Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

He shook his head.

‘I was going to read.’

‘Law?’ I said.

He nodded.

‘Good luck with Ingvild!’

‘Thanks,’ I said, and went back up to my place. Outside, the evening was exceptionally light; the sky in the west, which I could barely see from the window, rising from the trees and rooftops, had a reddish glow. Some black clouds hung like discs in the distance. I put on an old Big Country maxi single, ate a bread roll, put on my black suit jacket, moved my keys, lighter and coins from my trouser pocket to a jacket pocket to avoid the inelegant bulge on my thigh, put the tobacco pouch in an inside pocket and went out.

Ingvild didn’t see me at first when she entered Café Opera. She wandered around shyly, looking from side to side, dressed in a white pullover with blue stripes, a beige jacket and blue jeans. Her hair was longer than when I last saw her. My heart was pounding so much I could barely breathe.

Our eyes met, but hers didn’t light up as I had hoped. A little smile on her lips, that was all.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘You’re here already, are you?’

‘Yes,’ I said, half-getting up. But we didn’t know each other, a hug was perhaps too much, yet I couldn’t just sit down again like some jack-in-the-box, so I followed through and offered my cheek, which luckily she brushed with hers.

‘I’d hoped I would arrive first,’ she said, hanging first her bag, then her coat over the back of the chair. ‘So that I would have home advantage.’

She smiled again and sat down.

‘Would you like a beer?’

‘Ah, good idea,’ she said. ‘We have to drink. Could you buy this round and I’ll buy the next?’

I nodded and went over to the bar. The room had begun to fill up, there were a couple of people ahead of me in the queue, and I studiously avoided looking straight at her, but from the corner of my eye I could see that she was staring out of the window. She had her hands in her lap. I was glad of the break, glad not to be sitting there, but then it was my turn, then I was given the two beers, then I had to go back.

‘How’s it going?’ I said.

‘With my driving? Or are we past that stage?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘There’s so much that’s new,’ she said. ‘New room, new subject, new books, new people. Well, not that I’ve studied any other subject before,’ she added with a giggle.

Our eyes met, and I recognised that happy-go-lucky expression in her eyes that I had fallen for the first time I saw it.

‘I said I’d be a bundle of nerves!’ she said.

‘I am too,’ I said.

‘Skål,’ she said, and we clinked glasses.

She leaned to the side and took a packet of cigarettes from her bag.

‘Well, how are we going to do this?’ she said. ‘Shall we start again? I come in, you’re sitting here, we give each other a hug, you ask how it’s going, I answer and then I ask you how it’s going. Much better start!’

‘I feel a bit the same,’ I said. ‘A lot of new things. Especially at the Academy. But my brother is studying here, so I’ve been hanging on his coat-tails.’

‘And your cheeky cousin’s?’

‘Jon Olav, yes!’

‘We’ve got a cabin where his grandparents live. There’s a 50 per cent chance they’re yours too.’

‘In Sørbøvåg?’

‘Yes, we’ve got a cabin on the other side of the water, at the foot of Lihesten.’

‘Have you? I’ve been there every summer since I was a kid.’

‘You’ll have to row over and visit me one day then.’

There was nothing I would rather do, I thought, a weekend alone with her in a cabin beneath the mighty Lihesten, what on this earth could be better than that?

‘That’d be fun,’ I said.

There was a pause.

I tried to keep my eyes off her but couldn’t stop myself, she was so beautiful sitting there looking down at the table with the lit cigarette in her hand.

She glanced up and met my gaze. We smiled.

The warmth in her eyes.

The light around her.

At the same time there was that slightly gauche insecurity that came over her when the moment was past and she watched her hand flicking the ash from her cigarette into the ashtray. I knew where the feeling came from, I recognised it in myself, she was wary of herself and the position she was in.

We stayed there for almost an hour, it was torture, neither of us managed to get a grip on the situation, it was as if it existed independently of us, something much bigger and heavier than we could handle. When I said anything it was tentative, and every time it was the tentativeness, not what was said, that prevailed. She kept looking out of the window, not wanting to be where she was, either. But, I sometimes thought, perhaps she too is struck by sudden intense waves of happiness at just sitting there with me, as I was at sitting with her. I couldn’t begin to guess, I didn’t know her, didn’t have a clue what she was like normally. But when I suggested leaving it was relief she felt, I could see that. The streets had grown dark, apart from the heavy rain clouds there was something summery about the dusk, it was more open, lighter, filled with promise.

We walked up a hill towards Høyden, along a road cut into the mountain, a high wall on one side, railings on the other, and a row of tall brick houses beneath. The rooms inside the lit windows looked like aquariums. People were out in the streets, footsteps resounded in front and behind us. We said nothing. All I thought about was that she was only a few centimetres from me. Her footsteps, her breathing.

When I woke up next morning it was raining, the steady precipitation that was so typical of this town, distinguishable neither by its force nor its ferocity but still dominating everything. Even though you wore waterproofs and wellies when you went out you were still wet when you got back home. The rain crept up your sleeves, soaked into your collar, and the clothes under your rain gear steamed with humidity, not to mention what the rain did to all the walls and roofs, all the lawns and trees, all the roads and gateways as it relentlessly bucketed down onto the town. Everything was wet, everything had a membrane of dampness over it, and if you walked along the quay it felt as though what was above water was closely related to what was below it, in this town the borders between the two worlds were fluid, not to say floating.

It even affected your mind. I stayed at home all Sunday, yet still the weather impacted on my thoughts and feelings, which were somehow enveloped in something grey and unvarying and vague, reinforced by the Sunday atmosphere — empty streets, everything closed — which compounded with all the countless other Sundays I had known.

Apathy.

After a late breakfast I went out and called Yngve. Fortunately he was in. I told him about my date with Ingvild, how I was unable to say anything or be myself, he said she probably felt exactly the same, that was his experience, they were just as nervous and self-critical. Ring her and thank her for the evening, he said, then suggest meeting again. Not perhaps for a whole evening but a coffee. Then I would know how the land lay. I said we had already arranged to meet again. He asked who suggested it. Ingvild, I said. Well, that’s all sorted then, he said. Of course she’s interested!

I was happy to hear he was so sure. If he was sure, I was too.

Before we rang off he told me he was going to have a party at his place on Saturday, I could come and bring someone with me. As I ran across the street in the rain, I wondered who it should be, who I could take with me.

Oh, Ingvild of course!

Back home again, I thought about Anne who had been the technician for me when I was working for local radio in Kristiansand, she was in Bergen and would no doubt like to come along. Jon Olav and his friends. And maybe Morten?