Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

‘Great,’ I said. ‘See you then. Bye.’

‘Bye.’

The next morning I cleaned my room, changed the bedding, washed my clothes and hung them on the stand in the basement, I wanted everything to be perfect in case she came home with me after the party. Something had to happen anyway, that much was obvious. My passivity and awkwardness the first time were understandable but not crucial; our second meeting had been different, it took place in the middle of the day and was a chance for us to get to know each other better, but now, the third time we were meeting in Bergen I would have to make my intentions known, make a move, otherwise she would slip through my fingers. I couldn’t talk my way into a relationship with her, some action was required, a kiss, a hug, and then, perhaps later that night when we were walking in the streets outside Yngve’s flat, a question, would you like to come home with me?

It was an intimidating thought, but I had to, there was no way out, otherwise nothing would happen. And it wasn’t that I had to follow this plan slavishly, I would have to improvise as I went along, read the situation, try to see what she wanted, where she was, but I couldn’t not act, I had to act and then she could reject me if she wasn’t willing or felt it was too soon.

But if she wanted to come home with me I would have to tell her about my physical problem. I couldn’t go through the humiliation of trying to hide the fact that I came so quickly, as I had done so many times, I just had to tell her, treat it as a minor matter, no big deal, a manageable problem. The only time I had really made love to a girl, in a tent at Roskilde Festival that summer, it had got better and better the more times we did it, so at least I knew I could. I hadn’t liked her much though, not as a person, she didn’t mean anything to me beyond the sex, but Ingvild did, everything was at stake with her, I only wanted to be together with her, and I couldn’t allow myself to fail because of that.

I also knew it helped to drink, but I shouldn’t get too drunk, then she might think I was after only one thing with her. And I wasn’t! Nothing could be further from the truth.

Jon Olav and his two friends, Idar and Terje, were the first to arrive. I’d had three beers beforehand and was feeling confident in everything I said and did. I put out a dish of crisps and a bowl of peanuts, and told them about the Writing Academy. They had read books by Ragnar Hovland, knew about Jan Kjærstad and Kjartan Fløgstad, of course, and I suspected they were impressed when I told them they were going to come and teach us.

‘I imagine they’ll tell us a bit about their writing,’ I said. ‘But the main thing is they’re going to read our texts and talk about them. Do you like Kjærstad?’

At that moment the bell rang and I went to answer the door. It was Anne. She was dressed in black, had a little hat on her head and a long lock of hair hanging down over her face. I leaned forward to give her a hug, she placed a hand on my back, held it there for a moment after I had straightened up.

‘Great to see you,’ she said with a little laugh.

‘Great to see you too,’ I said. ‘Come in!’

She put down a small rucksack on the floor inside the door and said hello to the others as she took off her coat. Her bubbly personality had once struck me as incompatible with the black gothic element of her interests and approach to life. It was The Cult and The Cure, the Jesus and Mary Chain and the Belgian Crammed Discs bands, This Mortal Coil and the Cocteau Twins with Anne, fog and darkness and death romance, but with a smile on her lips and excited little jumps wherever she went. She was older than me, but when we had worked together, she behind the knobs and switches in the control room on the other side of the window, me behind the microphone, I once had the sense she might be interested in me, without being able to say for certain — such matters were impossible to know with certainty — anyway nothing happened, we were friends, both music fans, me slightly more interested in pop than her. Now she was a student, alone in Bergen like me, but she already had a host of friends as far as I could glean from what she said in the chair, reclining over the armrests, chatting with the others. No surprises there, she was outgoing and soon became the focal point of the little student gathering in my room that evening.

I drank steadily to reach a level where I no longer considered what I said or did, I just was, free and easy, so when the bell rang at a little before eight and I went out to open the door, I wasn’t in the slightest bit nervous or tense, just happy to see her, Ingvild, standing on the steps in the rain with a bag over her shoulder and a smile on her face.

I gave her a hug, she followed me in, said hello to the others, a touch shy, possibly also nervous, and took a bottle of wine from her bag. I hurried into the kitchen to fetch a corkscrew and a glass. She sat down between Jon Olav and Idar on the sofa, inserted the corkscrew, placed the bottle between her knees and pulled out the cork with a pop.

‘So this is where you live,’ she said, filling her glass with white wine.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve been cleaning all day ready for you all.’

‘I can imagine,’ she said.

Her eyes narrowed and seemed to fill with laughter.

‘ Skål, ’ she said.

‘ Skål, ’ said the others, and we clinked bottles and glasses.

‘What are you writing at the moment?’ Idar said.

‘A novel,’ I said. ‘A contemporary novel. I’m trying to make it entertaining but profound too. It’s not so easy. I’m fascinated by paradoxes. By whatever is both ugly and beautiful, both high and low. A bit like Fløgstad actually.’

I glanced at Ingvild, who looked at me. I couldn’t show the others how ridiculously in love I was, that all I really wanted to do was sit and stare at her, and I couldn’t show her either, so I tried to pay her as little attention as possible.

‘But now I want to be published,’ I said. ‘I don’t want what I write to be read by only a few people. There’s no point in that. I might just as well do something else. Do you know what I mean?’

‘Yes,’ Idar said.

‘Did you read out your poem then?’ Jon Olav laughed.

‘No,’ I said, glaring at him. I didn’t like him laughing. It was as though he was trying to tell the others something.

‘What kind of poem?’ Anne said.

‘It was just something I wrote for the Academy. A practice activity,’ I said and got up, went over to the record player and put on The Joshua Tree.

‘It wouldn’t be hard to recite from memory,’ Jon Olav said, and laughed again.

I spun round.

‘If you want to play tough, that’s fine by me,’ I said.

He stopped laughing, as I thought he would, and at first looked surprised.

‘What’s the matter?’ he said.

‘I’m serious about what I do,’ I said and sat down.

‘Skål!’ Jon Olav said.

We skål -ed, the brief flash of ill will was gone, the conversation flowed again. Ingvild didn’t say much, interjected with the odd ironic comment, livened up when the conversation turned to sport, and I liked that so much, while at the same time it struck me that I didn’t know her at all, so how could I have fallen so much in love with her, I wondered, sitting on the stool across the table from her, a bottle of cold Hansa beer held to my mouth and a lit cigarette in my hand, but I knew the answer with the whole of my being, there was no arguing with feelings, and nor should you, they always knew best. I saw her, she was here, and what she radiated, which was her, lived its life irrespective of what she said or didn’t say.