Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

‘Soon be there,’ I said.

She moved a trembling foot forward. And then pee began to run down her thigh, and then it came in a stream and splashed on the floor. She stood perfectly still as it happened. Leaning forward, stock still, the pee splashing down, she looked like an animal, I thought. Standing in front of her, I met her eyes and they were anguished.

‘It doesn’t matter, Grandma,’ I said. ‘It happens. It doesn’t matter. Just stay here and I’ll get Kjartan.’

I ran out, rang the bell twice in quick succession, opened the door and shouted up. He came steaming downstairs a few seconds later, prepared for the worst.

‘You’ve got to help grandma,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing serious. She only wants to go to the loo.’

He said nothing, went with me, took grandma and led her into the bathroom with firm resolute movements and closed the door behind them. I filled a bucket with water, wetted the cloth and wiped the floor.

I went back to Bergen with enough money to manage for the rest of the semester. I didn’t tell anyone about what I had experienced, but slipped into depressing Bergen life leaving Sørbøvåg as a closed room, a sealed experience, alongside all the other experiences I’d had that were incompatible with my life now or irrelevant to it. Especially after I had thrown the glass at Yngve’s head it seemed like that: it was impossible to reconcile the person I was then, someone trying to inflict damage, destroy, preferably blind his brother, with the person when I was with them or with mum, who knew nothing of all this. This was all I thought about, and the power in it was immense, it dragged me down to a place inside myself I hadn’t been and hadn’t known existed. If I could throw a glass at Yngve’s face what else was I capable of? There was something in me I couldn’t control, and it was terrible: if I couldn’t trust myself who could I trust?

This wasn’t a matter I could discuss with anyone else either. That afternoon in Yngve’s collective when I understood what I had done, I sat crying and begging for forgiveness, so upset that I couldn’t go home, I slept there, on the sofa in the collective, surrounded by other students who didn’t quite know where to look or what to do when I was there. One of them I hadn’t seen before, he came in when I was on the sofa with my head bowed, so you’re Karl Ove, he said, you live in the bedsit above Morten, don’t you? Yes, I said. I’ll pop by to see you one day, he said. I live in a flat just opposite you two. I raised my eyes and looked at him. He was smiling so much his face seemed to split into two. My name’s Geir, he said.

Two days later he knocked at my door. I was writing, shouted come in, thinking it was Morten as the front doorbell hadn’t rung.

‘Are you writing?’ he said. ‘I don’t want to disturb you.’

‘No, no, come in. You’re not disturbing me,’ I said.

He sat down, we chatted tentatively about common acquaintances, it transpired we were the same age and that he came from Hisøya and had gone to gymnas with several of the children I had been at school with and hadn’t seen since then. He had gone to a military academy, dropped out, moved to Bergen and started studying social anthropology. At first he wanted to talk about how happy he was and how good it was being in Bergen. He had his own money, his own flat and the university was overflowing with girls, could life be any better?

No, perhaps it couldn’t, I said.

He laughed and said he had never met such a gloomy individual as me. Anyone would think Job had taken up lodgings in Bergen! Come on, let’s go for a walk to put you in a better frame of mind!

Why not! I said, and we headed downhill to the town centre. We stood at the bar in Fekterloftet, ordered a carafe of white wine, and the embarrassment I always felt with people I didn’t know, the thought that I was boring and of no interest and that actually they didn’t want to be here, was completely absent. There was something about him I trusted. What I discussed with Geir that evening I couldn’t have discussed with anyone else I had met in Bergen, not even Yngve. You carried your inner thoughts and passions within you, and perhaps shared with a partner — what did I know about such matters — at any rate it wasn’t something you brought up one night you were on the town, it would have killed everything, caused others to shy away. Because it was all about having a good time, laughing, telling stories or arguing till the sparks flew, but about matters that were outside your inner life, about what was between people, about what they shared. Bands, films, books, other students, lecturers, girls, various experiences remodelled as entertaining anecdotes or jokes.

There was nothing of that this evening.

I talked about my year in northern Norway, how I had been slightly in love with a thirteen-year-old and I had kissed another, how I had been completely crazy about a sixteen-year-old and had almost gone out with her, how I had drifted round and got drunk, been out of control, and it had continued down here, and I was scared of myself, not in some make-believe way, not to make myself interesting, but in reality, scared of what I might do. If I could try to destroy my brother anything was possible. If I’d had a knife would I have stabbed him? I also talked about my grandmother, the dignity she possessed in all the misery in which she was trapped. But most of all I talked about Ingvild. I told him about all our meetings, I held forth on how fantastic she was but admitted I had done everything wrong from the very beginning. I said I was like Lieutenant Glahn, I could also shoot myself in the foot to make her look at me and perhaps think about me. Yes, I have got a scar on my foot, I said, and put my leg on a rung on the bar stool, look here, I got that trying to kick away a rocket on the ground near Hanne. Who on earth is Hanne? he said, someone I was in love with, I said, another one, he said and laughed. What he told me about himself was not only different, it was diametrically opposite.

He was actually a militarist, he said, he had loved life at the Military Academy, the sound of reveille in the morning, the smell of leather and weapon grease, the uniforms, the guns and the discipline, he had dreamed about it all his life, he had joined the Cadet Force at home in Arendal and had never been in any doubt about his career path after finishing gymnas.

‘Why did you leave then? If you liked it so much?’

‘I don’t know. It might have been because I discovered that I could do it, I knew it, and I wanted to do something I couldn’t do. And then there was the lack of individuality. I spoke to the commander about that, I said I didn’t want to be some sheep with a bell round its neck, he said that being led wasn’t the problem, but where you were led. Basically he was right. But the moment of truth was when I saw the regulations. Then I realised that someone would always know where I was. And that was no good. So I stopped and became a conscientious objector.’

‘Are you a conscientious objector ?’

‘Yes. Nevertheless I still love the sound of marching boots.’

I hadn’t even considered the possibility of liking the military; it stood for everything I was against. War, violence, authority, power. I was a pacifist but unhappy, he was a militarist and happy. It wasn’t easy to say who was right. He also told me about one morning he had walked home with a girl he had been interested in for a long time, the sun was up, the town was deserted, they strolled hand in hand through the park and were heading for his bedsit and the huge waterbed he had there, how perfect the moment had been in every respect. He told me about everything he was learning in social anthropology and laughed at some of the bizarre rituals people had. He also laughed at me, but not in a way that annoyed me, quite the contrary, suddenly I could laugh at myself too. I thought, I’ve got a new friend here. I had as well, but not for long because soon afterwards he said he was moving to Uppsala after the summer. I was sorry but said nothing. Fekterloftet closed its doors, we were drunk and did the rounds of the nightclubs, ending up in Slakteriet, as always Bergen’s last late-night stop, and stirred by the light sky and all the happy people on the street at the beginning of June I suggested dropping in on Ingvild so that he could see her with his own eyes and so that I could say some of the many things that I had thought about her. He was up for this, we made our way towards Nygårdsgaten, I remembered that as visitors we ought to have something to take with us, ran over to the flower beds by the Grieg Hall, tugged at a rhododendron bush, it had just blossomed and was beautiful, pulled it free and stood there with it in one hand while Geir struggled with his. Then we crossed the street, I found some pebbles and started throwing them at her window. It must have been around four or half past. She opened the window, at first she didn’t want to let us in, but I begged, she said OK, I’ll be right down. As she opened the front door a police car came down the street and stopped next to us. A policeman stepped out, Ingvild closed the door and disappeared, the officer asked us what we were doing, I said we were going to give the young lady some flowers, I realised this was wrong, we had taken them from in front of the Grieg Hall, but, look, the roots are intact, we can run back now and replant them, it’ll be fine. OK, said the policeman, and when we went to put the bushes back the car followed us and waited in the middle of the road until we had finished before driving on.