Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

‘Do you know Espen Stueland?’ I said after a while.

‘ Slow Dance from a Burning House ?’ Tore said.

‘He’s my best friend,’ I said.

‘Is that right?’ he said. ‘That’s terrific! One of the best debut collections for ages. Do you know him?’

‘Yes, we studied lit. together. And he lived in the flat beneath me for two years.’

‘What’s he like? A prodigy, eh?’

‘Yes, not far off it. At any rate extremely dedicated. And he has incredible insight into everything he reads.’

Tore stared into the distance for a few seconds laughing quietly and mumbling. Then he sat up straight.

‘Rune Christiansen. Have you read anything by him?’ he said.

‘I’ve heard of him. But I haven’t read anything,’ I said.

‘Then I’ll bring you his latest collection of poems. What about Øyvind Berg?’

‘Heard of him. Totschweigetaktikken and Et foranskutt lyn. But I’m a poor poetry reader, just so that you know. Espen’s a fan of Berg, by the way. And Ulven, of course.’

‘Oh my God, he is so good,’ Tore said.

We almost had tears in our eyes when we talked about how good Tor Ulven’s books were. Tore also loved Jan Kjærstad and Knife to the Throat by Kjartan Fløgstad but not his other works, although I did. I guessed that had something to do with academia. Of Norwegian poets he put Eldrid Lunden at the pinnacle, he said.

‘Haven’t you read any Lunden? Bloody hell, Karl Ove, you’ve got to read her. This is important! Mammy, Blue is the best collection of Norwegian poetry ever. After Obstfelder, of course. Obstfelder, Lunden, Ulven. But I’ll bring you a copy. And Det omvendt avhengige. You’ve got to read that!’

When I returned from lunch in the canteen next day there was a little pile of poetry books on my desk. And, on top, a note:

Karl Ove,

To be read,

from your friend Tore.

My friend?

I took the books home, skimmed through them as I usually did, to have an overview when he talked about them, the way I had done with Espen. He dropped by the next day, we had a coffee in the canteen, he wanted to know what I had got out of the books, especially Mammy, Blue, which I could see meant a lot to him. Now he wanted it to mean a lot to me.

What energy he had.

For the moment it was directed at me, and I liked that, in a way it was flattering, there was an element of him looking up to me, I was four years older, had done a course at the Writing Academy, I’d had a short story published in Vinduet and would soon start reviewing books for them. That had materialised a few weeks before, I had interviewed Merete Morken Andersen for Studvest, she was about to take over as the editor of Vinduet, and as a former Bergen student she was an obvious target for an interview. I met her at the Arts Faculty, we talked for an hour, when I had finished and had switched off the tape recorder she said she had been planning to bring in some new names on her appointment as editor, it was so easy to turn to the same old people, but she wanted some serious innovation in the journal and wondered if I could envisage writing for her.

I realised how this might seem through Tore’s eyes. But it would only be like this for the few weeks it would take him to get to know me properly and suss out what was what, I was a wannabe who was actually unable to write because I had nothing to say, who wasn’t honest enough with himself to draw the appropriate conclusions and was therefore trying to get a foot in the world of literature at any cost. Not as someone who created something himself, someone who wrote and was published, but as a parasite, as someone who wrote as others wrote, a second-rater.

I was a second-rater and that was why it pained me to see Tore’s interest in me. But what should I do? Say no, back off, you’re wrong?

He continued to pop his head in at Student Radio every so often, we would go to the canteen and chat, now and then he would join us when we went out after work, or on Fridays when those who wanted collected in the office and drank beer and went out afterwards or to one of the many private parties thrown by the staff. But his heart wasn’t in radio, I sensed that immediately, he wasn’t interested in any of what went on there, wasn’t gripped by any of the intrigues, had no idea about the conflicts of personality that existed, couldn’t care less who had been making out with whom, set up or split up with whom, and as far as the practical side of radio production was concerned he didn’t know a thing and didn’t want to. He performed his weekly spots and made a good job of them, such as the interview with Jon Fosse, which filled an entire programme, or the book and play reviews he wrote, but that was it. He belonged to one category of staff that Student Radio employed, those who joined to gain experience before moving on. The other category was those who stayed for many years, for whom radio was a kind of leisure club, a place where you could hang out and always find a drinking partner for the evening. Among them there were several nerds and losers who otherwise wouldn’t have fitted in anywhere, just sat in their nerd and loser bedsits with their nerd and loser friends. Having them at Student Radio made it an immensely more pleasant place to be than, for example, Studvest, where everyone was out to learn and move on — however, their presence also made me nervous because I was just as addicted to the social life as they were, I had just as little outside it, and in reality I was like them, I sometimes thought in my darkest hours. But there weren’t quite as many of them as before, the radio station was full of good people I got to know, not least those working in the culture section, such as editor Mathilde, a witty, cheeky and attractive Nordlander, or cheery Therese from Arendal, or Eirik, a tall strong Bergensian, as sharp as he was garrulous, or Ingrid from Trondheim, who didn’t say a lot, Tore — he had noticed her too — and I called her Garbo. One evening I was sitting in the studio working after a programme, she was around, clearing up, and when she came into the room where I was I wrote a sentence on our new speech recognition programme, which one click later was read out by an automaton voice.

Ingrid is dead, the voice said.

Ingrid is dead.

Ingrid froze and looked at me with scared black eyes.

Ingrid is dead.

In the darkened room, where only she and I were, it sounded eerie. The voice seemed to come from beyond the grave.

‘Switch it off,’ she said. ‘It’s not funny. It’s not funny.’

I laughed. Funny was precisely what it was. But it had spooked her, and I apologised. She left, I was alone, but I didn’t want to go home so went up to the office and played Wolfenstein until three, when I walked down to the collective in Nygårdsgaten, let myself in and slipped into bed beside Gunvor, who without waking up put her arm around me and mumbled something incomprehensible.

The following evening I was going to dinner at Tore’s. He had dropped by and invited me, I accepted and was happy to be asked, he had all his friends living in Bergen, as far as I knew, so it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that he would include me. I bought a bottle of wine after work, had an hour’s nap, took a shower and then walked across town and uphill to the Sandviken side, where he lived in one of the buildings at the very top. Once there I turned and gazed across Bergen, which sparkled and glittered in the sea of darkness between the mountains.

Tore’s flat was on the first floor, the downstairs door was open, so I walked up the stairs, where it was so cold you could see your breath in the harsh light, along a narrow musty corridor to a door. A piece of paper above the doorbell said renberg/halvorsen. Renberg, that was Tore’s name, wasn’t it?