Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

There was another girl who sometimes came to see me in the evenings, but she had started to fall in love with me, so on the last occasion I didn’t answer the door. Then there were a couple of others I had something with, I was incredibly attracted by one of them and had opened myself up to her, and taken her home once, but she made it very clear that this was a mistake, she wasn’t interested in the slightest, in fact she even went so far as to ask me not to tell anyone. At the radio station there were phone calls for her in the evening, I knew who was ringing her and was out of my mind with jealousy, not that I had any right to be, I didn’t even know her.

Tonje was outside all of this. I exchanged a few words with her when the opportunity arose, if, for example, she came into the studio when I was working there or she needed a technician for some news item or something, but I knew nothing about who she was or what she did.

She was incredibly good-looking, as Yngve had said, but she was nothing to me.

In the first week of December I had my twenty-fifth birthday. It was an important event, a milestone, I should have had a party, but I didn’t know enough people for that to be a possibility, so when I went to the radio station no one knew what a big day it was for me, which in itself I liked, it was fitting for the person I had become, someone who kept a low profile and did not attract unnecessary attention, someone who didn’t boast and knew his place.

I arrived early, the office was empty and I cleared the table by the corner sofa, put on some coffee, began to scan the newspapers for any student-related news items I could cut out. Outside, the snow had settled, a faint shimmer extended into the darkness by the windows, that was all it took to change the whole office atmosphere.

The door by the stairs opened and I glanced over.

Ingvild!

She smiled and waved and walked up to me.

‘Long time, no see,’ I said and gave her a hug. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Happy birthday,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘How did you know?’

‘I’ve got a memory like an elephant.’

‘Would you like some coffee?’ I said.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘I have to be going soon though.’

She perched on the edge of the sofa. I took the jug from the machine and quickly poured two cups while the filter trickled and dripped onto the hotplate.

‘What’s it like being twenty-five then?’ she said. ‘Does it feel good?’

‘I can’t notice any difference. Did you?’

‘No, other than it’s good not to be twenty any more.’

‘Tell me about it,’ I said.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ she said, producing a parcel from a bag and passing it to me. ‘Here you are.’

‘Have you bought me a present as well?’

‘Naturally,’ she said as she looked away, a little flustered.

I unwrapped it. It was a grey lambswool sweater from Benetton.

I looked at her, then at the sweater.

‘Don’t you like it?’ she said.

‘Yes, I do, it’s great,’ I said. ‘But a sweater? Why did you buy me a sweater?’

‘I thought you needed one,’ she said. ‘But if you don’t like it you can change it.’

She sat with her hands in her lap, watching me.

‘Thank you very much,’ I said.

I realised that she interpreted my reaction as meaning I didn’t like it, and there was an awkward silence until I realised I should try on the sweater. But that just made the situation even more awkward because what confused me was the sweater. Why buy me a sweater? It cost several hundred kroner. And, in a way, it was personal. A record, a book or a flower, if she was going to give me anything at all. But a sweater?

She stood up.

‘I have to go now. My lecture’s at a quarter past. But enjoy the rest of your birthday!’

She disappeared down the stairs and I went on reading the papers with a pair of scissors in my hand.

Yngve came by late in the afternoon, he just wanted to say happy birthday and that unfortunately he had no money for a present but better times were around the corner and then he would buy me something really nice.

That was all that happened that day. I went home as usual, read and played records as usual, talked to mum, who told me what had happened on this day twenty-five years ago. Dad didn’t ring, he never did, I wondered if he didn’t actually know when we, Yngve and I, had been born or he knew but didn’t care, but I was used to this, it didn’t matter, he lived his life, I lived mine.

The following week was the media party. It was being held in Uglen, Bergen’s infamous watering hole, where the most desperate and ravaged individuals hung out, typical of the humorists in media studies, who put Madonna on the same level as Mahler. I went there early, we were going to do a sound check and run through the songs, which we had hardly practised, for a final time. The snow had settled, it was cold in Bergen now, and for the first time in the five years I had lived there you sensed a Christmas atmosphere in the streets.

We played five songs, among them ‘Forelska i Lærer’n’ and ‘Material Girl’, as well as an original which Yngve had written the music for and Marit, the vocalist, the words.

Afterwards we stood by a table making a start on the beers we had been given for performing. Yngve knew a lot of people, it was only six months since he had finished his studies; for me most of the people were new faces, apart from Tonje, who came over and said hi after we had played.

‘Are you here too?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I get hired to play the drums all over town. It’s especially busy at Christmas.’

She smiled.

‘Aren’t you going to introduce us?’ Yngve said.

‘Tonje, this is Yngve, my brother. Yngve, this is Tonje from Student Radio.’

They shook hands, Yngve smiled and looked her in the eye as he asked her if she was in her first year.

They chatted for a while, had more in common than she and I had, and I looked around as I knocked back the cold beer and enjoyed the taste, perhaps not so much its slight bitterness as the promise of eventful nights and the mounting pleasure that came with it.

Tonje rejoined her friends, Yngve took a long swig, put his glass down on the table and said she was so good-looking, that Tonje was.

‘Ye-ah.’

I glanced over, she was talking to a guy but looked up at once, met my gaze and smiled.

I returned her smile.

Yngve talked about the various jobs he had applied for and how difficult it was to get in anywhere if you didn’t have any contacts, perhaps he had made a mistake focusing on finishing his studies instead of working on the side.

‘That’s what you did,’ he said. ‘And now you’re writing for Morgenbladet and freelancing for NRK. You’ve had a lot more opportunities than if you’d just kept studying.’

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But writing book reviews isn’t exactly lucrative.’

I met Tonje’s eye again. She smiled across the room and I smiled back. Yngve was oblivious.

‘Not book reviews, no,’ he said. ‘But if you stick at it you’ll soon have a name. Then everything’ll get much easier. If you have something concrete to show. I’ve got just the subject and the grade.’

‘It’ll all come out in the wash,’ I said with a smile, feeling light-headed. Whenever I looked at her I got a tingle in my stomach. She seemed to possess a sixth sense because however deep in conversation she was she always looked up when I glanced over. The people she was with noticed nothing. Yngve noticed nothing. It was as though we were sharing a secret. Whenever she smiled, she was smiling at herself.

Hey, it’s us two, isn’t it? Her smile seemed to say.