Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

Up until now!

Oh!

In a trice I added two more lines.

Two leather chairs

in the wind

noise from a town

you have left.

The girl disappears

into the girl.

That was it. A fully fledged poem.

To celebrate I stuffed the photography book down my trousers, left my shirt hanging outside them and went down to the basement to have a wank. With the book, which I could now hold and leaf through simultaneously, open in my left hand, and my right hand around my dick, I stared at one photo after another. The girl with the basket of laundry was still my favourite, but there was no longer anything pure about it, every situation I imagined myself in with her was permeated by the thought of Yngve and Ingvild and the fact that I had lost Ingvild, the only girl who meant anything to me. I flicked to and fro to escape the thought — more or less as Sagen had advised us, it struck me — and I finally succeeded in concentrating long enough on one of the girls’ wonderful bodies for me to come.

That was at least something.

Back upstairs, I killed time until I could go to bed. Fortunately I had no problem sleeping twelve hours at a stretch. I couldn’t say I looked forward to going to the Writing Academy, not a day passed without something disparaging being said about me, or rather something disparaging about my writing. No one meant it as such, it was called critique and supposed to be constructive, but in my case it was so useless because there was nothing else in my texts to compensate for the criticism. It was immature, it was clichéd, it was superficial and I was truly incapable of penetrating deeper into my own consciousness, where the essence of a writer was to be found. In all the discussions we had I was reminded of this, it was my role, and if I wrote something good, such as the poem about the two leather chairs, it would still be seen in the light of the person I had shown myself to be, as a sort of fluke, the anthropoid who writes Hamlet.

The only benefit of the Academy during those days was that so much happened, there was so much to react to while I was there, that the thought of Yngve and Ingvild was pushed into the background. For the same reason, my room was unbearable, there were no distractions, so if we didn’t have any writing assignments I went out just for a walk — one night to Jon Olav’s, where I could have a cup of coffee, but then couldn’t visit again until a certain number of days had elapsed so that my lack of friends wouldn’t become a burden to him, I had placed myself in a kind of quarantine — the next night to Anne’s, for her the same rules applied, after a cup of tea and an hour-long chat I couldn’t show my face there until after four or five days, preferably more — and there was no one else to visit. I couldn’t go to the cinema alone, that carried too much of a stigma, and Café Opera was out of the question. To stand alone in the bar, ashamed not to know anyone, that wasn’t a situation I wanted to expose myself to. Besides, the chance that I would bump into Yngve and Ingvild, or their friends, was too great. Just the thought of being in the same room as them, of being present as they gazed at each other or even touched each other, made my flesh run cold. Morten was a saviour: even though we had nothing in common we could always chat for an hour about something, and he didn’t find it strange that I popped by, after all we were ‘neighbours’.

One evening there was a ring at the door. I thought it was Jon Olav and went to open up.

Ingvild stood on the steps.

‘Hi,’ she said, sending me a hurried glance.

At that second, as I met her eyes, it was as though nothing had happened. My heart was pumping as if I were in love.

‘You?’ I said.

‘Yes, I thought we should talk.’

She looked down as she said that, pushed a strand of hair away from her forehead.

‘Come in,’ I said.

She followed me in and sat down on the sofa.

‘Would you like some tea?’ I said.

She shook her head.

‘I won’t be long.’

‘I’ll put some on anyway,’ I said.

I went into the kitchen and put a pan of water on the stove. Her coming to see me was the last thing I had expected and the place was neither tidy nor clean. I sprinkled tea leaves over the bottom of the tea pot and went back to her. She had lit a cigarette. The ashtray was half-full, I took it and emptied it in the kitchen waste bin.

‘You don’t need to tidy up for me,’ she said. ‘I’ll be off in a couple of minutes. There was just something I had to say to you.’

She laughed as she said it. She glanced down, she glanced up.

‘The tea will be ready soon,’ I said. ‘We’re doing poetry at the Academy and we’ve been given some fantastic poems. Especially one. Would you like to hear it?’

She shook her head.

‘Not now, Karl Ove,’ she said, squirming on the sofa.

‘But it’s not very long,’ I said. ‘Hang on a minute. I’ll find it.’

‘No, please don’t. It’s not the right moment.’

‘It’ll be fine,’ I said, rummaging through the pile of photocopied poems, found what I was after and turned to her.

‘Here it is. It won’t take long.’

I stood in the middle of the floor with the piece of paper in my hand and started to read.

Death Fugue

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown

we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night

we drink it and drink it

we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined

A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents he writes

he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden hair Margarete

he writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are flashing he whistles his pack out

he whistles his Jews out in earth has them dig for a grave

he commands us strike up for the dance

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night

we drink you in the morning at noon we drink you at sundown

we drink and we drink you

A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents he writes

he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden hair Margarete

your ashen hair Sulamith we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined

He calls out jab deeper into the earth you lot you others sing now and play

he grabs at the iron in his belt he waves it his eyes are blue

jab deeper you lot with your spades you others play on for the dance

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night

we drink you at noon in the morning we drink you at sundown

we drink and we drink you

a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete

your ashen hair Sulamith he plays with the serpents

He calls out more sweetly play death death is a master from Germany

he calls out more darkly now stroke your strings then

as smoke you will rise into air

then a grave you will have in the clouds there one lies unconfined

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night

we drink you at noon death is a master from Germany

we drink you at sundown and in the morning we drink and we drink you

death is a master from Germany his eyes are blue

he strikes you with leaden bullets his aim is true

a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete

he sets his pack on to us he grants us a grave in the air

He plays with the serpents and daydreams death is

a master from Germany

your golden hair Margarete

your ashen hair Shulamith 1

I read it as I had been taught, with a regular rhythm, not stressing individual words, not stressing anything because it carried meaning, rhythm was paramount, rhythm was everything.

While I was reading, Ingvild smoked and studied the floor in front of her.