Free My Struggle: Book 3 by Karl Ove Knausgård

best not to mention it, as it could be interpreted as his having made a mistake yesterday, his having done something wrong, and I didn’t want him to think that. So I went for my trunks and a towel from the line in the boiler room, put them in a plastic bag with the diving goggles, which would come in handy if we were going to one of the two beaches in Hove, and sat down in my room to await departure.
    Half an hour later we left for the far side of the island, on what was perhaps the best day of the year, with the sea so calm it barely made a sound and therefore lent the surroundings, the previously so silent bare rocks and the previously so silent forest above, a semblance of something unreal, such that every footstep on the rocks and every clink of a bottle sounded as if it was the very first time, and the sun, which was at its zenith in the sky, appeared as something deeply primitive and alien on this day, when you could see the sea curve and disappear down into the depths beyond the horizon, above which the sky floated so airily with its light, soft, misty blueness; and Yngve and I and Mom and Dad put on our swimsuits and each of us in our own way dipped our bodies, hot from the sun, into the lukewarm water, while Grandma and Grandad sat there in their finery, apparently unmoved by their surroundings and our activities, as though the 1950s and Vestland were not only features that had stamped themselves on them superficially, through their clothes, behavior, and dialect, in other words externally, but also internally, to the depths of their respective souls, to the innermost core of their respective characters. It was so strange to see them there, sitting on the rocks, squinting into the bright light coming at us from all directions, it seemed so alien.
    The day after, they went home. Dad drove them to Kjevik, grabbed the opportunity to visit his own parents while he was there while Mom took Yngve and me to Lake Gjerstad, the idea being that we could swim and eat cookies and relax, but first of all Mom couldn’t find a road to the lake, so we had to go on a long detour through a forest full of scrub and thickets; secondly, the part of the lake we arrived at turned out to be green with algae and the rocks slippery; and thirdly, it started to rain almost as soon as we had put down the cooler bag and the basket with the cookies and oranges.
    I felt so sorry for Mom, who had wanted to take us on a nice trip, but it hadn’t worked out. There was no way to express this to her. It was one of those things you had to forget as quickly as possible. And that was not at all difficult; there were so many new experiences in store for us during those weeks. I would soon be starting school, and as a result so many new objects would become mine. Above all, a satchel, which, the next Saturday morning, I went to Arendal with Mom to buy. It was square, blue and all shiny and glossy, with white straps. Inside, there were two compartments, where I immediately put the orange pencil case I had also been given, containing a pencil, a pen, an eraser, and a pencil sharpener, and one of the notebooks we had bought, with orange and brown squares on the front, the same as on Yngve’s, plus some comics I put in to plump it up. There, nestling against the leg of the desk, it stood every night when I went to bed, not without some mental anguish for me, for there was still quite a time to go to the big day when I, along with almost everyone I knew, would be starting the first class. We had already been to school for a day, that past spring, we had had a chance to meet the woman who was to be our teacher and to do a bit of drawing, but this was different, this wasn’t anywhere near the same, this was the real thing. There were those who said they hated school, indeed, almost all the older children said they hated school, and strictly speaking we knew we should, too, but at the same time it was so alluring, what was about to happen, we knew so little and