Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

I left with them, they said they hoped we would meet again on board, took their bikes and were gone, I plodded over to the lorry queue and began to ask the drivers if they would take me along, I had no money for the boat. No, no one was interested, needless to say. One by one they started their engines and trundled on board while I walked back to the café and sat watching the ferry, which, once again, glided slowly away from the quay and became smaller and smaller until, half an hour later, it had disappeared.

The last ferry left in the evening. If I didn’t get on it I would have to hitch down to Copenhagen. That would have to be the plan. While waiting I took the manuscript from my rucksack and read. I had written a whole chapter in Greece, on two mornings I had waded out to a little island and from there to another island with my shoes, T-shirt, writing pad, pen, cigarettes and a paperback copy of Jack in Swedish in a little bundle on my head. There, in a hollow in the mountainside I had sat all on my own writing. It felt as if I had arrived at where I wanted to go. I was sitting on a Greek island in the middle of the Mediterranean writing my first novel. At the same time I was restless, there was nothing there, only me, and it wasn’t until that was all there was that I experienced the emptiness it entailed. That was how it was there, my own emptiness was everything, and even when I became immersed in Jack or was bent over my pad writing about Gabriel, my protagonist, what I noticed was the emptiness.

Sometimes I dived into the water, dark azure and wonderful, but I had hardly swum a few strokes before it occurred to me there might be sharks around. I knew there were no sharks in the Mediterranean, but I still had these thoughts as I scrambled up onto the shore dripping wet and cursing myself, it was idiotic, scared of sharks here, what was this, was I seven years old? But I was alone beneath the sun, alone by the sea and utterly empty. It felt as if I was the last human on earth. It rendered both my reading and writing meaningless.

Yet when I read the chapter about what I thought was a seamen’s pub in the harbour quarter of Hirtshals I thought it was good. The fact that I had been accepted at the Writing Academy proved I had talent. Now all I had to do was demonstrate it on paper. My plan was to write a novel during the coming year, and then have it published next autumn, depending on how long it took to print and that kind of thing.

Water Above/Water Below it was called.

A few hours later, in the falling dusk, I walked along the queue of lorries again. Some of the drivers were dozing in their cabs, I knocked on the side windows and saw them give a jolt, then either open the door or roll down the window to hear what I wanted. No, I couldn’t have a lift. No, that wasn’t on. No, of course not, were they supposed to pay for my ticket or what?

The ferry was moored at the quayside with its lights blazing. Everywhere around me people began to start up their engines. One line of cars moved slowly forward, the first ones disappeared through the open jaws into the bowels of the ship. I was desperate but told myself everything would be fine in the end. Had there ever been any stories of young Norwegians starving to death on their holidays or being stranded in Denmark, unable to get home?

Outside one of the last lorries, three men stood chatting. I walked over to them.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Could any of you take me on board? I haven’t got any money for the ticket, you see. And I have to get home. I haven’t eaten for two days, either.’

‘Where are you from?’ one asked in a broad Arendal dialect.

‘Arendal,’ I said, in as thick an accent as I could muster. ‘Or, to be precise, Tromøya.’

‘You don’t say!’ he said. ‘That’s where I’m from!’

‘Which town?’

‘Færvik,’ he said. ‘And you?’

‘Tybakken,’ I said. ‘Could you take me then?’

He nodded.

‘Jump in. Squat down as we drive on board. It’ll be a cinch.’

And that was what I did. As we drove on board I sat huddled up on the floor with my back to the windscreen. He parked, switched off the ignition, I grabbed my rucksack and jumped down to the deck. My eyes were moist as I thanked him. He shouted after me as I left, hey, hang about! I turned, he handed me a Danish fifty-krone note, said he didn’t need it, perhaps I did?

I sat down in the cafeteria and ate a large portion of meatballs. The boat began to move off. The air around me was full of animated conversation, it was evening, we were under way. I thought about my driver. Usually I had no time for his type, they had wasted their lives sitting behind a wheel, they had no education, were fat and full of prejudices about all manner of things, and he was no different, I saw that straight away, but what the hell, he had got me on board!

After the cars, lorries and motorbikes had — amid much revving and banging — driven off the ferry and onto the roads in Kristiansand next morning, the town lay still behind them. I sat on the steps of the bus station. The sun was shining, the sky was high, the air already warm. I had saved some of the money I had been given by the lorry driver so I could ring dad and say I was coming. His pet hate was surprise visitors. They had bought a house thirty kilometres or so away, which they rented out in the winter and lived in themselves throughout the summer until they had to start back at work in northern Norway. My plan was to stay there a few days and then borrow some money for a ticket to Bergen, perhaps catch a train there, whatever was cheapest.

But it was too early to ring.

I took out the small travel diary I had been keeping for the last month and entered everything that had happened from Austria onwards. I spent a few pages on the dream I had in Løkken, it had made such an impression on me, it was deeply entrenched in my body, like a barrier or a boundary I mustn’t cross, it seemed important.

Around me the frequency of the buses began to increase, until at one point barely a minute passed without a bus stopping and disgorging its passengers. They were going to work, I could see it in their eyes, they had that vacant wage-earner look.

I stood up and went for a walk around town. The pedestrian street, Markens, was almost completely deserted, only a lone figure dashing up or down. Seagulls were pecking and snatching at the rubbish under a litter bin with no bottom. I ended up at the library. It was habit that drove me there, some of the same sensation of panic I’d had when I walked around there during my years at gymnas had me in its grip now, I had nowhere to go and everyone could see that, I had always solved this by seeking refuge there, the place where you could hang about without anyone questioning what you were doing.

Before me lay the market square and the grey stone church with the verdigris roof. Everything was small and dismal, Kristiansand was a minor town, I could see that very clearly now after having been in southern Europe and experiencing how things were there.

Against the wall on the other side of the street sat a tramp, asleep. With his long beard and hair and his ragged clothes he looked like a wild man.

I sat down on a bench and lit a cigarette. Just suppose he was the one who had the best life! He was doing exactly what he liked. If he wanted to break in somewhere, he did. If he wanted to drink himself senseless, he did. If he wanted to hassle passers-by, he did. If he was hungry he stole some food. Fine, people treated him like shit or as though he didn’t exist. But as long as he didn’t care about anyone else, it was water off a duck’s back.

This must have been how the first humans lived before they established communities and started farming, when they just wandered around eating whatever they could find, sleeping wherever seemed appropriate, and every day was like the first or the last. The tramp had no house to return to, no house to tie him down, he had no job to attend to, no schedules to keep, if he was tired, well, then he lay down wherever he was. The town was his forest. He was outdoors all the time, his skin was tanned and wrinkled, his hair and clothes filthy.