Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

It was raining, I decided to catch the bus instead of cycling to town and then walked up to my hairdresser, whom I had originally chosen because the salon couldn’t have been less hip and because the guy who owned it, a young energetic guy, was so nice.

‘Hi,’ he said as I walked in.

‘Any chance of an appointment? Like now?’

‘In ten minutes,’ he said. ‘Take a seat in the meantime.’

Was that all there was to it?

Outside the window people passed by clutching at swaying umbrellas. The hairdresser finished the customer, an elderly man, he pronounced himself pleased, on the floor lay his dead white hair. When the door shut with a jangle I sat down in the chair, the cape was whirled around me, I said I wanted it short, as usual, and he began to cut.

‘I’ve got an interview afterwards,’ I said. ‘So I have to look as smart as possible.’

‘What have you done now?’ he said.

‘I’ve had a novel published. It’s received good reviews, so now they want to talk to me.’

‘Is there any money in it? How many copies have you sold?’

‘I don’t know. It’s just come out.’

‘What’s it about then?’

‘Bit of all sorts.’

‘Any murders?’

‘No.’

‘Love?’

‘Yes, actually there is some.’

‘No good for me then. Wife’s just moved out.’

‘Has she?’

‘Yes.’

There was a silence. His scissors snipped away above my head.

‘You want it over your ears, do you? Shall I shave your neck?’

‘Perfect.’

It was only after I had paid that I started feeling nervous about the interview. I had done one already, on the day of the press conference, Dagsnytt 18 had rung me and asked if I would go on the programme. It had been live, sitting on the sofa outside the studio I was so nervous I could barely swallow the coffee I was passed. Tomm Kristensen, who was the TV host, had come out and said that unfortunately he hadn’t read my book.

‘So I’m going to ask you questions about what it’s like to make your debut and so on,’ he said. ‘In the blurb it says the book’s about male shame. Could you say a few words about that, do you think?’

‘I didn’t write the blurb,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know it was about shame until I saw it.’

‘We’ll find something else to talk about then,’ he said. ‘It’ll be fine.’

Straight afterwards I was shown in. Kristensen sat with his headset on, scribbling on a piece of paper in front of him, I put on the headset in front of me, I could hear the item before mine.

Then he introduced me.

‘There’s a big paedophilia case in Belgium at the moment,’ he said. ‘You’ve written a novel about a teacher who has a sexual relationship with a girl of thirteen. Would you say you’ve jumped on a bandwagon?’

I eyed him with horror. What was he actually saying?

‘No,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t. This has nothing to do with Belgium.’

I noticed that I could in fact speak and my nerves vanished.

‘You’re making your debut now. How has this process been? Do you feel your publishing house has failed to take you into account, by deciding on the blurb and things like that?’

‘No, I don’t feel that. I chose the picture for the front cover, for example.’

‘Yes, it’s a photo of a naked girl. Why did you choose that? Is it meant to be provocative?’

‘No, no. It’s relevant to what the book’s about, actually.’

I was bathed in sweat after the interview was over, and also a little indignant, all I had done was write a novel, you would have thought I had killed someone judging by his questions.

The present interview, however, wasn’t live, and it would probably be slanted towards the book’s good review, so I had nothing to fear. Nevertheless I was nervous, and on my way there, through the rain-glistening streets, with all the car lights diffused in the grey daylight, I considered what I was going to say. Inside the café someone stood up, I guessed he had to be the journalist, his name was Stang, we chatted for more than an hour and it went fantastically well, I talked and talked about literature, Norwegian and international, about my own book, what my aim was, well, it was to escape from the minimalistic, into the maximalistic, something bold and striking, baroque, Moby Dick, but not in an epic way, what I had tried to do was take the little novel, about one person, where there is not much external action, it is all internal, and extend it into an epic format, do you understand what I mean?

He nodded and wrote, wrote and nodded.

I was excited when I bought Dagbladet next day.

But the interview was short, it said I was proud of and pleased with the newspaper review, and that I had read Dagbladet ever since I was twelve years old.

I cycled up to the university and knocked on the door of Eirik’s office.

‘You’ve read Dagbladet ever since you were twelve, I see,’ he said and laughed. ‘And that’s something to boast about!’

I sat down on a chair and he could see I was actually pretty shattered by the interview, I came across as an idiot, a completely deranged numpty, ‘proud and pleased’, my God, I was so ashamed that I didn’t know where to look.

‘Probably doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference,’ he said.

‘No, maybe not,’ I said. ‘But everyone will read it. What a bloody fool I am!’

‘You aren’t a fool though, of course,’ Eirik said. ‘Take it easy now.’

‘I’m beginning to wonder,’ I said. ‘I did say what he’s written in the review.’

‘Bit more subtlety required for interviews, that’s all,’ Eirik said. ‘Then it’ll be fine.’

Eirik was the type who had something to say about everything. Not in any vague or ungrounded way, he was well read about everything between heaven and earth, and for me he was a boon during these months, in the same way that Espen and Tore had been before, because he had read the novel and I used what he said about it shamelessly, such as it was an ‘auto-geography’, in all my interviews, of which there were now more and more. I sat down in Hotel Terminus and talked or I invited them home and sat at the sitting-room table and talked, and when Tonje came home I talked about everything I had talked about. Reading these same interviews, I burned with shame. I lay awake at night squirming at the thought of what an idiot I was. If nothing happened for a few weeks it felt like a complete void. I wanted more, and when more came it was always terrible. At the same time I was also being invited to a variety of events. I went to Kristiansand for a reading with someone called Bjarte Breiteig and someone called Pål Gitmark Eriksen, they had also made their debuts that autumn and held Tor Ulven in the very highest esteem, it turned out after a few minutes’ conversation. They were so enthusiastic and in tune with each other that I saw them as literature’s answer to Joe and Frank Hardy. As we were about to set foot on stage there were four people in the audience. I knew one, he was one of my old gymnas teachers, but when I went up to him afterwards he said he was there because he was good friends with the family of one of the other writers. I did a reading at Hotel Terminus, everyone I knew in Bergen had come, the room was packed, but I had to perform without a microphone and without a stage. I stood in the middle of the floor, it was like reading to people in your sitting room at home, and when I did there was a passage in which the main protagonist, Henrik, sees someone mimicking him. I began to blush because I imagined everyone would be thinking I was Henrik and the description of the mimicry was a description of me while I was reading. I blushed, lost my rhythm, squirmed like a worm on a hook, and this with friends present, they must have thought I was an even bigger loser than they had ever imagined because this was public, this was where I really had to sparkle, and all I could think of was that the mimicry was becoming a mimicry of me now and I read faster and faster to finish.