Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

I didn’t have a clue. There was something about someone coughing on an old gramophone recording, then there was a man who drove an unbelievably overheated car to a funeral, and then there was a couple who were at some kind of holiday resort. I understood that, but firstly there was no plot, and secondly there was no sequence of events, and no coherence, everything came at you higgledy-piggledy, and that was fine per se, but what was it that was higgledy-piggledy? It wasn’t thoughts, there was no one in particular thinking this. There were no lines of argument either, or descriptions, it was just a bit of everything all at the same time, but it was no use trying to understand this, as I couldn’t make sense of the bigger picture, what did it mean ?

I hoped this was what we were going to learn.

I would have to follow closely, note down everything that was said, not waste a moment.

Modernism and postmodernism Fosse had said, that sounded good, it meant us and our time.

While I was eating lunch — because of my impecunious state, five slices of bread, butter and three soft-boiled eggs — there was a knock at the door. It was my neighbour from down below, Morten, holding a long black umbrella with a walking-stick handle and wearing a red leather jacket, blue Levi’s and boat shoes with white socks, and even though his hair wasn’t a mess this time, there was still something wild about him, perhaps especially the look he was giving me, but it was in his body language too, as if something powerful was stirring inside him and he was expending all his energy on that. And then there was his laughter, which burst forth in the strangest of places.

‘Hi again!’ he said. ‘Can I come in? For a chat? Bit brief last time, you might say, heh heh.’

‘Come in,’ I said.

He stopped inside the door and looked around.

‘Take a seat,’ I said, kneeling down by the stereo to put on a record.

‘ Betty Blue, yep,’ he said. ‘I’ve actually seen that one.’

‘It’s a good film,’ I said and turned to face him. He hitched his trousers up over his knees before he sat down. There was something formal about him, which, along with the vague yet intense impression of wildness, filled the whole room.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Nice, she is. Especially when she went nuts!’

‘Yes, she did go nuts,’ I said, sitting down on the chair across the table from him.

‘Have you lived here long?’ I said.

He shook his head.

‘No, sir! I moved in two weeks ago.’

‘And you’re studying law?’

‘Exactly. Clauses and paragraphs. And you’re going to be a writer, didn’t you say?’

‘Yes. Started today.’

‘Shit, I wouldn’t mind doing that. Articulating everything you feel inside,’ he said, thumping his chest. ‘I get so sad sometimes. Maybe you do too?’

‘Yes, it happens.’

‘Great to get it out, is it?’

‘Yes. But that’s not why, you know.’

‘Why what?’

‘Why I write.’

He looked at me with a self-assured smile, slapped both palms against his thighs and prepared to stand up, or so it seemed, but he didn’t, instead he leaned back in the sofa.

‘Are you in love? Right now, I mean,’ he said.

I looked at him.

‘Are you ? Since you’re the one asking.’

‘I’m fascinated by a girl. If I can put it like that. Fascinated.’

‘I am too,’ I said. ‘Incredibly so.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Ingvild.’

‘Ingvild!’ he said.

‘Don’t tell me you know her,’ I said.

‘No, no. Is she a student?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you a couple?’

‘No.’

‘Same age as you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Monica’s two years older than me. That’s perhaps not so good.’

He fiddled with the ribs of the umbrella, which was propped up against the sofa next to his calf. I took out my tobacco pouch and began to make a roll-up.

‘Have you met the others in the house yet?’ he said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Only you. And I caught a glimpse of the girl who was having a shower.’

‘Lillian,’ he said. ‘She lives behind the staircase on the same floor as you. An old lady lives above her. She sticks her nose into everything, but she’s not dangerous. Above you is Rune. A nice fellow from Sogndal. That’s it.’

‘I’ll get to know them in time,’ I said.

He nodded.

‘But now I won’t take any more of your time,’ he said, getting up. ‘See you. I have the feeling I’ll be hearing more about Ingvild soon enough.’

He went out, his steps grew fainter as he went downstairs, I continued eating.

The next morning I walked up to the university to find out whether my loan had come through, it hadn’t, and I went down a street alongside Høyden, as the university area was called, at the end was Mount Dragefjell, where the law students’ building was, there I turned right down one of the narrow alleyways and emerged unexpectedly by the swimming pool. As I passed I drew the air deep into my lungs because from a grille set in the pavement came the smell of chlorine, and with it all the pleasant memories of my childhood unfolded like flowers in the first rays of sun after a night of slumber.

Where I walked, however, there wasn’t much sun to speak of, the rain was pouring down, hard and unremitting, and between the buildings the water in the fjord was heavy and grey, beneath a sky that was so low and so full of moisture that the dividing line between it and the fjord appeared to have been erased. I had admitted defeat and put on a raincoat, a light, green affair that made me look like a bumpkin or a hick from the hills or something, but in this weather there was nothing else you could do, these weren’t showers over in half an hour; the cloud cover above me was thick and grey, bordering on black, and hung over the town like a tarpaulin bulging with water.

It affected the atmosphere in the classroom because with all the boots and umbrellas and wet coats, as well as the grey light outside, which caused the room to be reflected in the windows, it was vaguely reminiscent of how it had been in all the various classrooms I had sat in over the years, including those in northern Norway, which had already joined all the other good memories I had of rooms.

I sat down, took out my notebook, grabbed one of the stapled photocopies from a pile and started to read, as that was what all the others were doing. Under the blackboard sat Fosse and Hovland, doing the same. We were going through Trude’s — she was the stern one — texts first. They were poems, and they were beautiful, I could see that right away. There were dreamy landscapes, horses, wind and light, all concentrated into a few lines. I read them, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to be looking for, had no idea what was good or not, or what might make them better. And as I read the fear grew in my breast, for this was immeasurably better than what I had written, there was no comparison, this was art, that at least I did understand. And what would I say if Fosse or Hovland asked me to comment on them? Some horses standing under a tree and, in the next line, a knife sliding across skin — what did it mean? Horses galloping across a field with thundering hooves and an eye hanging above the horizon?

Minutes later, work started in earnest. Fosse asked Trude to read. She sat still for a few moments, concentrating, then she began. Her voice seemed to tone into her poems, it wasn’t as if the poems came out of her mouth, I felt rather that they were already there in advance and she used her voice to access them. At the same time there was no room for anything else, her voice could only contain the poems, the few words that made up a rounded whole, with nothing of her in it.