Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

Even his father couldn’t help noticing it.

“Why so grim, Cain?” he said. “Aren’t you happy for your brother?”

“Yes,” said Cain, clearing his throat. “Of course I am.”

The disparity between what he said and the way he said it was so great that some of them laughed.

“I’ve had an idea for you, too,” said his father. “The field beyond the river is yours.”

“Right, then,” he said just as dismally, even though it pleased him.

Again there was laughter.

While the sound of the voices rose and fell about him, and at regular intervals built up to crescendos that rolled along the table, when everyone suddenly laughed and shouted at the same time, only to descend to a more even level of chatter again, Cain sat thinking about what he would do with the land. His joy burned like a small bonfire within him, and he constantly heaped new thoughts on it to keep it going. An area of corn on the rising ground toward the mountains, he thought, and imagined golden ears beneath a blue sky. A strip of rutabagas below, one of carrots, one of onions. And behind the house, potatoes. What a house he would build. It would have two rooms, and an open loft and a cellar. A woodshed. A toolshed.

Perhaps the good thoughts crowded in too fast, or there were too many of them, because after a while they began to nauseate him, there was no satisfaction in them any longer, and he looked up.

Abel sat on the opposite side of the table observing him. Abel smiled when their glances met, but his eyes were filled with sorrow.

The very next day Abel left for the mountain. During the next six months he was away from the farm for several months at a stretch, and Cain, who every day that spring and summer worked his land, feared that he was roaming about in the extensive forests outside the Garden of Eden, and had perhaps even ventured into the forbidden area itself, which had held a special fascination for him since his childhood. However, he came down for Midsummer’s Eve, and sitting on the grassy slope above the great bonfire in the twilight, with all the people of the neighborhood, Cain was struck by his brother’s beauty once more. There was something mild about his presence that evening; a smile from him was like feeling a cool hand on the brow, Cain thought, and he saw how the people sitting around him were all drawn to this benison, without, presumably, realizing it themselves. Their expressions were molded by his, whether they were listening with interest to what he was saying, and accompanying it with small smiles of encouragement, or shyly dropping their eyes when he asked them a question, or blushing with pleasure when he laughed at something they’d said.

Cain hadn’t planned to go to the celebration, but when he’d heard that Abel would be there, he’d changed his mind and gone to the stream late in the afternoon, washed himself thoroughly, shaved and scrubbed his nails, put on his only white shirt, his red braces, and his black trousers. When he was ready, the sun was still shining on the house wall, and since he didn’t want to make a fool of himself by turning up too early, he’d pulled out a chair and sat waiting in the sun.

He had some small hope that Abel might drop by, it would have been good to sit there together for a while, have a drink perhaps, but when it didn’t happen, he wasn’t disappointed. The next day was more convenient. Then he’d have time to show him everything. Not because he wanted his praise, he didn’t care about that, but because in some way it would mark the completion of the house. Ever since he’d begun to dig out the cellar, the thought had been with him that one day he’d show the finished house to Abel; in a way it had been built with that in mind.

He would say nothing of this, naturally. They would just be there. And if Abel said nothing either, it wouldn’t matter. The less visible the work put into it was, the better the house would be, as its value lay in utility and was invisible.

This was the way his thoughts had run as the shadows lengthened around him. Not until he could see the flames of the bonfire above the treetops had he gone in, put on his jacket, combed his hair, put on his hat, taken a bottle of spirits from the cellar, and set out. Perhaps he should have joined Abel when he arrived, but the thought that then he’d be one of the people clamoring for his attention was distasteful, and instead he’d come up here where he could see everything that happened without being observed himself.

A man came lurching up the grass slope in front of him. He stopped several times, standing with feet apart, bottle in hand, staring down at the people around the fire, the large wooden dance floor behind it, took a pull, and continued up without noticing Cain. He stopped in front of a tree on the edge of the forest, opened his fly, and began to pee. It went on so long that Cain eventually turned and looked in his direction. He was supporting himself against the tree with one hand, holding the bottle to his mouth with the other, and drinking while the stream, which seemed to emanate from an inexhaustible source, played back and forth over the shrubbery.

When at last he’d finished, he buttoned up, dried his hands on the sides of his trousers, adjusted his hat, and turned to go back to the festivities. After a few paces he caught sight of Cain, and veered toward him.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

“Cain,” said Cain.

“Ah,” was all he said as he turned his face away and tottered on down. Cain followed him with his gaze as he slipped into the crowd. On the wooden floor, more and more people were starting to move to the music. The young girls in light, white dresses, fair hair, red cheeks, and downcast eyes; the older women, heavier, less evasive, always on the brink of laughter. The young men, straight-backed and deadly serious in every movement; the older ones, jollier — the few of them who danced often did so in an exaggerated way, as if they could only dance by parodying themselves at the same time. The atmosphere was abandoned, the air full of laughter and shouts, the sky luminous, and over in the forest opposite he saw more and more figures gliding past, ghostlike among the trees.

They wanted each other, and they got each other.

A quiver ran through him. It was life he was looking at. The girls’ white dresses, their high busts and delicate faces, the blood that coursed through their veins. The broad backs of the men, their voices that rose and fell in the air, the green grass, the explosion of leaves on the trees, the bonfire that stretched its flaming fingers skyward.

He took a pull at the bottle that lay beside him in the grass, opened his mouth as the burning liquid ran down his throat, yet took a quick second gulp, there was something about the increasing fogginess in his head that he liked.

One of the young men in the circle around Abel got up. He wanted to dance, and halted in front of Abel, grasping his hand to pull him up, but Abel smilingly shook his head and extricated himself. When he persisted and grabbed his hand again, Abel pulled him down close to him with a sudden tug and whispered something in his ear. Those around them laughed. But the young man didn’t laugh, he stood quite still for a while, pulled at his braces with his thumbs, and looked as if he were thinking about something.

With rapid steps and a completely expressionless face, he then walked past the fire and across to the girls who were sitting a little way off up the slope, bowed to one of them, who rose, took his hand, and went over to the dance floor with him. Once, as he danced, he looked over at the young men, who shouted friendly banter at him.

After this little scene, Abel remained sitting and stared into the flames. When, after a while, one of the others leaned forward and said something to him, it was as if he didn’t hear him at first, it seemed to take several moments before he wrenched himself away from his thoughts and turned toward his friend. The heartiness he then displayed seemed exaggerated to Cain. His brother’s way of making up for lack of attention, as if he owed his friend something, was something he’d never witnessed before. Abel had always simply done what he had done, straight off, without deliberation. Nor had Cain ever seen him so calm before. The previous summer he’d have been dancing long before this, he thought. Or stood up and sung. With an almost wild energy he had kept it up: dancing and singing and drinking and laughing, still so like the child he’d been only a few years before, that no one had felt threatened by him, but only looked on him with admiration and joy.