“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.