Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

I looked down at him. I disliked him intensely, everything about him, but especially his dog-like traits and his stupidity. He was the one losing out, not me. I was paid a wage, it made no difference to me whether we sat here or up a tree, I was ready for anything.

He met my eyes for an instant and when he looked back down he smiled.

It was the first time I had seen him smile.

He really thought he was punishing me. That it was him who had the whip hand.

I walked away and sat down on a kerbstone in the car park. There was something crab-like about the way he moved, the lightning-quick pendulum movement across the ground or floor. What I found confusing was that his face, if you could forget about the rest of him, was completely normal. A red-haired freckled man in his late forties. Had it been the case that he was only misshapen, that he was only deformed I wouldn’t have reacted in the same way. But the fact was his thoughts were obviously also deformed and misshapen. His soul was also crippled. What did that make him?

Oh, sweet Jesus.

Here he was, the lowest of the low, the weakest of the weak, and there was I, filled with contempt for him.

It was me who was the monster. But I couldn’t help myself. His stupidity infuriated me, sitting there, not wanting to go anywhere, thinking he was punishing me, the sweat running down his forehead and breathing in and out through his clenched yellow teeth.

The cloud cover had slowly and, almost imperceptibly, cleared. The sun shining on us now came from a pale blue sky. Vehicles in the car park were opened and started, they drove down the road, others arrived, were parked, engines were switched off, doors opened. Everyone saw us sitting there, no one said anything. I had no idea whether this was normal or not, whether it was just me or it happened to Ørnulf’s carers every day.

‘Up you get now and we’ll go,’ I said every so often. He didn’t react. If I walked towards him he would grab the wheelchair so tightly that I couldn’t lift him into it.

He sat there for an hour and a half. Then Ellen came along, pushing Are, she had given him some sunglasses to wear. They stopped beside us.

‘It’s lunchtime,’ she said. ‘Come on, Ørnulf, up into your chair!’

Ørnulf jumped up into the chair, sat with his hands in his lap. Was I supposed to push him now?

Yes, apparently I was.

Walking alongside Ellen, I pushed the wheelchair back. The air was warm, the sunshine boiling hot. I hated myself and the whole of my being.

Sleep came that night, empty and meaningless, for a long time I was merely a body with a slow-beating heart and slow respiration, which together with the blood circulating kept it alive, no more than that, until the dreams began to emerge, these flickerings of atmosphere and images that rule the brain when we are asleep and which for me were always the same: I was alone, I had my back to the wall, I was terrified or humiliated. There were people laughing at me, there were people after me, and above them all, in his many and various forms and guises, loomed dad. In my most common nightmares we were still living in Tybakken and he was in the house with me, but in the worst ones of all he came back while I was visiting mum and it turned out he lived there, because at mum’s I took liberties, I did as I wanted, and if there was one thing that enraged him it was that.

Every morning a feeling of humiliation sat deep in my body, that was how I started the day, and if it gradually dissolved as routines anchored me in another world, the real world, the feeling of being humiliated and debased was a continuous presence, and it took nothing, nothing, for it to flare up again and burn through me, yes, burn up the whole of my miserable self.

That morning I woke up half an hour before the alarm clock went off, dreaming I was dead, and the relief when I came to and discovered I wasn’t was so great that I let slip a chuckle.

I got out of bed, ate a piece of bread, dressed, locked the door and walked towards the institution again.

Ørnulf was sitting by the wall with his arms around his legs rocking to and fro when I opened the door. He sent me a fleeting glance, lowered his eyes again, utterly indifferent. In the duty room Ellen was with another girl of my age. She stood up and shook my hand. Her name was Irene, she said. She was tall and slim, had short blonde hair, blue eyes, high cheekbones. She was beautiful in that cool way I had always found myself drawn towards. Her presence there complicated everything, I knew that as soon as I sat down and poured myself a cup of coffee. I would be aware of her at all times, and therefore of myself, of how I appeared in her eyes.

She suggested that she attend to Ørnulf, Ellen attend to Are and I attend to Hans Olav. That meant I would have breakfast with him, relax a little afterwards, clean his ‘flat’ and then perhaps be with him in the ward until midday, unless he wanted to sleep instead. He seemed to sleep a lot.

I buttered some slices of bread for him, some for me, poured juice into two glasses and coffee into two cups, one of which was half milk, and carried everything in on a tray, placed it on his dining table, closed the door to the main ward, knocked on his bedroom door and went in.

He was lying in bed and pulling at his dick, which was flaccid.

‘Hi, Hans Olav,’ I said. ‘Time to get up. I’ve brought you some breakfast!’

He looked at me while continuing to wank.

‘I’ll wait a bit then,’ I said. ‘Get up when you’re ready!’

I closed the door and sat down on the chair at the table, which was positioned next to the entrance to a little balcony. It was grey and worn and the paint was peeling, and beneath it was the handball court; behind this, beyond the embankment, were several buildings identical to the one I was sitting in. Behind and between them pines and isolated deciduous trees.

Some residents came walking towards us and slightly behind them two women, each pushing a wheelchair. I got up and walked around. In the living room there was a Monet picture, the kind you can buy framed in big chain stores. The furniture was made of pine and consisted of a large red-patterned sofa, a low coffee table with turned feet and a bookcase. The shelves of the bookcase were empty apart from an ornamental dog, a small candlestick and a glass tea light. The room was decorated to look like home, but of course it didn’t.

I knocked on the bedroom door and opened it again. He was lying as before.

‘You’ve got to come now,’ I said. ‘I’ve got breakfast for you. Your coffee’s getting cold!’

I stood beside him.

‘Come on now, Hans Olav. You can do that afterwards.’

He waved me away with one hand.

I put a hand on his shoulder.

He screamed, a loud rasping scream, I took fright and stepped back.

But I couldn’t give in, I had to show him who was boss, if not I would have problems later, so I took his arm and tried to pull him up. While he tried to get rid of me with one hand he kept wanking with the other.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Shall I take your breakfast back? Is that what you want?’

He screamed again, an equally hoarse rasping scream, but swung his legs down, supported himself with his hands on the mattress and slowly and stiffly pushed himself into a standing position. As he stood up his trousers fell down. He pulled them up and started to walk out of the room, holding them up with one hand. He sat down on his chair and drank his coffee in one draught. I ate my bread and tried to act as if nothing had happened while my heart hammered behind my ribs and all my senses were focused on him.

With one sweeping movement of his hand he sent the glass of juice, the empty coffee cup and the plate of bread flying to the floor. It was all plastic, Irene had made sure of that, and didn’t break.