Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

Before, Abel had sometimes swum in the deep pool nearby, there was a tree on the bottom of it that he could hold on to and he’d stayed down as long as he could in the hope that those on the bank would think he’d drowned. It worked the first time, and the second, but the third time no one took the bait. That was a long time ago, but Cain suspected that Abel was just waiting for sufficient time to elapse so that he could fool them again. Now, panting, he broke the surface and looked at him.

“Come on, then!” he shouted.

Cain walked down to the bank, undressed, and waded out. The water flowed dark green, almost black, beneath the trees, when it reached his waist he halted. He felt how the current was pressing against his body and he didn’t like it.

Abel came floating toward him.

“I can teach you to swim if you want,” he said.

“You’re not teaching me anything,” said Cain. “I’ll just have a wash.”

Abel shrugged and swam to the bank. When he began to walk toward the tree and Cain realized that he was going to dive again, he took a few more steps into the stream until the water was deep enough to cover him entirely when he crouched down. He didn’t want to immerse himself with Abel close by, because he kept his eyes shut under water and the mere thought that someone was near, someone who might suddenly bump into him, or for that matter push him over so that, in his panic, he would start swallowing water, frightened him.

He satisfied himself one last time that Abel really was on land, took a breath, clamped his nostrils with his fingers, shut his eyes, and lowered himself in.

It felt like being shut up in a confined space. He couldn’t hear anything, he couldn’t see anything, everything was cold and dark. But his hair was the worst thing, it was the way it floated above his head and gently waved in the current, a feeling that for some reason he associated with death.

After only a few seconds he stood up again. He felt that everyone on the bank was looking at him and kept his eyes carefully averted from them, brushing his streaming hair away from his face with his hand and looking instead toward the tree where Abel had almost reached his branch again.

He had time for another little duck.

This time he decided to try to open his eyes underwater. Abel swam with them open so what he’d heard about eyes leaking and water finding its way into the brain through the little gaps at the corners couldn’t be true. But even if it was, surely a little glimpse couldn’t hurt?

Once more he clamped his fingers over his nose, shut his eyes, and let the water cover him. As soon as he felt his foothold was firm, he opened his eyes carefully, he saw the smooth, algae-covered rock rise gently from the white sandy bed in front of him, it was out of focus and unclear, to be sure, but he saw it. The cold water pressed against his eyeballs but it didn’t seem to be penetrating or running into his head, he would have noticed that, he thought, and took some tiny steps forward, he wanted to feel that algae-covered rock against the soles of his feet. To lessen the pressure he pushed the water aside with his hands. This movement was small as well. His elbows were pressed to his sides, it was only his forearms that waved. But it was a movement nevertheless. He was moving forward underwater! And wasn’t that the same as swimming? He was swimming! he exulted to himself as, crouched on the bottom, he took small steps forward with his hands flapping back and forth in the water.

At that moment it occurred to him that there was something chickenlike about the way he was moving. And hardly had the thought struck him than he caught sight of Abel. He lay on the bottom some feet away regarding him. He was grasping a fissure in the rock with one hand. Cain saw how his shoulders shook with laughter, and air bubbles poured from his mouth.

They stood up and broke the surface simultaneously, right in front of the curious eyes of the people sitting on the bank. Presumably they had followed Abel with their eyes, at first captivated by his dive through the air and down into the water, then by what was to them his unnatural glide over the bottom, and they must have suspected that something was afoot for him to be down there so long, and so close to Cain, too.

Abel was laughing as he waded ashore.

“Do you know what Cain does underwater?” he shouted.

Cain saw how infectious his humor was. Some of them were laughing already, even though nothing funny had been said or done.

“Well, you know how he looks like a fish on land?” said Abel, drooping his shoulders forward, pushing out his jaw, and starting to gape like a fish. At the same time he somehow contrived to empty his eyes of life, vacuously staring in front of him and for a second becoming Cain’s living double. But the laughter he’d elicited egged him on to go further than he’d possibly intended. It’s him to a tee! somebody shouted, and Abel raised his hand and scratched his head with languorous movements. That done, he stood there with his arms hanging by his sides, suddenly they seemed grotesquely long, and then, as he started to walk, he let out several gruff, inarticulate sounds, and went from being his brother’s living image to a simpleton.

“UGHHHH,” he went, “UGHHHHH, UGHHHHHH.”

Cain realized that the two caricatures weren’t all that far apart, as everyone could see, and suddenly felt tears pricking at his eyes and stared down at the ground in front of him, glad that he was so wet after his bathing that nobody could see the state he was in.

“But underwater!” said Abel, “he looks like this!”

He crouched down on the grass, forced his elbows to his sides and began to flap his wrists, advancing, while he did so, with tiny steps, nor did he omit small dips of his head, too, and a thin call of po-o-o-k, po-o-o-k, pokk, pokk, pokk! Po-o-o-k, po-o-o-k, pokk, pokk, pokk!

Everybody laughed.

“He’s a fish on land and a chicken underwater!” said Abel.

Normally Cain would have flown at him, simply knocked him over and hit him in the face a few times with a clenched fist until his father or someone else stepped in and separated them. But not today. For some reason he was completely defenseless against what he saw. He wasn’t angry, just miserable.

Without a word he bent down and picked up his clothes. When he turned to go over to the field, he met Abel’s gaze. At first it was smiling, perhaps teasing as well, but then it suddenly seemed to take him in, his tear-filled eyes, the small twitchings at the corners of his mouth, for the next moment Abel’s face opened as if struck by terror.

Cain looked down without understanding what that glance meant and he’d got several paces out into the field before it began to sink in.

At the same time he heard Abel’s voice behind him.

“Cain,” it shouted, “Cain, I didn’t mean. . oh, Cain!”

At first he just went on walking. But when the voice came again, even more pleading, he stopped and turned.

Abel stood where he’d left him, in the middle the prostrate figures on the grassy bank by the river. He stood with his arms by his sides and Cain could see he was crying.

Why was he crying?

Slowly he came walking toward Cain. Above him the treetops were rent by another gust of wind and the sunbeams that struck through the patchwork of leaves around him shone with that almost wild fervor that light takes on in the proximity of a storm. He walked with his head down and raised it only when he stood in front of Cain. His face was wet with tears and completely contorted by the sobs that came out of it.

“What is it, Abel?” said Cain.

The whole of his torso shook, he tried to say something but not a sound came from his lips.