Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

‘No,’ she said. Tears began to run down her cheeks. I looked at her at a loss to understand. Was she crying?

‘I’m never going to be a legend!’ she wailed.

Everyone was staring at her now.

‘It’s too late!’ she exclaimed, and put her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook. Ola and Asbjørn burst into laughter, Yngve and Jon Olav and Ingvild sent us enquiring looks.

‘I’m never going to be a legend,’ she repeated. ‘I’m never going to be anything!’

‘You’re only twenty,’ I said. ‘It’s not too late.’

‘Yes, it is!’ Anne said.

‘So?’ Jon Olav said. ‘What do you want to be a legend for? What’s the point?’

She got up and went towards the front door.

‘Where are you going?’ Yngve said. ‘You’re not going, are you?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Come on, stay a bit longer,’ he said. ‘You definitely won’t be a legend if you leave at midnight. Come on. I’ve got a whole demijohn of wine. Would you like a glass? It’s a legendary vintage.’

She smiled.

‘Perhaps one glass then,’ she said.

Yngve got her one and the party continued. Ingvild stood by the wall with a glass in her hand, a tingle ran through me, she was so beautiful. I must go and talk to her, I thought, and went over.

‘Proper student party, eh!’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Have you read anything by Ragnar Hovland by the way? He writes a lot about this sort of thing, I believe.’

She shook her head.

‘He’s one of the teachers at the Academy. From Vestland, like you. In fact, I’ve got a bit of Vestland in me too. I mean, my mum comes from Sørbøvåg after all. So I’m half a Vestlander anyway!’

She looked at me and smiled. I clinked glasses with her.

‘Skål,’ I said.

‘Skål,’ she said.

From the sofa I met Anne’s eyes. I raised my glass to her too, and she raised hers. Jon Olav stood in the middle of the floor swaying to and fro, searching with his hand for something to lean on, found nothing and staggered a few steps to the side.

‘He can’t take his drink!’ I laughed.

He regained his balance and, with a rigid expressionless face, walked through the room and into the adjacent bedroom.

Where were Idar and Terje?

I went for a walk to find out. They were sitting in the kitchen and chatting, their heads bowed over the table and their hands wrapped around a bottle of beer. When I returned, Ingvild was sitting beside Anne on the sofa. Anne’s eyes were glazed and somehow completely disconnected with her smile.

She turned to Ingvild and said something. Ingvild took a deep breath and sat up straight, from which I concluded that what Anne had said shocked her. She replied, Anne just laughed and shook her head. I went over to them.

‘I know your sort,’ Anne said, getting up.

‘I’m not standing for that,’ Ingvild said. ‘You don’t know me.’

‘Yes, I do,’ Anne said.

Ingvild laughed scornfully. Anne walked past me, I sat down where she had been sitting.

‘What did she say?’ I asked.

‘She said I was the sort who took other women’s men.’

‘Did she say that?’

‘Did you two ever go out together?’ she asked.

‘Us? No. Are you crazy?’

‘I’m not standing for that,’ Ingvild repeated and got up.

‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘But please don’t go because of Anne. It’s not very late! And it is a good party, isn’t it?’

She smiled.

‘I’m not going,’ she said. ‘Only to the loo.’

I went into the bedroom. Jon Olav was lying on the bed, on his stomach with his head burrowed into the blanket and one hand hanging limply over the side. He was snoring. Arvid stood in the hall doorway.

‘Hi, Knausgård Junior,’ he said.

‘Are you going?’ I said, suddenly afraid, I wanted everyone to stay and the party never to end.

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I’m going for a little walk to clear my head.’

‘Good!’ I said, and went back into the sitting room. Ingvild wasn’t there. Had she gone after all? Or was she still in the toilet?

‘Won’t be long now before Yngve puts on Queen,’ Asbjørn said to me, getting up from the stereo. ‘This moment always comes. When he’s so drunk that the evening is as good as over. At least for him.’

‘I like Queen too,’ I said.

‘What is it with you two?’ he said with a laugh. ‘Is it genetic or was there something in the air on Tromøya? Queen! Why not Genesis? Pink Floyd? Or Rush!’

‘Rush are quite good,’ Yngve said from behind us. ‘In fact, I’ve got a record by them.’

‘What about Bob Dylan then? He’s got such good lyrics! Ha ha ha! Yes, how he didn’t get the Nobel Prize is a scandal.’

‘The only thing Rush and Dylan have in common is that you don’t like them,’ Yngve said. ‘Rush are good in lots of ways. The guitar playing, for example. But you can’t hear that.’

‘Now you disappoint me, Yngve,’ Asbjørn said. ‘Falling so low that you defend Rush. I’d come to terms with you liking Queen, but Rush … What about ELO? Jeff Lynne? Nice arrangements, eh?’

‘Ha ha,’ Yngve said.

I went into the kitchen. Ingvild was sitting with Idar and Terje. Darkness hung over the valley below. The rain was illuminated in the light from the street lamps. She looked up at me and smiled, a touch quizzically, what now?

I smiled back, but had nothing to say, and she turned to the other two. In the sitting room the music was taken off and the murmur of voices rose for some seconds until the scratch of the stylus on a new record came through the speakers. It was the first notes of a-ha’s Scoundrel Days. I liked the record, it was full of memories, and I went into the sitting room.

At that moment Asbjørn came out of the adjacent room. He strode determinedly across the floor towards the stereo, leaned over, lifted the stylus and took off the record. Clearly, his movements were for show, almost didactic.

He held up the record and started to bend it.

The room went quiet.

Slowly he bent the record further and further until at last it cracked.

Arvid laughed out loud.

Yngve had been watching Asbjørn. Now Yngve turned to Arvid, poured his wine onto his hair and walked out.

‘What the f …?’ Arvid said, getting up. ‘I didn’t do anything, did I.’

‘Aren’t you g-going to b-burn some b-books too?’ Ola said to Asbjørn. ‘Make a l-little b-bonfire?’

‘Why did you do that?’ I said.

‘Jesus,’ Asbjørn said. ‘You boys don’t have to make such a fuss. I was just doing him a favour. Yngve knows me. He knows I’ll buy him a new record. Perhaps not by a-ha, but a new record anyway. He’s playing to the gallery.’

‘It might not be the material value of the record on his mind,’ Anne said. ‘You might have hurt his feelings.’

‘Feelings? Feelings?’ Asbjørn laughed. ‘He’s playing to the gallery!’

He sat down on the sofa and lit up. He acted as if nothing had happened, or was so drunk he didn’t care, yet at the same time something came over him, either his facial expression or body language, which suggested a guilty conscience, and then it took over, then it was obvious to everyone that he was sorry for what he had done. The music came back on, the party continued; after half an hour Yngve returned, Asbjørn said he would replace the record and soon everything was fine between them again.

After the beer ran out I had started necking wine. It was like fruit juice, and the source was inexhaustible. Now it wasn’t only time that was dislocated, it was also place, I no longer knew where I was, it was as though darkness had descended between the various faces I spoke to. And how they shone. I was very close to my emotions in that I talked completely without inhibitions, said things I never usually said and didn’t know I had even thought, such as when I joined Yngve and Asbjørn and said I was so happy they were such good friends or when I went over to Ola and tried to explain how I had felt about his stammer the first time I had heard it, all while the wave which was connected with the thought of Ingvild rose within me more and more often. It was like a feeling of triumph, and while I was in the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror, washing my hands and moistening my hair to make it stand up, smiling all the time, my thoughts coming in short jerky phrases, fucking great, this, oh fucking bliss on earth, oh so bloody brilliant, so bloody brilliant! I decided to make a move on her, kiss her, seduce her. I wasn’t planning to invite her back to my place any more, no, there was a room upstairs on the second floor I had discovered, an old maidservant’s room, no one was sleeping there now, it was probably used as a guest room, it was perfect.