Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

If it hadn’t been for his clothes hanging soaking on the bedside chair, he would have thought he’d dreamed the whole thing.

Had Abel tried to drown himself?

He must have drunk himself to madness, he thought, sitting up and looking out into the small farmyard, the cart standing there with its shafts on the ground, the heaving birch tree. And then woken up in a state of shock of some kind, at the very extremities of himself, where dancing naked in front of his brother was the most natural thing to do.

His own actions seemed equally alien. Had he really dived down into the pool? Swum round in that ice-cold water without being able to see an inch in front of his face? Found Abel tied up, released him, and dragged him out onto dry land?

He suddenly imagined it once more, and a shiver went down his spine. He had seemed to be standing in the water. .

Best not to think about it. Best to forget it entirely. Unless, of course, Abel wanted to talk about it, he thought, and pushed his feet into slippers, went downstairs and to the stove in the back room. It was a little cold and he felt chilled to his very soul after what had happened, so he could well spare a stick or two even though it was summer. He placed some splinters under them, lit them, opened the damper, took out some food from the cupboard, and seated himself at the table by the window, from where he could see everyone who came up the road from the bridge. Not that he’d been rushed off his feet by visitors, exactly. In fact, he hadn’t had any, unless one counted his mother, who brought him some food occasionally, and one of his father’s men who, on two occasions, had come to collect the horse he’d borrowed, even though both times he’d told his father that he’d return it before sundown. The sun hadn’t gone down either time! It was irritating perhaps, but he knew the sort of man his father was, and the way he thought, and the kind of son he assumed Cain to be. Not only had he been remarkably ugly even as a toddler, but worse, he assumed, was the fact he’d always been so wary of people that he withdrew as soon as he got the chance to, that he never said anything on his own initiative and little more when he was spoken to, that he seldom smiled and almost never laughed. He treated everyone as a stranger, and was therefore a stranger himself, even to his nearest and dearest. And what can you do if you have a son you don’t like? A son in whom you can’t see anything of yourself? A son who isn’t just repellent, but also alien?

With only one son, one would probably have had no choice but to put up with his flaws. But if one had a second, who fulfilled all the hopes a father could possibly have, and more besides, was it surprising he pushed the first somewhat aside? That one wanted to live on through the second, and not through the first, whom one had gradually begun to suspect: wasn’t he trying to maneuver himself into a position from which he could grab everything as soon as we’re dead?

Their father was both a farmer and a shepherd, but his heart belonged to the soil, and thus Abel placed him in an impossible position: on the one hand he wanted so much to humor his younger son’s whims, on the other he wanted to see him become a farmer like himself. Cain realized that his father had regretted the choice he’d made. Not only had it cut the ties between Abel and the parental farm, but it also meant that Cain had got his hands on a corner of it. His father viewed his piece of land as a kind of bridgehead, and despaired at his own shortsightedness. As soon as they became debilitated, by age or infirmity, Cain would take over. Not immediately and openly, the way a forthright person would, but by degrees and stealth. Hadn’t the process already begun? Cold as the fish he resembled, Cain had begun to work on the weak point, his mother, her indulgence: constantly performing small services for her, always paying her attention, and not without it bearing fruit, for weren’t her visits to him getting longer? Didn’t she defend him each time his name was mentioned?

Yes, she did, thought Cain as he turned his glass round and round on the table in front of him.

The sorrow she would experience if Abel died. And so would he! Their whole world would fall apart.

But even so, he’d tried to drown himself.

Cain rose and made a circuit of the room, straightened the runner on the table, put a log that had fallen onto the floor back into the wood box, swept under the stove. Still feeling a bit cold, he went up to the half-loft and fetched a sweater. He had to talk to Abel about it when he came. Speak of the chasm he’d open if he went out of their lives. He certainly knew it already, but it couldn’t hurt to remind him.

What was the point of talking?

Cain put his hands to his head in exasperation.

Were words all he had to offer?

He went into the living room and sat in the chair by the stove, but couldn’t settle, got up again, put on his shoes and jacket, but halted at the door, fetched the full dustpan from the living room, and shook the ash out over the muddy ground in front of the steps: now he’d be able to see if anyone came while he was out. Then he began to walk the edge of his field. Although he felt sure his brother would sleep a few more hours yet, he increased his speed. All the time he conversed with him in his thoughts. He spoke of the ditches he’d dug, how heavy the work had been, but how satisfying now that the soil would soon be drained and could even be cultivated next spring. He explained that their father had lent him what he needed in exchange for part of the crop, but that he was determined, for his pride’s sake, that it would never be necessary again. From now on he could barter for the things he needed. A horse — that was absolutely essential — and then perhaps some hens, and then, in time, cows and sheep as well. When he arrived at the strip of corn, which stretched perhaps a hundred yards up to the edge of the forest, he flung his arms wide, no words were necessary here.

He walked by the riverbank on the way home. It was a kind of test: if he managed to avoid thinking about what had happened the night before when he was actually there, he would always be able to. He looked at the water quivering around the rocks it passed in the gentle rapids, he looked at the foam that formed by the bank in the eddy below, the rushes that grew farther in. He saw the sandy bottom that gradually rose and broke the surface, forming a small island in the middle of the current, the black shadows on the other side, which occasionally gathered speed and darted away, and thought of how they’d sometimes tried to spear the fish here with spears they’d made especially for that purpose, without ever succeeding.

A bird of prey hung in the sky above him, and he stared at it until he could say with certainty that it was an eagle. When he walked on, he made the mistake of looking across to the far side. There was the tree leaning over the water that Abel had climbed up the night before. In a flash he saw his brother’s body as it stood in the dark water. He saw its arms slowly moving in the current, under there , thrusting themselves blindly forward in his mind, whose train of thought must have spun out from the tree Abel had tied himself to, because the next thing he imagined was the pines on the heath, how the light shone like pillars in among their trunks in the middle of the day. But the image was too weak, after only a few moments he felt how the enormity of the night’s events was beginning to tug at him through it, and without raising his eyes from the ground, he pushed himself deeper into his enormous store of images and notions about trees, ending up finally before the oak tree in his parents’ farmyard. That he could think about. Ever since he was little, he had talked to it, fortunately even then wise enough to make sure no one overheard him. The tree was so old, and stood there so alone, that his childish heart had been filled with compassion; if no one else on the farm gave it a thought, he would at least do his best to, even though he suspected that his child’s words and child’s deeds didn’t make much difference. It had stood there before he was born, and would be standing there after he was dead, but perhaps, even so, it was pleased that he stroked its bark every time he passed, and sometimes, when he was sure he wasn’t observed, even pressed his cheek against it.