Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

The mist drifted in great sheets above the dense dark green bordering on black spruce trees on the hillside across the mere. It was nine o’clock, mum asked if I would mind scattering spruce sprigs over the road by the gate. This was an old custom. I went down in the rain, laid sprigs over the gravel, looked up at the house, the windows aglow in the grey morning. I cried. Not because of death and its coldness but for life and its warmth. I cried because of the goodness that existed. I cried because of the light in the mist, I cried because of the living people in the dead man’s house and I thought, I can’t waste my life.

Jon Olav was supposed to give a speech in church, he was crying so much he couldn’t get out a word. He tried, failed, whenever he opened his mouth to speak another sob emerged. When the service was over we carried the coffin through the church out to the waiting hearse. We joined mum, drove slowly through the village, past the house, to the cemetery, which was situated on a hill above the fjord, where the grave stood open in readiness. We carried the coffin over. We sang, we sounded so strangely fragile in the enormous space. Beneath us lay the fjord, grey and heavy; on the opposite side the mountain plunged vertically into the sea, wrapped in mist and cloud. The priest threw earth onto the coffin. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. For a moment mum stood alone in front of the open grave. She bowed her head, a fresh wave of sobs went through me, the last, for as we left to go to the community centre, where hot meat broth was being served, the mood lightened, it was over, now life would continue without him.

I travelled back to Hustad, started ringing around the places which employed conscientious objectors in Bergen, got an immediate nibble at Student Radio as I had two years’ experience of local radio, and after a few days of Christmas holiday at home with mum in Jølster I went up to the Student Centre for my first day as a conchie. The door to the open-plan office on the first floor, where Student Radio, Studvest and many other student organisations were located, was locked, so I waited downstairs for the manager to arrive, paced back and forth, reading the notices, looking at books Studia had displayed, sat down and lit a cigarette, nearly an hour passed, what was this, had I got the wrong day?

An hour and a half after the time we had arranged he appeared.

Was that him ?

A fat long-haired guy with glasses approached. He was wearing a denim jacket, jeans and a pair of the ankle-high yellow and black football boots with rubber studs we wore when we were small, before football became organised and we had proper boots. One night three years ago I had been boozing and smoking hash in his bedsit. It felt as if the gates of hell had opened. How could he be the manager?

‘Hi, hi,’ he said.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Are you the manager of Student Radio?’

‘Yeah, baby.’

‘I was at a party at yours, do you remember? Long time ago.’

‘Yeah, you were well out of it, weren’t you.’

‘No, I wasn’t. But you were!’

He laughed, a low chuckle. Laughter was an integral part of him, it seemed to flow around him, he laughed at nearly everything that was said.

Then he became serious again.

‘Something happened that night. We realised we’d gone too far. I think we went out on the town a couple more nights and then packed it in. Per Roger travelled abroad, and when he came back he’d cleaned up his act. And me, well, you can see what I’m doing! Come on and I’ll show you around,’ he said, jangling a big bunch of keys.

We went up the stairs and into the offices. Student Radio’s rooms were at the back. Three desks, a corner sofa, some cabinets separating their section from the next.

‘Here’s your desk,’ he said, nodding to the closest. ‘I sit over there. And the people working here share the last one. Most of the work takes place in the studio. Have you been there?’

I shook my head.

‘That’s where you’ll be most of the time. Your main task is to put the record archives onto the computer.’

‘Really?’ I said.

He laughed.

‘Archiving broadcasting schedules. The so-called TONO schedules. Archiving reels. Maybe playing them onto DAT if you’ve got time. Making coffee. Buying coffee. Let’s see what else. Going to the Post Office. We get a hell of a lot of post. Ha ha ha! Any other tedious chores we have? Cleaning the studio. Hoovering. Copying flyers. Copying documentation for meetings. We’re so happy to have a conchie it’s not true. You’re the lowest on the ladder. You’ll be our dog! That’s your job description. You’ll be our dog and at my beck and call! I’m in charge here.’

He smiled, I smiled back.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Where shall I start?’

‘Everything starts with coffee. Put a pot on, can you.’

I did, fetched water from the downstairs toilet, sprinkled coffee into the filter and switched on the machine while Gaute sat working in front of his computer. Apart from us two there wasn’t a soul around. I sat down at my desk, opened the drawers to see what was in them, went for a walk to see what was on the shelves, looked out of the windows, up at the park, the black branches stretching towards the sky. When the coffee was ready I poured out two cups and put one on his desk.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘What are you working on?’ I said.

‘Wolfenstein,’ he said.

‘Wolfenstein?’

‘Yes. It all takes place in Hitler’s bunker. The idea is to move up the floors. The old man’s on the top floor. But it’s not so easy because there are Nazis everywhere. The higher you go the harder it is.’

I stood behind him.

There was a machine-gun barrel at the bottom of the screen moving forward along an empty corridor. At the end there was a lift. Suddenly the door opened and some white-clad soldiers burst out.

‘Oh dear,’ Gaute said.

They saw ‘him’, there was an exchange of fire, they were around a corner, a couple of them fell to the ground, but then another lift-load of soldiers appeared, ‘Gaute’ was hit and the screen filled with blood.

It was creepy because you saw the corridors and soldiers as if through a pair of eyes, and when the blood came I thought, this is what it is like to die, your eyes filled with blood, game over.

‘I’ve only played a couple of times,’ he said. ‘You’ve got the game on your computer as well. And Doom.’

He stretched.

‘Shall we call it a day then?’

I looked at him.

‘I’m supposed to work eight hours a day. They’re very strict about that. I have to fill in forms and stuff, which you have to sign.’

‘Who are “they”? I can’t see any “they” here.’

‘Fine by me,’ I said. ‘But perhaps we should drink up our coffee first, eh?’

It soon emerged that, as far as Gaute was concerned, appearances deceived. I thought he was a slacker, a skiver and a shirker, but this was not the case. He was ambitious, had ideas in all sorts of areas for how radio could be improved, and during the time I was on national service there he reorganised the whole radio and made it more professional, from the management side to the music profile, and updated the technical equipment so that all the tapes I edited during the first months I worked there, when all the programmes were analogue, had gone by the time I finished after sixteen months, and everything was digital. Wolf was only played after working hours, and then I became obsessed, often leaving the office at two in the morning, having played non-stop from four in the afternoon, sometimes I was still playing when the others came in to do the morning programme. We had a football-manager game as well, which was perhaps even more addictive, I spent all my free time buying and selling players and playing match after match until my team had won the European Cup, which could take several weeks. After a twelve-hour stint my head was ice cold and utterly empty, this was systematised meaninglessness, but I couldn’t stop myself, I was hooked.