Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

Just then the door of the neighboring house opened, and as the lanky figure began to walk across to the dock with a rusty gasoline can in his hand, the heart of the landscape suddenly began to beat again. He placed the can on the edge of the dock, climbed down the ladder, and pulled the boat closer with one foot before stepping aboard. Standing in the bow, he retrieved the can, and then took it with him to the back of the boat, where he unscrewed the gas-tank cap and checked the gauge before starting to pour the shimmering liquid in with the aid of a funnel. He poured just a little at a time, constantly checking the level, and when he’d finished, he carefully wiped the tank and the can and the funnel with a rag. He took just as much care in screwing on the caps and replacing the various items.

Each time he went out in his boat, he performed the same actions in precisely the same order. I knew that in a few moments he’d start the engine, then crouch down in the bow and loosen the moorings, and then, standing in front of the driving seat, he would back a few yards into the bay, sit down, rev up, and buzz out of the narrow sound between the islets in a wide arc. The compulsiveness of his actions had long since infected me. Each time I saw him get into his boat, I had to watch everything until he’d disappeared out of sight. I’d developed several similar traits out here, for instance I had to keep my shoulder moving the whole time when I was walking, it was as if my jacket never sat properly, just as my eyes sometimes began to blink in short bursts, and on my daily trips to the north end of the island, which were always at the same time each day, I had to follow particular routes and perform particular ceremonies on the way, although these compulsive acts didn’t trouble me greatly. As long as I obeyed them, they didn’t create problems. And why shouldn’t I obey them? A couple of times I’d walked past the lighthouse without touching it, and then taken another route to the headland, without achieving anything except a feeling of increasing nausea the farther I got, only to vomit at last over the black rock. Then I’d returned to the house, taken off my outer clothes, sat down on the sofa in the living room, waited a few minutes, and then begun the entire walk again. The longing to feel the wall against the palm of my hand was like an ache in my body as I mounted the slope. It was ridiculous, I knew it was ridiculous, but there was no avoiding it, my willpower was too weak, and I pressed my hand against the wall of the lighthouse, touched every other fence post on the way down as I blushed with shame and anger, waited until three waves had risen out by the submerged rock before continuing across the slabs as I carefully shut the following wave crests out of my field of vision, until I reached the headland and was finally outside the alien will’s jurisdiction.

If this was all it took to find peace, why on earth shouldn’t I do it? Resistance to these compulsive thoughts only shook me up unnecessarily. And who was I really resisting?

Perhaps the ridiculousness lay not in the compulsive thoughts, as I’d imagined, but in the resistance to them. Was resistance to compulsive thoughts in some way more “real” than compulsive thoughts? It could well be the other way round. It could well be that the compulsive thoughts gave expression to my real desires. That my very core had suddenly begun to express itself in this way. Observing the chaotic conditions that prevailed, it had introduced some simple measures to take control of the situation, a kind of mental confinement to barracks, which the strongest thoughts had been set to enforce, as a transitional phase, until the normal thoughts were again able to take care of themselves. For them, so little used to order and discipline, it felt like an encroachment, of course, and instead of submitting to it, which they felt was humiliating, they’d chosen to resist, spurred on by the notion of “freedom of thought” that they clung to. But nothing like “freedom of thought” has ever existed, it’s a laughable concept, just as all concepts of freedom are. Everything happens through necessity. The question is simply which necessity.

On the other side of the bay my neighbor was squatting in the bow loosening his moorings as the exhaust from the engine slowly drifted across the water. The hollow space under the quay gave the engine’s hum a moist sound that got drier and sharper when immediately afterward he backed out into the bay, plumped down on his seat, put the engine in gear, and streamed away toward the islands. This time I had to wait until the sound of the engine had died away completely before I was free to do as I liked. Then I opened the cupboard, took out some clean clothes, and went into the bathroom to the shower, stood under it until all the hot water was gone, dressed, and went down to the kitchen, put the coffeemaker on, spread some pieces of crispbread, filled a glass with water, and carried everything into the living room, where I sat down to eat, while I thought about what to do that day. Not that there was a lot of choice. After doing a few hours’ reading first thing, I usually went for a walk — usually to fish, but I also swam occasionally, even though the water out here was never more than fifty or sixty degrees — then I had dinner, and afterward I’d read into the evening, until I was tired enough to go to bed. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I took the boat to the council complex, where I cleaned offices in the admin building. That was it. That was the life I’d been living for the past twelve months. Only four other people lived out here, and our brief encounters when we bumped into one another was all the social life I led. From the outside it must look as if I was just marking time, and so I didn’t have any desire to talk to people I’d known before, and had got an unlisted number with the cell phone I’d bought in case of emergencies. The strange thing was that this life, in which I might not speak to anyone for days, was no less meaningful than the previous one I’d led. On the contrary. I’d never been more content. In the beginning, certainly, I’d been filled with an almost aggressive restlessness, a kind of hunger that nothing I saw or did could assuage, but after a few weeks it was as if the hurry in me were reduced, so that my thoughts could at last settle onto the things around me. And that was good enough. That was more than good enough. One morning I might see how the pale, quivering streak of light above the mountains on the mainland in the east slowly unfolded and got clearer and clearer as the earth turned, until the sun suddenly stood there and shone. Then the panes of the lighthouse sparkled, its cylindrical wall stood out white and sharp, the slabs below had a ruddy sheen against the cold blue of the sea, and all I could think about was how the sudden joy that the sight aroused in me could best be realized. Another morning I might wake up with the feeling that something had changed, open the curtains, and see how a thin layer of new snow had made the colors outside stand out with almost indecent clarity. The yellow of the grass, the green of the moss, the red of the boathouses, the blue of the tarpaulins. It was as if I’d come to a place where I hadn’t been for a long time, and the pale images of memory had to make way for the world as it is: sharp and realistic. One day the bay was teeming with fish, one day an otter had left a crisscross of tracks all over the island, one day a dead gull lay floating in the sea. One day an enormous flock of birds arrived on the island, they were there for several days, nervous and alert; even the smallest movement made them take wing: a cloud of birds then filled the air. One day a bleach bottle lay bobbing by the sea rock, one day a white plastic bag hung motionless in the water a few feet below the surface, one day a trimmed tree trunk knocked against the rock in the narrow cleft. One day the sea was as calm as a millpond, one day it was full of languid, bottomless breakers, one day of small, choppy waves as excitable as lemmings. Everything changed, but the change took place within the same limits, as if the seasons were a metronome, the days’ stanzas obeyed.