Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

Even if I wanted to, I could never end up the way he was, I knew that. I could never go mad and become a tramp, it was inconceivable.

An old VW camper van stopped by the market square. A plump, lightly clad man jumped out on one side, a plump, lightly clad woman jumped out on the other. They opened the rear door and started unloading boxes of flowers. I threw my cigarette down on the dry tarmac, slipped on my rucksack and walked back to the bus station, where I rang dad. He was bad-tempered and annoyed and told me I had arrived at an inconvenient time, they had a little child now, they couldn’t receive visitors at such short notice. I should have rung before, that would have been OK. As it was now, grandma was coming, and a colleague too. I said I understood, apologised for not calling before and rang off.

I stood with the receiver in my hand for a while thinking, and then I dialled Hilde’s number. She said I could stay there and she would come and pick me up now.

Half an hour later I was sitting beside her in her old Golf, on our way out of town, with the window open and the sun in my eyes. She laughed and said I smelled terrible, I would have to have a bath when we arrived. Then we could sit in the garden behind the house, in the shade, and she could serve me breakfast, I looked like I needed it.

I stayed at Hilde’s for three days, long enough for mum to transfer some money into my account, and then I caught the train to Bergen. I left in the afternoon, the sun flooded the heavily forested countryside in Indre Agder, which received it in its manifold ways: the water in the lakes and rivers glittered, the dense conifers shone, the forest floor blushed, the leaves on the deciduous trees flashed on the few occasions a gust of wind caught them. Amid this interplay of light and colour the shadows slowly lengthened and thickened. I stood by the window in the last carriage for a long time watching features of the countryside that kept disappearing, cast aside as it were, to be replaced by new ones, which always made their appearance in quick succession, a river of stumps and roots, cliffs and uprooted trees, streams and fences, unexpected cultivated hillsides with farmhouses and tractors. The only features that didn’t change were the rails we followed and two shimmering dots on which the sun was reflected all the way. It was a strange phenomenon. They looked like two balls of light, which seemed to be standing still while the train was travelling at more than a hundred kilometres an hour, and the balls of light remained at the same distance from me.

Several times during the journey I went back to see the balls of light again. They lifted my spirits, made me somehow happy, as though there was hope in them.

Otherwise I sat in my seat smoking and drinking coffee, reading newspapers but no books, on the basis that it might affect my prose, that I might lose whatever it was that had got me into the Writing Academy. After a while I took out the letters from Ingvild. I had carried them with me all summer, the folds were wearing thin and I knew them nearly off by heart, but a radiance emanated from them, something good, something pleasurable, which touched me whenever I read them. It was her, both what I remembered of her the one time we had met and the her that arose from what she wrote, but it was also the her of the future, the unknown her that awaited me. She was different, something else, and the odd thing was that I also became different and something else when thinking about her. I liked myself better when I thought about her. It was as though thinking about her erased something in me, and that gave me a fresh start or moved me on.

I knew she was the right one, I had seen that straight away, but perhaps I hadn’t thought, only felt, that what she had in her and what she was, and which in glimpses her eyes revealed, was something I wanted to be close to or embrace.

What was it?

Oh, her self-awareness and insight into the situation, which laughter suspended for an instant, but which returned the very next second. Something evaluative and sceptical even, in her nature, that wanted to be won over but was afraid of being duped. In it resided vulnerability but not weakness.

I had enjoyed talking to her so much, and I had liked writing to her so much. The fact that she was the first thought in my mind the day after we had met didn’t necessarily mean anything, it was often like that, but it hadn’t stopped there, I had thought about her every day since, and now four months had passed.

I didn’t know if she felt the same way about me. Presumably she didn’t, but something in the tone of her writing told me there was some excitement and appeal in this for her too.

Mum had moved from a flat with a terrace to a basement in a house in Angedalen, in Førde municipality, ten minutes from the centre. It was a wonderful location with a forest on one side, a field ending in a river on the other, but the flat was small and studenty — one big room with a kitchen and bathroom, that was it. She was planning to stay there until she found something better to rent or perhaps even buy. I had intended to do some writing while I stayed with her, during the two weeks before I would finally move to Bergen, and she suggested I use Uncle Steinar’s cabin, which was up by the old house in the forest pasture above the farm grandma came from. She drove me there, we had a coffee outside the house, then she made her way back and I went into the cabin. Pine walls, pine floor, pine ceiling and pine furniture. A woven rug here and there, a few plain paintings. A pile of magazines in a basket, a fireplace, a kitchenette.

I placed the dining table by a wall without a window, put my pile of papers on one side, a pile of cassettes on the other, and sat down. But I couldn’t write. The emptiness I had first felt on the island off Antiparos returned, I could feel it again, exactly as it had been before. The world was empty, or nothing, an image, and I was empty.

I went to bed and slept for two hours. When I woke dusk was falling. The bluish-grey twilight lay like a veil over the forest. The thought of writing still repelled me, so instead I put on my shoes and went outside.

I could hear the roar of the waterfall in the forest above, otherwise everything was still.

No, it wasn’t, I could hear bells ringing somewhere.

I walked down to the path by the stream and followed it up into the forest. The spruces were tall and dark, the rock face beneath was covered in moss, here and there roots lay bare on the surface. In places small thin deciduous trees tried to force their way up into the light, elsewhere little clearings had formed around fallen trees. And alongside the stream the forest was open, of course, where it swirled and crashed, threw itself over rock and stone on its way down. Otherwise everything was dense and dark green from the spruce needles. I could hear my own breathing, could feel my pulse beating in my chest, throat and temples as I walked up. The noise from the waterfall became louder, and soon I was standing on a crag above a deep pool, looking at the steep bare rock face where the water plummeted downwards.

It was beautiful, but it was of no use to me, and I walked up through the trees beside the waterfall, climbed to the exposed rock, which I wanted to follow right to the top, a few hundred metres above me.

The sky was grey, the water that cascaded down beside me shiny and clear, like glass. The moss I was walking on was drenched and often gave way; my foot slipped and the dark rock beneath was revealed.

Suddenly something jumped out just in front of my feet.

Paralysed by fear, I stood stock still. My heart seemed to have stopped too.

A small grey creature darted off. It was a mouse or a small rat.

I laughed nervously to myself. Continued upwards, but the little scare had a hold on me. Now I peered into the dark forest with a sense of unease, and the constant blanket of sound from the waterfall which I had hitherto regarded as agreeable became threatening, prevented me from hearing anything else except my own breathing, so a few minutes later I about-turned and made my way back down.