had never happened. Not once. I hadn’t even tried. My lack of experience of this meant that I both knew and didn’t know how to do it. And once I hadn’t done it as a twelve-or thirteen-year-old, time passed and it slowly became unthinkable, not in the sense of unheard of, more in the sense of beyond my horizons. The direct result of this was that I had heavy nocturnal emissions. I dreamed about women, and in my sleep not even touching was required, it was enough just to lay my eyes on them, standing there, with their beautiful bodies, and I came. If I was close to them in my dreams, again I came. My whole body jerked and convulsed through the night, and my underpants were soaked with semen in the morning.

I had read porn magazines like everyone else when I was growing up, but it had always been with others around me, in the forest with Geir or Dag Lothar or some of the other boys, never alone, not once had I taken a magazine home, I wouldn’t have dared. There were few things I found more stimulating and exciting than looking at a porn magazine, but the desire it aroused in me never led to masturbation as there were always others around. At most I would lie on my stomach and rub my groin against the ground while I read. When I was alone at home I sometimes flicked through the mail order catalogues that existed then, staring at the lingerie or bikini models, and my throat constricted as I studied the cloth pressing against the soft arch between their thighs, or the nipples occasionally visible under their bras or bikini tops. But that was where it stopped, at the constricted throat, the throbbing heart. I didn’t masturbate. This was never a conscious decision, it wasn’t that I told myself, no, I’m not doing that. Everything was vague and unclear, unconscious and tenebrous. By the time I was in my teens it was too late. Reading porn magazines in the forest was over and not replaced by anything else. In my teens I didn’t see a single pornographic film and didn’t read a single pornographic magazine. Desire was never focused on one point, it broadened out, it was large and nebulous and hard to handle. Somewhere I knew that my situation with regard to girls, or Irene, as she was the one in question now, would improve dramatically if I just started masturbating. Nevertheless, I didn’t. Even though I knew this, at the same time I didn’t, wanking belonged to the unthinkable, and that was where I was on this day, with the aroma of Irene still clinging to the sheets, I should have, I had to, I wanted to, but I didn’t.