Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

‘What are you doing?’ I said. ‘You mustn’t do that!’

He stood up. Then he grabbed hold of the table, hoisted it onto the two legs furthest from him and pushed it over.

I didn’t know what to do. I was terrified of him, perhaps he had noticed. Fortunately he left the room at once, for the adjacent bathroom, and I set the table back and was picking up the food when the ward door opened and Irene poked her head round.

‘Having problems?’ she said.

‘He tipped up the table,’ I said.

‘Do you want me to take over?’

‘No,’ I said, although that was exactly what I wanted. ‘It’ll be fine. We just have to get used to each other. It probably takes a bit of time.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘If you need anything we’re here. He isn’t dangerous, you know. Imagine he’s really a one-year-old!’

She closed the door, I put the last slice of bread on his plate and went to find something to wipe up the pool of yellow juice.

He was standing by the little window in the bathroom and peering out when I went in.

‘I’ll just have to get something to wipe up with,’ I said. Suddenly he wasn’t aware of me, but I didn’t care as long as he left me in peace.

I had to wash the floors in the morning anyway, might as well do it now, I thought. I ran water into a red bucket, added a dash of green soap, took a cloth and scrubbing brush, set about cleaning the living room, then the hall, the bedroom and the little kitchenette. While I was busy doing this he approached, stood a few metres away and watched me. After a while he came closer and carefully poked the bucket with his foot, as if to tell me he could kick it over if he wanted.

He laughed his gurgling laugh and was suddenly overcome with a sense of purpose, he quickly left the room laughing out loud as he fidgeted beneath his chin. When I went into his room with the bucket and brush he was lying on his bed and wanking again, with an equally flaccid dick.

‘Wan! Wan!’ he said.

I ignored him, finished cleaning up, hung the cloth over the rim of the bucket and slumped down in the living room. I was tired and closed my eyes, ready to jump to my feet if a door went or a sound came from him.

I sat there for half an hour and slept. When I woke the food had gone and Hans Olav was back in bed.

I stood in front of the window in the living room looking out. There was a small mountain crag, bare in some places, covered with grass and bushes and thickets in others. The forest stretched up high behind.

From the other room the bed creaked, I heard him mumbling something to himself and I went in. He was on the floor, still holding his trousers up with his hand, as he had done all morning.

‘Shall we go for a walk, Hans Olav?’ I said. ‘A bit of fresh air would be good, wouldn’t it?’

He looked at me.

‘Shall I do up your trousers?’

No reaction.

I walked over to him, leaned forward and held the waistband of his trousers, he at once poked two fingers at my face, one went in my eye, it swelled with pain.

‘Hey! Cut that out!’ I shouted.

At first I could see nothing, only darkness filled with luminous dots, but after a few seconds my eye started working again. I stood blinking, he went into the hall and banged on the door to the main ward with both fists.

He obviously didn’t like me and now he wanted to be with the others or have me changed. But it takes two to tango.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s go out. Get your jacket on and we’ll go.’

He continued banging. Then he turned to me, but instead of going for me, which I had expected, and perhaps trying to poke out my eyes again, he walked around me and into his bedroom.

‘Now you come here!’ I shouted. ‘Come on. Do you hear me!’

He lay down on the bed, but his eyes seemed nervous and I took his hand and pulled as hard as I could to get him on his feet. Although he didn’t offer any resistance, in fact he tried to meet me halfway, he slid off the bed to the floor, slowly, like a boat listing.

This was hell.

He lay on his side with tears in his eyes. He tried to push himself up with one hand, all I could do was watch, hoping no one would choose this precise moment to come in. Once he was in a sitting position I took his hands again and he, no longer struggling, pushed off with his legs and was finally upright.

He looked at me and hissed, not unlike a cat, and then he slunk into the hall. I went and sat down on the chair in the living room. Listened to him shuffling around.

It was ten minutes to nine.

Something fell to the floor, I hurried out, it was the plate and cup. He was standing and pissing in the corner.

I said nothing, fetched the cloth and bucket, put on gloves and wiped it up. He seemed less stressed, walked to and fro around me as I worked.

‘Shall we go for a walk?’ I said.

He went over and got his jacket, stuffed his feet into his large shoes. He couldn’t manage the zip, I moved towards him, he twisted away, opened the door to the corridor and with small cautious tripping movements walked down the steps and waited for me by the front door. I opened it and we were outside. He stayed ten strides ahead of me as we walked. After a few minutes he turned, I tried to make him go on, but he said no! no! and we walked back up to his flat, he lay down on the bed and started wanking. I sat down on the chair. Not even a third of the day had gone.

Life in the institution was not only different from outside, time was too. Standing by the window and looking into the forest, I knew that if I had been there, sitting under a tree and looking over at these buildings, time would have been barely noticeable, I would have drifted as lightly through the day as the clouds across the sky, whereas inside the institution and looking out, time was much heavier, almost clay-like, as though here it met obstacles and was always being forced to take detours, like a river traversing a plain before joining the sea, one might imagine, winding its way in countless labyrinthine meandering bends.

When my shift was finally over it always came as a surprise and was an experience I used to help me endure the strain: everything passes. On the way to work in the morning I dreaded it, but now it was over and I was free again, it was as though the interim didn’t exist, had never existed, it was quite palpably gone.

It was no surprise that time went more slowly there, it was a place where nothing was supposed to happen, where no progress was possible, you noticed that as soon as you entered, this was storage, a warehouse for unwanted people, and the notion was so awful that you did whatever was in your power to act as if this were not the case. The residents had their own rooms with their own possessions, which were identical to the rooms and possessions of people outside, they had meals together with their ward colleagues and carers, who were supposed to represent their family, and every day they went to ‘work’. What they created there had no intrinsic value, the value lay in the fact that the work gave their lives a semblance of the meaning lives outside had. And it was the same with everything in their world. What they were surrounded by looked like something, and it was in that outward semblance that its value lay. This became clearest to me on the first Friday when I was doing the afternoon shift and the whole ward was going to a ‘disco’ after dinner. It was to take place in a function hall in the district, a large room with tables and chairs in one half and a dance floor in the other. The lighting was muted, the windows were covered with curtains. Pop music blared out of the speakers, some Down’s syndrome residents moved back and forth on the dance floor. The place was full of wheelchairs, gaping mouths, rolling eyes. The residents of my ward sat around a table by the windows, each with a Coke. I sat beside Ellen, who every so often sent me tired looks. Egil was wearing a creased white shirt with ketchup stains on the front. His hair stood on end. He stared up at the ceiling as his mouth moved. Håkon sipped cautiously at his soft drink. Alf stared sombrely down at the table. Next to us a carer stood up and pushed a resident in a wheelchair onto the floor, jiggled him to and fro in time to the music. His mouth hung open and emitted hollow happy noises as he drooled. The other carers at the tables were smoking and chatting about their own lives as far as I could see. Now and then they shouted, no, don’t do that, or, sit still, or, you know what we say about that. Hans Olav was standing in the corner with his Picasso face, screwing and unscrewing a wall lamp. This was deeply disturbing. Disturbing because all these misshapen bodies and crippled souls which had been trundled into the discotheque — the most important room for youth culture, created for dreams about romantic love, charged with the future and potential — didn’t experience any dreams, any yearnings, any electric charges, all they saw was hot dogs and soft drinks. And the music, which was meant to fill the body with joy and happiness, was only noise. When they danced it was just movements, and when they smiled it was because it was a semblance, now they were doing what normal people did. Everything was like the world as it was, but all the meaning had been stripped from it, and what was left was a parody, a travesty, grotesque and painful.