Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

I introduced Gunvor to Yngve and Asbjørn and his other friends, who in a way had become mine too, or not friends exactly but at any rate people I was often with, by dint of being Yngve’s younger brother, my safeguard in Bergen, and she was a great hit with them. That wasn’t so strange, it was impossible not to like Gunvor, she always laughed at what others said, was sociable and affable, didn’t take herself seriously, but nor was she frivolous, she worked hard at what she did and was no stranger to high seriousness, she also had a pietistic side to her, you had to work, you had to go to lectures, you had to read, only then did you deserve time off. But this sense of moral duty, which I also knew and regarded as an enemy, something I had to oppose, something that stood for the opposite of what I wanted to be, this sense of moral duty didn’t weigh heavy on her, it didn’t affect her personality, it was more like a kind of guiding line, thin and straight and strong, a sinew in her soul, not visible but important, it gave her strength and security, meant that she never doubted that where she was and what she was doing were right.

When I was with her it was as though something was being drawn out of me. The darkness became lighter, the crippled straighter, and the strange thing was that it didn’t come from outside, it wasn’t that she lit the darkness, no, it was something that happened inside me because I saw myself with her eyes, and not just my own, and in her eyes there was nothing wrong with me, quite the contrary. In this way the balance shifted. When I was with Gunvor I no longer wished to do myself any harm.

As arranged I hoofed over to Espen’s the day after, up the hills behind the railway station, over the long flat stretch there, to Alrek, where I had been only once before, when as a sixteen-year-old I had visited Yngve four years ago.

Espen was cooking in the shared kitchen when I arrived. Chicken casserole with tomato, he said, want some?

It was heavily seasoned but good, he lit up when I said that.

Afterwards he made coffee in a strange shiny, almost sculpted, jug, it was shaped like a little man with a hat on, and Espen dismantled it first, poured water into one part, then poured fine-grained specialist coffee of some kind into a funnel-like contraption which he dropped into the water part, before screwing on the top half, which had a lid with a black ball in the centre, and put it on the hotplate. I had no intention of asking what kind of coffee it made, I would accept everything he served with a worldly air.

Each carrying a cup, we went to his room.

Oh, how strong it was, it tasted a bit like espresso.

Espen flicked through his records.

‘Do you like jazz?’ he said.

‘Ye-es,’ I said. ‘I don’t listen to so much, but it’s OK.’

‘Let’s take a classic then, eh? Kind of Blue ?’

‘Fine by me,’ I said, trying to read the cover to see who had made the recording. Miles Davis.

Espen sat down on the bed.

‘I went to see him at a concert in Oslo. I didn’t have a ticket, so I sneaked in.’

‘You sneaked in? How did you manage that?’

‘I went into the building next door, down to the cellar, where I found some chairs. I carried them to make it look as if I was working there. Then I opened a door, and there I was, in the middle of the auditorium.’

He laughed.

‘Is that true?’

‘Yes. It was a fantastic concert.’

Pale melancholic music began to float through the room. Espen took out his chess set, placed the board between us, grasped one black and one white pawn in each hand, swapped them about behind his back and then held his fists in front of me.

‘That one,’ I said.

He opened his fist. Black.

‘I’m not quite sure how to set out the pieces,’ I said. ‘It’s pawns first, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ he said, laying out his pieces in an instant. I copied him.

I hated chess, losing at chess felt to me much more significant and revealing and humiliating than a game of tennis, for example. I wasn’t so intelligent, wasn’t so smart, even if I strained my brain so much smoke came out of my ears, I could never work it out, could never plan more than two moves ahead, at least not when I was small and played with dad or Yngve, who beat me every time. I hadn’t played since then, however, I was an adult now, I thought. Maybe the experience I had acquired would benefit me in some way or other. It was only problem-solving really.

‘No stopwatch?’ he said.

‘No,’ I said.

We started and three minutes later I was in checkmate.

‘Do you want a return game?’

‘OK.’

Three minutes later I was in checkmate again.

‘Best of three. Then you’ve got a chance of turning things round.’

‘Can do.’

He crushed me for the third time. But I couldn’t see a hint of gloating in him as he packed away the set and silently set about rolling a cigarette.

‘Are you an active player then?’ I said.

‘Me? No. No, no. I just like it.’

‘Do you read chess columns in the paper?’

‘Sometimes, yes. It can be incredibly interesting to follow the moves in old games between the masters.’

‘Oh yes,’ I said.

‘But there are some standard moves you can learn. Openings and so on. I can show you if you’d like.’

I nodded.

‘Shall we do it next time?’

‘Yes.’

Outside, the sun was shining through the clouds. The light that fell diagonally through the air made the colours in the countryside beneath seem shrill in comparison with the matt-grey surroundings.

‘What books do you actually like reading? In modern Norwegian literature?’ he said.

‘Bit of everything,’ I said. ‘Kjærstad, Fløgstad, Jon Fosse. All sorts of books really. What about you?’

‘A broad range too. But Øyvind Berg is good. Tor Ulven is fantastically good. Ole Robert Sunde, have you read anything by him? A whole novel about the main character, who walks to a kiosk and back. Odyssey, right? His language goes in all directions. It’s enormously digressive, almost essayistic. You should read it.’

‘I’ve heard about it,’ I said. ‘Think there was something in Vinduet once.’

‘Then there’s Ekelöf of course. And Jan Erik Vold! Enthusiastic Essays. I think that’s my favourite book. It’s so unbelievably rich. Have you seen it?’

I shook my head. He jumped up and went through one of the piles of books on his desk, passed me a fat blue book with a picture on the cover of Vold swimming.

‘There,’ he said. ‘He writes about all sorts. Not just literature. Loads about jazz and … well.’

‘Great,’ I said, leafing through it.

The music had stopped, he took the record off the deck.

‘What shall we play now?’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘Flick through and see if there’s anything you like.’

‘OK,’ I said, kneeling down.

Would you believe it, he had Heaven Up Here !

‘Do you like Echo and the Bunnymen?’ I said.

‘Yes, certainly do. Ian McCulloch has a wonderful voice. And he’s so fantastically arrogant.’

‘Can we play that one? Perhaps it’s a bit pathetic. After all I’ve got it myself, but it’s so good.’

‘Yes, go on. It’s a long time since I’ve listened to it.’

When I left an hour later, down the hills shining in the wan November light, I was full of tensions. Espen was the kind of person you noticed. He had a strong presence, and as I was so weak I picked up all the different moods he radiated and probably didn’t register himself. There was also something introspective about him, sometimes it was as if his gaze didn’t leave his eyes, it stayed where it was, inside, making it seem hard and irreconcilable, but when it let go he was openness in person, friendliness itself, in a way that I wasn’t sure he registered either, because his enthusiasm seemed to take over and actually he was just following the currents inside him.