Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

Something else at Student Radio which I hadn’t seen before was the Internet. This was also addictive. Moving from one page to the next, reading Canadian newspapers, looking at traffic reports in Los Angeles or centrefold models in Playboy, which were so endlessly slow to appear, first the lower part of the picture, which could be anything at all, then it rose gradually, the picture filled the frame like water in a glass, there were the thighs, there, oh, there was … shit, was she wearing panties ? … before the breasts, shoulders, neck and face appeared on the computer screen in the empty Student Radio office at midnight. Rachel and me. Toni and me. Susy and me. Hustler, did they have their own website as well? Rilke, had anyone written about his Duino Elegies ? Were there any pictures of Tromøya?

After Christmas the outgoing conscientious objector returned, and he went through all the jobs with me. He was amazed to discover that I didn’t know how to edit, didn’t know the first thing about a broadcast technician’s work, in fact, didn’t know anything. On the radio in Kristiansand I’d had my own technician, all I needed to do was speak into the microphone, either outside, when I was interviewing someone, or in the studio, when I had my programme. The technician took care of everything else. Here it was different. He was also amazed to see I wrote down everything I was going to say, even the simplest things like ‘Hi, welcome to Student Radio,’ and I didn’t ad lib the way he and all the others working there did. But I learned fast. In the holidays the conscientious objector ran the programmes, then I had to be able to work solo, that is, switch on the transmitter, play the radio jingle, the programme jingle, introduce the programme if I decided to play a repeat or sit there and play records and chat, perhaps ring someone up and interview them on air, which I enjoyed more and more, it gave me a real kick to do live radio alone, and the more complicated the schedule the bigger the kick. But usually I didn’t run programmes apart from a short student news bulletin that was broadcast every day, which I spent all morning collating, sifting through the newspapers to find anything student-related, writing and recording. In addition, I compiled items for the culture programmes, interviewed writers or taped book reviews, and every day I thanked my lucky stars I had washed up here and not, for example, at Sandviken or some other institution. Olav Angell had translated Ulysses, so I rang to ask him about his work. Fredrik Wandrup slated Ole Robert Sunde in a review, I rang Wandrup first, then Sunde, added some comments of my own and pieced it all together. Dag Solstad was in town, so I went down to his hotel and interviewed him. This was the first time I had worked on something I really liked. And I was not the only one who did, there was such an enthusiastic atmosphere, yet laid-back, this wasn’t a place for students wanting to further their careers; on the contrary, up in the studio and down in the offices people hung around all day doing nothing special, drinking coffee, smoking, chatting, maybe flicking through the new CDs that had arrived or browsing through papers or magazines. I said nothing for the first few weeks, nodded to anyone who came, worked as hard as I could, if I had fifteen minutes free I would key in a few record titles on the computer, if I had to go to the Post Office I would run up and down the stairs. At the meetings between managers I wouldn’t say a word, however, I wrote down everything they said. But gradually I began to recognise the various faces and even remember their names. As I was the only person sitting there the whole time, everyone knew who I was and gradually I began to exchange a few words with them, perhaps even crack a joke. During one meeting Gaute suddenly eyeballed me and asked, what do you think, Karl Ove? To my astonishment, I noticed that everyone was staring at me expectantly, as though they really believed I had something to say.

At the beginning of every semester new assistants were recruited. Gaute asked me to make a flyer, it was the first real task I had been given and I was concerned I wouldn’t perform it well enough, worked all evening on just the title, which ended up as Free Studio Loan, and sacrificed my favourite picture in the Dante edition I had, with the Doré illustrations, cut out the last picture, where they see God, the last and the first light, and stuck it on a sheet of paper, which I copied two hundred times and for the whole of the next day I stood handing them out in the Student Centre concourse, which was swarming with new students. At the introductory meeting a few days later the room was jam-packed. Most sat or stood quietly listening to Gaute, but some also asked questions and among them I noticed a young guy with a shaven head and Adorno glasses, not least because he had a copy of Ole Robert Sunde’s novel Of Course She Had to Ring on the desk in front of him. This was a statement and a signal, a code for the initiated, of whom there were not many, and therefore particularly significant. He read Sunde, he had to be a writer himself.

Some days after the meeting the interviews began. I sat alongside Gaute in a conference room asking successive candidates questions and jotting down brief notes. It was a peculiar role because I knew nothing, certainly no more than they did, yet they had to sit nicely and squirm in the chair and answer as well as they could, which no one demanded of me. Afterwards we went through the list of names, discussed our impressions, and that was strange too, how much I enjoyed picking and choosing. Three of the girls had been especially attractive, one sat looking at us through anxious blue eyes under black mascaraed eyelashes, with high cheekbones, long blonde hair, probably about twenty, she had to be in. Another had her dark hair collected in a long plait, kept moving her lips, perhaps the most beautiful mouth I had ever seen, sat with a straight back and her hands resting in her lap, elegant in every way, and when she said she played the drums, I was sold, she had to be in. Gaute laughed and added that she did in fact have experience of local radio as well and was an obvious choice anyway. The Sunde guy had to be in, the conventional Business School guy as well so that it wasn’t just arts students, and definitely the girl who was so knowledgeable about classical music …

After a couple of weeks’ training the various departments were in place. I was beginning to get to grips with the job and was no longer nervous as I set foot on the steps up to the offices. Now it was the opposite, I looked forward to going to work. Student Radio was the first time I had felt part of my own group in Bergen, hitherto everything in my life had gone through Yngve or Gunvor, that didn’t happen here and I was pleased, although it also created problems. It felt as if something new had started in my life and it had done so outside Gunvor and me, outside our relationship, which was as before, we had been together for close on four years, we were best friends, we knew everything about each other apart from the terrible things I had done to her, which were still there, inside me, not in her, she knew nothing, she saw me as a good person. But when she came to visit me at Student Radio, it felt wrong, I was uncomfortable, it was as though I were cheating on her merely by being there. I realised it was over, but I was unable to finish it, I didn’t want to hurt her, didn’t want to disappoint her, didn’t want to ruin something for her. Furthermore, our lives were interwoven in other ways, at home she was one of the family, especially for mum, who had become attached to her, and for Yngve, who was very fond of her, but also for those not so close, such as mum’s brother and sisters, and the same was true on Gunvor’s side. As if that weren’t enough she had got to know Ingvild last year, the two of them were friends now, and Gunvor moved into the collective where Ingvild had lived, the one with precursors going right back to Fløgstad’s Bergen period, the one which in recent years had been dominated by Arendalers, in other words, Yngve’s friends.