Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

Two days later we got out of the train at the station in Bergen, this funnel of a town, and it was good to step into it, everything seemed homely and familiar, my place on earth. It was early evening, I knew being alone in my room after a week with company would be an anticlimax, so I went to Yngve and Asbjørn’s, where we cracked open the bottle of whisky we had brought with us and started drinking. Asbjørn said that unfortunately he had some bad news for us. Oh? we said, looking at him. Yes, your grandmother has died. Has she? Died? Yes, your mother phoned when you were on your way down to Italy. Did she say when the funeral was? Yes, it’s been and gone. She said it had been impossible to get hold of you.

We got drunk and went to Hulen, it was a weekday and not very full, we hung around the bar drinking, when they closed we went home and carried on. There was a good atmosphere, I felt as though I was in the eye of a storm of people and action. At some point I put on a Superman outfit, sat drinking whisky in the red cape and the rest of the outfit or bopped around to the music. It was a party, it felt as if the flat was packed, I swung round, banged into the fridge, drank, changed the music, sang along, chatted to Yngve and Asbjørn, all while in this fantastic Superman costume, until suddenly everything receded, like powerful tidal waters and the bare facts were revealed: only Yngve, Asbjørn and I were there. We were alone. The party was in my mind. And grandma, grandma was dead.

Even though the music was still playing it was as though there was silence.

I put my face in my hands.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

‘What is it, Karl Ove?’

‘Nothing,’ I said, but my shoulders were shaking and tears were running down my face, wetting my fingers.

They turned off the music.

‘What is it?’ they said again.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, looking at them. A sob escaped me, I couldn’t stop it. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘Do you want to sleep here? Maybe that’s best,’ Asbjørn said.

I nodded.

‘Lie on the sofa. It’s late anyway.’

I did as they said, lay down on the sofa and closed my eyes. One of them covered me with a blanket and I fell asleep.

The next morning everything was fine again, apart from my embarrassment at what had happened, crying in front of them. It didn’t matter too much about Yngve, even though that wasn’t good either, but Asbjørn?!

And the idiotic Superman outfit!

I took it off, had a cup of coffee with them in the sitting room, where Asbjørn told Yngve off for never putting the milk back in the fridge, it was just fantastic looking forward to a glass of milk and coming home and finding out it was piss-warm.

I smiled and said they were like a married couple. They didn’t like hearing that. I went down to Møhlenpris with my old suitcase, let myself in and had a shower. With my hair wet, my shirt sticking to my shoulders and chest I sat down to read. I had got to the end of the eighteenth century, which was bursting with English poets and novelists, and French dramatists, of whom I knew Racine was the most important, and some philosophers and letter-writers. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the names and one work by each of them, continued into the nineteenth century, put down the book, took out the sheets showing the lecture programme, there was one in the afternoon, I decided to go. It was about modern literary theory and I found the selection of texts for it and browsed through them before leaving. Stanley Fish. What a name. And Harold Bloom. My name’s Fish. You don’t say. Mine’s Bloom. And over there’s Paul de Man. Do you know him? Yes, I’m a fan of Paul the Man.

That was a text!

I’m a fan of Paul the Man.

When I had finished the text, I put a few books and a writing pad in a bag and walked up to the university. The grass in the park was dry, the sky grey, the leaves on the trees were pale green and yellow. A group of druggies sat under a tree, I took a detour so as not to see them or be accosted, everything about them filled me with unease, from their loud voices and aggressive actions when they weren’t doped up to total apathy, which was inhuman, sitting or lying there disconnected from the world, yet with their eyes open, eyes in which you could read nothing. Then there were the syringes, the leather straps, the cartons of milkshake or chocolate milk, the food containers and plastic bags strewn around them, and their clothes, filthy, ragged, as if they hadn’t been in contact with humans for several years but had spent the winter in the middle of a forest, after a plane crash maybe, with only one set of clothes. They drifted, they didn’t live. And that was what they wanted to do, drift not live.

Past them and out through the gate, past the Student Centre, up the hill and onto the gravel path alongside the Botanical Garden, over to the passage between the Maritime Museum and the university library, past the Faculty of Arts and through the gates of Sydneshaugen School, where I stopped, put the bag on the ground between my feet and lit a cigarette.

Further ahead, beside the steps, someone from my department was standing and smoking. He looked up at me at that moment, then shifted his gaze elsewhere. His name was Espen, I knew, fresh from gymnas, and although he hadn’t said much when I had been with him I knew he was frighteningly well read. He had spoken about Beckett once with Ole, another student in our department, and I had been deeply impressed despite being two years older than him. He had long dark hair, sometimes collected in a ponytail, brown eyes, glasses, he was thin, wore a brown leather jacket, often with a woollen jumper underneath, would come to lectures on his bike and often sat for hours in the reading room. He seemed shy, on his guard though not suspicious, more like a wary animal.

I picked up the bag and walked towards him.

‘Are you going to the lecture?’ I said.

He smiled as if to himself.

‘Reckon so,’ he said. ‘Are you?’

‘That was the plan. But as I was coming here I lost interest. Think I might go and read instead.’

‘What are you reading then?’

‘Odds and sods. Nothing special. Stanley Fish.’

‘Oh.’

‘And you?’

‘Dante at the moment. Have you read any Dante?’

‘Not yet. But I will. Is it good?’

‘It’s very good,’ he said.

‘OK.’

‘Mandelstam’s written a really great essay about The Divine Comedy. ’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, perhaps I should give it a go. Mandelstam?’

‘Yes. You do that. It might be tricky to get hold of, but I can copy it for you if you’d like?’

‘Yes, I would,’ I said. ‘That’d be great!’

I smiled, tossed my cigarette to the ground and trod on it.

‘See you,’ I said and went into the old school building.

On my way home I rang mum. Fortunately she was at home. I asked her how she was, she said fine, but it was incomprehensible that grandma had gone. It had been quick. She had caught a lung infection and only a few days later she had breathed her last. It happened at the care home where she had been moved at the end of the summer when she could no longer live on the farm, her condition required more nursing and supervision than she could get there. Perhaps that was the reason she went so quickly, there was nothing to hold her back, like her intimate surroundings at home, where she had lived for more than forty years. But Kjartan had been present when she died and she hadn’t been afraid.

I could hear that mum was upset, but I didn’t know how to react. She wanted to talk about how it had been in Italy, I said only that it had been good, I couldn’t go into detail, after all we had been drinking and staggering around while grandma was dying, that in itself was unseemly and nothing mum needed to know. We arranged that I would travel up in a few weeks, go and see her grave, she was in the old cemetery across the fjord, it was nice there, mum said, that was a nice thought.