Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

A large brick building came first, this was the administration block where I had picked up my key the previous evening. No one went there. We fanned out, heading for the other blocks in a circle around it. Lawns, dry and discoloured, had been laid between narrow tarmac paths. A tarmac handball court nestled in a hollow surrounded by embankments. Scattered here and there were islets of trees, once part of the forest around them, which now began a few metres behind the various buildings.

I had no idea what lay in store for me and was nervous as I entered. I had to report to Department E, the block to the left, and it was, I soon established, like the other constructions, long, made of brick and painted white, two storeys. I would be working on the top one. The entrance was at the back, by a small semi-full car park. I opened the door and went down a corridor with stairs at the end. I recognised the smell, it was the same as at Eg Hospital, where I had worked three years before, and the same as at the school I had attended in the 1970s, a mixture of green soap and a faint odour reminiscent of cellars and sewage, something dark and damp and subterranean in all the assiduously maintained hygiene.

There was a bench by the wall, above it a line of hooks from which hung jackets and overall trousers. Two wheelchairs stood by the wall opposite, beneath small narrow windows that had been positioned at the top of the wall, 1950s-like.

I went up the stairs, opened the door and came into a long corridor with doors either side. By the wall sat a man in a chair staring at me with fierce eyes. His legs were stumps, cut off at the knee, from what I could see. Otherwise he looked normal. High forehead, red hair, white freckled skin, powerful upper body. He was wearing red jogging trousers and a white T-shirt with a Dole bananas logo.

‘Hi!’ I said.

The look he sent me was full of contempt. He put his hands on the floor, swung his lower body down between them, fell forward with his hands, swung his lower body between them again and in this unusual but deft way moved off down the corridor.

A woman stuck her head out of the nearest door. She was probably in her mid-thirties, had dark curly hair and a slight overbite.

‘Karl Ove?’ she said.

‘Yes. Hello,’ I said.

‘Marianne,’ she said. ‘Come in here. This is where we hang out!’

I went into the little room, where a man with a moustache, a perm, colourful baggy pants and a singlet was sitting with a cup of coffee in front of him, next to a slumped podgy woman with glasses and slightly messy blonde hair, wearing jeans and a denim jacket, twenty-five, more or less, also with a cup of coffee in front of her.

‘Hi,’ said the man. ‘My name’s Ove. This is Ellen, and that’s Marianne. Marianne’s finished her shift now, so it’ll be us three today.’

The woman called Ellen lit a cigarette.

I took off my jacket, rummaged for my tobacco pouch and sat down.

‘Have you worked here before?’ Ove said.

I shook my head.

‘Just copy what we do and you won’t go far wrong,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that right, Marianne?’

He looked up at her — she was putting on her jacket — and winked. She smiled.

‘Have a nice day,’ she said and went out of the door.

‘When you’ve had a smoke we’ll start,’ Ove said.

The man without any legs came into the room, sat up at the table like a dog and stared at Ove.

‘This is Ørnulf,’ he told me. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee, Ørnulf?’

Ørnulf didn’t answer; he sucked in air through clenched teeth. His eyes glowed. He smelled awful. I lit a cigarette and leaned back against the sofa. Ove placed a cup under the Thermos spout and filled it in two pumps, added milk and set the cup in front of Ørnulf, who grabbed it with both hands and drained it in three long gulps. He then put it down on the table, gave a wheezy belch, picked it up again and held it in front of Ove imploringly.

‘No, no, you’ve already had two,’ Ove said. ‘Now you’ll have to wait for breakfast.’

Ørnulf put down the cup and swung out of the room to the wall on the opposite side of the corridor, where he sat with his hands under his stumps, staring in at us.

Couldn’t he talk? Or didn’t he want to?

‘Breakfast’s at eight,’ Ove said. ‘Then four of the residents go to the workshop. Three are left here. One of them, Are, needs care. The other two manage fine, but you have to keep an eye on them. The crew in the workshop come back here for lunch. Anything else you need to know we’ll deal with as it crops up. OK?’

‘Sounds good,’ I said.

He took a green book from the table beside him, opened it, and from the lined pages and compact writing I assumed this was where they logged their reports.

‘You can have a flip through this later,’ he said, looking at me.

I nodded.

He didn’t like me, I had realised at once. What he said was well-meaning enough, but the friendliness in his voice was somehow forced, and something about his attitude — I didn’t know whether it was his eyes or his body language — told me he had already formed an opinion about me and it didn’t do me any favours.

Ellen, for her part, was indifferent.

Could she be a lesbian?

‘Well,’ Ove said, getting to his feet. ‘We’d better go and wake them up. Come along so that you can meet the residents.’

I followed him along the corridor. At the end on the left was the kitchen, on the right a little dining room, and inside it a door to an office where half the wall was glass.

Ørnulf, who had followed us, stopped outside the swing doors to the kitchen.

‘He always sits there until the food comes,’ Ove said. ‘Don’t you, Ørnulf?’

Ørnulf grimaced, bared his teeth and sucked in deeply, and a kind of eerie hissing sound issued.

Was that a yes?

‘Ørnulf sits in his wheelchair when we go out. But inside he can move around really well. Can’t you, Ørnulf?’ Ove said, without looking at him. ‘You see the swing door to the kitchen? It’s important we keep it closed when we’re not in there ourselves. Have you got that?’

‘Right,’ I said.

‘So let’s start with Hans Olav. He’s got his own little ward to himself in here,’ he said, opening the door at the end of the corridor. ‘He can be a bit unruly at times, if I can put it like that, that’s why he lives on his own. See? But he’s a good boy.’

Inside there was a little hall with a dining table, and in the continuing corridor three doors. The closest was open, and at the back of the room there was a man, in his forties maybe, lying in bed and wanking. His dick was fat and limp. Ove stopped in the doorway.

‘Hi, Hans Olav,’ he said.

‘Wan!’ Hans Olav said.

‘No, no wanking now,’ Ove said. ‘You have to get up and put on your clothes for breakfast.’

‘Wan, wan,’ said Hans Olav. He had a big flattish nose, deep furrows down his cheeks and he was almost completely bald. His head was round, his eyes were brown, and I gave a start when I saw him, he was the spitting image of pictures I had seen of Picasso in his later years.

‘This is Karl Ove,’ Ove said. ‘He’s going to be working here this summer.’

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Shall I help you up?’ Ove said.

Without waiting for an answer, he went over to Hans Ove, grasped one arm with both hands and hauled him into a sitting position. Annoyed, Hans Olav hit out, not aggressively, more the way you swat a fly, slowly struggled to his feet, grabbed his trousers and pulled them on. He was taller than me, almost two metres, but seemed weak and unable to stand.

‘Hans Olav has breakfast here with a member of the staff,’ Ove said. ‘I’ll do it today, but tomorrow it’s your turn.’