Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

Tonje took my hand, Yngve slightly lowered his head as he walked, as always.

There was a queue in front of Café Opera. We joined it at the back.

Tonje looked at me.

She screamed.

‘What’s happened? What’s happened? YOU’RE BLEEDING!’ I walked across the street.

‘What have you done, Karl Ove?’ Yngve said, following me.

‘I haven’t done anything,’ I said. ‘Cut myself a little, that’s all.’

Tonje caught up with us.

She was crying, she was hysterical.

‘What have you done?’ she said. ‘What have you done?’

I started walking down the hill. Yngve followed me.

‘I’m going home,’ I said. ‘Take care of Tonje for me.’

‘Are you sure? You’re not going to get up to anything else?’

‘Leave me in peace, for Christ’s sake. Take care of her.’

He stopped, I carried on without a backward glance, up the hill by the Pentecostal church, into Skottegaten and down to where my bedsit was. I unlocked the door, got into bed fully clothed, waiting for the doorbell to ring, she had to follow me, she had to, she had to leave Yngve and come down here, ring the bell, she had to, and I lay listening, and I heard nothing, and I fell into a deep sleep.

Even while I was asleep I knew I mustn’t wake up, something awful was awaiting me, and for a long time I succeeded in staying there, in the zone beneath consciousness, until the well of sleep had run dry and I had to move on.

My face ached, I sat up, all that had happened returned. Now I have to take my life, I thought.

I had considered this option many times, but it was a game, I would never, not under any circumstances, do it, not even now.

Nevertheless, I hurt so much inside that this thought was my sole relief.

The pillow was bloodstained. I went into the hall, took down the CD I had hanging on a nail and studied my face.

I had ruined it. I looked like a monster.

If there were scars I would always look like this.

I showered. I lay down on the bed. I tried to imagine what it must have been like for Tonje. What she might be thinking now. Whether it was over or not.

This wasn’t what she had anticipated when she got together with me.

I sat up and bowed my head.

Dear God, I said. Let this go well.

I went into the kitchen, looked down into the backyard.

I had to meet her.

Perhaps not today though.

Perhaps best to keep my distance today.

In the evening I was supposed to play with Yngve and Tore in the disused factory. I went down to Yngve’s a few hours before.

‘You look terrible,’ he said when he saw me. ‘Why did you do it?’

‘I don’t know. I just did. Got too drunk. Can I come in?’

‘Course.’

We sat down in the sitting room. I couldn’t meet his eyes, stared down like a dog.

‘What were you thinking about?’ he said. ‘Not Tonje, that’s for certain.’

‘How was she?’ I said. ‘What happened?’

‘I took her home.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Say? Nothing. She cried the whole way home. No, she did say she didn’t understand anything. She said you’d both been so happy. She said she thought you’d been happy too.’

‘That’s true.’

‘It didn’t look like it, you know.’

‘No.’

There was a silence.

‘You’ve got to stop drinking. You mustn’t drink any more.’

‘No.’

Another silence.

‘Do you think she’ll leave me?’

‘How should I know? And there’s only one way to find out. You have to go and see her.’

‘Not now. I can’t.’

‘But you have to.’

‘Can you come with me? Well, not to see her, just walk with me. I don’t want to be on my own.’

‘OK. I need a walk anyway.’

Yngve talked about other things, normal things, as soon as we got outside. I said nothing, I was happy to let him talk, it helped. In case she wasn’t at home I asked him to wait. I rang the bell, looked up, nothing, I went back to him. We went to the twenty-four-hour café that shift workers, lorry drivers and taxi drivers used, where the chance of bumping into anyone was minimal. When it started to get dark we picked up Yngve’s guitar from home and went to meet Tore.

Tore stared at me, white-faced.

‘What have you done?’ he said. I had to look away; he was crying.

‘It looks worse than it is,’ I said. ‘They’re not deep. It’s just a few scratches.’

‘Jesus, Karl Ove,’ he said.

‘Come on, let’s make some music,’ I said.

After an hour in the freezing room, all wearing hats and scarves and thick jackets, the breath from our mouths like clouds, we left. Yngve had to go home, Tore and I chatted on the corner. He told me a good friend of his had once tried to commit suicide. He had gone into the forest and shot himself in the chest with a shotgun. He was found and he survived.

‘I didn’t know that,’ I said.

‘No, how could you?’ he said. ‘Don’t you dare try anything like that.’

‘But it wasn’t anything like that, Tore. Not even close. I just got drunk and it seemed like a good idea.’

‘Well, it wasn’t.’

‘No, in retrospect I can see that.’

We laughed and started to walk. Said goodbye at the corner by the Grieg Hall, he went uphill to his, I walked to Tonje’s flat.

This time she opened the window. But she didn’t come to the door, as she had done every time so far, instead she threw the key down to the street. I let myself in and went up. She had a visitor. Her best friend was there with her boyfriend.

I stopped in the doorway.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I look absolutely terrible. I got drunk and cut my face.’

Tonje couldn’t look at me.

‘We were just going,’ the boyfriend said.

They got up, put on their coats and hats, said goodbye and left.

‘I’m so sorry for what happened,’ I said. ‘Can you forgive me?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know if I can be in a relationship with you. I don’t know if I want that.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I understand.’

‘Have you ever done anything like this before?’

‘No. Never. And I’ll never do it again.’

‘Why did you do it then?’

‘I don’t know. I have no idea. I just did it.’

I sat down on the chair, looked up at her, she was staring out of the window.

‘Of course I want to be with you,’ she said and turned. Tears were coursing down her cheeks.

One year later we moved in together. Right below the Science Building we found a two-room flat which we tried to fit out as best we could with the little furniture we had. The bedroom was at the back, it was as small as a cabin on a boat and we had no room for much more than the bed. Outside it was the sitting room, also small, and to make more room we partitioned it with a bookcase. On one side I had a little place to write; on the other we put the sofa, chairs and a table.

Here we had our first rows, this was the practical side of living together you had to get used to, but also our first real life together with each other, suddenly we shared everything. In this little flat we slept together, we ate together, listened to music or watched TV together, and I liked her always being there and always returning after she had been out. She was now a manager at Student Radio and worked long hours. I had started studying again, after a four-year break, I took history of art and was so ashamed at being much older than most of the other students that I never attempted any contact. When I wasn’t attending lectures and studying slides of artworks I was poring over books in the reading room and devouring them like a maniac. After my national service had finished in March the year before I had joined Jon Olav and some of his friends in Vats, where a gigantic oil platform, Troll Oil, was being built, and they had got some work. I went along in the hope that more employees would be needed in due course, and after having slept on the sofa in an admin hut for three nights, of all the fortune hunters only Ben and I were left, and even though we, or at least I, had to be the worst qualified construction workers they had ever assessed, we got jobs in the end. I worked there for two and a half months, down one of the shafts, which when I started rose perhaps twenty metres above the sea, but by the time I finished were more than a hundred metres high. At the beginning I suffered from vertigo, but the shaft grew so slowly that I eventually became used to heights, and during my last days I moved around outside on scaffolding which consisted of three planks and an insubstantial rail a hundred metres above the water with a sense of pride and without feeling the slightest fear. I was a dreadful labourer, but the job was so simple that I still coped. We did twelve-hour shifts, either day or night, and walking around at night beneath the stars amid the drone of machinery, seeing the lights of the three other shafts in the middle of the fjord, surrounded by the vast darkness while the wind howled around our ears, was magical, it was as though we were alone in the universe, a little colony of humans on an illuminated vessel in the great nothing. Tonje was furious with me when I returned, not because I had left her for a job only a few weeks after we had got together, but because I hadn’t called her once. I explained to her that in fact I had tried once, but she hadn’t been at home and apart from that one attempt there hadn’t been time. I slept, ate, worked, that was it. She didn’t believe me, I realised, she thought this meant something, was a sign of something. Perhaps it was, I hadn’t thought about her much, I had been fascinated by the fantastically exotic nature of the work, but what did that matter as long as I could look her in the eye and say I loved her and really mean it? Look her in the eye and say she was the only girl for me, now and for ever?