Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

Why didn’t I do it?

I was on the verge, but I couldn’t.

The next morning I caught the bus to Sandviken, and there was some comfort in that, even the smell of the institution, even the comfortless sight of people immured there provided some comfort. This was life, and what I had done was also life. I couldn’t escape it, I had to accept it. What I had done, I had done. Yes, I was distraught now and would be for weeks, but time dims everything, even the worst horrors, it interposes itself, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, month by month, and it is so immense that ultimately what happens completely dissolves and is gone. It is there, but so much time, so many minutes, hours, days and months lie in between that it can no longer be felt. And it is feelings that count, not thoughts, not memories. And slowly I came out of it, all the while cleaving to the notion, the redeeming notion, that if she doesn’t know, it doesn’t exist.

It didn’t exist, she came back to Bergen and at first my guilt flared up again, I was a liar and a traitor, a bad person, an evil person, for some weeks that was what I thought when I was with her, but then that too dulled and lay like a constant though manageable emotion slightly beyond my consciousness.

It hurt when she smiled, it hurt when she said she loved me and I was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

Then it didn’t hurt any more.

Espen and I searched half-heartedly for a flat for some weeks, we went and had a look at a couple, however neither was suitable, instead we moved into separate accommodation: Espen to a flat out of town, me to Asbjørn’s former bedsit in Nøstet.

One day I received a letter from Vinduet. I opened the envelope and read the contents at full throttle standing next to the post boxes in the hall. There had been more than one thousand five hundred stories sent in, thirty had been selected and they were happy to inform me that mine was one of them.

I couldn’t take this in and reread it.

Yes, it really did say that. My story would be published in the debutant issue.

I walked down the steps into my new bedsit, sat on the chair with the letter in my hand and read it again.

There had to be a mistake. Or else the standard of the contributions had been exceptionally low. But one thousand five hundred texts? From five hundred writers? Could they all have been that bad?

That wasn’t possible.

So they must have mixed me up with someone else. Kramsgård or Knutsgård or something.

I laughed.

I had been accepted!

A few days later I was called up to do my national service. I had to go to Hustad towards the end of autumn and then I would have a work placement somewhere for sixteen months. Basically that suited me fine, more than two years at Sandviken Hospital was probably enough, and I didn’t want to study.

I continued working, I also continued writing book reviews for Studvest as well as doing interviews which Hans suggested, mostly with writers as that was my field, but with academics too and any other people a student newspaper might be interested in covering. I had nothing to do with the rest of the paper, I went in and picked up a tiny tape recorder, did the interview, wrote it up and delivered it, that was it. Hans liked what I did and he said many others did too.

Just before going to Hustad two copies of the debutant issue arrived in the post. I found my contribution, it was called Déjà Vu, beside the title there was a picture of me, a little passport photo they had blown up, and in the introduction below my name my date of birth and profession, which I had given as ‘unemployed’. It looked good, no posing, no boasting, in fact, as near to nothing as you could get in a brief bio.

The issue was reviewed in all the big newspapers, not least because the previous one, which had come out in 1966, had contained stories by Øystein Lønn, Espen Haavardsholm, Knut Faldbakken, Kjersti Ericsson, Olav Angell and Tor Obrestad, so when Vinduet did the same twenty-six years later everyone had an eye on the possibility that an equally strong generation might be in the offing. The conclusion most papers drew was that this was not the case. In all the reviews names were bandied around as more promising than others; mine was not among them. That was understandable: my story belonged to the weakest contributions and perhaps should not have been there at all. By the time I caught the plane up to Molde and the bus from there to Hustadvika I had put all this to the back of my mind. I would soon be twenty-four and in the last few years my life had stood still, I hadn’t developed in any direction, hadn’t done anything new, I had only continued the pattern that had formed during the first few months in Bergen. When I looked around me now, I saw no openings anywhere, just more of the same everywhere. National service came heaven sent. It gave me sixteen months to defer decisions. Everything would be decided for me for more than a year, I wouldn’t have any responsibility for my life, at least not that part to do with studies, work and career.

Early one morning one of the staff at Hustad came into my room and woke me. There was a telephone call for me. It was only six o’clock, I realised something had happened and hurried down to the phone booth at the end of the corridor, lifted the receiver to my ear.

‘Hello?’ I said.

‘Hi, mum here.’

‘Hi.’

‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news, Karl Ove. It’s grandad. He died last night.’

‘Oh no.’

‘He died on the way to the hospital. He rang Kjellaug in the evening, she rang for an ambulance and Jon Olav went over. He was there when grandad died. I don’t think he suffered. It was quick.’

‘That’s good anyway,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ mum said.

‘He was old,’ I said.

‘Yes, in the end.’

The funeral was due to take place in a week’s time, I applied for leave, was granted it, flew down to Bergen a few days later, caught the boat to Rysjedalsvika with Gunvor, mum picked us up, drove us through the rainy November countryside, across the small mountain district to Åfjorden, where grandad had lived his whole life. Born in 1908. To parents who lived in straitened circumstances. Everyone out here did. A mother who died while he was still small. A father who built houses and worked on trawlers. His father married again later in life and had a daughter. When he fell ill while fishing one winter in the early 1930s and died straight afterwards in Florø Hospital, grandad laid claim to the house where the new wife and the little daughter were living. There was a court case, grandad appealed to the Norwegian Supreme Court and won. His father’s wife and his half-sister had to move out and grandad took over the house, where he had lived until now. He got married in 1940, to Kirsti Årdal, had four children between 1942 and 1954, ran the smallholding with her, worked as a driver, kept mink, bees, a few cows, a few chickens and cultivated soft fruit. All the children apart from the youngest moved away, grandad retired, his eldest daughter was an ungdomskole teacher, the next a nursing teacher and the youngest a psychologist, while his only son was a ship’s pipefitter and a poet. That was how it was, that was how things turned out, now it was over.

We drove up the hill to the house, opened the doors and got out. It was raining, the heels of my shoes sank into the soft gravel as I opened the boot and took out the suit bag and little suitcase.

His blue overalls hung on the hook in the hall and his black cap with the short peak. His boots were on the floor.

Voices came from the sitting room, I put down the luggage and went in. Kjellaug, Ingunn, Mård and Kjartan were there, they hugged us and asked how Gunvor and I were getting on in Bergen. Ingunn enquired if we were hungry. There was a happiness in the room, there always was when they met. I thought, this is what he has left behind: Kjellaug, Sissel, Ingunn and Kjartan; their husbands: Magne, Kai Åge and Mård; their children: Ann Kristin, Jon Olav, Ingrid, Yngve, Karl Ove, Yngvild, Odin and Sølve. Tomorrow we would bury him. Now we would eat and talk.