Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

Everything took place in the proximity of death in these books, which were otherwise full of thoughts and theories about art and philosophy, they were at the heart of the great European tradition, but they weren’t experimental like Joyce’s or Musil’s novels, they lacked a certain independence of form, and I wondered why they did, couldn’t he do that? Mann wrote about the avant-garde, but allowed it to be written by a traditionalist like Zeitblom. Espen, my best friend, had no time for Thomas Mann, presumably because of the traditional and bourgeois character of his novels, this lay outside his sphere of interests. Espen was a poet and omnivorous as regards literature, irredeemably curious and thirsty for knowledge, but more often than not with an eye for the most progressive literature, and that did not include the predominantly realistic novel. Espen kept his French and American poets to himself, I kept my mainstream novels to myself, and then we met in the middle, with authors such as Thomas Bernhard, Tor Ulven, Claude Simon, Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras, Stig Larsson, Tomas Tranströmer. I could talk about Thomas Mann and Espen would listen, but I could never get him to spend time reading him, nor did I dare try, in case he thought it was poor literature, which would definitely have rebounded on me and my taste. I saw our relationship as parallel to the one between Leverkühn and Zeitblom in Doctor Faustus — Espen was the artist, bent over his apocryphal books in his study, the poet, the genius, I was the plain, ordinary man, by chance his friend, who watched him at work and knew enough about it to understand he was unique, but not enough, never enough, to produce the same himself. I could write about literature, as Zeitblom wrote about music, I couldn’t create it. If I had said something of this kind to Espen he would have objected violently, he didn’t see himself like that, I knew, but there was an enormous difference between us: he could read Ekelöf, Celan, Akhmatova, Montale, Ashbury, Mandelstam, poets I had barely heard about, as the most natural thing in the world and there was no posturing about his reading, as unfortunately there was about mine, I brandished authors’ names the way medieval knights brandished flags and banners, but not him, not Espen, he was genuine.

We had both taken the lit. course in the autumn of 1989 and the spring of 1990. At first I knew no one there and made no attempt at contact either, so it was the gymnas all over again, sitting alone in the canteen and drinking coffee and pretending I was reading, standing outside the lecture room in the breaks smoking, sitting in the reading room in the afternoons and evenings, all the while with a slow panic in my body, my mouth open in my consciousness, as I wandered around acting as if everything was as it should be. When I closed my books for the evening I sometimes went down to see Yngve, he had moved in with Asbjørn in Hans Tanks gate just below the Science Building, watched TV with them or just drank coffee in their sitting room. I had taken a bedsit in the same property as Yngve’s previous collective, it was big and cost much more than I could afford, but I had gone for it anyway, I could always earn some money when the semester was drawing to an end and my study loan was all gone. When I had been broke the spring before and was still at the Writing Academy, I had moved up to Sørbøvåg and worked for a few weeks with Kjartan. I painted one barn wall, he stood under the ladder watching me and said there was nothing better than watching others work for you. He collected manure from the muck cellar with his tractor, dumped it in great heaps around the farm, which I then spread with a fork. The job was hard work, my arms and upper body ached when I went to bed at night, but it was also satisfying, the physicality of the work, sticking the three prongs into the muck, which was partly caked, partly still wet, grabbing a chunk of it and scattering it, it gave me a good feeling, I could see I was making progress, pile after pile disappeared, and it was wonderful to put the fork down in the afternoon and go in and have a snack with grandma and grandad. I got up at seven, had breakfast, worked till twelve, had lunch, worked till four, it was a purge, a penance, none of my terrible life in Bergen existed here, I was a different person here, someone who could not be criticised. I cooked, I walked grandma across the floor, sometimes I massaged her legs as well, as I had seen mum and Kjartan do, I kept grandad company, and Kjartan, who came home from work at about five, presumably had a little more time for himself than he usually did. Grandma was poorly, and when I left them to work it was as if her shaking and convulsions lived on in me outside, something that had to be subdued and suppressed but lay beyond my control. It was barely possible to speak to her, her voice was so weak, just a whisper, it was difficult to distinguish words. One afternoon grandad was talking about Hamsun, whom he had read with such pleasure, and grandma whispered something from her chair, I leaned forward to listen, couldn’t understand until the coin finally dropped: Duun! Olav Duun, the writer. Another afternoon I could see she was upset, she was trying to catch my attention, I went over and bent down, she pointed to grandad and whispered something I didn’t understand, say it again, Grandma, I can’t hear what you’re saying, one more time, just …

I thought she said that grandad had killed someone.

‘Has grandad killed someone?’ I said.

Then she laughed! A quiet, breathy, barely audible laugh, but her chest shook and her eyes gleamed.

So that wasn’t what she had said, I thought, and laughed as well. But it wasn’t so strange that I had heard it, a paranoid shadow sometimes lay between her and the world, if she could say grandad was a thief in her deepest confusion, couldn’t she say that he had killed someone as well?

It was fantastic to see her laugh. Normally her days were so humdrum and full of suffering that it was painful to witness. One night I woke up to grandad calling for Kjartan, I hurried downstairs, both of them were waiting for me in the double bed in the dining room, grandma shaking, eyes wide open, grandad sitting on the edge of the bed.

‘Kjartan has to help her go to the bathroom,’ he said. ‘Go and get him.’

‘I can do it,’ I said.

She wore nappies at night, I understood, but I kept away from this part of the nursing, anything to do with intimate areas, dressing and undressing, it wasn’t right, I was her grandchild, mum or Kjartan had to do that. But in this situation I would have to do whatever was required.

I put one hand behind her back, the other under her arm and began to lift. She was so stiff that it took a long time, but eventually she was sitting on the edge of the bed. She whispered something. Her jaws trembled, but she looked straight at me with her clear blue eyes. I leaned forward.

‘Kjartan,’ she said.

‘I can take you,’ I said. ‘Then we won’t have to wake him. I’m already awake.’

I took her arm and raised her into a standing position. But it was too quick, she was too stiff and fell back. I did it again, more slowly, and pulled the walking frame over with one hand, placed it in front of her, watched her gently, almost imperceptibly, move her hands down to the handles.

Finally she was holding it with both hands and her balance was good enough for her to be able to walk. She was wearing only a thin white nightdress, her lower arms and legs were bare, her grey and white hair was loose, and I did not like what I had walked into, I was much too close to her, in the wrong way. When we were in the bathroom I would have to help her to sit down on the toilet seat and undress her. No, no, no. No, no, no. But we were on the way, tiny step by tiny step she shuffled across the floor, first the dining room, where they slept, then the sitting room, where the TV was. Her hands shook, her head shook, slowly and laboriously she put one foot in front of the other, they too shook. A lamp shone in the corner, otherwise everything was dark inside. I strode forward and opened the door to the hall. Beyond it was the bathroom.