Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

I caught the bus to Danmarksplass and walked the three hundred metres up to his flat, unlocked the door, put down my rucksack in the hall, stood still for a while and wondered what to do. The windows faced north and the sun was in the west, setting over the sea, so the rooms were dark and chilly. They smelled of Yngve. I went into the sitting room and looked around, then into the bedroom. There was a new poster on the wall, an eerie photograph of a naked woman with Munch og fotografi written at the bottom. Photos he had taken himself were there too, a selection from Tibet, the ground was a gleaming red, a group of ragged boys and girls posing for him, their eyes dark and foreign. In one corner, beside the sliding door, his guitar was leaning against an amplifier. On top of it a large echo box. A plain white Ikea blanket and two cushions converted the bed into a sofa.

I had visited Yngve several times while I was at gymnas, and to me there was something almost sacred about his rooms, they represented who he was and who I wanted to become. Something that existed outside my life and something that one day I would move into.

Now I was here, I thought, and went into the kitchen to make some sandwiches, which I ate standing in front of the window, with a view of the terraces of old workers’ houses going down to Fjøsangerveien at the bottom. On the other side, the mast on Mount Ulrich flashed in the sunshine.

It occurred to me that I had been on my own a lot recently. Apart from the few days with first Hilde and then mum, I hadn’t spent time with anyone since I said goodbye to Lars in Athens. I could hardly wait for Yngve to come home.

I put on a Stranglers’ record and settled down on the sofa with one of Yngve’s photo albums. My stomach ached and I didn’t know why. It felt like hunger, not for food but for everything else.

Perhaps Ingvild was also in town? Perhaps she was sitting in one of the hundred thousand bedsits around me?

One of the first questions Yngve asked me when he arrived was how it was going with Ingvild. I hadn’t told him much, a few words when we were sitting on the steps earlier that summer, that was all, but it had been enough for him to realise it was serious. Maybe also that it had huge significance for me.

I told him she was coming to Bergen around now and would live in Fantoft, and I would be ringing her to arrange the first meeting.

‘Might turn out to be your year,’ he said. ‘New girlfriend, Writing Academy …’

‘We’re not there yet.’

‘No, but from what you’ve said, she’s interested, isn’t she?’

‘A little maybe. But I doubt it means as much to her as it does to me.’

‘But it could do. If you play your cards right.’

‘For once, you mean?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ he said, eyeing me. ‘Fancy some wine?’

‘Certainly do.’

He got up and disappeared into the kitchen, reappeared with a carafe in his hand and went to the bathroom. I heard some snorting and gurgling noises, then a steady glug until he emerged holding a full carafe.

‘Vintage 1988,’ he said. ‘But it’s pretty good. And there’s quite a lot of it as well.’

I took a swig. It was so sour it made me wince.

Yngve smiled.

‘Pretty good?’ I said.

‘Taste is relative, as you know,’ he said. ‘You have to compare it with other home-made wine.’

We drank for a while without speaking. Yngve stood up and went towards the guitar and amplifier.

‘I’ve written a couple of songs since you were last here,’ he said. ‘Want to hear them?’

‘Yes, love to,’ I said.

‘Well, they’re not really songs,’ he said, fastening the strap over his shoulder. ‘Just a few riffs really.’

I felt a sudden tenderness as I watched him.

He switched on the amplifier, stood with his back to me and tuned the guitar, adjusted the echo box and began to play.

The tenderness vanished, this was good, what he was playing, the guitar sound was big and majestic, the riffs melodious and catchy, it sounded like a cross between the Smiths and the Chameleons. I couldn’t understand where he had got it from. Both his musicality and the dexterity were way beyond my capacities. He simply had the gift, from the moment he started, as though it had always been there.

He turned towards me only after he had finished and put down the guitar.

‘That was really good,’ I said.

‘Do you think so?’ he said, sitting down on the sofa. ‘It’s just a couple of little ideas. I could do with some lyrics so that I could finish them off.’

‘I don’t understand why you don’t play in a band.’

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I jam a little with Pål now and then. Otherwise I don’t know anyone who plays. You’re here now though.’

‘I can’t play.’

‘You can start by writing a few lyrics, can’t you? And you can play the drums as well.’

‘No, I can’t,’ I said. ‘I’m not good enough. But perhaps I could write something. That’d be fun.’

‘You do that,’ he said.

Autumn was on its way, I thought, as we stood in the road outside the long line of low brick terraced houses waiting for the taxi. There was a kind of heaviness in the light summer night, impossible to localise yet unmistakable. An augury of something damp and dark and gloomy.

The taxi arrived a few minutes later, we got in, it raced recklessly down to Danmarksplass, past the big cinema and over a bridge, along Nygårds Park and into the centre, where I lost my bearings, streets were just streets, houses just houses, I disappeared into the large town, was swallowed up by it, and I liked that because I became visible to myself, the young man on his way into a metropolis filled with glass and concrete and tarmac and strangers caught in the light from street lamps and windows and signs. A shiver ran down my spine as we drove into the centre. The engine hummed, the traffic lights changed from green to red, we stopped outside what must have been the bus station.

‘Isn’t that where we went that time?’ I said, nodding towards the building across the road.

‘That’s right,’ Yngve said.

I had been sixteen, visiting him for the first time; I had held the hand of one of the girls we were with in order to get in. I had borrowed Yngve’s deodorant, and in the minutes before we left his place he had stood in front of me, rolled up the sleeves of my shirt, passed me his hair gel, watched me rubbing it in and said, good, now let’s go.

Now I was nineteen and all this was mine.

I caught a glimpse of the lake in the middle of the town, and then we turned left, past a large concrete building.

‘That’s the Grieg Hall,’ Yngve said.

‘So that’s where it is,’ I said.

‘And there’s Mekka,’ he said straight afterwards, nodding towards a supermarket. ‘That’s the cheapest in town.’

‘Is that where you shop?’ I said.

‘If I’ve got any money,’ he said. ‘Anyway, this is Nygårdsgaten. Do you remember The Aller Værste! song? “We ran down Nygårdsgata as though we were in the Wild West.” ’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What about “Disken” then? “I went into Disken and the place was bloody heaving”?’

‘That was the disco in Hotel Norge. Right behind that building there. But it’s called something else now.’

The taxi pulled into the kerb and stopped.

‘Here we are,’ the driver said. Yngve passed him a hundred-krone note, I got out, looked up at the sign on the building where we we had stopped. CAFÉ OPERA it said in pink and black letters on a white background. Inside the big windows the place was full of people, shadowy figures among the small clear flames of candles. Yngve got out on the other side of the taxi, said goodbye to the driver and slammed the door shut. ‘Right, in we go,’ he said.