Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

After paying for all these books I went up the stairs to the canteen. I had been there once before, with Yngve, but then I hadn’t needed to think, he had taken care of everything, now I was on my own, and my brain reeled at the sight of all the students sitting in the enormous room eating.

At one end was the counter, where you were either served lunch or you helped yourself to what there was in a glass cabinet, and then you paid at one of three cash desks and went to find somewhere to sit. The windows at the opposite end were misted up, the air, through which the buzz of voices rose and sank, was damp and clammy.

I looked across all the tables, but needless to say didn’t see anyone I knew. The thought of sitting there all alone was terrible, so I turned and went the other way, for there, on the side facing Nygård Park, was the grill where they served hot dishes and beer, a bit more expensive than the canteen, but what did that matter, my pockets were full of money and I didn’t need to scrimp and save.

I ordered a hamburger, chips and a large beer and carried it to an unoccupied window table. The students sitting here seemed older and more experienced than those in the canteen, and there were also some old men and women who, I guessed, were lecturers, unless they belonged to the group of eternal students I had heard about, men in their forties with tousled hair and beards and jumpers, who in the fifteenth year of their studies were still working on their majors in an attic somewhere as the world raced past.

As I ate I flicked through the books I had bought. On the inside flap of the Fosse book there was a 1986 quote from Kjærstad: ‘Why isn’t Bergens Tidende full of feature articles about Jon Fosse?’

So Fosse was a good writer, and not just that, he was one of the leading lights in the country, I thought, raising my gaze as I chewed the bread and meat into a tasty pulp. The bushes in Nygård Park stood like a green wall against the narrow wrought-iron fence, and in the grey air above them the rain angled down, caught by a sudden gust of wind which whistled along the street beneath me that very next moment and flapped at the umbrellas of two women who had just walked down the stairs.

In the evening I called Yngve and asked where he had been hiding recently. He said he had been working and he had been out the night the loan arrived and I had to get a phone so that he didn’t have to walk all the way up to my digs every time he wanted something from me. I said I’d got my loan now and I would think about buying a phone.

‘Did you have a good time?’ I persisted.

‘It was good. I came home with a girl.’

‘Who was she?’ I said.

‘No one you know,’ he said. ‘We’ve seen each other at Høyden, that’s all.’

‘Are you going out with her now?’

‘No, no, no. It’s not like that. What about you? How’s it going?’

‘Fine. But there’s quite a bit to read.’

‘Read? I thought you were supposed to be writing.’

‘Ha ha. I’ve just bought a Jon Fosse. Looks good.’

‘Oh yes,’ he said.

There was a silence.

‘But if you haven’t started writing yet, perhaps you can write some lyrics for me? Or preferably several. So that I can finish the songs.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘You do that.’

I sat over Yngve’s songs all evening and into the night, with music on my stereo, drinking coffee and smoking. When I went to bed at three, I had two semi-finished, well on the way, and one completely finished.

You Sway So Sweetly

Give me a smile

don’t be unfair

just want to undress you

layer by layer

Dance, dance, dance

In a mindless trance

Don’t ever stop

Keep on dancing

Until you drop

You sway so sweetly

You sway so sweetly

Give me a smile

don’t try to fight

just wanna love you

all day and night

Dance, dance, dance

In a mindless trance

Don’t ever stop

Keep on dancing

Until you drop

You sway so sweetly

You sway so sweetly

You sway so sweetly

You move so well

After lessons on Friday we went out. Hovland and Fosse took us on their obviously well-worn path to Wesselstuen. It was a great place, the tables were covered with white cloths, and as soon as we sat down a waiter in a white shirt and black apron came over to take our orders. I hadn’t experienced that before. Our mood was nice and relaxed, the week was over, I was happy, there were eight of us carefully selected students sitting round the table with Ragnar Hovland, already a legend in student circles, at least in Bergen, and Jon Fosse, one of the most important young postmodern writers in the country, who had also received good reviews in Sweden. I hadn’t spoken to them privately yet, but now I was sitting next to Hovland, and when the beer arrived, and I’d had a swig, I seized the opportunity.

‘I’ve heard you like the Cramps.’

‘Oh?’ he said. ‘Where have you heard such malicious gossip?’

‘A friend told me. Is it right? Are you interested in music?’

‘Yes, I am,’ he said. ‘And I do like the Cramps. So, yes … Say hi to your friend and tell him he’s right.’

He smiled, but there was no eye contact.

‘Did he mention any other bands I liked?’

‘No, just the Cramps.’

‘Do you like the Cramps then?’

‘Ye-es. They’re pretty good,’ I said. ‘But the music I listen to most at the moment is Prefab Sprout. Have you heard their latest? From Langley Park to Memphis ?’

‘Certainly have, although Steve McQueen is still my favourite.’

Bjørg said something to him from across the table, and he leaned over to her with a polite expression on his face. Jon Fosse was sitting beside her and chatting to Knut. His texts had been the last ones we went through, and he was still full of it, I could see that. He wrote poems, and they were remarkably short, often only two or three lines, sometimes only two words beside each other. I didn’t grasp what they were about, but there was something brutal about them, and you wouldn’t believe that when you saw him sitting there smiling and laughing, his presence was almost as friendly as his poems were short. He was garrulous as well. So personality wasn’t the reason.

I put my empty beer glass down on the table in front of me and wanted another, but I didn’t dare beckon to the waiter, so I had to wait until someone else ordered.

Petra and Trude sat beside me chatting. It was as if they knew each other from before. Petra suddenly seemed very open while Trude had completely lost her stern concentrated demeanour, now she had a girlish air, as though a burden had been lifted from her shoulders.

Although I couldn’t really claim to know any of the other students, I had seen enough of them to form an impression of their characters, and even though these didn’t necessarily coincide with their texts, except in the case of Bjørg and Else Karin, who both wrote the way they looked, I felt pretty sure I knew who they were. The exception was Petra. She was a mystery. Sometimes she would sit quietly staring down at the desk, with no presence in the room at all, it was like she was gnawing at her insides, I thought then, for despite not moving and despite her eyes being fixed on the same point, there was still an aggression about her. She was gnawing at herself, that was the feeling I had. When she eventually looked up there was always an ironic smile playing on her lips. Her comments were usually ironic, and not infrequently merciless, though somehow correct, albeit exaggerated. When she was enthusiastic this could vanish, her laughter might then become heartfelt, childish even, and her eyes, which so often smouldered, sparkled. Her texts were like her, I thought, as she read them, just as spiky and grudging as she was herself, at times clumsy and inelegant, but always full of bite and force, invariably ironic, though not without passion even so.