Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

When the results were pinned up on the board outside the institute it turned out I had got only a 2.4. It was a cum laude and perfectly acceptable, but a far cry from what I had hoped for and expected. I wanted to be at least the best in the year. Espen, however, got a 2.2, one of the best grades that had been given this semester. I understood why: he had written about that particular canto, read it and extracted something from it on the spot, while I had sewn a finished product onto the text and rendered it invisible.

I got what I deserved, but it was hard to swallow; the sole reason for taking this subject, in my view, was to be the best. What was the point of being a mediocre lit. student? It was absolutely meaningless.

I decided to drop philosophy and concentrate on literature to make up for lost ground at once. Espen was going to start at the Writing Academy and wouldn’t be a threat to me there, which pleased me. He wasn’t competitive, but he won anyway and there was no safeguard against that.

The summer lay before me and as usual I didn’t know what to do or where to go. The only certainty was that I had to earn some money. Gunvor, who was working at an old people’s home all summer, suggested I apply for a job at a mental health institution situated between Haugesund and her home known to students as a place where they always needed people. Two colleagues from her department would be working there all summer, she knew, and they weren’t from the district either, they would be staying in some rooms the local council used in a school.

I rang up, said I had worked at a similar institution before, I had also taught in a school for a year, and the woman I spoke to said I could have a temporary post for six weeks. So in the middle of June I packed a bag and took a bus south. Gunvor was leaning against her father’s car and smiling as, a few hours later, I alighted in the town centre. She took off her sunglasses and we hugged.

‘I’ve missed you so much,’ she said in her local dialect, stretching up to kiss me.

‘I’ve missed you too,’ I said.

The houses around us were white, the sea behind us was blue, the forest on all sides green and bathed in sun. We got into the car, it was the first time she had driven me and for a moment I felt the subordination which that entailed, she had the skills, I didn’t. I was the eternal passenger. Now I was also the passenger in my girlfriend’s car.

‘Is it far?’ I said, pushing the seat back to make room for my legs.

‘Three kilometres,’ she said. ‘They’re waiting for you with dinner. Are you nervous?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’ll be fine, I’m sure.’

She sent me a smile before looking straight ahead again. She had so much happiness in her, expressed not only by her lips and eyes but her whole body. Even when she was concentrating on her driving, it radiated off her.

On the way she described what we could see around us. There was the school, that was where her best friend lived, there was a ski slope over there, that was where she had her first kiss … After some minutes she slowed down and turned into a gravel road, we drove past some fields, some big old white houses, and at the bottom of a gentle slope, by the forest, with the fjord beneath, was their house.

‘Here it is!’ she said. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’

‘Beautiful,’ I said.

She parked, we got out, I followed her to the door, which was instantly opened by a woman who must have been her mother.

‘Hi, and welcome to our house,’ she said with a smile. I shook her outstretched hand.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘How nice to have you here at last!’

‘It’s nice to be invited,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard so much about this place.’

‘Is dad out?’ Gunvor said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was thinking we’d eat when he gets back.’

‘Then I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping,’ Gunvor said and grabbed my hand. ‘Come on!’

We went into the hall and through the house, dark and cool, to the furthest room, where I put down my bag and looked at her. She sat on the tightly made bed and dragged me towards her. Before coming here she had warned me there would be no chance of us sharing a room.

‘Can’t you come to my room during the night?’ I said. ‘Just sneak in?’

She shook her head. ‘Not when they’re in the house. But they’re going early tomorrow morning. I’ll come then.’

When we sat down at the table her father folded his hands and said a short prayer. Gunvor and her mother did the same. Ill at ease, I laid my hands on my lap so that no one could see whether they were folded or not and lowered my eyes as they had done.

‘Amen,’ they said, and as if with the wave of a magic wand we were somewhere else, hands helping themselves, questions being asked and answered, food being chewed and swallowed, laughter and merriment. As always when I was with people I didn’t know, I was completely open to them. The mother, who was jolly but still scrutinising me, the father, who was more serious and sombre, clean-cut and solid, Gunvor, halfway between them and me, as uneasy about what I might be thinking about them as what they might be thinking about me. I answered the questions they asked, tried to appear polite and friendly, to give them what I imagined they wanted. If the atmosphere flagged, with a sudden lull in the conversation or a facial expression I interpreted as disapproval, for instance, I gave them an extra helping.

After the meal we walked down to the fjord for a swim.

‘Well?’ Gunvor said, grabbing my hand. ‘Did it give you a shock when grace was said?’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘But it was a bit unexpected. I had the feeling they belong to an earlier generation than my parents.’

‘They probably do too,’ she said. ‘What do you think of them then?’

‘They’re nice,’ I said. ‘They have very different temperaments, it seems, but they seem to be on the same wavelength, if you know what I mean.’

‘I think so,’ she said, looking at me. ‘It’s strange having you here.’

‘It’s strange being here, too,’ I said.

We cleaned our teeth together in the bathroom, kissed each other goodnight and went to our separate rooms. Outside, it had begun to rain. I lay listening to the light pitter-patter, which ceased whenever the wind gusted through the forest. From inside the sitting room a clock ticked, every hour a mechanism was activated and its delicate chime sounded. This was a house where, from my perspective, everything functioned as it should and where lives were lived in an orderly manner. I understood more about Gunvor when I saw her at home. She was a student, lived her life in Bergen, but was also a part of this, she was loyal to her parents, to whom she was both close and distant. I assumed the feeling I had while I was there, that I was false and bad, that I was duping them, was alien to her nature.

The clock chimed twelve. Someone was up and in the corridor, a door was opened and closed, the toilet flushed. I liked being in other people’s homes so much, I thought, I always had done, although what I saw there could seem unbearable to me, perhaps because I saw things I wasn’t intended to see. The personal life that was peculiar to them. The love, the helplessness that resided in that, which was usually hidden from others’ eyes. Oh, trifles, trivialities, a family’s habits, their exchanged glances. The vulnerability in this was so immense. Not for them, they lived inside it, and then there was no vulnerability, but when it was seen by someone who didn’t live there. When I saw it I felt like an intruder, I had no right to be there. At the same time I was filled with tenderness for them.