Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

He thought it appeared this way because the attack had made him sink into himself, into a place sheltered from the tumult of outward impressions — that was why they seemed so diffuse and blurred, the distance between him and them had increased, this was nothing novel to him, that sudden aversion to the heat, the decay, the manure they spread over the fields, all the greenery that, greedy and unseeing, burgeoned everywhere, was something he’d experienced before.

Yes, he knew how it worked. The heat brought everything together, the cold pulled them apart. And he knew which he preferred.

With slow movements he dusted the earth from his clothes. At the top of one thigh there was a wet patch about the size of an oak leaf. It would certainly have dried out by the time he arrived, he thought, and began to walk again. Within him all speed and all joy had ceased. When he arrived in the meadow, he picked up a rake without a word and began to rake the grass together in a pile. No one took any notice of him, which was just as well, he thought, and lifted up the grass when the pile had grown big enough, carried it over to the drying rack, and had begun to hang it up on the lines when his father paused in his work, leaned on his scythe, and looked at him.

“Where’s Abel?” he asked.

Cain was just bending down and answered without looking up.

“Am I his keeper or something?”

“WHAT did you say?” demanded his father.

Cain said nothing but tipped the armful of grass over the top string, and when he became aware of a movement in the corner of his eye and knew that it was his father coming toward him, he bent down as if nothing special had happened and picked up the grass straws that had slid off.

By the time his father stopped in front of him, he had all the grass in his hands and could no longer stay bent, but had to straighten up.

“What did you say?” asked his father again.

Without meeting his eyes he repeated that he wasn’t his brother’s keeper even as he prepared himself for the blow that was certain to follow.

But there was no blow. Instead his father’s hand grasped his chin and forced his head up.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

“Yes,” said Cain, and met his glance.

“You’re not to go anywhere without Abel,” said his father. “Is that understood?”

“Yes,” said Cain.

“Well, go and fetch him,” said his father.

He dropped the grass on the ground where he stood and turned his back on his father and began to walk toward the houses. They lay on a slope fringed by trees, mainly pines and birches, and at that distance with their rough timber walls and grass-covered roofs, they were difficult to discern from the surrounding landscape. Paths crisscrossed the ground between the buildings and behind them lay the arc of a cart track leading to the barn bridge. As he approached he saw his mother coming up from the stream. She set down a tubful of washing and began to hang it on the line between the two pines. It was as if the white garments sucked the light into them, they hung there motionless, shining white in the midst of all the green.

“Where’s Abel?” he asked.

“He’s sitting in the kitchen,” she answered, and picked up a new item of clothing, shook it several times in front of her, and hung it on the line.

When he reached the door, he stopped and turned. The heat and the stillness of the air made everything so peaceful. The trees raised their crowns pensively to the sky. The white-painted window moldings stood out against the red of the walls, a bumblebee flew buzzing past over the grass and rose so steeply into the air that a second later it was no more than a black prick against the blue expanse of the sky.

He looked toward the barn, where the shadow from the long wall lay like a rug that someone had unfolded on the grassy bank, the small grove of lemon trees that stood by the south-facing end wall, its fruits visible as small yellow flecks among the green.

A door slammed on the other side of the house. He turned to the line where the clothes now hung closely spaced and realized that his mother had gone down to the cellar with the tub and the extra clothespins.

Well, he couldn’t dawdle about here, he thought, and opened the door. After the outside brightness the passage seemed pitch-black. He stood quite still for a while to accustom his eyes. When he went into the kitchen, Abel looked up at him, smiling.

“Get ready now,” said Cain, “we’ve got work to do.”

He didn’t say “you” as he might have done and had at first intended. It would have sounded like an admonition and what had he to admonish Abel for? It wasn’t his fault he was the favorite.

They worked side by side all morning. Cain said nothing, but Abel, who was used to his brother’s silences, at first paid no attention to it and gabbled away as usual. After a while, however, he came to the conclusion that Cain wasn’t listening, and the last hour or two before lunch passed without a word being exchanged between them. The five men didn’t talk either, but it wasn’t quiet. The grasshoppers creaked constantly, an incessant humming from wasps and bumblebees rose and fell in the air around them, the scythes swished through the grass, the birds sang in the forests above them. Although there was lots to put up with — apart from his streaming eyes and blocked nose, horseflies were biting and they were surrounded the whole time by a buzzing swarm of fat, iridescent green flies — Cain found it easy to endure, there was a satisfaction in watching the racks of grass getting fatter yard by yard, and when his father called that it was lunchtime, it was only with difficulty that he managed to tear himself away from his work. The desire to complete things — it was already his great strength — meant that he never gave up but went on until he was finished, cost what it might. Something finished, what was more alluring than that? An overflowing corn bin, a new-mown meadow, a shed of perfectly split wood from floor to ceiling?

“You too, Cain!” shouted his father.

He put down his rake and followed the others down to the river, where the women awaited them with food. They sat on the grassy bank in the shade of the great leafy trees and ate. Small dapples of light opened and closed around them each time the breeze rustled the trees. Now and then a puff of wind would move the boughs and all the small patches of light would shift all together, you would think they were like fish in a shoal and the movement that flashes through them just in the moment they become aware of the shadow of a predatory fish.

Somewhere in the distance there was rumble.

“Did you hear that?” said Abel. “It’s thunder.”

Cain peered out and looked up at the sky, the clouds had stacked themselves into a tower above the mountains in the east. Heavy and bluish gray it came rolling up the valley.

“Hopefully it’ll only be a shower,” said his father.

“It doesn’t look like it,” said Abel, getting up and looking at Cain.

“Are you coming?”

While the others lay down on the bank to rest after the meal, Abel would always bathe. Although, unlike Abel, Cain couldn’t swim, his brother always asked him the same question. Each time he said no. But today he felt a strong need to wash, apart from sweat, he also smelled of urine, and to everyone’s surprise he nodded and got up.

“Good!” said Abel. He pulled off his shirt and trousers, climbed up into a tree that grew on the bank, balanced along one of its branches, and dived in as he always did. Cain saw how the white body cut straight through the water and turned only a few fingers’ breadth from the bottom, the unfamiliar movements of his limbs as he glided over the sand, his hair billowing about his head, his eyes open.