Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

The clock readied itself to chime again. I opened my eyes, there was no question of me being able to sleep straight away. The trees outside the window were black, the darkness between them pale. It wasn’t raining any more, but the wind was still rising and falling in the forest like billowing breakers of the air.

One o’clock.

I thought about the one time I had been to hospital in my childhood. I had broken my collarbone, it hurt so much I was crying but didn’t realise anything was wrong until I complained to mum in the evening and she drove me to see the doctor in Kokkeplassen, where she worked, a red-haired freckled young man, who said the bone was probably broken and we would have to go to hospital to have an X-ray. After it had been done the doctor there said I could sleep in the hospital that night. There was nothing I would rather have done, it was an adventure, something to tell the others, but if I said yes perhaps mum might think I preferred to sleep in the hospital than at home, she would be sad about that, and so I shook my head to the doctor’s suggestion, said I wanted to sleep at home if that was all right. Yes, of course, he understood, wound a bandage tightly around my shoulders in a figure of eight and wished me all the best as we left.

Even then I had felt I was being false, someone who carried thoughts no one else had and which no one must ever know. What emerged from this was myself. This was what was me. In other words, that which in me that knew something the others didn’t, that which in me I could never share with anyone else. And the loneliness, which I still felt, was something I had clung to ever since, as it was all I had. As long as I had that no one could harm me, for what they harmed then was something else. No one could take loneliness away from me. The world was a space I moved in, where anything could happen, but in the space I had inside me, which was me, everything was always the same. All my strength lay there. The only person who could find his way in was dad, and he did too, when I was dreaming and he seemed to be in my soul and shouting at me.

For everyone else I was unreachable. Well, in my thoughts they could reach me, anyone at all could stir them up, but what were thoughts worth? What was consciousness other than the surface of the soul’s ocean? Other than small gaily coloured boats, floating plastic bottles and driftwood, waves and currents, whatever the day might bring, over a depth of several thousand metres.

Or depth was the wrong word.

What was consciousness other than the cone of light from a torch in the middle of a dark forest?

I closed my eyes and rolled over onto my side. In six or seven hours she would come to me and I longed to feel her body against mine after holding her in my arms. It was so long since we had been together I was aching for this. If only I could sleep now, I thought, then when I woke she would be here. But I couldn’t. I slipped into a kind of semi-conscious state of desire and expectation, it was absolutely unbearable, I wanted her, and I slept registering the chimes of the clock, oh, it is only two, only three, only four … When the door finally did open and she crawled over to me, in the enthusiastic-tentative way that was so typical of her, the sleep I rose from was so deep that everything that happened was in a dream.

We had breakfast, she behaved like her mother, washed up when the meal was over, I stood in the yard smoking with a cup of coffee in my hand, she came out, sat down on the step, squinted into the sun, which was already high.

‘You haven’t seen me ride yet,’ she said. ‘That’s a scandal, if you ask me.’

‘I think I just did, didn’t I?’ I said.

She blushed and looked down. Then she eyed me and smiled.

‘That was a cheap shot, Karl Ove,’ she said.

‘Couldn’t resist it,’ I said.

‘In fact I was serious,’ she said. ‘Come up with me now. You can even have a ride yourself if you want.’

‘Not on your life. But I’m happy to watch.’

Half an hour later we walked up the hill, Gunvor carrying a saddle. We stopped in front of an enclosure, a Fjord pony trotted down to us, she stretched out a hand and said something, it lowered its muzzle to her hand, she patted it, fitted the saddle, swung herself up and soon she was riding to and fro across the green pasture in the full sunshine while I watched and took pictures. Sometimes I clapped to make her laugh, there was something forced about the situation, she actually wanted to show me this, her riding a horse, but at the same time she was uncomfortable, she wasn’t the type to show off, but it went well, it was a happy moment, she was beaming when she had finished and jumped down in front of me.

‘You should join a circus,’ I said and took a picture of her with the reins in one hand and a carrot in the other.

‘You should come with me to a gymkhana one day,’ she said. ‘With Icelandic ponies. Preferably in Iceland.’

‘Don’t let it go to your head,’ I said. ‘Be happy I came here.’

‘It’s just a start,’ she said. ‘When I’ve finished with you you’ll be a real hestamadur !’

‘What’s that? A horseman?’

‘Yes, more or less. It’s a term of distinction in Iceland.’

‘I don’t doubt it.’

‘I had an idea some time ago,’ she said. ‘I was thinking of doing my subsid. at the university in Rekyavik. If I did would you come with me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you? Seriously?’

‘Yes.’

In the evening she drove me to the town where I would be living for the next six weeks. We went first to the institution, which was situated just outside the town centre, and collected the key for my room, then we drove down to the hall of residence, if that was what it was, which stood on a slope a few hundred metres from the quay. A room with bare plaster, a shiny lino floor, a bed, a cupboard and a pine table, a kitchenette, a small toilet with a shower.

‘I think I’d better be getting back now,’ Gunvor said, standing in the doorway with the car keys in her hand.

‘You do that,’ I said. ‘See you next weekend.’

We kissed fleetingly, her car started up soon afterwards, the sound reverberated against the wall, disappeared down the hill and was gone.

After I had slipped the cover onto the duvet I had borrowed from them, put the sheet on the bed, my clothes in the cupboard and books on the desk, I went out for a walk, drifted down to the quay area, which apart from some youths’ cars parked by a snack bar and a little crowd sitting around the wooden tables was empty. They had long hair, denim jackets and denim waistcoats, one of them even wore wooden clogs, and they stared at me as I walked by. I stopped at the edge of the quay and looked down into the water, which, close to the harbour wall, was cold and black. Music blared from one of the cars, a door was open, I saw. ‘Forever Young’. I walked past them again, strolled to the little town centre, which apart from a large cooperative store and a Narvesen kiosk also had a small mall, a Chinese restaurant and a handful of shops along the main street. There wasn’t a soul around, but that wasn’t so surprising, it was Sunday, ten o’clock in the evening.

On the hill up to the building where I was staying I turned and stared across at my workplace-to-be, which from here was visible as dots of light in the forest beneath a steep mountainside. I could feel I was dreading starting, not so much because of the job itself as all the people I would meet, all the situations where the counter was on zero and I would have to make a good impression.

Freshly showered, I went out of the door next morning, down the hill, through the town centre, out the other side, across a river and up towards the forest, where there were around ten buildings among the trees. The sky was overcast, the air warm and still. A bus passed me and stopped by the turnaround at the end of the road, a line of people got off and made for the buildings. I followed them. Two of the patients, clearly with disabilities, stood watching us, which I could imagine them doing every morning. No one spoke; the sound of footsteps and people on the move, slowly making their way forward, surrounded by the stillness of the forest on both sides.