Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle: Book 5: Some Rain Must Fall (2016)trans. Dan BartlettThe fourteen

Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle: Book 5: Some Rain Must Fall (2016)trans. Dan BartlettThe fourteen years I lived in Bergen, from 1988 to 2002, are long gone, no traces of them are left, other than as incidents a few people might remember, a flash of recollection here, a flash of recollection there, and of course whatever exists in my own memory of that time. But there is surprisingly little. All that is left of the thousands of days I spent in that small, narrow-streeted, rain-shimmering Vestland town is a few events and lots of sentiments. I kept a diary, which I have since burned. I took some photos, of which twelve remain; they are in a little pile on the floor beside the desk, with all the letters I received during those days. I have flicked through them, read bits and pieces, and this has always depressed me, it was such a terrible time. I knew so little, had such ambitions, and achieved nothing. But what spirits I was in before I went! I had hitchhiked to Florence with Lars that summer, we stayed there for a few days, caught the train down to Brindisi, the weather was so hot it felt as though your head was on fire when you poked it through the open train window. Night in Brindisi, dark sky, white houses, heat as in a dream, big crowds in the parks, young people on mopeds everywhere, shouting and noise. We lined up by the gangway to the big ship going to Piraeus, with lots of others, almost all young and carrying backpacks like us. It was 120 degrees in Rhodes. One day in Athens, the most chaotic place I have ever been, and so insanely hot, then the boat to Paros and Antiparos, where we lay on the beach every day and got drunk every night. One evening we met some Norwegian girls, and while I was in the toilet Lars told them he was a writer and had been accepted to start at the Writing Academy in the autumn. They were discussing this when I returned. Lars just smiled at me. What was he up to? I knew he was prone to telling little fibs, but while I was standing there? I said nothing, decided to give him a wide berth in the future. We went to Athens together, I had run out of money, Lars was still rolling in it, he decided to fly back home the day after. We were sitting in a terrace restaurant, he was eating chicken, his chin glistening with fat, I was drinking a glass of water. The last thing I wanted to do was ask him for money, the only way I could get any out of him was if he asked me whether I wanted to borrow some. But he didn’t, so I went hungry. The next day he left for the airport, and I took a bus to the suburbs, got off near a motorway on-ramp and started hitchhiking. After no more than a few minutes a police car stopped, the officers couldn’t speak a word of English, but I got the message that hitchhiking wasn’t allowed there, so I caught a bus back to the city center, and with the last of my money bought a train ticket to Vienna, a loaf of bread, a big bottle of Coke, and a carton of cigarettes. -- source link

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