Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

Back home, we moved into a new flat, in Sandviken, opposite the church, consisting of a long combined kitchen and sitting room, as well as a bedroom, and, unlike all the other bedsits and flats I had lived in over the last seven years, the building was in good condition. We couldn’t afford it, but we rented it anyway. I was happy there, I especially liked the view of the church and the trees surrounding it.

At the end of August we went up to mum’s, where Yngve and I painted the house. Kjartan dropped by, he had written something, he said, but didn’t have much hope, he had been refused too often for that, he was going to send his manuscript to the publishing house Oktober, he reckoned. What did I think?

Send it, send it, it’s excellent.

Kjartan was a writer. Espen was a writer. Tore was a writer. But I wasn’t, I was a student, I had come to terms with that and I used every ounce of strength I had to study. I went up to the reading room early in the morning, followed the courses of lectures, sat in the reading room until late at night. I liked the subject, especially the lectures, since so many of them were spent viewing slides of the greatest buildings, sculptures and paintings in existence. All the material I had found difficult and impenetrable before, when as a twenty-year-old I had made a stab at hard-core theory, was now easily comprehensible, and this was strange as I hadn’t tackled any theory since, however I didn’t waste any time pondering this, I was there to read, and read I did.

Tore’s book came out, it received good reviews, he was invited to join Vagant, where two of my friends worked now. Tonje continued at the radio station, at weekends we visited her mother or her brother’s family, unless it was just us two, either at home in front of the TV or out with friends. Life had settled down, it was good and, provided that I could pass the two subjects I needed and make a start on my main course, everything to do with job and career would sort itself out. In addition, I was also making a last desperate attempt to write again. This was against my better judgement, I no longer believed I could do it, I was running on pure self-will. No more short stories, now it was to be a novel. It was about the slave ship Fredensborg, which had sunk off the island of Tromøya some time in the eighteenth century, and it was discovered when I was a boy, by the head teacher of my school among others. I had always carried this story within me, had always been fascinated by it, not least when I saw objects from the ship exhibited at the Aust-Agder Museum, the world and history coincided in a point near where I grew up, and now I was going to write about it. Progress was slow, there was so much I didn’t know, such as daily life on board a sailing vessel of almost three hundred years ago, I knew nothing about that, had no idea what they did or what tools they used or what they were called, only things like the sails and the masts, and that meant I had no freedom at all. I could describe the sea and the sky, but that wasn’t much on which to base a novel. Their thoughts? Yes, but what did a sailor think in the eighteenth century?

I didn’t give up, I fought on, borrowed books from the university library, wrote a sentence or two after I returned from the reading room in the evening and for a few hours on Sunday mornings, it wasn’t good, but sooner or later it had to click for me too, as it had done for Kjartan: Oktober had accepted his collection of poetry, it would be published next autumn. After twenty years of writing poems he was finally where he wanted to be and I was ecstatic on his behalf because he had resigned from his job, he had been forced to stop his studies, so writing was all he had left.

Late that autumn I got a phone call from Yngve in Balestrand, Gunnar had rung him, dad had gone missing.

‘Gone missing?’

‘Yes. He’s not at work, not in the flat, not with grandma or Erling.’

‘Could he have caught a plane and headed south?’

‘Doubtful. Something’s probably happened to him. The police are searching for him. He’s been reported missing.’

‘Really? Do you think he’s dead?’

‘No.’

A few days later he rang again.

‘Dad’s been found.’

‘Oh? Where?’

‘In a hospital. He’s paralysed. Can’t walk.’

‘You’re joking. Are you telling me the truth?’

‘Yes, that’s what I’ve been told. But it’s unlikely to be permanent. It’s alcohol-related in some way or other.’

‘What’ll happen now?’

‘He’ll be admitted to a detox clinic.’

I rang mum and told her. She asked me for the name of the clinic, I said I didn’t know, but Yngve probably did.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I was thinking of sending him my love.’

The exam came, I wrote about Greek statues, it went well, at the oral they told me it didn’t matter what I said, they couldn’t give me a better grade than the one I already had. I continued with history of art and took philosophical aesthetics on the side, read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason all Easter, Tonje applied for a radio job in Volda, Tore rang to say he would be editing an anthology and wanted a text from me. But I haven’t got anything, I said. Then you’ll have to write something new, he said. You’re doing this. I perused the little I had, there was nothing of any value apart perhaps from a passage in the novel, which was almost finished now. Fredensborg is sailing between the islands of Mærdø and Tromøya on this day in the eighteenth century, from Copenhagen bound for Africa to collect slaves, one of the crew stares over at the shore, there is a farm, a woman is drawing water from a well in a bucket, he looks at the house, which is derelict. Flies are buzzing around her. In the house a man lies in a coma, he is sleeping more and more hours in the day, everything is crumbling around him, until at last sleep encloses him, encapsulates him, and she, after fighting against everything, is set free. I turned the text into a short story, entitled it Sleep and sent it to him.

In late spring Eivind Røssaak phoned, he had been appointed the culture editor of Klassekampen and enquired whether I would like to review books for him. I said yes. The history of art exam came, I wrote fifty pages about the concept of mimesis, a whole booklet, which I handed into the university porters before going home. The grades I was awarded were obscenely good and more and more I was reconciling myself to the idea that I was going to be an academic.

Tonje had been accepted in Volda and was going to move up there while I would stay in Bergen, start on my main course and join her for her last year. Tore had accepted my piece, the anthology had come out to a deafening silence, but it did do some good, Geir Gulliksen rang one day and asked if I would be in Oslo in the near future, if so, he would like me to drop in on him so that we could talk about me and my writing.

In fact I would be, I lied, and we arranged to meet.

In Oslo I stayed with Espen, as always. Now Tore was in Oslo too, the three of us met up, cycled over to see Vigeland’s morbid chapel in the morning and in the evening met again to go for dinner. It was a Vagant dinner, everyone who worked on the journal was there, Kristine Næss, Ingvild Burkey, Henning Hagerup, Bjørn Aagenæs, Espen, Tore — and then me. They had asked me to interview Rune Christiansen, it was to take place the following day, so I was a kind of associate member of the editorial team for a weekend. The dinner was at Kristine Næss’s place, we sat around a small table, it was all nice and intimate, my two best friends were there, I was inside the circle, I was where I wanted to be, but my respect for them was too great, I didn’t dare say anything, I just listened. Henning Hagerup, the best critic of his generation, sat next to me and asked me one or two polite questions, and I didn’t answer. I said nothing, just looked down and nodded, glanced up at him, he smiled at me and turned away. We ate, the conversation was lively, but I was mute. I didn’t dare say anything. In a big room with a lot of people this wouldn’t have mattered because no one would have noticed, but here, where there were so few of us, it stood out. The longer I remained quiet, the more conspicuous it became, and the more conspicuous it became, the more impossible it was to say anything. I cursed myself, tied myself in knots inside, couldn’t stop, listened to what was said, formulated something I could say, but didn’t, held back, held everything back. An hour passed, two hours passed, three hours passed. We had been sitting there for three hours and I hadn’t said a single word. The atmosphere was warming up, beer and wine and cognac were on the table. Four hours passed, five hours passed, I hadn’t said a word. Then another problem presented itself. Soon I would have to go, but how could I do that, after five hours I couldn’t just get up and say thank you for everything, it’s been nice, I’m afraid I have to go, that would be impossible. Nor could I leave without saying anything. I was trapped, as I had been trapped all evening, naturally everyone had noticed and both Espen and Tore had watched me initially with curiosity, then with concern, but in that gathering, which consisted exclusively of writers and critics, I couldn’t speak, I had nothing to offer, I was an idiot, a blushing tongue-tied little shit who came to Oslo from the provinces thinking that with his savage reviews in Klassekampen and his glowing grades he at least had something to offer, but I had nothing, I was a nobody, a zero, indeed such a nonentity that I couldn’t even get up from the table. I couldn’t speak and I couldn’t leave. I was trapped.