Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

‘Yes. Yes, I know,’ I said.

He looked as if he wanted to say more, but instead he sat back and averted his gaze. His attempt to console me was even more humiliating than his analysis. It meant he perceived me as someone who needed consoling. He talked literature with the others, but he consoled me.

I couldn’t be the first to leave, everyone would think it was because I was upset and couldn’t take criticism. Nor the second, nor the third. They would think the same. If I was the fourth, though, no one would think that, at least not with any reasonable justification.

Fortunately this didn’t look as though it was going to be a long evening, we had come here for a beer following the day’s work, and after an hour I was able to get up and go without losing face. It was raining harder now, the wind was gusting through the streets, which in the centre were empty now that the shops were closed. I didn’t give a damn about the rain, I didn’t give a damn about people, I didn’t give a damn about all the rows of crooked wooden terraced houses on the sloping mountainside I was walking up as fast as I could. I just wanted to get home, lock the door and be on my own.

Once indoors, I took off my shoes, hung my dripping raincoat in the wardrobe and placed the bag with my texts and notebook on the top shelf because one glance at that and my mortification would return.

To my dismay, we had been given another writing assignment. Another poem had to be written this evening and read and assessed the following day. I wasn’t going to give a damn about that either, was I?

At any rate I can’t be bothered with it now, I thought and lay down on my bed. The rain beat against the window above my head. There was a faint whoosh as the wind swept across the grass and pressed against the walls of the houses. The woodwork creaked. I was reminded of the wind outside the house where I grew up, its whoosh was so much stronger and more powerful because of the trees it moved. What a sound it had been. It soared into the air, moved off, disappeared, soared again, sigh after sigh went through the forest and the trees threw themselves forwards and backwards, as though trying to escape.

The trees I had liked best were the pines which stood on the vacant plots in the housing estate. They had been part of a forest, but then it had been cut down, the rocks had been blasted and lawns had been laid and houses built, which they stood beside. Tall and slim, many of them with branches only towards the top. Reddish, almost flame-like, when the sun shone on them. They resembled masts, I thought whenever I was standing by the window in my bedroom and looking up at the neighbouring plot, where they swayed to and fro and creaked, the plots of land were ships, the fences railings, the houses cabins, the estate an armada.

I got up and went into the kitchen. The night before I had put all the dirty crockery and cutlery in the sink, filled it with hot water, squirted a bit of washing-up liquid in it and left it to soak; now all I had to do was rinse everything in cold water and it would be spotlessly clean. I was pleased at having discovered this method, thereby avoiding all the hassle.

Once this was done, I sat down at my typewriter, switched it on, rolled in a sheet of paper and stared at it for a while. Then I began to write a new poem.

CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT.

I took out the sheet of paper and looked at it.

The thought of reading this at the Academy filled me with glee, I purred with delight as I imagined what it would be like, how they would react, what they would say. The text consisted of nothing more than clichés and I would have to cross everything out, except for one word?

Ha ha ha!

I poured a cup of coffee and lit a cigarette. The delight was not undiluted, I would be taking a big risk if I read it aloud, it was a provocation, a slap in the face, and if there was one thing I didn’t want it was to fall out with anyone. My fear of this was so strong that it made the thought of doing it even more enticing. It was the attraction of the forbidden that I could feel, that I could actually do it, a dizzying sensation, like the fear of heights.

At around eight there was a ring at the door, I thought it would be Morten, but it was Jon Olav, he stood there in an open jacket and trainers in the rain, as though he had only crossed the yard, and in a way this was true, it wasn’t far from his bedsit to mine.

‘Are you working?’ he said.

‘No, I’ve finished,’ I said. ‘Come in!’

He flopped down on the sofa, I made two cups of coffee and sat on the bed.

‘How’s it going at the Academy?’ he said.

‘Well enough, I suppose,’ I said. ‘But it’s tough. They don’t mince their words when we discuss texts.’

‘Really?’ he said.

‘Now we’re writing poetry.’

‘Can you do that?’

‘I’ve never done it before. But that’s the whole point of being there. You have to try new things.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I haven’t really got going yet. And there’s so much to read that I already feel left behind. It’s not like arts subjects, where you can get by with what you already know or use your common sense … Well, of course you have to use your common sense as well.’ He laughed. ‘But there’s so much you have to know. There’s quite a different degree of precision involved. So the only thing that counts is reading. And everyone’s so disciplined. They’re in the reading room from the crack of dawn to late at night.’

‘But not you?’

‘I’ll have to at some point,’ he smiled. ‘I just haven’t started yet.’

‘I think the Writing Academy’s just as tough, only in a different way. We don’t have to know the way you do. You can’t read your way to becoming a writer.’