Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

Five and a half hours passed. Six hours passed.

Then I went to the toilet. Went into the corridor, put on my shoes and jacket, poked my head round the door, they were still sitting around the table, and I said, ‘Got to be off. Thanks for everything. It was nice.’

Everyone shouted bye and nice to meet you, I carefully closed the door behind me, went down the stairs, and when I emerged and the cold sharp autumn air hit my face I burst into a run. I sprinted as fast as I could across the road and down the block, the veins throbbing in my neck, my mouth gasping for air, and that was why I did it, I assume, that was why I ran, I needed to feel that I was actually alive.

I had read Rune Christiansen’s work for years, his visual, almost filmic, poetry had a strong appeal for me, and the moods it evoked or were aroused in me were a kind of constant in my life, which always informed the way I saw and felt but on which I never reflected. If the theme of transience appeared in his poetry it wasn’t brutal, as it was with Tor Ulven, this osteal hardness which could occasionally split open into a death’s-head grin, this bone-rattling merry dance, laughter as life’s sole bulwark against the void, no, with Rune Christiansen transience was gentler, bathed in a light of reconciliation, it was rust, autumn, decay, hedgehogs shuffling through a pile of leaves, planes crossing the sky, romance in a hotel room, in a subway entrance, in a train clattering through a forest somewhere.

I met him in a Sunday-empty café in Lommedalen. In the forest outside the darkness fell as we talked with a Dictaphone on the table between us. Hardly any newspapers or journals wrote about poetry, and this was to be quite a big interview, so he had prepared well, keeping some densely written sheets of paper at his side, presumably containing everything he had considered bringing up. I was no poetry expert, but in some way or other the questions appeared to strike a chord with him or else he managed to twist everything towards the essence of what he was trying to say in his writing, because the interview was a success, we sat there for close on two hours, and when I left to catch the bus to town it felt as if everything was within my reach, I was on to something important, all I had to do was stretch out for it. This was a vague feeling, nothing on which you could build, but all the same I knew I had something there. In the mist, in the darkness of the forest, in the dewdrops on the spruce needles. In the whales that swam in the sea, in the heart beating in my breast. Mist, heart, blood, trees. Why were they so appealing? What was it that enticed me with such power? That filled me with such enormous desire? Mist, heart, blood, trees. Oh, if only I could write about them, no, not write about them but make my writing be them, then I would be happy. Then I would have peace of mind.

The following morning I had arranged to meet Geir Gulliksen. He worked for a publishing house called Tiden, they had an office in Operapassasjen, I stood outside the door and wiped my palms on my thighs, hardly able to believe this was happening, I had an appointment with an editor in Oslo. Tore had engineered it, this was true, I had nothing to show him, this was true too, but I was actually standing here, I did have an appointment, no one could take that from me.

I took the lift up and went into reception.

‘I have an appointment with Geir Gulliksen,’ I said.

At that moment he walked around the corner, thin, rangy, smiling, self-assured. I recognised him from the photos I had seen.

‘Karl Ove?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Hi!’

We shook hands.

‘We can go into my office,’ he said.

Manuscripts lay there piled up, big envelopes that probably also contained manuscripts, and books stacked high.

We sat down.

‘Well, you sent us a damn good short story,’ he said. ‘I’d just like to put that on record.’

‘Thank you very much,’ I said.

‘Are you working on anything now? Or have you got anything else that’s finished?’

I shook my head. ‘No, but I’ve got a largish project in mind.’

‘I’d be happy to read it.’

Then he started asking me all sorts of questions, what I had done, what I liked reading. I told him Stig Larsson.

‘Hah, all the young writers say Stig Larsson now. Two years ago no one talked about him.’

‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ I said.

‘Of course it’s good,’ he said. ‘Anyone else you read?’

‘Tor Ulven.’

‘Right,’ he said and laughed. Aligned the edges of a manuscript. Did that mean my time was up?

I rose to my feet.

‘I’ll send you something as soon as I have it.’

‘Yes, you do that. It might take a while before you get an answer.’

‘That’s OK.’

He stood up and accompanied me out, raised a hand to wave goodbye, turned and went back in. He had lots of important manuscripts to read, I thought, lots of important writers to meet. I wasn’t one of them, he had arranged the meeting because of Tore, but I had a foot in the door, now I wasn’t just a name but also a face, and he had promised to read what I sent him.

We spent Christmas with Tonje’s father in Molde. I liked being there, he had a big house with a view of the fjord and the mountains behind, there was a swimming pool on the ground floor, a wet room with a sauna and diving equipment in a corner, a large open sitting room on the first floor, above it a loft with a ping-pong table. It was always tidy there, everything worked, there was snow-shovelling in the early morning, skiing late morning, they had good lunches, cosy evenings and if there were any problems in the household, if there were any hidden secrets, I never came across them. We used to go down to the city centre in the mornings, often bump into her friends, with whom I never managed to behave naturally, I was always quiet and tormented, apart from when we went out and I drank of course or on New Year’s Eve, when we ate at Tonje’s father’s place, with all her friends, and suddenly I could talk from the heart with them. Even the angst the following day was less there, in well-ordered surroundings, I felt less like an evil person than a young son-in-law letting his hair down on holiday.

At the beginning of January Tonje went back to Volda while I took my computer and headed for Kristiansand, where I had rented a room in an old manor house on the island of Andøya provided by the local council’s arts department. The poet Terje Dragseth had been behind this. After living in Copenhagen for many years he had returned to his hometown, where he worked as a literary liaison officer on the local council. He was published by Tiden and was held to be one of the best poets of his generation, his poems were often described as hymnic, I hadn’t read any of them myself. He was energetic and outgoing, his personality razor-sharp. He drove me to the manor house, which had once been situated a long way out of town, in the country, but now it found itself in the middle of a housing estate. He showed me round, said I only had to ring him if there was anything, worked for a while in his office at the other end of the building, which I could use any time I wanted, then he went back to town and I was alone. I took my computer from its cardboard box, connected everything, put the books I had brought with me in a pile next to it. Two volumes of À la recherche du temps perdu, Avløsning by Tor Ulven and Tore’s debut novel, Sleeping Tangle.

The room was small, a bed, a desk, a kitchenette, but the building around it was enormous. From what I had gleaned, it had once belonged to the violinist and composer Ole Bull. In the evening I wandered around inside, the furniture and the wallpaper and everything was intact, like in a museum. I nosed around Dragseth’s office, browsed through a few books, went back and sat down in front of my computer, but too much had happened that day for me to be able to work, so I rang Tonje and talked with her for an hour instead, then went to bed.