My Struggle: Book 3 by Karl Ove Knausgård

feet was set: brown dinner plates, green glasses with Duralex written on the bottom, a basket of crispbread, a big pot from which protruded a wooden ladle.
    “Been out with Geir,” I said, leaning forward to check if there was a piece of meat in the ladle I lifted out a moment later.
    “Where did you go then?” Dad asked, lifting his fork to his mouth. Something pale yellow, perhaps onion, was lodged in his beard, on his chin.
    “Down to the forest.”
    “Oh yes?” he said, chewing several times and swallowing, his eyes trained on me the whole time.
    “I thought I saw you on your way up the hill?”
    I sat transfixed.
    “It wasn’t us,” I said at length.
    “Nonsense,” he said. “What devilry were you up to there since you won’t admit that’s where you were?”
    “But we weren’t on the hill,” I said.
    Mom and Dad exchanged glances. Dad said no more. I could move my hands again. I filled my plate and started eating. Dad helped himself to another portion, still with the same apparent gliding movements. Yngve had finished eating, and sat next to me looking down in front of him, one hand resting on his thigh, the other on the edge of the table.
    “And how was the schoolboy’s first day?” Dad asked. “Did you get any homework?”
    I shook my head.
    “Was the teacher nice?”
    I nodded.
    “What was her name again?”
    “Helga Torgersen,” I said.
    “That’s right,” Dad said. “She lives … did she say?”
    “In Sandum,” I said.
    “She seemed so lovely,” Mom said. “Young and pleased to be there.”
    “But we got there late,” I said, relief spreading through my body at the turn the conversation had taken.
    “Oh?” Dad said, looking at Mom. “You didn’t mention that?”
    “We got lost,” she said. “So we arrived a few minutes late. But I don’t think we missed anything important. Did we, Karl Ove?”
    “No,” I mumbled.
    “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Dad said.
    I swallowed.
    “All right,” I said.
    “And what about you, Yngve?” Dad said. “Any surprises on the first day?”
    “No,” Yngve said, sitting up straight in his chair.
    “You have soccer practice today, don’t you?” Mom said.
    “Yep,” Yngve said.
    He had changed teams, had left Trauma, which was the island team where all his friends played, with its fantastic uniform, blue shirts with a white diagonal stripe, white shorts and blue-and-white socks, for Saltrød, a club in a little town just across Tromøya Sound. Today was his first session there. He would have to cycle over the bridge alone, which he had never done before, and all the way to the training ground. Five kilometers, he had said it was.
    “Didn’t anything else happen at school today then, Karl Ove?” Dad said.
    I nodded and swallowed.
    “We’re going to have a swimming class,” I said. “Six lessons. At another school.”
    “There you go,” Dad said, running the back of his hand across his mouth, but without removing the ribbon of onion from his beard. “That’s not a bad idea. You can’t live on an island and not be able to swim.”
    “And it’s free, too,” Mom said.
    “But I need a swimming cap,” I said. “Everyone does. And maybe some new swimming trunks? Not shorts, but the kind … well.”
    “We can find a cap for you. But your shorts will have to do you for now,” Dad said.
    “And goggles,” I said.
    “Goggles as well?” Dad said, looking at me with a teasing expression. “We’ll have to see about that.”
    He shoved his plate away and leaned back.
    “Great meal, Mom!” he said.
    “Thanks, Mom,” Yngve said, and snuck off. Five seconds later we heard the sound of his bedroom door being closed.
    I stayed at the table for a little longer, in case Dad wanted to chat with me. He gazed out the window for a while, at the four boys hanging over the handlebars of their bikes by the second crossroads, then he got up, put his plate in the sink, took an orange from the cupboard, and went down to his