Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

I opened the sitting-room door, grandad instantly got up in the awkward way he did and straightened as he watched me.

‘It’s good you came,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking we should put up a new fence below the barn, and now you’re here perhaps you could help me?’

‘Be happy to,’ I said. ‘Right away?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

In silence we put on our outdoor gear, I followed him down to the cellar, where he had some green impregnated fence posts and a roll of wire netting. I carried everything down to the end of the property, to the top of the little mound where the neighbour’s land started, and went back to fetch the sledgehammer grandad had just pointed to.

Manual work was not my strong suit, to put it mildly, so I was a bit nervous as I walked towards him with the sledgehammer in my hand, I wasn’t sure I could do this or do it in a way that would satisfy him.

Grandad took some wire cutters from an overall pocket and snipped off the old netting, then wriggled the first post to and fro until it was loose enough for him to pull up. I did the same on the other side, according to his instructions. When we had done that he put one of the new fence posts in position and asked me to knock it in the ground with the sledgehammer. My first blows were circumspect and probing, but he didn’t say anything and soon I had built up enough courage to hit it harder and with more assured swings.

The black peaked cap he always wore was dotted with droplets of rain. The blue material of his overalls had darkened. He gazed across the fjord and told me the story about the plane crash on Mount Lihesten in the 1950s, I had heard it many times, it was the mist and the drizzle that had reminded him, I supposed. But I liked hearing him tell stories, and when he had finished and hadn’t said anything for a few minutes, he just stood there with his head bowed next to the fence post, which was now firmly bedded in, I asked him about the war. How had it been here during the war, had anyone offered any resistance and had there been any Germans stationed here? We moved towards where the next post would be and he started telling me about those days in April 1940. When the invasion was announced he and a pal went to Voss, where they were mobilising for war. They went on foot, borrowed a boat and rowed across Sognefjord, crossed the mountain, it was April, crusty snow and moonlit nights, he said, descended to Voss, to the military camp there, where everyone from Vestland was supposed to meet. He shook his head and laughed. They were all drunk when he arrived and there were hardly any weapons. Nor any uniforms. The officers were in Fleischer’s Hotel drinking. When they ran out of booze, he told me, they requisitioned the bar on the cruise ship Stella Polaris. It was moored in Bergen and the alcohol was sent up by train.

‘So what did you do?’ I said.

‘At first we tried to get hold of weapons and uniforms. We walked around Voss and asked all the uniformed soldiers we met if they could help us. No one could. My friend said to a guard, you know we’re soldiers even though we’re not in uniform. Can you ring someone? No, answered the guard, and then he showed us the telephone cable. It had been cut. So we went back home. When we rowed across Sognefjord we took boats with us and left them on the northern side so the Germans would find it harder if they followed us. But of course when we arrived, the country had been occupied.’

It took him an age to tell the story, no detail was too trivial, right down to the dogs barking as he approached the farms at night, and by the time he had finished there was only one post left. I hammered it in, he fetched the roll of wire netting, we started to attach it to the posts, he held it while I banged in fence staples.

‘There were Germans stationed here, yes,’ he said. ‘I got to know one of them well. He was an Austrian and had been to northern Norway when he was growing up, they sent poor kids up here in the summer in the 30s, and he had been one of them. A nice fellow. He had a lot of interesting things to say.’

Grandad told me there had been a prison camp in the district, mostly Yugoslavs and Russians working on a road scheme. Grandad had a lorry, it had been requisitioned by the Germans, and he often used to drive to the camp, which was in Fure. He took food with him for the prisoners, he said, grandma made packed lunches and he hid them under rocks in the surrounding terrain. He said he reckoned the guards knew, but they turned a blind eye. Once he had seen one of the prisoners being shot.

‘He was standing in front of the German soldiers screaming Schiesst! Schiesst! And that was when one of them shot him. But the officers were furious. Discipline was strict, you know. So the soldier who fired his gun was sent to the Eastern Front. For German soldiers Norway was a dream posting compared with all the other places they could have been stationed. Towards the end of the war they mostly sent old men and young boys here. I remember I saw a new contingent arriving, and one of the officers said to them, Was wollen Sie hier, alte Leute? ’

He laughed. I hammered in the staples and unrolled the wire as far as the next post. He carried on telling me stories. The Austrian, who seemed to have been a friend from what he said, decided to make his escape in the days before the German capitulation, he boarded a boat with a woman from the village and her two sons and vanished. Later the two sons were found floating in the water on the other side of the fjord, presumably killed with a rock.

I looked at him. What on earth was he telling me?

‘Not so long ago a book came out about it. I’ve got it in the house. It’s very interesting. Who could have guessed he would be capable of something so awful? But he must have killed them. There is quite simply no other explanation. And then he disappeared. Into thin air. He may still be alive.’

I straightened up and helped grandad to roll out the wire to the next post, where I pulled it as tightly as I could and secured it at the top and bottom so that it would retain the tension, then I banged in more staples.

‘What was he like?’ I said, and looked up at grandad, who was gazing into the mist above the fjord.

‘He was a nice man, you know,’ he said. ‘Polite and cultivated and friendly. I haven’t got a bad word to say about him. But there must have been something else inside him,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Did he get away, do you think, or did he die?’

‘It’s hard to say,’ he said. ‘He probably died trying to escape.’

That was the last post, grandad snipped off the ends of the wire and I carried the roll and the sledgehammer to the cellar while he walked beside me. As we entered the sitting room, both red in the face after the rain, mum was making pancakes in the kitchen. Grandma was sitting in her chair, and when she saw me she said something. I went up close and lowered my head.

The clock, I thought she said. He’s taken the clock.

‘Who has?’ I said.

Him, she said, looking at grandad, who sat down on the sofa.

‘He’s taken the clock?’ I whispered as softly as I could so that he wouldn’t hear.

Yes, she whispered.

‘I doubt that,’ I said. ‘Why would he?’

I stood up, my stomach hurt, I went to join mum, half-closing the door behind me so that they wouldn’t hear us in the kitchen.

Mum was holding a ladle over the big hotplate and carefully pouring the mixture, which immediately began to solidify with a sizzle.

‘Grandma says grandad took her clock,’ I said. ‘Stole it, from what I could hear.’

‘Yes, I heard her say that too,’ mum said. ‘It’s the medication. It might be making her paranoid and causing her to imagine things. She’s pretty bad at the moment. But she’ll come out of it. Do you understand?’