Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

When he looked up again, the wooden bridge lay before him, and from there he followed the path the last stretch home. No footprints were visible in the ashes. Abel must be totally exhausted, and would probably sleep for another few hours yet, he thought as he went in.

After he’d eaten, he had an hour’s nap on the bench in the living room. Then he dressed, stopped a moment by the steps to make sure no one had been there while he slept, crossed the farmyard to the toolshed, the place where he most enjoyed passing the time. He would often work away at the back of the house, and only a few weeks before he’d had the idea of building himself a boat, which he expected to finish any evening now. Well, a boat was one word for it, perhaps it was more like a punt, flat-bottomed and square as it was shaping up to be. But even a punt would be a remarkable sight in the district, where no boats at all were to be found, and the thought that one day in the not-so-distant future he’d come sailing downstream in his own boat caused him to light up inside. At the same time he wasn’t ignorant of the fact that the venture might seem rather comic. With his tall, thin frame, he would tower up out of the flat-bottomed boat like some sort of mast, even when he was seated.

They would gawk anyway.

He worked on his boat all afternoon, but because he didn’t want to risk Abel arriving unnoticed, he would regularly break off and go to the front of the shed to watch for him.

When evening came and he still hadn’t turned up, Cain went indoors to eat. After the meal he pulled the chair up to the living room window, but changed his mind, replaced it, and lay down on the bench with a cushion under his head. If Abel didn’t come, his disappointment would be the greater if he sat so obviously waiting, he thought. Now he lay on the bench, just as on any other evening, and if against expectation Abel should turn up, perhaps it would be a good thing for him to find him like this, indifferent as to whether people visited him or not: he was fully occupied in leading his own life.

The next moment he was on his feet again. What if Abel had attempted to kill himself again? While he was lying here thinking about himself. As if he were the one suffering.

He hurried out into the hall and put on his outdoor clothes. There had to be a reason why Abel didn’t come. But even if there wasn’t, why couldn’t he take a stroll over to his parents’ and look for him there?

Because of his pride?

That wasn’t a reason, it was an excuse, he thought, shutting the door behind him, and began to walk down to the path.

But the thought of knocking at their door without any definite errand, standing there with his sheepish smile and asking for Abel, made him pull back to rethink the matter.

Was there anything he’d borrowed from them that he could return?

He opened the door of the toolshed and cast his eye over the shelves inside. But everything was his own. Then he went into the house and looked through the earthenware in case his mother had left a mold or anything the last time she’d brought him food.

But no.

He went outdoors again, and then he hit on it: the cart.

Strictly speaking he’d been given the cart by his father. The last time he’d borrowed it, his father had said in passing that he might as well keep it, but the change of ownership wasn’t that clear, he thought, it was perfectly possible to misunderstand. Maybe he’d imagined his father was just joking? Maybe he hadn’t heard? Maybe he’d forgotten?

It wasn’t perfect, but it would do.

He lifted the shafts and began to haul the cart down the path after him in the light summer night.

Half an hour later he parked it in his parents’ farmyard. There were lights in the windows, and he walked into the hallway, knocked at the door of the living room and opened it.

They sat, one each side of the table, eating. His father looked up at him without delaying the spoon that was traveling toward his mouth. He slurped at his soup, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Well?” he said.

“I was just bringing the cart back,” Cain said. “And thank you for the loan.”

“But you’ve been given it, lad!” said his father.

“Oh?” said Cain. But his adopted tone rang false, he heard that himself and had to look out the window, fiddle a bit with the keys in his pocket. Luckily his father would never understand anyone lying about a thing like this, he thought. He interpreted it as pure stupidity, he could see that from his expression, the shadow of contempt that passed over his face as he resumed eating.

“You’re both eating?”

“If you want some, sit down,” said his father.

“No, no. I ate not long since.”

A silence ensued. Cain tried to hear if there were any noises from other parts of the house, but everything was quiet. Only the scrape of the spoons on the soup bowls, the careful slurping.

“Is Abel here?” he said at last.

His father said nothing, but his mother turned toward him.

“He went up the mountain early this morning. He’d hardly got back before he left again.”

“Oh,” said Cain. “Oh well, I just thought I’d say hello while I was here. But in that case. . Well, in that case, I’ll be off.”

“Take that cart back with you,” said his father.

“I will.”

He stopped in the hall. Shouldn’t he have asked if all was well with Abel? He turned and put his hand on the door handle. But that would seem a bit over the top, wouldn’t it? Why shouldn’t all be well with him, they’d think. And then they’d link his idiotic return of the cart with the question and realize that it had been because of Abel he’d come, not the cart. But clandestinely, they would think, why clandestinely? Could something have happened?

He heard his father speaking inside, thought it was probably about him, and began to shout inwardly, and at the same time drew back his hand and carefully stepped toward the front door; the floorboards creaked easily and he didn’t want them to think he’d been standing there listening. For the same reason he first drew the cart down toward the cow barn, as that meant they couldn’t observe him from the window, which allowed him to reach the road itself under cover of the apple trees.

He ran back like a horse with the cart behind him. He was so relieved to be alone that he caught himself laughing out loud several times on the way home.

Abel stayed in the mountains all summer. For the first few weeks, Cain thought of him so much that he realized it was bordering on the unhealthy, and began to fight against it. Abel was present in practically every memory he possessed, there was barely a rock or a hill into which his form wasn’t woven, and if he once pulled out these threads, the entire world would unravel. But the fact that Abel was a part of him didn’t mean he should have open access to his thoughts. Each time Abel popped up there, he shot an arrow into his breast. That was his method. If he was thinning rows of carrots, and associations suddenly brought his brother to his inner eye, he would mentally take up position, place an arrow in his bow, draw it, and shoot, even as his hands worked on among the feathery carrot stalks. As Abel fell down, he turned away and looked to see what was left there now. If he turned up again, he shot another arrow into his breast. Gradually it grew longer between each of Abel’s appearances. Then his image was erased from his thoughts: good. But what of his feelings? The longing, loss, the love, the hate? Did they come in images he could expunge? No, they didn’t. Neither longing, loss, love, nor hate have any shape, they run freely through the body; if you deny them access to the mind, they will still get at you: suddenly one morning Cain awoke to find himself unable to get up. Depleted, as after a long illness, he remained in bed all day. Everything he looked at, even just a fly buzzing in the window or a knot in the wooden floor, filled him with a strange, trembling anxiety. The muscles in his stomach contracted at the slightest little thought, his heart thudded as if he were running, and tears, whose source was normally deep down within him, and so could usually be stopped long before they’d reached the surface, seemed to have shifted during the night and were now located right on the perimeter of reality, so close to the outside world that it took no more than a little prick before the skin burst and tears filled his eyes.