Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

Only when the lights of the ferry terminal became visible, just a few small twinkling dots in the dense darkness, still far off, although because of the boat’s great speed we would soon be gliding alongside, illuminating the waiting room, the ticket office window, the two buses, some cars and a crowd of people either about to embark or meet someone, only then did I go back in.

Mum was one of those waiting with their arms down by their sides and heads bowed in the rain and wind, she waved to me, I went over and gave her a hug, and as we walked towards the car the express ferry was already roaring into the distance.

‘Great to see you,’ she said.

‘Ditto,’ I said and got in. ‘How are things?’

‘Good, I think,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot to do, but it’s interesting work, so I’m not grumbling.’

We drove through the forest and came out by the bay on the other side, by the shipyard where Kjartan worked. There was an enormous hull visible in a shipbuilding hall or a dock. Kjartan crawled through shafts and small passages fitting pipes, and when he talked about his work it was not without a certain pride in his voice, although he did admit he was a mediocre, if not poor, pipefitter, it lay so far from who he was, it was an occupation poorly suited to him and had been ever since he joined the proletariat at the end of the 1970s. He was also the safety rep at the shipyard, which occupied a lot of his time, from what I gathered.

A steep climb up a forest-clad mountain, over the summit and down the other side to Hyllestad, the municipal centre at the end of Åfjord, along the fjord to Salbu, where grandma and grandad’s and Kjartan’s houses stood on top of a little hill.

Rain fell across the cones of light as mum parked in the yard, and when she switched off the headlamps it was as if for a moment the deluge had stopped until the engine died and the rat-a-tat-tat on the roof and bonnet took over.

I got out, took my bag, walked across the soft gravel and opened the front door.

Oh, that smell.

I hung my jacket on the hook above grandad’s overalls, moved back a couple of steps to make room for mum, who hung up her coat, put her bag at the foot of the stairs and went into the sitting room.

Grandma was in the chair beside the window at the back, grandad on the sofa beneath the window in the long wall, both watching TV with the volume deafeningly loud.

‘Well, look who it is,’ grandma said.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Yes, the Norwegian population is growing!’ he said.

‘Think I’ve stopped growing now,’ I said, and turned to grandma, wanting in some way or other to greet her with more warmth, but I couldn’t exactly give her a hug where she was sitting, I had never done that and I never would. She held one arm across her chest, as if in a sling, it trembled and shook. Her head shook too and her feet were stretched out on a stool. Everything all right, Grandma? No, I couldn’t say that.

I walked towards her and smiled.

She looked at me and her mouth moved.

I went up to her and lowered my head to hers.

She had almost no voice left, all I heard was a breathy whisper.

What did she say?

Hi.

Her eyes smiled.

‘I came by boat,’ I said. ‘The rain’s terrible, I must say.’

Yes.

I straightened up and looked at the door as mum came in.

‘Shall we make some supper?’ she said.

The next morning I slept until twelve and went down in time for lunch, which they always had at this time here. Mum had made potato dumplings, we ate them in the kitchen, the mist hung heavy in the air and the leaves on the tall birch outside the window were yellow and glistened with moisture.

After lunch, while they rested, I went for a stroll around the two-hectare property. Beyond the little mere, which was black and covered with water-lily leaves alongside the banks, rose the spruce-clad hillside, silent and sombre against the low sky. I wandered over to the barn, even more sunken and run-down than I remembered, opened the door to the animals on the ground floor, the three cows shifted in their stalls, the one furthest away turned its head and watched me with its gentle eyes. I walked past them and through the low door leading to the barn. It was half-full of hay, I climbed to the edge of the loft and swung myself up, poked my head into what had once been a hen house, and where there were still feathers on the floor, even though it must have been ten years since a hen had roosted on a perch here.

I would have to bring Ingvild here one day.

This was such a happy thought, that she might sit on the sofa and chat to grandad, chat to mum and see this world here, which was so magical for me. At the same time there was something almost criminal about the idea, something transgressive and forbidden, of bringing two completely different worlds together in this way: if I saw her on the sofa I would immediately realise that she didn’t belong there.

I went onto the barn bridge and lit a cigarette, shielding it with my hand against the drizzle, which was turning into rain. Mum appeared outside the house, she opened the car door and got in, drove towards me so that she could turn. I went down to find out where she was going.

‘I’m off down to the shop. Want to come with me?’

‘No, I think I’ll do a bit of writing.’

‘OK. Is there anything you want?’

‘Some newspapers would be nice.’

She nodded, turned and drove back down. Soon afterwards her car passed me on the road below.

I tossed my cigarette where they usually burned paper and went indoors. Both of them had got up, they were in the kitchen. I quietly closed the door behind me, thought of going up to my room and trying to write a bit, but then I saw something through the open door and stopped. Grandma lifted her trembling hand and took a swipe at grandad, which with some doddery footwork he managed to sidestep. She sat down in her wheelchair, paddled it with her feet and took another swipe. He stepped to the side again. All this went on in eerie slow motion and without a sound. Grandad went out the other door, into the sitting room, and grandma manoeuvred her chair back to the table with tiny foot movements.

Upstairs in my room, I lay on the bed. My heart was pounding with agitation at what I had just witnessed. It had been like a dance, the grisly dance of the aged.

I had never considered what the relationship between my grandmother and grandfather was like, in fact, I had never thought they even had a relationship. But they had been married for what would soon be fifty years, they had lived on this smallholding, brought up four children, struggled and toiled to make ends meet. Once they had been young, as I was now, with their lives ahead of them, as I had mine. I had never considered that either, not seriously.

Why did she try to hit him?

She was heavily medicated, which made her paranoid, gave her delusions, that was why.

I knew that, but it didn’t help, the image of the two of them was stronger.

Through the floor I could hear the radio, the weather forecast and the news. I could imagine him sitting right next to it with one hand under his ear, staring straight ahead, unless his eyes were closed in concentration.

Grandma trembling in the kitchen.

The impact of what I had seen was so overwhelming that I got up and went downstairs in an attempt to smooth things over, my presence might re-establish a kind of normality, I thought vaguely, as the steps creaked beneath me and the sight of the grey telephone on the table under the mirror reminded me of the old telephone they’d had, the one hanging on the wall, consisting of a mouthpiece and an earpiece, all in black Bakelite.

But could that be right? Could there have been such an old nineteenth-century-style contraption here when I was young? Or had I seen it in a film and imagined there was one here and it had stuck in my memory?