My Struggle: Book 3 (16 page)

I sat for a while on the bench, bent forward with my hands on my knees, watching the others coming out of the shower one by one, all with big heads, fair hair, darkened now by the water, pale skin where, after only a few weeks, the clear marks left by a T-shirt and swimming trunks were now disappearing, and skinny bodies, no one was fat in our class, not even Vemund, he was just a bit flabby and had round cheeks, but still he was called fat, the class fatty. Someone had to be. The skin on my arms was developing goose pimples in the cold air and I ran my hands over them quickly a few times. I tried to recapture the happiness the chlorine had filled me with, but now it was as if I couldn’t regain it, as if it had been used up or taken over by everything else that was happening.

Through the chink in the open door I saw that the lights in the swimming pool had been switched on.

“It’s starting!” someone shouted.

The few boys left in the showers hurried out. The rest put on their bathing trunks, goggles, and caps.

A whistle sounded from inside. I took the cap from my bag, crumpled it up in my hand, and went to the pool, after Geir, before John. The girls came out of their changing room opposite at exactly the same moment. The teacher stood by the edge of the pool beckoning to us. The whistle hung from a cord around her neck. She was holding a sheet of paper in a transparent plastic sleeve.

She blew the whistle again. The last boys came running out of the changing room, laughing.

“Don’t run!” she yelled. “We never run in here. It’s slippery and the floor’s hard.”

She adjusted her glasses.

“Hello and welcome to the class!” she said. “We’ll be meeting here six times this autumn, and our goal is to teach everyone to swim. As this is our first lesson today, we’ll take things slowly. First of all, we can play in the water for a bit, and then we’ll practice some strokes on the mats you can see over there.”

“On land?” Sverre said. “Are we going to learn to swim on land?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Now, there are some simple rules we have to follow. You always shower before getting into the pool. Is there anyone here who hasn’t had a shower?”

No one said anything.

“Good! And you must all wear caps. There is to be no running, not even when we have finished. There is to be no dunking! Not under any circumstances! There is to be no jumping into the pool. Always use one of the two ladders you can see.”

“Are we allowed to dive then?” John asked.

“Can you dive?” she asked.

“Yes, a bit,” John said.

“No, you are not allowed to dive,” she said. “Not even ‘a bit.’ So, no jumping, no diving, and no running. And whenever I blow this whistle you pay attention to me. Have you got that?”

“Yes.”

“Right, let’s start with the roll call. Answer me when I say your name.”

Anne Lisbet was the first to have her name called out, as usual. She was standing right at the back in a red swimsuit, smiling, laughing almost, as she answered. I felt a tingle go through me. At the same time I dreaded my name being read out, hated the way every name was sliced off like a piece of bread and put to one side, until it was my turn. Usually I looked forward to this, sitting in class with everyone’s attention drawn to me for a second, how loud and clear my voice was … but this was different.

“John!” she said.

“Yes, here,” John said, waving his raised hand.

She sent him a sharp glance before going on to the next.

“Karl Ove!” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

She looked at me.

“Where’s your bathing cap? Haven’t you got it with you?”

“Here,” I said, raising my hand with the cap so that she could see.

“Put it on then, young man!” she said.

“I’d prefer to wait until I’m in the water,” I said.

“There’s no ‘preferring’ here. On with it!”

I unfurled it, drew apart the sides, and wriggled it into position on my head. This did not go unnoticed.

“Look at Karl Ove!” someone said.

“He’s wearing a woman’s cap!”

“A cap with flowers on it! That’s for old biddies!”

“Now, now,” said the swimming teacher. “All caps are acceptable here. Marianne!”

“Yes,” Marianne said.

But I didn’t escape so lightly. All around me there were grins, nudges, and amused grimaces. The cap seemed to be burning on my head.

When the roll call was over everyone went as quickly as they could to the two ladders at the corners of the pool. The water was cold, it was best to submerge your body as fast as possible, and I crouched down, launched myself, and took as many strokes as I could manage along the bottom. I could swim underwater; the problem was on top. But what a feeling it was, with the bottom only a few centimeters beneath my body and all the water above me! As I broke the surface and stood up, I searched for Geir.

“Did you borrow your mom’s cap, or what?” Sverre said.

“No, I did not,” I said.

Geir and Leif Tore had both taken a kickboard, they lunged forward with it in their hands, and kicked as hard as they could. I went over to them.

“Want to go a bit further up and dive?” I said.

They nodded, and we waded off with the slow, heavy steps you take when you walk in water, until it was up under our arms.

“Is it true your eyes can be open underwater?” Leif Tore said.

“Yes,” I said. “All you have to do is keep them open.”

“But it’ll sting!” he said.

“It doesn’t sting mine,” I said, happy for the opportunity he had given me to shine. For a while we tried to dive the way divers did, swimming on the surface of the water and then bobbing down with their legs in the air. None of us could do it, but Geir was quite close. He was good at everything in water.

When the whistle sounded and we assembled by the thin blue mats to practice strokes, I had almost completely forgotten about the cap. But then Marianne came over to me.

“Why do you have a woman’s cap?” she said. “Did you think the flowers were so pretty, or what?”

“That’s enough about the cap,” the teacher said. She had been standing right behind us. “OK?”

“OK,” Marianne said.

We lay on our stomachs on the mats, waving our arms and kicking our legs like pale overgrown frogs. The teacher walked around correcting our movements. Then we had to go into the pool again, take a kickboard, and practice our kicks. When we had been doing that for some time, the lesson was suddenly over. After a short get-together at the end of the pool, when she praised us, told us what we would be doing in the next lesson, and reminded us to have a shower, we went into the changing room. I sat down on the bench and was about to put the cap in my bag when Sverre bounded over and grabbed it out of my hand.

“Let me have a look!” he said.

“No,” I said. “Give it to me.”

I lunged at him, but he jumped back. He put on the cap and walked around wiggling his hips.

“Oh, what lovely flowers I have on my cap,” he said in a girl’s voice.

“Hand it over,” I said, getting up.

He took a couple more mincing steps.

“Karl Ove’s got a woman’s cap, Karl Ove’s got a girl’s cap,” he said. As I ran at him he removed the cap, dangled it in front of me, and took a couple of steps backward.

“Let me have it,” I said. “It’s mine!”

I made another lunge at it. Sverre threw it to John.

“Karl Ove’s got a girl’s cap,” he chanted. I turned to him and tried to grab it. He gripped my arm and squeezed while holding the cap in front of my face.

I started to cry.

“I want it!” I shouted. “Give it to me!”

My eyes were almost blind with tears.

John threw it back to Sverre.

He held it up in the air and gazed at it.

“Look! What nice flowers!” he said. “Oh, how pretty they are!”

“Give it to him,” someone said. “He’s crying.”

“Oh, the poor baby. Do you want this lovely cap back?” he said and threw it to where I had been sitting. I walked back, put it in my bag, took my towel, and went in for a shower, stood under the hot jet for a brief moment, dried, dressed, and was the first to leave the changing room, found my boots among all the others in the front hall, put them on, opened the glass door, and stepped out into the playground, where the large, shallow puddles, visible only because they were a little shinier than the surrounding tarmac, were lashed by rain. There wasn’t a soul around. I walked toward the school building, which was almost identical to ours, and saw the green Beetle parked exactly where Mom had dropped us just over an hour ago.

I opened the door and got into the back.

“Hi,” Mom said, turning to me. Her face was illuminated by the gleam of a lamp hanging over the edge of the school like a vulture.

“Hi,” I said.

“Did it all go well?”

“Fine.”

“Where are Geir and Leif Tore?”

“They’re coming.”

“Can you swim now?”

“Nearly,” I said. “But we swam mostly on land.”

“On land?”

“Yes, on some mats. To learn the strokes.”

“Oh, I see,” Mom said, turning back. The smoke from the cigarette she held in her hand hung under the sloping windshield, thick and gray. She took another drag, then pulled out the little metal ashtray and stubbed out the cigarette. From the swimming pool door swarmed a mass of kids. A car headlight swept across the tarmac, then another. The two cars drove almost right up to the entrance.

“Perhaps I’d better tell them you’re here,” I said, opening the door.

“Geir! Leif Tore!” I shouted. “Car’s over here!”

They both looked at me, but they didn’t come, they stayed with the kids collecting around the entrance.

“Geir! Leif Tore!” I shouted. “Come on!”

And then they came. Said something to the others first, then they set off, side by side, at a jog across the playground. White plastic bags hanging from their hands, the only things about them that reflected any light and they resembled heads.

“Hello, Fru Knausgård,” they said, getting onto the back seat.

“Hello,” Mom said. “Was it good?”

“Not bad,” they said. They looked at me.

“Yes, it was fun,” I said. “But the teacher was strict.”

“Was he?” Mom said, starting the car.

“It was a she,” I said.

“Oh,” Mom said.

When, four days later, I was walking up through the forest with Geir, Leif Tore, and Trond, after the brief and unsuccessful hunt for treasure at the end of the rainbow, the fantasy of being able to swim among the trees there made me pause to wonder whether I would ever be able to swim at all. Grandad couldn’t swim, and at one time he had even been a fisherman. I didn’t know if Grandma could, but I found it difficult to imagine her swimming.

Behind the swaying pine trees clouds scudded across the sky.

What was the time, I wondered.

“Do you have your watch on, Geir?” I said.

He shook his head.

“I do,” Trond said, thrusting his hand forward and up, making his sleeve glide back, so that his watch was visible.

“Twenty-five past one, no, past two,” he said.

“Twenty-five past two?” I said.

He nodded and my stomach churned. On Saturdays we had rice pudding at
one.

Oh no, oh no.

I broke into a run, as if that would help.

“Got a rocket up your ass, or what?” said Leif Tore behind me. I craned my head.

“Lunch was supposed to be at one,” I said. “I’d better go.”

Up the soft fir-needle-strewn incline, over the little algae-green stream, past the tall spruce and up the slope to the road. Both Mom’s and Dad’s cars were there. But not Yngve’s bike. Had he been home, eaten, and cycled off again? Or he was he late as well?

The thought, unlikely though it was, kept a little hope burning within me.

Across the road, into the drive. Dad might be behind the house, might come round the corner at any second. Might be waiting for me in the hall, might be in his study, and tear the door open when he heard me. Might be standing at the kitchen window waiting for me to appear.

I closed the door gently behind me and stood still for a couple of seconds. Footsteps on the kitchen floor above me. Dad’s. I took off my boots, placed them by the wall, unbuttoned my waterproof jacket, pulled down my waterproof trousers, took them into the boiler room, and hung them on the line there. Stopped and glanced at myself in the mirror above the chest of drawers. My cheeks were red, my hair was a mess, there was some shiny snot under my nose. My teeth stuck out as always. Buckteeth, as people called them. I went upstairs and into the kitchen. Mom was doing the dishes; Dad was sitting at the table eating crab claws. Both looked at me. The pot of rice was on the stove, the orange plastic ladle protruding.

“I lost track of time,” I said. “Sorry. We were having a lot of fun.”

“Sit down,” Dad said. “You must be hungry, I imagine.”

Mom took a dish from the cupboard, filled it with rice pudding, and put a bowl of sugar, a packet of margarine, and a cinnamon shaker, which hadn’t been put away with the other spices, beside it.

“What have you been up to?” she said. “Oh, you need a spoon as well.”

“This and that,” I said.

“You and …?” Dad said, without looking at me. He folded the small white bits that stuck out from the end of the hairy orange claw to the side and put the claw to his mouth. Sucked at it with a short slurp. I could hear the meat being released and sliding into his mouth.

“Geir, Leif Tore, and Trond,” I said. He broke the empty claw at the joint and began to suck on the next. I put a knob of margarine on the rice, even though it wasn’t warm enough to melt, and sprinkled some cinnamon and sugar on it.

“I’ve cleaned the roof gutters,” he said. “You should have been here.”

“Oh, yes,” I said.

“But now I’m going to chop a bit of wood. As soon as you’ve eaten up, you can join me.”

I nodded and tried to look happy, but he could read my thoughts. “We’ll be finished in time for the match,” he said. “Who’s playing today?”

“Stoke and Norwich,” I said.

“Noritsch,” he said, correcting my pronunciation.

“Nowitsch,” I said.

I liked Norwich, I liked their yellow-and-green uniforms. I liked Stoke, too, with their red-and-white-striped shirts. But best of all I liked the Wolverhampton Wanderers, who played in gold and black and whose mascot was a wolf’s head. Wolves, that was my team.