Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

I woke up at eleven, had breakfast, switched on my computer and sat down.

What was I going to write?

I didn’t have the foggiest.

I opened some files to see if there was anything I could work further on.

There is a time for everything. Now it is here, in this house, by this window with a precise segment of nature outside, resting in the dim May darkness; it cannot be other.

Footsteps across the soft grass, swish swish, in the rain. The rain falling on the field, the drops from the branches onto his neck as he stops to open the gate. It emits a gentle creak, thuds back against the post, is fastened with a wire loop. His hands are freezing cold. He shoves them into his pockets and walks on down the narrow muddy path.

The figure appears in the deep snow, running, head bowed into the wind. He notices the movement from the window, the figure becomes clearer, clearer against the heavy grey unchanging background; the eager flushed face of a boy with important news and a big responsibility. He knows what it is about, heard the shot himself some minutes ago. It filled him with such disquiet that to begin with he doubted what he had heard and speculated that it might have been thunder; instead of going out into the storm, up the hill, to investigate the matter, he chucked another log on the fire and sat down in the chair by the window, his head still muzzy with sleep. But now he had to go out, the boy was pounding on the door with his fists and shouting his name.

Every night the same. On scaffolding, high up, with an iron bar in my hand. The streets of the town so far below. A siren somewhere. The sudden clang of metal on brick. Someone shouting. I walk over to the railing. One of the cranes swings above the rooftop. The container hanging from the chains sways gently to and fro. Like prey, I think. I turn, smash the bar against the lock. What satisfaction. Grip the railing. Fingers in the glove, the coarse material against my skin. I know the metal is cold, I know I will feel it if I keep holding. But I duck underneath, walk along the planks on the scaffolding. Tip back my helmet, take off one glove, scratch my scalp. Feel the sudden cold on my sweaty forehead. Feels like the cold is coming from inside. One of the older workers is leaning against the railing and staring out. I walk over to him. He says nothing. We gaze across the town. The sun is almost white against the hard blue sky. It gives everything we see great definition, I muse. The sun makes the scattered patches of ice glint. I feel like saying something to him. The shadow of the housing block beneath us stretches across the pavement, making a sharp dividing line. The concrete bridge’s gentle arch over the ice-bound lake. The smoke rising from the chimneys on the rooftops, almost invisible, just an undulating wave in the air, a darker hue. Heat. And the crane’s leisurely hydraulic movements. I say nothing. I never say anything.

I could see no further than the hills twenty metres from the house, with the cluster of rowan trees and the rickety fence at the top which marked the boundary to the neighbouring farm. The countryside beyond, the fjord, and the steep mountain on the far side of it, were hazy in a heavy grey mist. I opened the window a fraction. The rush of the ever-rising stream became louder. The deep ruts from the tractor wheels in the field were filled with turbid greyish-brown rainwater. I thought about the ferocious noise. With every turn of the wheels the tractor had sunk deeper, the sound had intensified in volume, in aggressiveness and power; a sign of impatience, of further activity and the dogged belief that all problems can be solved. Then it was quiet. The neighbour jumped to the ground beside his vehicle in his thigh-length boots and yellow rain jacket, stood there studying it for a while, then returned in the ruts made by the tractor. He walked up the slope, across the field of redcurrant bushes, over the fence, which the tractor had ploughed through without ceremony, and for those of us standing at the window, watching, he disappeared from view. A little later we heard the sound of a second tractor, it swung up the gravel path and lumbered into the field; a neighbour was standing on the footplate holding on to the door frame, another neighbour was in the cab. Grandad stood at the window while they attached the chain between the tractors and started them both up, he saw the thick black smoke pouring from the exhaust pipes as the engines were put under strain, the tractor rocked back and forth until in a matter of minutes it was pulled onto firm ground and the second neighbour could drive away. He watched with a blank expression on his face, I couldn’t read any of his thoughts and I couldn’t ask. Two days before, on the first evening here, he had discreetly referred to Kjartan’s plans for what he still called the bog land, what he had intended to do with it this year. After seeing him stare at all this activity outside his own window, in which we weren’t involved — Why didn’t the neighbour come in and ask us for help? Why didn’t he use our phone? It was right here, in the hall. He could have used it to call, couldn’t he? — I didn’t consider his remarks to Kjartan about the running of the farm to be a sign of calculated malice, as I first thought, nor incipient senility, as though he had forgotten what it was like here, no, it was a loss so great that he couldn’t take it in, he had to act as if nothing had changed, re-create what went on outside here every day, find an explanation he could accept. Are you sure we can afford to hire all these people? he asked Kjartan later that day, when we were in the sitting room eating waffles. He drank the lukewarm mixture of half cream and half coffee, sucked a sugar cube, waited for an answer. I looked at Kjartan. He made no attempt to answer, carried on eating, but not in such a convincing way that I was unaware he was repressing enormous irritation. This had been going on for some time. But of course you’ve got another income on the side, grandad said, and with that he calmed down. I didn’t know what to say, so we continued to eat in silence. There was nothing to ask, nothing to discuss.

I took the lid off the saucepan. Circles of grease had floated to the top, a couple of sausages had already split. I pulled it off the heat and took a pair of wooden tongs from the drawer. The clock on the wall above the window showed it was nearly twelve. Even if the land was leased out and everything that could be called farm work had ceased many years ago, they still maintained the old mealtimes: breakfast at six, lunch at twelve, tea at five and supper at nine. Habits that were tied to farm work. This was how it had been around here for many centuries. And it had been like this for a reason. The fury I occasionally felt as they sat down to eat lunch at twelve sharp was completely unjustified, it was unreasonable to get het up about this. Yet, somehow, yes, it was reasonable: what sort of life was it getting up at the crack of dawn to sit around all morning, as she did, in a chair, or as in his case, to lie on the sofa, with the radio on so loud that the voices were distorted, what sort of a life was it, living day after day, as though they were waiting for something and while they waited went into the kitchen to eat, then returned to wait and so on and so on? It was deeply entrenched inside them, almost an instinct, any tiny deviation could cause tremors that spread and became, or so it seemed, unbearable, perhaps even life-threatening.

I took the bread for the sausages out of the oven, turned off the stove and put the sausages in a dish, then I went into the sitting room to get them. Grandad was lying on the sofa, as was his wont, wearing a black suit, a tie, a somewhat stained, not-quite-white shirt. I glanced at the television and the picture of drenched bedraggled children walking in line down a road somewhere in Norway shouting sporadic and half-hearted hurrahs, switched it off with the remote control and bent down by grandma’s chair. She was also in her finery, a blue dress with white embroidery, a brooch fastened to her chest. A strip of kitchen roll hung from the neckband.