Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

I turned to them.

‘I give up,’ I said.

‘OK,’ they said, and led me to a hatch where I had to empty my pockets and hand over my belt, and then they steered me down to the cellar, or whatever it was, at any rate there were iron doors on either side of the corridor and I had to go through one of them. The cell was completely bare except for a big blue mattress.

‘Sleep it off here. Someone will collect you for questioning when you wake up.’

‘Yes, sir!’ I said in English, standing in the middle of the cell until they had closed the door behind them, then I lay down on the blue mattress and laughed to myself for a long time before falling asleep.

The next time I woke up I was still drunk and everything that had happened out there and on the way here had something dreamlike about it. But the iron door and the concrete floor were tangible enough.

I knocked on the door.

I ought to have shouted, but I didn’t know quite what. Guard?

Yes.

‘Guard, I’ve woken up!’ I shouted. ‘Guard! Guard!’

‘Shut up!’ someone shouted.

That frightened me a bit and I sat down on the mattress. Some time later the door was unlocked and a policeman stared in at me.

‘Are you sober now?’ he said.

‘Yes, I think so,’ I said. ‘Perhaps not completely though. Better than before anyway.’

‘Come with me,’ he said.

We went up from the cellar, him first, me next, into a lift and through the floors. He knocked on a door, we went into an office, an older man, maybe fifty, maybe fifty-five, plain clothes, looked at me.

‘Sit down,’ he said.

I sat down on the chair in front of his desk.

‘You were found in Florida,’ he said. ‘You’d fallen asleep in the corridor of a nursing home. What were you doing there?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I was so drunk. I don’t remember a thing. Just that I woke up there.’

‘Do you live in Bergen?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Karl Ove Knausgård.’

‘Have you any convictions?’

‘Convictions?’

‘Have you ever been convicted of anything? Drugs, breaking and entering?’

‘No, no, no.’

He looked over at a man standing in the doorway.

‘Will you check that?’

The man went into the office next door. While he was there the man who was questioning me sat, head down, filling in a form without saying a word. Blinds covered the windows; outside, between the slats, the sky was blue.

The second man came back.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘You don’t remember anything?’ said the man questioning me. ‘Earlier in the evening, you don’t remember anything? Where did you go?’

‘I was at a party. By the park.’

‘Who were you with?’

‘My brother, among others. And some of his friends.’

He looked at me.

‘We’d better call him in then.’

‘Who?’

‘Your brother.’

‘What’s he got to do with this? And what’s all this about? I slept in the corridor of a nursing home, that’s not good, I know, and you might consider it breaking and entering, but that’s all I did.’

‘You don’t remember anything?’ he said. ‘The home was burgled last night and in the immediate vicinity there was a car crash. So things were happening. Then we find you in the corridor of the same home. That’s what this is about. What’s your brother’s name?’

‘Yngve Knausgård.’

‘His address? And yours?’

I told him.

‘You’ll be hearing from us. You can go now.’

I was escorted down to the ground floor, given my few possessions and I went into the car park outside. I was so tired I could barely walk. I stopped several times to catch my breath, and before Steinkjellergaten I had to sit down on a step, I simply had no energy left. Up the hill, would I make it? But ten minutes later, after passers-by had stared at me, every single one, I got to my feet and lurched up the hill. The walk home from the police station took me close to an hour. In my room I lay down on the bed and fell asleep for the third time within twenty-four hours. Not for long. When I opened my eyes again it was still early afternoon. The heaviness had left my body, it felt normal now apart from a terrible hunger. I ate ten slices of bread and cheese, drank a litre of milk with Nesquik and went to the phone box to call the Academy. Fortunately Sagen was there. I told him I had been arrested and hadn’t been able to go to the dinner. Arrested? he said. Are you joking? No, I said, I spent the night in a cell. I’m still in a bad way, I’m afraid to say. Could you send me the certificate, do you think? Certainly, he said. Shame you weren’t here for the meal. Arrested, you say? Yes, I said. Thank you for everything this year anyway. I’m sure we’ll meet again.

I rang off and, with my last coins, caught the bus into town. The sky was dark blue, the sun red and above Askøy the clouds in the east looked as if they were on fire. I walked past the Student Centre and down to Møhlenpris, intending to visit Yngve, perhaps he could clarify what had happened.

The door was open, and I went up the stairs to the floor where the collective was and rang the bell.

Line, a nice blonde girl from Østland, a few years older than me, opened the door.

She looked at me with something akin to fear in her eyes.

‘Is Yngve in?’ I said.

She nodded.

‘Come in,’ she said. ‘He’s in his room.’

I went in, took off my shoes, kept my jacket on, knocked softly on Yngve’s door and opened it.

He was standing by the stereo and turned when he heard me.

I stared at him in amazement.

Half of his face was covered with a bandage.

Suddenly it all came back to me.

I had hurled a glass at him with all the strength I possessed.

I had thrown it at his eye.

He didn’t say anything, just looked at me.

‘Did I do that?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Don’t you remember?’

‘Yes, now I do,’ I said. ‘Did I hit you in the eye? Are you blind?’

He sat down on the chair.

‘No, the eye is intact. You hit me just next to it. I had to have stitches. There’ll be a permanent scar.’

I began to cry.

‘I didn’t mean it,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean it. I don’t know why I did it. I didn’t mean it. Can you forgive me? Oh Yngve, can you forgive me?’

He sat like an emperor on the chair in the room, his back erect, legs apart, one hand on his knee, looking at me.

I couldn’t meet his gaze, I couldn’t look at him.

I lowered my head and sobbed aloud.

1Translated by Michael Hamburger.

Three and a half years later, between Christmas and New Year 1992, I stood at the far end of the Student Centre by the stairs up to the concourse where the student organisations had their stands, waiting for the Student Radio programme manager. I was going to do my civilian service there and had just come down from a couple of months at a camp in Hustad, on the coast outside Molde, where I had been with other Vestland conscripts to learn various aspects of peace work and conscientious objection to military service. It had been a joke; hardly anyone cared about the idealistic side of civilian service. The majority were undoubtedly against war, but their principles didn’t leave any deeper marks on them, and I felt I had been transported back to my confirmation camp in the eighth class, where everyone thought it was fun being alone and away from home but no one had any time for the reason, our relationship with God and Jesus Christ, and consequently every opportunity to sabotage the teaching and exploit the freedoms we had for our own purposes was taken. The only real differences were age — most people in Hustad were in their early or mid-twenties — the length of the course — not two days but two months — and the facilities. They had a well-equipped music room, a well-stocked library, they had a dark room and video equipment, they had kayaks and diving gear, and we could take a diving certificate. Tours to the district were arranged, a bus came and picked us up; one evening we were driven to Kristiansund, where we were allowed to go out and get drunk. But the most important part was the courses. Someone had worked hard for conscientious objectors to be taken seriously back when young people were passionate about such matters and full of idealism. We didn’t give a shit. Attendance was obligatory, but those who didn’t feel well or had a headache could barely follow what the teacher was saying, and the mismatch between the teachers’ idealism and passion for conscientious objection and our ignorance was occasionally painful to behold.