Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

Trude got up and walked across the room. Petra turned to me.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me what bands I like?’ she said with a smile, but the eyes she fixed on me were dark and mocking.

‘I can do,’ I said. ‘What bands do you like?’

‘Do you imagine I care about boys’ room banter?’ she said.

‘How should I know?’ I said.

‘Do I look like that type of girl?’

‘In fact, you do,’ I said. ‘The leather jacket and so on.’

She laughed.

‘Apart from the stupid names, and all the clichés, and the lack of psychological insight, I quite liked what you wrote,’ she said.

‘There’s nothing left to like,’ I said.

‘Yes, there is,’ she said. ‘Don’t let what others say upset you. It’s nothing, just words. Look at those two,’ she said, motioning towards our teachers. ‘They’re wallowing in our admiration. Look at Jon now. And look at Knut lapping it up.’

‘First of all, I’m not upset. Second of all, Jon Fosse is a good writer.’

‘Oh yes? Have you read any of his stuff?’

‘A bit. I bought his latest novel on Wednesday.’

‘Blood. The Stone is,’ she said in a deep Vestland voice, fixing me with her eyes. Then she laughed that heartfelt bubbling laugh of hers, which was abruptly cut short. ‘Ay yay yay, there’s so much posturing!’ she said.

‘But not in the stuff you write?’ I said.

‘I’ve come here to learn,’ she said. ‘I have to suck as much out of them as I can.’

The waiter came over to our table; I raised my finger. Petra did the same, at first I thought she was taking the mickey out of me, but then realised she wanted a beer too. Trude came back, Petra turned to her and I leaned across the table to catch Jon Fosse’s attention.

‘Do you know Jan Kjærstad?’ I said.

‘Yes, a bit. We’re colleagues.’

‘Do you consider yourself a postmodernist as well?’

‘No, I’m probably more of a modernist. At least compared with Jan.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

He looked down at the table, seemed to discover his beer and took a long draught.

‘What do you think of the course so far?’ he said.

Was he asking me?

I flushed.

‘It’s been good,’ I said. ‘I feel I’ve learned a lot in a short time.’

‘Nice to hear,’ he said. ‘We haven’t done much teaching, Ragnar and I. It’s almost as new to us as it is to you.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

I knew I ought to say something, for I suddenly found myself at the beginning of a conversation, but I didn’t know what to say, and after the silence between us had lasted several seconds, he looked away, his attention was caught by someone else, whereupon I got up and went to the toilets, which were behind a door at the other end of the room. There was a man peeing in the urinal, I knew I wouldn’t be able to perform with him standing there, so waited for the cubicle to become vacant, which happened the very next moment. There was some toilet paper on the floor tiles, wet with urine or water. The smell was rank and I breathed through my nose as I peed. Outside the cubicle I heard water rush into the sinks. Immediately afterwards, the hand drier roared. I flushed and went out just as the two men left through the door, while another older man with a huge gut and a ruddy Bergen face came in. Although the toilet was a mess, with the floor wet and dirty and the smell vile, it still had the same solemnity as the restaurant outside with its white tablecloths and aproned waiters. No doubt it had something to do with its age: both the tiles and the urinals came from a different era. I rinsed my hands under the tap and looked at my reflection in the mirror, which bore no resemblance to the inferiority I felt inside. The man positioned himself, legs apart, by the urinal, I thrust my hands under the current of hot air, turned them over a few times and went back to the table, where there was another beer waiting for me.

When it was finished and I had started on the next, slowly my timidity began to ease, in its place came something soft and gentle and I no longer felt I was on the margins of the conversation, on the margins of the group, but in the centre, I sat chatting first with one person, then with another, and when I went to the loo now it was as though I took the whole table there with me, they existed in my head, a whirl of faces and voices, opinions and attitudes, laughter and giggles, and when some began to pack up and go home I didn’t notice at first, it happened on the extreme periphery and didn’t matter, the chatting and drinking carried on, but then Jon Fosse got up, followed by Ragnar Hovland, and it was terrible, we were nothing without them.

‘Have another one!’ I said. ‘It’s not so late. And it’s Saturday tomorrow.’

But they were adamant, they were going home, and after they had gone the urge to leave spread, and even though I asked each and every one of them to stay a bit longer the table was soon empty, apart from Petra and me.

‘You’re not going to go as well, are you?’ I said.

‘Soon,’ she said. ‘I live quite a way out of town, so I have to catch the bus.’

‘You can doss at my place,’ I said. ‘I live up in Sandviken. There’s a sofa you can sleep on.’

‘Are you that keen to keep drinking?’ she laughed. ‘Where shall we go then? We can’t stay here any longer.’

‘Café Opera?’ I suggested.

‘Sounds good,’ she said.

Outside, it was lighter than I had expected, the remnants of the summer night’s lustre had blanched the sky above us as we ascended the hill towards the theatre, past the row of taxis, the ochre glow from the street lamps as if drawn across the wet cobblestones, the rain pelting down. Petra was carrying her black leather bag and although I didn’t look at her I knew her expression was serious and dogged, her movements rigid and awkward. She was like a polecat: she bit the hands of those who helped her.

At Café Opera there were many vacant tables, we went up to the first floor, beside a window. I got us two beers, she drank almost half hers in one swig, wiped her lips with the back of her hand. I searched my brain for something to say, but found nothing, and drank almost half mine in one swig too.

Five minutes passed.

‘What did you actually do in northern Norway?’ she said out of the blue but in a matter-of-fact way as though we had been chatting for ages, while staring into the nearly empty beer glass she was nursing in front of her.

‘I was a teacher,’ I said.

‘I know that,’ she said. ‘But what made you decide to do that? What did you hope to achieve?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It just happened. The idea was to do some writing up there, I suppose.’

‘It’s a strange notion, looking for work in northern Norway so you can write.’

‘Yes, maybe it is.’

She went to get some beer. I looked around me; soon the place would be full. She had rested her elbow on the bar, held up a hundred-krone note, in front of her one of the barmen was pouring a beer. Her lips slid over her teeth as she knitted her brow. On one of the first days she told me she had changed her name. Her surname, I assumed, but no, she had changed her Christian name. It had been something like Anne or Hilde, one of the most common girl’s names, and I had thought a lot about Petra rejecting her first name because personally I was so attached to mine, changing it was inconceivable, in a way everything would change if I did. But she had done it.

Mum had changed her name, but that was to dad’s surname, it was a convention, and when she changed it again, it was back to her maiden name. Dad had also changed his name, that was more unusual, but he had changed his surname, not his Christian name, which was him.