Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

I opened the button of my jeans and unzipped, pushed the book down inside, covered it with my shirt, leaned forward as far as I could to see what it looked like, whether anyone would realise I had a book there.

Maybe.

What about taking a towel with me? If anyone came I could casually hold it over my stomach for the few seconds the encounter lasted. Then I could have a shower afterwards. Nothing suspicious about that surely, going to the toilet and then having a shower.

And that was what I did. With the book stuffed down my trousers and clasping the biggest towel I had I went out of the door, crossed the landing, down the stairs, along the corridor, into the toilet, where I locked the door, pulled out the book and began to leaf through.

Even though I had never masturbated before and wasn’t exactly sure how to do it, I still knew more or less, the expressions ‘jerk off’ and ‘beat the meat’ had been ever-present in all the wanking jokes I had ever heard over the years, not least in football changing rooms, and so with the blood throbbing in my member I took it out of the little pouch formed by my underpants, and as I ogled the long-legged red-lipped woman standing outside a kind of holiday bungalow in the Mediterranean somewhere, judging by the white walls and the gnarled trees, beneath a line of washing, with a plastic bowl in her hand, although otherwise completely naked, while I looked and looked and looked at her, all the beautiful erotic lines of her body, I wrapped my fingers around my dick and jerked it up and down. At first the whole shaft, but then after a few times only the tip, while still staring at the woman with the bowl, and then as a wave of pleasure rose in me, I thought I should look at another woman too, to make maximum use of the book, as it were, and turned over the page, and there was a woman sitting on a swing, wearing only red shoes with straps up her ankles, and then a spasm went through me and I tried to bend my dick down to ejaculate into the toilet, but I couldn’t, it was too stiff, so instead the first load of sperm hit the seat and slowly oozed down while later blobs were pumped out, further down, after I had the great idea of leaning forward to improve the angle.

Oh.

I had done it.

I had finally done it.

There was nothing mysterious about it after all. On the contrary, it was incredibly easy and quite remarkable that I hadn’t done it before.

I closed the book, wiped the seat, washed myself, stood stock still to hear if, contrary to expectation, anyone was outside, shoved the book back down my trousers, grabbed my towel and left.

It was only then that I wondered if I had done it right. Should you shoot into the toilet? Or maybe the sink? Or a wad of rolled-up toilet paper in your hand? Or did you usually do it in bed? On the other hand, this was an extremely secretive business, so it probably didn’t matter if my method deviated from the norm.

Just as I had put the book down on the desk, folded the unused towel and placed it in the cupboard there was a ring at the door.

I went out to answer it.

It was Yngve and Asbjørn. Both were wearing sunglasses, and as on the previous occasion there was something restless about them, something about Yngve’s thumb in his belt loop and Asbjørn’s fist in his trouser pocket or them both standing half-turned away until I opened the door. Or perhaps it was the sunglasses they didn’t take off.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Come in!’

They followed me into my room.

‘We were wondering if you fancied coming with us into town,’ Yngve said. ‘We’re going to some record shops.’

‘Great,’ I said. ‘I’ve got nothing to do anyway. Right now?’

‘Yes,’ Yngve said, picking up the book with the naked women. ‘I see you’ve bought a photography book.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘It’s not hard to guess what you’re going to use that for.’ Yngve laughed. Asbjørn chuckled too, but in a way that suggested he wanted this aspect of the visit over as quickly as possible.

‘These are serious pictures, you know,’ I said as I put on my jacket, bent over and tied my shoes. ‘It’s a kind of art book.’

‘Oh yes,’ Yngve said, putting it down. ‘And the Lennon poster has gone?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

Asbjørn lit a cigarette, turned to the window and looked out.

Ten minutes later, side by side, all wearing sunglasses, we were crossing Torget. The wind was blowing off the fjord, flags were fluttering and cracking on masts, and the sun, which was shining from a clear blue sky, glittered and shimmered on every surface. Cars tore down the street from Torgalmenningen like a pack of hounds whenever the traffic lights changed to green. The market was packed with people, and in the fish tanks in the middle, caught in their few cubic metres of greenish and probably freezing-cold water, cod swam around with their mouths agape, crabs crawled on top of one other and lobsters lay still, their claws bound with white elastic.

‘Shall we eat at Yang Tse Kiang afterwards?’ Yngve suggested.

‘Can do,’ Asbjørn said. ‘If you promise not to say Chinese food in China tastes quite different.’

Yngve didn’t answer, took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and stopped by the traffic crossing. I looked to the right where there was a vegetable stall. The sight of the orange carrots lying in bunches in a big heap made me think of the two seasons I had worked at the market gardener’s on Tromøya, when we pulled up the carrots, washed them and packed them, and I was always so near to the earth, rich and black, under the late August and early September evening sky, the darkness and the ground so close together, and the rustle of the bushes and trees at the end of the field sent small shivers of happiness through me. Why? I thought now. Why had I been so happy then?

The lights changed to green and we crossed the street surrounded by a crowd of people, passed a watchmaker’s shop, continued to a large square which opened up between the buildings like a clearing in a forest, I asked where we were going actually, Yngve said actually we were going to Apollon, and afterwards we were planning to visit some second-hand record shops.

Flicking through records in music shops was something I was good at, I knew most of the bands in the racks, I picked them up and looked to see who the producer was, who played what on the various tracks, which studio was used. I was a connoisseur, yet still I glanced over at Yngve and Asbjørn as we flicked through the LPs, and if either of them lifted a record out I tried to see what it was, what passed muster here, and in Asbjørn’s case I could see it was partly old stuff, and curiosities such as George Jones or Buck Owens. What particularly caught my eye was a Christmas record he held up to show Yngve, they laughed, Asbjørn said it was really over the top, and Yngve said yes, it was really camp. But he kept to the same categories that I liked, British post-punk, American indie rock, the odd Australian band perhaps and of course a couple of Norwegian bands, but nothing beyond that as far as I could see.

I bought twelve records, most by bands I already had and one on Yngve’s recommendation: Guadalcanal Diary. An hour later, sitting in a Chinese restaurant, they laughed at me for having bought so many records, but I sensed there was some respect in their laughter, it didn’t just say I was a new student who had never had so much money in his hands before but that I was dedicated. A huge dish of steaming rice was set on the table, it stuck to the big accompanying porcelain spoon, we dug in and each transferred a heap onto our plates, Yngve and Asbjørn poured the brown sauce onto the rice and I did the same. It almost completely disappeared between the grains, and what had been at first thick and black was brown the very next moment, and the grains of rice visible through it. It tasted a little sharp, I felt, but the next mouthful, of beef chop suey, more than compensated for that. Yngve ate with chopsticks, manipulating them with his fingers like a native. Afterwards we had fried banana with ice cream, and then we had a cup of coffee with a small After Eight mint in the saucer.