Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

The bus back to Bergen left at four in the morning, we stayed awake till then and were waiting at the stop, stamping our feet to keep warm, when it arrived, thundering around the bends above us. We slept leaning against each other for the four and a half hours the journey lasted, surrounded by the thrum of the heater, the drone of the engine, the occasional cough from other passengers, the door opening and closing, all in a distant dream, the characteristic sounds of vehicles boarding ferries, the silence afterwards, when the monotony of the road takes over.

We walked straight up to the university from the bus station, said bye, I read for a few hours, then Yngve came and asked me to join him in the canteen, he had good news. At the weekend he had been staying in a cabin in the mountains with some people from Student Radio, one of them had sung and played the guitar, Yngve said he had such a good voice that he had asked him straight out if he wanted to be in a band. He did. We would go out one night, all four of us, and get to know one another, they had agreed. His name was Hans and he came from Geiranger, studied history and liked Neil Young, that was all Yngve knew.

We met him at Garage, the new rock scene which consisted of a small room and a long bar on the ground floor and a big dark basement beneath with a stage. They had started booking a number of good English and American bands as well as many from Bergen, where bands were springing up everywhere, Mona Lisa Overdrive were indisputably the best, Pogo Pops came a good second.

From Yngve’s brief description I had expected a rough-looking guy with a lumberjack shirt, torn jeans, sturdy boots, tousled hair and wild eyes, it was the Neil Young reference that did it, but the young man who came in through the door holding a dripping closed umbrella in one hand and whose eyes immediately sought Yngve’s had nothing in common with the phantom I had conjured up, and it disappeared the instant he came over to our table.

‘Hans,’ he said, proffering his hand. ‘You must be Yngve’s younger brother and the drummer.’

‘That’s me,’ I said.

He removed his glasses and wiped off the moisture.

‘We’re waiting for Pål,’ Yngve said.

‘I’ll get myself a beer in the meantime,’ he said, and went towards the bar. Someone put The Clash’s ‘London Calling’ on the jukebox and my spine tingled, that was a good sign.

‘This has all the potential for being a legendary moment,’ Yngve said when he returned. ‘The night the vocalist met the rest of Kafkatrakterne for the first time.’

‘We’d seen one another at art school but didn’t like what we saw,’ Hans said. ‘Perhaps we even got into a fight. But then the guitarist heard me sing and had a vision that would redefine the course of rock history.’

‘While the drummer said nothing and the bassist arrived late,’ Yngve said.

‘Drummers don’t have to say anything,’ Hans said. ‘Theirs is the most important function in the band. They’re supposed to be silent and tough. To drink a lot, say little and fuck loads.’

‘Actually I’m silent and soft,’ I said. ‘Hope you can still use me.’

‘You don’t look soft,’ Hans said. ‘But if you insist, OK. It’s good to have variations on this theme. Tiny unexpected details which make it that bit more exciting. On the other hand, there is the Charlie Watts type. The gentleman who stays with his wife and plays jazz in his spare time. Spot of gardening and so on.’

‘I can’t play, either,’ I said. ‘Yngve probably didn’t tell you, but I’m afraid it’s true.’

‘This could be interesting,’ Hans said.

‘Skål,’ Yngve said. ‘To Kafkatrakterne!’

We raised our glasses, drank up, went downstairs and watched the band playing for a while, Pål eventually turned up and we hung around the bar chatting. I said nothing, it was the others who did the chatting, but I was still part of it, I didn’t feel I was on the outside.

Hans had played in bands all his life, from what I could understand. He wrote in the student newspaper Studvest, made programmes for Student Radio, was interested in politics, against the EU, wrote in Nynorsk, was confident but not in the least bit boastful, that lay as far from his character as it was possible to be. He had a strong sense of irony, liked to make jokes, often with a dangerous sting in the tail, but his presence was usually so friendly that the danger was somehow neutralised. I really liked him, he was a good person. Whether he liked me or not was a different matter. The little I said came from the bottom of a deep well, dark and somehow quaking.

When Garage closed and the evening was over I didn’t go home but to Gunvor’s. She had moved to one of the apartment blocks near Bystasjonen and rented a room in the loft. I let myself in with the key I had been given, she lifted her head a fraction and smiled through the hair covering half her face and asked if I’d had a good time. Yes, I said, and lay down beside her. She went back to sleep at once, I lay awake studying the ceiling and listening to the occasional traffic in the streets, the rain falling on the roof and the skylights. There was little I enjoyed more than coming here after I had been out on the town, having a place that wasn’t mine but where I was welcome, where I could cuddle up to her and feel her bare skin against mine. Now and then I wondered if she felt the same, if she lay awake feeling my bare skin against hers with her soul at peace. The notion was alien, almost scary, because then I was viewing myself with her eyes while knowing who I was myself.

The clock radio came on, I opened my eyes drowsily, Gunvor got up and went to the bathroom in the hall, I closed my eyes, heard the faint hiss of the shower, the rumble of the traffic on the road past Bystasjonen, fell asleep, woke up to her standing there putting on first her bra, then a blouse and a pair of trousers.

‘Are you going to have breakfast?’ she said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m going to sleep a bit more.’

Then, apparently the next moment, she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek in her waterproof trousers and jacket.

‘I’m off. See you this afternoon?’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Can you come to my place?’

‘Yes. Bye!’

She vanished as if in a dream, into the wet streets of Bergen, beneath its grey sky, while I stayed in bed until eleven. Instead of going to the reading room I spent the day in town. Went into all the second-hand shops and bookstores, bought some records and some old paperbacks as well as a brand new novel that Else Karin from the Academy had just brought out. It was called Out, the cover was white with a picture of a woman kneeling, half of her was naked and the other dressed in a harlequin costume. I had no expectations, I only bought it because I knew the author and was curious to see how her style compared with what I had written.

On the back, it said JEALOUSY — ILLNESS — INSANITY?

My goodness.

I went into the café with all the old people and sat down to read. On the second page, no less, came the bombshell. It was about me!

You never came near, Karl Ove.

The jury agrees with me.

Your fingers were absent, just ask us.

You didn’t get my juices on you

unless you lied.

I read on, ploughed through the pages scanning for my name. Ay, yay, yay.

Karl Ove, you’ll have to come and love me.

Karl Ove, you didn’t come near me.

You were a disaster, Karl Ove –

and I was already so thin.

Lots about dicks and wombs, I noticed. Screams and ovaries being injected. Whipping and burning. Nothing short of a cabinet of horrors. One day you might understand, Karl Ove, I read. Hell, Karl Ove, I read. Then suddenly in lower case, why, karl ove, why did you have to love me.