Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

‘Isn’t that good?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘I think it’s fantastic. Absolutely brilliant. I’ve never read anything like it.’

I sat down at the other end of the sofa.

‘Yngve told you what happened, didn’t he?’ she said.

‘The tea,’ I said and got up. ‘Just a minute.’

I went to the kitchen, poured the boiling water over the dry tea leaves, which would swell up and become soft and supple within seconds, the biggest would go clumpy, while all the properties in them would be released and infuse the water and colour it, golden at first, then darker and darker.

I brought out the teapot with two cups, put them on the table.

‘It has to stew a bit first,’ I said.

‘I have to go soon,’ she said. ‘I only wanted to talk to you about what has happened.’

‘Can’t you have a cup of tea anyway?’ I said.

I filled her cup, the tea was too weak, and I poured it back into the pot, and then I poured again. This time it was darker, if not perfect, at least drinkable.

‘Do you take milk?’

She shook her head and grabbed the cup with both hands, took a sip and put the cup back on the table.

‘It had nothing to do with you,’ she said. ‘What happened.’

‘Right,’ I said, filling my own cup.

‘I hope we can be friends despite everything. I’d like to be friends with you.’

‘Of course we can be friends,’ I said. ‘Why shouldn’t we be able to?’

She smiled, no eye contact, took another sip.

‘How are things then?’ I said.

‘They’re fine,’ she said.

‘Course going well?’

She shook her head.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said.

‘Same here,’ I said. ‘But the Academy course only lasts a year, not six like in psychology. I’ll have to see what I do afterwards. Maybe lit. But I’m planning to keep writing.’

Silence.

It was painful with her there.

‘Do you still live in Fantoft?’ I said.

She shook her head.

‘I’m moving into a collective.’

‘Are you?’

‘Yes. I think I’ll have to go,’ she said and stood up. ‘Thank you for the tea. See you.’

I accompanied her to the hall, smiled at her and said bye, watched her disappear round the corner, went back in, washed the two cups, emptied the ashtray so that I wouldn’t be reminded of her visit, lay back on my bed and stared at the ceiling. It was eight o’clock. Two hours until I could sleep.

For as long as there were classes at the Academy I coped very well during the day. I trudged through the rain in the morning and, if nothing else, appreciated meeting the other students — we saw so much of one another that I was relatively natural with them — and then I trudged home through the rain in the afternoon beneath the fast-darkening sky. I made myself something to eat, I sat and read until my restlessness became too much and drove me out, mostly into the great nothing, in other words, I met no one. I had nowhere to go, and I couldn’t stay in my room, what was I supposed to do? Ten wild horses couldn’t drag me into a cinema on my own or into Café Opera. Living like this was fine for a while, there was nothing wrong with it as such, the situation was explicable, I was attending a course on which there were very few students, and those there were, were older than me, none would have been a friend of mine under normal circumstances, which contrasted sharply with the situation for the average student, who was surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands, of other likeminded people. Yes, there was a rational explanation: I was at the Writing Academy, and when I finished there I would take out a student loan and go to Istanbul to write, a town where no one expected me to know anyone, which furthermore was exotic and foreign, an adventure, by Christ, a room of my own in Istanbul!

I wrote letters and described my plans. I read novels I had heard about at the Academy, by Øystein Lønn, Ole Robert Sunde, Claude Simon, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute. Although they were difficult for me I ploughed through them in the hope that something would stick. I walked down into the town centre and bought records, drank coffee in the cake shops old people frequented, where I didn’t care how I looked or what impression I made or if people wondered why I was on my own. I didn’t give a shit about old people and I didn’t give a shit about myself either. I sat there studying the records, reading books, drinking coffee and smoking. Then I walked home, killed time, went to bed, another day dawned. The weekdays were no problem, the weekends were more difficult, at two or three in the afternoon the urge to go out and have fun, like other students, slowly made itself felt, at six or seven it became acute, they were pre-loading all around me while I sat alone. At eight or nine it felt better, soon I would be able to go to bed. And occasionally something would hold my attention, a book or my writing, to make me forget time and the situation, and when I next checked my watch it could be twelve, one or even two. That was good, for then I would sleep in longer the following morning, thereby shortening the day. Some Saturdays I went out in the evening, I was sick of my room and my footsteps were drawn to the town centre, past Café Opera perhaps, where the windows were full of laughing chatting people and golden beers, and although all I had to do was open the door and go in, it wasn’t locked of course, I couldn’t do it, in some way or other this was how life had become. Once I did anyway, and it was as I had imagined, a nightmare, I burned inside as I stood in the bar drinking, my chest burned and my head burned, I knew no one, I had no friends, and everyone could see that, I was alone in the bar acting as if it were the most natural thing in the world, I drank and calmly surveyed the room, is there anyone I know here tonight? … No, indeed, how strange, not one! Never mind, it’s nice anyway to have a beer before I go home to bed … busy day tomorrow, might as well take it easy now … As I hurried home afterwards I was furious at myself and my own stupidity, I shouldn’t have gone there, it was ridiculous, why did I have to display my failings in that way?

The following weekend I rang Yngve. He had a TV, I would ask him if he was planning to watch the Saturday match and, if so, could I pop up? I hadn’t forgotten the business with Ingvild, I would never forgive him for it, but we had been brothers for much longer than I had been in love with Ingvild, and it ought to be feasible to separate the two relationships from one another, to have two thoughts in your head at once.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Hi, this is Karl Ove.’

‘Long time, no hear,’ he said. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Fine. I was wondering, actually, if you were going to watch the football this afternoon?’

‘I was, yes.’

‘Would it be OK if I came up to see it?’

‘Yes, of course. It would be great.’

‘Will Ingvild be there? If so, I won’t come.’

‘No, she’s at home this weekend. Just come on up.’

‘Right, see you then. Bye.’

‘Bye.’

‘By the way, have you done the pools?’

‘Yes.’

‘How many lines?’

‘Thirty-four.’

‘OK. See you.’

I bought a bag of beers in the nearby shop, showered and changed my clothes, trotted up the hill in the rain, went into the kiosk and did the pools, waited for a bus, jumped on, sat looking at all the lights and movement that abounded in this town, the many dislocations of colour and form that occurred, all the light that glittered in the water, floated in the water, all the umbrellas and swishing windscreen wipers, all the lowered heads and laced-up hoods, all the rubber boots and waterproof jackets, all the water running down the gutters, by the kerbsides and on the roof, the gulls circling above and settling on the top of a flagpole, bedraggled, or on the ridiculously high statue in Festplassen, a man of normal dimensions standing on a pillar, how high was it, twenty metres? Thirty? Christian Michelsen, what had he done to deserve such a fate?