Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

The money had poured into my account and I wanted more. The work at Troll Oil was finished for me, but I could carry on at Troll Gas, which they were building at Hanøytangen, just outside Bergen. I rang them, and when I said I had worked for Norwegian Contractors, the door was open. They were probably expecting an expert of some kind or other and must have been disappointed when they realised I was only a cack-handed academic, but I kept the job until the work was finished. It was heavy going and monotonous, but I liked it so much I started wondering about applying for other big projects, such as the new airport they were building in Østland that I had heard talk of in the breaks.

While I worked at Hanøytangen I had lived at home, and in my free weeks I was with Tonje all the time, down in my bedsit, where I woke up early every morning and dashed out to buy fresh shrimps, fresh bread, freshly ground coffee, fruit and juice for our breakfast, or up in her crooked windblown flat, which would be eternally illuminated by love’s first glow.

One day I finally met Tonje’s mother and her husband, who had been living in Africa for some months. Now they were back in their homeland for a few weeks, they had borrowed a house from some friends, we had dinner in the garden, I was nervous, but it all went fine, they were kind and curious to meet me, and as we were about to leave they said we should visit them in Africa, at Christmas perhaps. We accepted the invitation. We had the money and the time.

I tried to restart my writing, but it didn’t flow, nothing came of it, nothing serious, at least not compared with what Kjartan or Espen wrote. I thought I would have to travel for a while, write full time, and as it was possible now to have unemployment benefit sent from Norway to EU countries I thought I might just as well live in one of them, such as England, and got in contact with Ole, an old student friend. He had married an English girl and lived in Norwich and said it would be a great town for me.

The morning I was due to leave I broke a mirror. Tonje said nothing, but I knew she was angry. In the taxi on the way to the boat I said I hadn’t done it on purpose.

‘It’s not the mirror, you muppet,’ she said, crying. ‘It’s the fact that you’re leaving me.’

‘Are you upset about that?’

‘Didn’t you know?’

‘No. It’s only for three months. And you’re going to visit me. And then we’re going to Africa afterwards, for Pete’s sake. Besides I have to write something soon.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m just going to miss you terribly. But I’ll be fine. You don’t have to feel sorry for me, if that’s what you think.’

She smiled.

As I was going up the tubular gangway to the boat an hour later and turned and saw her standing there, and we waved to each other for a last time, I was thinking I loved her and wanted to marry her.

This was one of those thoughts that change everything. One of the thoughts that just appear and everything else slots into place. It was a thought with future and meaning. That was what I was missing and had missed for so long. A future and meaning.

Of course we could just live together and see what happened. Actually there was no less future and meaning in that. Tonje was Tonje whether we were married or living together. Nevertheless. No one else I knew, of my age, was married, marriage belonged to the generations before us, it was a nineteenth-century anachronism, created as a result of a rigid sexual morality and an equally rigid view of humanity, in which the woman was at home with the children and the man out at work, it was as antiquated as a top hat and a chamber pot, Esperanto and a paddleboat. The sensible option for modern men and women was not to marry, the sensible option for modern men and women was to live together, to respect each other for what we were, in ourselves, and not to be dependent on external institutions to live our lives. There was nothing to say we had to run around in jogging pants and watch videos in the evening, have a few kids, split up and have custody every second week. We could organise our lives in a dignified manner with the means our era had placed at our disposal. That was the sensible and appropriate option. But love wasn’t sensible, love wasn’t reasonable, love wasn’t appropriate, it was more than that, had to be more than that, so for Christ’s sake why not drag up marriage from the mists of time and impose its form on love again? Why not use the big words again? Why not solemnly state that we will love each other for ever? Why not insist on the profound solemnity it implied? Honour the lifelong obligation? Everything else we did was nonsense, irrespective of what we were doing, it was nonsense, no one believed in it, not really. No one I knew anyway. Life was a game, life was a pastime, and death, it didn’t exist. We laughed at everything, even at death, and that wasn’t completely wrong, laughter always had the last word, the skull’s grin when one day we lay there with earth in our mouths.

But I wanted to believe, I did believe, I would believe.

I got my cabin key from reception, dropped off my suitcase and went up to the café. Everything lay open before me. I was going to a new country, to a town I had never seen, I had nowhere to live and no idea what was awaiting me.

I would be there for three months. Then we were going to Africa and there I would be free.

It was perfect.

The boat slid out. Tonje would probably be on her way home now, I thought and went up on deck to see if I could catch a glimpse of her. But we were already quite far away, it was impossible to identify any of the black figures walking along Bryggen from this distance.

The sky was grey, the water we steadily made our way through, black. I held the railing and gazed towards Sandviken. The old idea of leaving everything returned for a brief instant. The worst of it was that it would be all right. I had always known that I could turn my back on everything and just leave, with no regrets. I could also leave Tonje. I didn’t miss her when she wasn’t there. I didn’t miss anyone and never had done. I never missed mum, I never missed Yngve. I never missed Espen, I never missed Tore. I hadn’t missed Gunvor when we had been a couple, and I didn’t miss Tonje now. I knew I would wander through the streets of Norwich, sit in lodgings somewhere writing, perhaps go out for a drink with Ole, and I wouldn’t miss her. I would think about her now and then, with warmth but not with longing. This was a flaw in me, a shortcoming I had, a coldness in my heart. If I got close to people I could sense what they wanted and subordinate myself to that. If Gunvor had felt I was too distant from her I sensed that feeling and tried to meet it halfway. Not for my sake but for hers. If I said something Espen considered stupid I was ashamed and tried to make amends, his assessment of me was paramount. Couldn’t I be distant and stand firm? Couldn’t I be stupid and stand firm?

No, not there, not in front of them.

But when I was alone it meant nothing.

This coldness in my heart was terrible, sometimes I thought I wasn’t human, I was a Dracula who lived off other people’s emotions but had none myself. My love affairs, what else were they but a mirror? What else were they but my own feelings?

What I felt for Tonje was genuine, however, and since a genuine feeling was more precious to me than anything else, I had to commit everything to that.

But I didn’t miss her.

All day and all evening I sat reading and jotting down ideas and thoughts in my notebook. It was now or never. I couldn’t be someone who wrote but wasn’t published for much longer, both for purely practical reasons — one, I already lagged several years behind those I had started studying with and, two, I had to make a living — and for reasons of dignity. A twenty-year-old writing full time to become a writer is simply charming; a twenty-five-year-old doing the same is a loser.