Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

‘I was drunk,’ I said.

‘The old, old story,’ she said. ‘And there was me thinking I had met my knight in shining armour.’

We stood side by side dressing in silence. I said goodbye when she left, she said nothing. But I wasn’t bothered about that.

It was ten o’clock, soon grandad would be arriving on the boat. I put the bed linen in the washing machine and showered at full speed. I was still drunk and so drained that I had to summon every ounce of willpower to do what was awaiting me.

As I was about to leave Jone came out of his flat.

‘Did you have company last night?’ he said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Why?’

He laughed.

‘We heard you, Karl Ove,’ he said. ‘Your voice and a girl’s voice. And it wasn’t Gunvor, was it?’

‘No, it wasn’t. I’ve been a fool. I don’t understand what got into me.’

I met his eyes.

‘Please do me a favour and don’t mention any of this to Gunvor. Or to anyone.’

‘Naturally,’ he said. ‘I’ve neither heard nor seen anything. You didn’t either, did you, Siren?’

The latter he shouted into his flat.

‘Is Siren here too?’

‘Yes, but it’s OK. This’ll stay between us. No worries.’

‘Thank you, Jone,’ I said. ‘Now I’ve got to be off though.’

I dragged myself down the stairs, speeded up when I was outside, nauseous and with an aching head, but that wasn’t a problem, what was a problem was that I was so tired I didn’t really have the energy for this. I just caught a bus at the Forum stop, jumped off at Fisketorget ten minutes later as the express boat from Sogn was slowly entering the harbour.

There was radiant sunshine, not a cloud in the sky, all the colours around me shone bright and clear.

I had to act as if nothing had happened. Whenever I thought about it I had to tell myself it hadn’t.

That actually it hadn’t happened.

It hadn’t happened.

I stood outside the ferry terminal with a throbbing head and watched the Sogn boat docking, thinking what happened last night hadn’t happened.

The gangway was lowered, a few passengers stood in the doorway impatiently waiting for the signal to disembark.

There it was, at the dockside.

They were starting to come ashore.

Nothing had happened.

I was innocent.

I hadn’t been unfaithful.

I hadn’t.

Passenger after passenger came down the gangway, most carrying a suitcase or two. Grandad was nowhere to be seen.

The wind made the flags flutter, the water ripple. The drone of the engine resounded against the rocks in the harbour, the exhaust fumes fluttered up the length of the white hull.

There he was. Small, wearing a dark suit and a black hat, walking slowly towards the gangway. He was holding a suitcase in one hand. The other was on the railing, and he shuffled ashore. I took a few steps forward.

‘Hi, Grandad,’ I said.

He stopped and looked up at me.

‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Do you think we can take a taxi?’

‘Certainly can,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask them to radio one.’

I walked over to a driver putting some luggage in the boot of his taxi. He said there would be lots of taxis along any minute and closed the boot lid.

‘We’ll have to wait a bit,’ I told grandad. ‘There’ll be more taxis coming soon.’

‘Well, we’ve got plenty of time,’ he said.

Grandad said nothing in the taxi. That was unlike him, but it must have had something to do with the unfamiliar surroundings, I supposed. I didn’t say anything either. As we passed Danmarksplass I avoided looking at the flat so as not to be reminded of what had happened, so as not to see how we had run for the door when the taxi stopped. It hadn’t happened, it didn’t exist, I thought, and we turned left, uphill towards Haukeland Hospital, grandad and me. Slowly he took his wallet out of his inside pocket and began to flick through the notes in it. I ought to have paid for him, but I had very little money and I let him pay.

The sun was reflected in all the windows above us as we got out of the taxi and crossed the area in front of the main entrance. It was dark inside after all the sunshine. We walked to the lift, I pressed a button, we rose up the building. The lift stopped, a woman came in, she had a tube attached to her arm, it led to a bag on a kind of stand with wheels. When she stood still and grabbed the rail with her other hand a cloud of blood appeared in the lower part of the tube.

I felt like vomiting and turned my back. Grandad stared down at the floor.

Was he afraid?

It was impossible to say. But all his authority had ebbed away. I had seen that once before, when he visited us in Tybakken many, many years ago. It must have been something to do with not being on home territory. In his own house he was another man, he radiated calm and security in a very different way.

‘Here we are,’ I said as the door opened.

We went out, I read the signs, we had to go left. There was a bell, I rang it, a nurse came and opened the door.

I stated his name, she nodded, shook hands with him, I said goodbye to him, promised I would visit him as soon as possible, he answered, good, and then he walked in side by side with her as the door in front of me slid to.

I was deeply ashamed. My life was unworthy, I was unworthy and that became so evident when I met grandad, in his situation, ill, at the hospital, getting towards the end of his life. He was over eighty years old and if he was lucky had ten years left, maybe fifteen, but also maybe only two or three, it was impossible to say.

He had a little tumour in his throat, for the moment it wasn’t life-threatening, but it had to be removed, that was why he was here.

Grandma was dead and soon grandad would die. They had toiled and striven all their lives, in the same way that their parents had toiled and striven all their lives. To eat, to keep their heads above water. It was the great struggle, they had fought it and now it was over or approaching the end. What I was doing, what I had done, it was unworthy, an evil deed, abject and utterly wretched. I had a girlfriend, she was wonderful, indeed fantastic, and then I had done this to her.

Why?

Oh, there was no reason. I didn’t want to do it. Not now, not when I knew what I was doing, now I didn’t want to do it.

I emerged in front of the hospital, stood on the grey tarmac looking around while I smoked. Nothing had happened, that was the point, nothing, absolutely nothing, I had been out with Yngve, gone home alone, slept, picked up grandad.

If I was going to meet Gunvor, if I was going to be able to look her in the eye, I had to stick to this version of events.

Nothing had happened.

An hour later I was sitting in the third-floor café in the Sundt department store drinking coffee while watching the people in Torgalmenningen. This was where I usually sat when I was alone in town, here, surrounded by older Bergen men and women, no one wanted anything from me, I was completely at peace and even though there was a vaguely cloying odour in the air, which the aroma of the cakes and pastries could not dull, in a strange way I liked being there. Sitting and reading, writing in my notebook if I had an idea, every now and then looking down at all the people moving to and fro, the pigeons living their lives in their shadow, with similar movements, just on an enormously smaller scale, always after food that had been dropped or thrown into a refuse bin. An ice cream, a bit of a hot dog, half a roll. Often they were chased by children, then they strutted off in the jerky way they did, in a semicircle, and if that wasn’t enough they took to the air and glided for five or six metres before landing and resuming their search for food.