Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

I emptied the fridge of all the cheese, milk and juice, took out a pile of plates, butter knives, glasses and cups, put everything on the trolley and started to set the tables. As it was Sunday I boiled some eggs and lit a tea light on every table. A lean dark-haired man with trembling hands who resembled Ludwig Wittgenstein had already sat down. He looked straight ahead as though praying.

I put a plate in front of him.

‘I’m no bloody homo!’ he said.

I put out a cheese board and cartons of milk and juice. He didn’t say anything else; he didn’t seem to have noticed me at all. Mary came in and gave him a small cylinder of pills, poured juice into his glass, stood there until he had swallowed them, continued through the room. I took out the eggs, rinsed them in cold water, switched on the coffee machine, dampened a cloth and wiped the worktop and bread board. There was an empty car outside in the car park with its lights on. Åge came into the hall, he raised a hand in greeting, I waved back.

‘Well?’ he said, standing next to me after leaving his jacket and bag in the duty room. ‘Did you have a good Saturday night?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Nice and quiet. Went to bed early.’

‘You seem like a responsible guy,’ he said.

‘Maybe,’ I said.

‘I thought we could take a trip with them this morning,’ he said. ‘What do you say to that?’

‘OK with me,’ I said. ‘But I haven’t got a driving licence. Have you?’

‘Yes. Then we can get away from the biddies for a bit.’

This was an idiotic comment, but I didn’t want him to know I thought that and feel rejected, so I hung around before I went in to fetch the eggs and egg cups.

He requisitioned a car after breakfast, gathered four of the patients, then we got in and drove off. Through the centre of Bergen and up the other side, where he stopped on a large gravel parking area under the mountain, this was Lake Svartediket, he said, and it lived up to its name, the black dyke, at any rate now in late autumn, because there was barely any colour in the countryside. We piled out of the car and walked up a gentle mountain ridge, he talked non-stop, his voice was a whine and he rolled out a whole litany of complaints about the conditions at Sandviken Hospital. He was particularly dissatisfied with the atmosphere among the nurses on the ward, they were conspiratorial, he said, talked behind one another’s backs, he said, and I nodded and nodded while thinking, what an idiot this man is, won’t he shut up soon, what the hell has this got to do with me?

We stopped, looked around us, at a lake some distance away, as black as the blackest tarmac, and the mountain that rose almost vertically behind it, and then we walked back to the car. He drove on, turned off by Nesttun and went back. The whole time he played Bob Dylan on the stereo, and I thought, that fits, they’re crabby, both of them.

‘Ta-dah, three hours gone,’ he said as we drove uphill on the Sandviken side of town.

‘That’s true,’ I said.

‘It was nice talking to you,’ he said. ‘I can hear you understand what it’s all about.’

‘Thanks, and the same to you,’ I said.

What a prat.

Mary, on the other hand, I thought, was a different kettle of fish, and a tingle spread through my stomach. Yes, she was thirty years old, yes, she was a nurse, yes, I had only spoken five sentences to her, tops, but none of that was important because nothing else was going to happen. Did it matter that I was full of tension when I was in the same room as her?

As I was about to leave some hours later, Eva asked me if I was interested in any more work. I nodded, she put my name on the internal temporary staff list. At the bus stop, in the pouring rain, I totted up my monthly pay in my head. I went to bed as soon as I got home, slept deeply, was woken by the telephone, everything was pitch black around me and at first I thought I had slept through, but it was no more than half past five. It was Yngve, he was working at the hotel and wondered if I fancied going out when he had finished. I said yes, of course, and we agreed to meet at Café Opera just after ten.

I had promised him a song, I had one started, and after eating I put on the music and got down to work. Jone was in Stavanger and Espen must have been out, judging by the silence from below, so I ratcheted up the volume and enjoyed myself; when I composed lyrics for Yngve, I felt no restrictions, I just wrote.

An hour later it was done.

I took a shower, and because I was going out I masturbated, it was a way of reducing the risk of being unfaithful, I really didn’t want to end up where I had been before, at the mercy of my desires. I couldn’t trust myself, I could drink one beer, but if I had two I wanted more and if I had more anything could happen.

Standing there in the shower, dick in hand, the image of Hans Olav sprang to mind at regular intervals, him lying there and wanking in bed, it was as if I had been contaminated, and it removed all my desire. But I managed anyway. I stood in the shower for almost half an hour afterwards. Had the water not been cold I would have been there for another half an hour, there was no energy in me, no willpower, I wanted to stand there with the water pouring down me for all eternity.

I barely had the energy to dry myself, and to get dressed I had to pull myself together and mobilise all the strength I had. After I had finished I felt better. It would be good to have a drink, perhaps get a bit merry, have something quite different to think about.

With the darkness outside the windows like an ocean and the rooms sparsely illuminated I saw them as I had done when I was a small boy. Everything in them was somehow turned away from me, into itself. It was alien, essentially alien. Everything was, I thought, and stood by the window in an attempt to extend this perception and see if everything out there was also essentially alien, turned away from me, from us, the humans who wandered the earth.

Oh this was a scary perception. We were surrounded by death, we wandered in death, but we didn’t see it, on the contrary we adapted it to our own advantage and used death for our own purposes. We were islands of life. The trees and the vegetation were related to us, and the animals, but that was all. The rest was, if not hostile, then turned away.

I got dressed and went downstairs, death, out of the door, death, up the hill, death, through the underpass, death, down the road, death, along the fjord, death, and into the park, which wrapped itself around me with its living yet sleeping darkness.

I had a couple of beers on my own while waiting for Yngve, it felt good both because there were so few people around, there was a very special atmosphere with the darkness outside, the light inside and all the space between people, and because the alcohol was slowly having an effect on me, it was promising, I was on the way up and when I reached the top of the arc that was waiting, anything could happen.

Besides I had earned some money recently and my prospects for earning more were good.

‘Hello,’ said Yngve from behind me.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Great. Have you been here long?’

‘Half an hour. I’ve been enjoying the feeling of not working.’

‘That’s the best thing about working,’ he said. ‘It’s brilliant when you stop.’

He stowed his umbrella and small rucksack, went for a beer and sat down.

‘How is it? At Sandviken, I mean?’

‘Pretty awful really. But it brings in the money.’

‘I’ve worked there,’ he said, wiping the froth from his top lip.

‘Yes, you have.’

‘It’s different when you’ve done a few shifts and you’re used to everything.’

‘I’m sure it is,’ I said.