Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

Once she asked if she could use my computer, only for half an hour, there was something she had to write and going all the way up to the school was a hassle. I was extremely annoyed but I said nothing, of course she could use my computer for half an hour, and so that she would understand what a sacrifice it was for me I sat on a chair in the corridor, outside the door, waiting, seething with impatience.

She often referred to the opinion one of her friends had expressed about our life together, how strange it was that I worked all the time and never showed my face outside with her, of course she told me this because she thought the same, deep down I was angry, what we did with our lives was none of his business.

One evening in spring she got terrible abdominal pains. She had to go to the out-of-hours doctor, she said, I asked if I should go with her, no, she said, you write, it’ll be fine, and then from the sitting-room window I saw her walking up the hill stooped over and I thought it was generous of her to let me write instead of accompanying her to the doctor. Personally, I had no objection to doing this kind of thing on my own, I was unsentimental in this regard, and I was happy she felt the same.

Two or three hours later she phoned, they had admitted her to hospital, they didn’t know what was wrong and were going to perform a little procedure to find out.

‘Shall I come?’

‘Yes, could you?’

She was lying in bed when I arrived, her smile gentle and apologetic, the pain had gone, it was probably nothing.

The next day I went back up, they hadn’t found anything, it was a mystery. I was going to Oslo for a final discussion of the manuscript, the plane tickets had been booked ages ago, so she would have to make her own way home, it wasn’t a problem, and she had lots of friends who could go shopping for her, if need be.

In May I revised the manuscript for the last time, everything that had to be done had to be done now, so when 17 May came, Constitution Day, Tonje asked if I could be with her that day, first to have breakfast with some friends, then to walk to the town to watch the procession and afterwards to have a few drinks in a pub, but I couldn’t, work was at a crucial point, I couldn’t lose a whole day, anyway you know lots of people there!

She went in her sailor’s jacket, she looked a dream, I watched her from the window and that was what I thought, then I sat down in the sun on the veranda and began to plough through the manuscript with pen in hand. After a while I went in and had a bite to eat, continued to read, until the telephone rang. It was Tonje.

‘I miss you so much,’ she said. ‘Can’t you come on down? Just for a little walk? I’m having a great time, but it would be even better if you were here. And the others are asking me if there’s something wrong. As you’re not here.’

‘Look,’ I said. ‘You know I have to work. I can’t. You understand, don’t you?’

Yes, she did, perfectly.

We rang off.

I stood scanning the fjord.

What on earth was I doing?

Was I a complete cretin?

Was she supposed to sit all on her own in her sailor’s jacket on 17 May?

I threw on my jacket, jumped into my shoes and hurried up the hill. As soon as I reached the top and started to walk I saw Tonje. She was ambling along with her head bowed.

Was she crying?

Yes, she was.

Oh Tonje.

I ran over to her and held her in my arms.

‘Don’t take any notice of me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what’s come over me.’

As she said this, she smiled.

We walked back down to the centre, into the bar where her friends were sitting and then to the pub, where we got drunk, as is right and proper on Constitution Day. While we were sitting there I said my novel would be on the front page of Dagbladet when it came out. Tonje eyed me. ‘Want a bet?’ I said. Yes, she said. A trip to Paris. If you win you take me. If I win I take you.

We walked home that night with our arms entwined. She told me how the way we lived had worn her down, I said it would soon be over, there was only one more month, then everything would be different.

‘The worst is I believe you,’ she said.

The night England played Argentina in the World Cup a removal van collected all our things. We flew to Bergen and waited outside our new flat the following day for the van. We had answered a box number advert, Tonje had written a letter explaining who we were, and we got the flat, an old lady owned it and wanted very little for it, although it was big, at least by our standards.

My phone rang, it was the van driver, he was at the bottom of the hill and couldn’t get any further. We ran down to meet him.

‘It’s no good,’ he said, scratching his cheek. ‘I’ll have to unload your things here.’

‘Here? In the street?’ I said.

He nodded.

‘But you can’t do that!’ I shouted. ‘We’ve paid for the move. You’ll obviously have to carry the stuff to the flat!’

‘But I can’t get up the hill,’ he said. ‘You can borrow a handcart if you promise to bring it back.’

I gave up and helped him to move all the furniture and boxes off the van. The pile was the height of a man. He drove off, I rang Eirik, the only person I knew who was in town right now, but he was busy, so it was a case of rolling up my sleeves.

People walking past stared at the household goods. There was something completely wrong about it, I thought, putting three boxes onto the handcart and pushing it uphill. It looked obscene, naked, unprotected. A divan in the road. Our bed in the road. A sofa, a chair, a lamp. Pictures. A desk. All shining in the sunshine against the dry grey tarmac.

Over the following days we painted the flat, and once we had finally decided how to arrange the furniture we were happy. It felt like our first decent flat, we were no longer students, the future started here. Tonje had a job with NRK Hordaland, my novel was finished, all that was left was the proofreading. And the cover. I went down to see Yngve in Stavanger for some help with that. I had photos of Zeppelins with me, I had thought from the beginning that a Zeppelin would be right for the atmosphere I was seeking in the novel, the overwhelming feeling of everything that had been lost, all the time and all the eras, there was little that expressed this better than the German airship, this whale of the air, this Moby Dick of progress, so beautiful and alien it hurt. As an alternative I had a book I had once been given by dad, it was about space, no photographs, just drawings. Early 1950s, space travel didn’t exist yet, but there was speculation, there were designs of space outfits, this is how the first space traveller would be dressed. There were designs of rockets, houses on deserted planets, moon vehicles. All in the style that was so typical of the 1950s, American advertising optimism. A father with his child pointing to the starry sky. The future, adventure, the entire universe at man’s feet. The covers Yngve and Asbjørn designed, with Zeppelins and 50s drawings, were good but not precise enough for the novel. They tried more and more variations, and I was beginning to reconcile myself to their suggestions when Asbjørn came up with some photos by Jock Sturges, an American photographer, in a magazine. One of them showed a girl, perhaps twelve years old, perhaps thirteen, she was naked and stood with her back to the camera, and when we saw it the search was over. This was actually what the novel was about. Not time that was lost but the main character’s desire for a thirteen-year-old girl.

Back home again, I spent my days reading newspapers and watching TV, sitting in Verftet and drinking coffee with a book in my hands while Tonje worked, I was in limbo, a routine no longer did anything for me, it was just a routine, the days in it were empty. Yngve and Asbjørn lived in Stavanger, Espen and Tore lived in Oslo, Hans and nearly all of the others had also moved there. Only a handful of friends remained in Bergen. Ole was in town, I knew, he had got divorced and moved back, I rang him, we went out for a beer. Eirik, whom I had first got to know in Student Radio, was doing a doctoral thesis in literature, I cycled up to his office and had a coffee with him in the canteen.