Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

Could I cut the bonds to all this?

No.

I was too weak.

So I lived a kind of double life, I erected a wall between the various parts and hoped everything would resolve itself.

The guy who had brought Ole Robert Sunde’s novel to the first meeting was called Tore, he came from Stavanger and brought a wealth of ideas to department sessions. One morning when he was in the office we got into conversation. I asked him how it was going with Sunde, he said he had thrown it at the wall in frustration and was writing an essay about precisely that right now, which he would try to sell to a journal.

‘Have you read it?’ he said.

‘Not that one. I only got through the first twenty pages. But I read the one about O, you know, his Odysseus-style novel. I don’t remember what it was called.’

‘Contrapuntal,’ he said.

‘Yes, that’s the one. I did my first-year assignment on Joyce, though. So I’m interested in that tradition.’

‘I’m more of a Beckett man myself.’

‘You like the secretary better than the master?’

He smiled.

‘Doesn’t sound so good when you put it like that. But Beckett’s bloody good.’

‘Yes, he is.’

‘In fact, I’m writing a sort of Beckett novel at the moment. Well, that may be overstating it. It has elements of the absurd anyway.’

‘You’re writing a novel?’

‘Yes. I’m going to send it in this spring. Then I’ll get the usual rejections. Interesting blah blah blah, but I regret to say blah blah blah. I’ve got sixteen of them at home.’

‘ Sixteen rejections?’

‘Yes.’

‘How old are you actually?’

‘Twenty. And you?’

‘Twenty-four. I’ve had only one rejection.’

‘So you write too?’

‘Yes … or no, not really.’

‘Do you write or don’t you?’

‘It depends what you mean …’

‘Mean? Surely, either you write or you don’t? There’s no halfway house, to my knowledge.’

‘Then I do. But it’s not very good.’

‘Have you had anything published?’

‘A short story. In Vinduet ’s debutant issue. Have you?’

He shook his head.

‘That’s sixteen — nil to me in rejections, and one — nil to you in acceptances.’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘The Vinduet acceptance might sound good, but the short story isn’t.’

‘We’ve spoken for three minutes and you’ve already told me twice something’s not very good. I detect a pattern. A personality trait.’

‘I’m telling you the truth. It’s got nothing to do with my personality. It’s an objective fact.’

‘Right,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘I’ve got a lecture now. But what about a beer afterwards? When do you finish?’

‘Half past four.’

‘Five at Café Opera?’

‘OK, why not?’ I said, and watched him go down the aisle between the partitions and disappear down the stairs.

He was sitting alone at a table on the ground floor when I went into Café Opera later that afternoon. I got myself a beer and joined him.

‘I’ve read your short story. Déjà Vu, ’ he said with a smile. ‘It’s good.’

‘You’ve read it. Today? Where did you get a copy?’

‘It was in the university library. Influenced by Borges, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Yes. Or Cortàzar.’

I looked at him and smiled. He was the type who didn’t leave a stone unturned. Would I have gone to the trouble of checking out the library for a short story written by a guy I didn’t know before meeting him? Not on your life. But Tore did.

He was short of stature but possessed immense energy, on the one hand there was something open and receptive about him — he was the kind of guy who would look around when he laughed and drop comments all over the place, completely unconcerned by how he might be interpreted — and on the other there was something closed about him, which could manifest itself after immersing himself in one of his frequent bouts of sociability, then he might suddenly go absent, his eyes were totally vacant, and he heard nothing of what was being said, it lasted a few seconds, that was all, and wasn’t very obvious, but I noticed it at our very first editorial session, and it sparked an interest.

‘Have you lived here long?’ he said, looking at me over the top of his beer glass, from which he took sips.

‘Four and a half years,’ I said. ‘And you?’

‘Only six months.’

‘What are you studying?’

‘Literature. I think I’ll take philosophy afterwards. And you?’

‘I’ve got a subsid in literature. But that’s a long time ago. My life has stagnated for three years now. Nothing’s happened.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ he said.

It was as though he didn’t want to know that things could go badly. But I said nothing, drank and looked out of the window, at the streets, cold and grey, passers-by in coats and cloaks, the occasional puffy bubble jacket.

I looked at him again. He was smiling, and it was as though the smile and the ensuing laughter lifted him and pushed him forward.

‘I played in a band in Stavanger,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows everyone there. One of the guys I met while I was at gymnas runs his own record company and has a little shop in Stavanger. His name’s Jone. And he came to Bergen to study for a year. He told me he shared a flat with a total nutter. He played the drums and read books and was going to be a writer. That was all he did. His place was overflowing with books, he was completely possessed. You know, Dostoevsky novels in the kitchen cupboard and Sandemose’s collected works in the toilet. And he played in a band. A student band.’

‘What was it called?’

‘Kafkatrakterne,’ he said. ‘Do you know them?’

I nodded.

‘Yes, I played the drums with them.’

He jerked back in his chair and stared at me.

‘Was that you ? You lived with Jone?’

‘Yes. I thought that was why you were telling me. You’d realised it was me.’

‘No, no, not at all.’

He went quiet.

‘What are the odds on that?’ he said eventually. ‘On the guy being you?’

‘Pretty good,’ I said. ‘Bergen’s a small town. You’ll find out soon enough. But say hi to Jone and tell him not to exaggerate. Everything was very normal there. I did read, that’s true, but the flat wasn’t exactly overflowing with books. Though it might have seemed like that to Jone as he isn’t a very literary person.’

‘But it’s true you had rats there?’

‘Yes.’

I laughed. What sort of picture had Jone drawn? I could see him in his record shop encircled by gymnas students: In Bergen, lads, it’s the Wild West.

But I hadn’t even read much. Skimmed a few books, yes, but I hadn’t read them in any depth, as Espen had, for example. I had rarely played the drums. And the rats … yes, there had been two. One I caught in a trap and one I poisoned which lay rotting in the wall behind the stairs.

‘Do Kafkatrakterne still play then?’ Tore said.

I shook my head.

‘Do you?’

‘No, not here.’

We sat in Café Opera for two hours. We liked the same sort of music, British pop and indie, except that his taste was more defined and categorical than mine. The Kinks were his big band. XTC, a close second. He also talked a lot about the Smiths and Japan, R.E.M., the Stone Roses, Bowie, Depeche Mode, Costello, Blur. Every time I mentioned a band he hadn’t heard of I saw him make a mental note. Boo Radleys, I said, you absolutely have to check them out. And The Aller Værste! you really don’t know anything about them? Norway’s greatest band!

Then we talked about literature. He was up to speed on everything that had been published. All the novels, all the poetry collections, everything.