Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

‘Oh yes? Where?’

‘There was a party in Møhlenpris. Loads of people.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Nothing special. Actually I didn’t talk to her that much.’

‘Anyone else I knew there?’

‘Yes, lots. Several of those at Yngve’s party. Asbjørn and Ola, was that his name? Very nice guy anyway.’

‘Yes, he is,’ I said. ‘Whose party was it?’

‘I don’t know. I went with some friends of friends. It was a big do. Half of Høyden was there.’

‘I was at home,’ I said.

‘So you said. You could catch up now.’

‘I fancy a drink, but no.’

‘OK. I respect a man who has self-discipline!’

He left, and I sat down to write. I had three complete conversations now and was going to try to finish a fourth before I went to bed. This one takes place in a café, the two participants are criminals and they become edgy and evasive when they catch sight of the microphone the collator positions on the table, they soon leave.

I went to bed early and fell asleep at once as usual. At seven I was woken by a dream, which was a very rare occurrence.

I had been dreaming about a party with Yngve and Ingvild. I went into the hall, stopped by the sitting-room door, they were standing at the far end, by a window. Ingvild looked at me, then she tilted her head and Yngve kissed her.

I lay back in bed.

Ingvild was going out with Yngve.

That was why she hadn’t come.

I brooded over it all morning. I believed in dreams, I believed they told you something about life and at a deeper level were always true. If so, the image had been unmistakable. They were standing together, Ingvild saw me and then she kissed Yngve.

Surely that couldn’t be true?

Dear God, tell me it isn’t so!

But I knew it was, and the truth burned inside me all day. The whole of my body ached, my stomach churned, at times I could barely breathe, my heart was beating so fast.

Oh God, tell me it isn’t true.

Suddenly it all changed. A dream? Was I a complete moron? Who believed in dreams?

It was only a dream.

I fetched my trainers and the old tracksuit I had once been given by Yngve, which I regarded as a good omen, he had never wished me any ill, and then I went into the street and began to run. I hadn’t run since I lived in northern Norway, I was gasping for breath after only a few hundred metres. But I had to smash this ridiculous idea, crush it and my method was to wear myself out, run and run until there was nothing left to run with, and then take a hot shower and sit reading a neutral novel of some kind which dealt with anything other than love, and then, as tired as a child after a long day, go to bed, hopefully to wake up refreshed the next morning, free of jealousy and unfounded suspicions.

It didn’t quite go according to plan, the image stayed with me all week, but it didn’t torture me in the same way, there was a lot to think about in connection with classes, and when I rang Yngve to arrange the details for the trip to Sørbøvåg I noticed nothing unusual about him.

It had just been a dream.

We had Friday free, and I planned to catch the boat north on Thursday afternoon, although Yngve couldn’t come until the day after. Mum was taking the Friday off and would pick me up from the quay at Rysjedalsvika.

The rain was teeming down as I jumped off the bus by Fisketorget and walked over to Strandkai Terminal, where the boat was moored with the engines running, waiting for passengers. The water level in Vågen was high, the bluish-grey sea bobbed up and down, a very different density from the angry raindrops lashing the surface. I bought a return ticket from the office window, crossed the quay, went up the gangway, found myself a seat at the very front so that I could see the countryside through the large sloping front windows while it was still light.

Hydrofoil had been one of the magic words in my childhood, along with catamaran and hovercraft. I didn’t know for sure, but I assumed this boat with its split hull was a hydrofoil. I still liked the word.

Through the side windows I saw passengers arriving with suitcases and bags, heads tucked into their coats beneath the rain, moments later they sat down around me, all performing the same series of movements. Waterproofs had to be removed, umbrellas closed and placed on the racks above the seats, bags placed on the floor under the back of the chair, tray tables raised and vacant seats pulled down before they could slump into their own seat with a sigh. The snack bar at the back of the boat, where you could get newspapers and coffee, hot dogs and chocolate, was open. Most of the passengers appeared to be from the rural areas of Sogn og Fjordane, there was something about the way they dressed that you rarely saw in Bergen, but also about the way they behaved, as though the thought that someone could see them had never occurred to them, and maybe also about their physiognomy, that is, their facial features and body types. In the weeks I had lived here I had started to recognise certain Bergen faces, there were similarities, whether they were boys, elderly women or middle-aged men they had some common features I hadn’t seen elsewhere. Among these faces there were hundreds, indeed probably thousands, which were not similar. They disappeared, dissolved the moment they had passed, while the Bergen faces returned, oh, there was that type! Bergen had been a town ever since the early Middle Ages, and I liked the idea that Håkon’s Hall and St Mary’s Church weren’t the only remnants of those times, as well as the countryside of course, and that the crooked trading houses in Bryggen weren’t the only remnants of the fifteenth century, but also the various facial features, appearing and reappearing in new generations, still visible around town. I saw elements of the same faces in the people around me on the boat, except that I associated them with the farms and villages of the fjord landscapes to the north. Mum told me that in her grandparents’ time they used to attribute specific characteristics to people from the various farms. This family was like this, that family was like that, and the idea was passed down through the generations. That mode of thinking belonged to a completely different era and was basically incomprehensible to me, who hadn’t come from any of the places I had grown up in, unlike all the others there. Everything was first generation with me, everything was happening as if for the first time, nothing, neither bodies, faces, customs nor language, originated in that place or had been bound up with it for a longer period, and so couldn’t be viewed in that way.

Actually there were only two forms of existence, I reflected: one that was tied to a place and one that wasn’t. Both had always existed. Neither could be chosen.

I got up and went aft to the snack bar, bought a coffee and a chocolate Daim, and as I folded down the table and put the cup in the tiny round hollow, the mooring ropes were thrown on board, the gangway was lifted and the engine revs increased. The hull trembled and shook. Slowly the boat moved forward as it swung to the left and soon the bows were facing the islands off Bergen. I closed my eyes, enjoyed the throb of the boat, the regular hum that rose and sank, and fell asleep.

When I opened my eyes I saw the contours of an enormous forest stretching back and, behind it, in the distance, a range of mountains.

So, not far to go.

I got to my feet and walked to the stern, up the stairs and onto the deck. It was empty and as I approached the railings, no longer sheltered by the superstructure, the wind was so strong that it almost upended me. I held on tight and was laughing inside with joy because not only was the wind full of raindrops, which beat against my face, but darkness had fallen and the immense wake behind us was a luminous white.