Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

At the end of last semester I had been so hard up and had borrowed so much money that I had succumbed to the temptation and a bought a few metres of sales space at a record fair Jone was going to in Bergen and I had sold all my records. Every single one. I got a few thousand for them, which I had drunk my way through a week later, that had been when Bergen was really buzzing and everyone was out — and that had been that. Six years’ worth of collecting out of the window. My whole soul had been in those records. And that was partly why I had done it, I wanted to purge myself of everything, it was shit, all of it, anyway.

‘If you’re interested in collecting, it’s CDs that count now,’ Jone said. ‘It was wise to sell up! Don’t give it another thought!’

He laughed again.

‘There was some blood on my jacket when I came home this morning,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t my jacket either. And I can remember zip all. Nothing.’

‘You’re as decent as the day is long, Karl Ove. Calm down. You didn’t do anything wrong.’

‘I feel as if I’ve killed someone.’

‘It’s always like that. I’m sure you just went round saying how fantastic everyone was.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m off to class. I’ve got a late lecture today.’

‘OK. I have to go too. See you.’

We didn’t practise at Verftet any more, Pål had found us a place in the basement of the HIB, the technology centre, which was over the bridge from my flat, a grey building with blue lines and a blue logo, it looked more like a grey plastic bottle of shower gel than anything else, with grooves and a blue cap. Pål’s laboratory was in the building, I had been up there once, walked wonderstruck through the small rooms with all the instruments, I loved ‘science’, or rather the aura that surrounds the work, not science in itself, which I despised, it was technical, instrument-based, nonhuman, restrictively rational. But ‘science’, that was everything from Captain Nemo’s submarine to Darwin’s Beagle diary, Bruno, who was burned at the stake, and Galileo, who gave the Church all the concessions they wanted, Marie Curie’s in retrospect frightening experiments with radiation, Oppenheimer and his circle’s splitting of the atom. There was the man who had an iron rod blown through his head in the 1880s and underwent a complete personality change — before nice, after evil — allowing medical science to take a step forward because now they knew that certain functions were housed in certain parts of the brain and, thanks to this accident, they had localised one of them and could develop theories to make lobotomy possible. Was there anything more desperate or crazier than a lobotomy? If so, it must have come from the same people who strapped down their patients and sent enormous electric shocks through them to shake them out of their depressions. It did help though, they were on the right track, and that was what I liked, that someone had learned how to control, in this case electricity, tame and store it, thus enabling something new to enter the world. At the same time there was something crazy about it, all this speed that was being released or all this light being transmitted everywhere. Human bodies being viewed as an arena, being treated with electric shocks to see how they would react, or cutting into, for instance, connections in the brain to produce a more harmonious type of personality. You wouldn’t believe this could be true or you thought it was something they did in pre-biblical times, but it was true, this was what we were doing, and the aura of total insanity existed here too, in these small rooms, with their microscopes and all manner of underwater specimens, collected from the bottom of the sea by their research ship. Not that I understood what they were doing, or that I cared, all I saw was ‘science’, the romance of blue rubber gloves.

I could never see Pål fitting in there, he was the most unscientific person I had ever met, but that was perhaps exactly why he was so successful at what he was doing.

I met Yngve and Hans down at reception, Pål was late as always, we took the lift up and went to his department, he was standing over his desk, his long hair covering his face like a mini-curtain.

‘Oh, that’s right!’ he said. ‘It’s music time.’

His bass was in the corner, he grabbed it and we took the lift down to the basement, where Pål unlocked the door and let us in. The room was big, the concrete floor covered with a yellow felt carpet, the drum kit was already there, plus some amplifiers and a sound system.

The mere sight of it, the three musicians immediately unpacking their cases and taking out their instruments, the cables, the straps, the plectrums, the speakers, plugging in and switching on their amps, tuning their guitars, adjusting the sound, excited me, this was what I had always dreamed of, being in a band, doing band things. I gave the snare drum a few exploratory taps and tightened it, although I had no idea how to tune it, I couldn’t hear when it sounded good, banged the bass drum, tightened the screw on the crash cymbal and pulled it closer in a — for me — reasonable imitation of a genuine drummer.

‘I’ve spoken to someone planning a big party for New Year’s Eve today,’ Yngve said.

I looked at him, he was sporting that secretive expression of his, he was holding something back, like a child, and he smiled.

‘Someone’s been pulling your leg,’ Pål said. ‘It’s not New Year’s Eve today.’

‘Did they give you some money to stay away?’ Hans said.

‘Ha ha,’ Yngve said. ‘They wanted us to play.’

‘Are we going to play at a New Year’s dance then?’ I said.

‘Absolutely,’ Yngve said. ‘It’s at Rick’s, and there’ll be loads of people, so we’ve got to practise.’

‘What shall we play then?’ Hans said.

‘I don’t know,’ Yngve said. ‘Can’t we just do all the songs we’ve got?’

We had been playing together for almost a year, we were getting better and better, especially me, because although I was still a lousy drummer and always would be, I had with the others’ help managed to produce a variety of beats for a variety of songs, a fixed pattern for each which I clung to when we played. At home I went through every single song in meticulous detail several times a day, I knew them inside out, right down to every last touch of the cymbals, I sat drumming on my thighs and tapping my feet on the floor, all to sustain the minimum of rhythm and drive the band needed. Half a rehearsal had been spent getting me to achieve syncopation. A full hour, the same theme again and again, me unable to find the beat in one place, more and more embarrassing, it was eating away at everyone’s patience, was I a complete idiot or what, it was so bloody easy, until it clicked. The whole time I was scared I would be given the boot because Yngve, Pål and Hans were competent musicians and they would, in one fell swoop, be so much better if they got rid of me, which I told them often enough, but no, stop talking rubbish, you’re the drummer, that’s it.

After the rehearsal Yngve, Hans and I went into town while Pål caught the bus home. I was still haunted by that night’s drinking, the most terrible thoughts and imaginings constantly lay beneath the surface, and my stomach ached with fear, for which in fact there was only one remedy and cure — Gunvor, an evening with her. But when Yngve suggested going out and celebrating there still wasn’t a suggestion of a no on my lips.

‘I just have to nip back home first,’ Hans said. ‘I’ll come out later. Are you going to Garage?’

‘Yes, aren’t we?’ Yngve said, looking at me.

‘Yes.’ I nodded.

It started to rain, not much, just a few drops on my face, but the sky above us darkened quickly, an entire wall of black was on its way across the mountains.